#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Remembering Jan. 6, N.C. Gerrymandering, Mastering Your Peace w/Iyanla Vanzant, RMU Studio Reveal

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

1.6.2022 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Remembering Jan. 6, N.C. Gerrymandering, Mastering Your Peace w/Iyanla Vanzant, RMU Studio RevealIt's Thursday, January 6, 2022, and here's what's coming Up on Roland Martin Unfiltered streaming live on the Black Star Network.One year ago today, thousands swarmed the U.S. Capitol to interrupt the presidential vote certification. President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and others on Capitol Hill took time to reflect and remember the real reason the insurrection happened. We'll have a recap of today's events and talk to CBC member Rep. Bobby Scott and Retired Army Lt. General Russel Honore about the ongoing lack of accountability about what happened that day.In North Carolina, the legal battle over the state's new congressional map that illegally favors Republicans over Democrats is now in the hands of a panel of judges. We have a North Carolina State Representative here to explain how this ruling could influence who controls Congress after this year's midterm elections.The first mayor of Georiga city, incorporated in 2017, pleads guilty to federal fraud charges a day after resigning from office.Plus, we'll tell you why Michael Carvajal, the federal Bureau of Prisons director, is resigning.She has the key to mastering your peace, acclaimed best-selling author and spiritual teacher Iyanla Vanzant will give us some tips on doing just that.#RolandMartinUnfiltered partners: Verizon | Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband, now available in 50+ cities, is the fastest 5G in the world.* That means that downloads that used to take minutes now take seconds. 👉🏾https://bit.ly/30j6z9INissan | Check out the ALL NEW 2022 Nissan Frontier! As Efficient As It Is Powerful! 👉🏾 https://bit.ly/3FqR7bPAmazon | Get 2-hour grocery delivery, set up you Amazon Day deliveries, watch Amazon Originals with Prime Video and save up to 80% on meds with Amazon Prime 👉🏾 https://bit.ly/3ArwxEh+ Don’t miss Epic Daily Deals that rival Black Friday blockbuster sales 👉🏾 https://bit.ly/3iP9zkv👀 Manage your calendar, follow along with recipes, catch up on news and more with Alexa smart displays + Stream music, order a pizza, control your smart home and more with Alexa smart speakers 👉🏾 https://bit.ly/3ked4liBuick | It's ALL about you! The 2022 Envision has more than enough style, power and technology to make every day an occasion. 👉🏾 https://bit.ly/3iJ6ouPSupport #RolandMartinUnfiltered and #BlackStarNetwork via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛ https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfilteredDownload the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox 👉🏾 http://www.blackstarnetwork.com#RolandMartinUnfiltered and the #BlackStarNetwork are news reporting platforms covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. The The The The The The The Today is Thursday, January 6, 2022, coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered,

streaming live on the Black Star Network. One year ago, thousands of mostly white domestic terrorists swarmed the U.S. Capitol in order to stop the presidential vote certification, all led by Donald Trump and his band of thugs. We will hear from President Joe Biden as he laid out the case against Trump and those who tried to stop democracy. We'll also hear from Vice President Kamala Harris, who spoke in addition to others on Capitol Hill. Live on the show, we'll talk with Congresswoman Maxine Waters, one of the folks who was targeted by those domestic terrorists a year ago.

We'll also talk with Virginia Congressman Bobby Scott and also retired Army Lieutenant General Russell Honore about the ongoing lack of accountability regarding what happened on that day. We'll talk about North Carolina. Well, there's a legal battle over the state's new congressional maps, but Republicans admitted using map experts, folks, map experts in order to stop the democracy there. We'll talk with the North Carolina State Representative

about that legal challenge in that state. Also, the first mayor of a city in Georgia, incorporated in 2017, pleads guilty to federal fraud charges a day after resigning from office. Also, we will talk with, first of all, also the head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons has resigned after a tumultuous year.

We'll also, folks, talk with Yala Van Zandt on today's show. And for the first time, we will be revealing to you our new studios, Roland Martin Unfiltered and the Black Star Network. Trust me, you don't want to miss that. It is fantastic. You're going to see all the things that we're now able to do in our new space right here on Black Lives Matter Plaza in the nation's capital. and now able to do in our new space right here on Black Lives Matter Plaza in the nation's capital.

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

Best believe 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 Rolling with Roland now. He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best.

You know he's Roland Martin now. Martin. One year ago, mostly white domestic terrorists angry about President Joe Biden beating Donald Trump stormed the nation's Capitol, attacked Capitol Hill police officers, yelling racial epitaphs, targeting members of Congress. They wanted to attack them. There were folks with twist ties. They were sitting here attacking officers with flagpoles. Some were carrying the Confederate flag. They rifled through the offices of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Also, we have yet to find out what happened to the button that was in the office of Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley as well? And also, how did they know where the private office was for whip Congressman Jim Clyburn? Who were the Republicans that helped them on that particular day?

Since January 6, 2021, Republicans in Congress have been trying to thwart Democrats from getting to the bottom of what actually took place. They have refused to participate in the select committee. What it shows is that Republicans are still angry that Biden beat Donald Trump, and they have again tried to stop democracy from moving forward. What has this resulted in? It's resulted, first of all, Donald Trump was impeached for a second time as a result of his efforts leading this, and Republicans have now put that coup d'etat into place

by trying to take over secretaries of state, the folks who lead elections, the voter suppression bill. So don't think for a second that what happened on January 6th, 2021 was stopped. No, they want to continue that without the violence. Folks, we're joined right now by two members of Congress who were in the Capitol that day. It was, again, a day that we will always remember.

We're joined right now by Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California, Congressman Bobby Scott of Virginia. Glad to have both of you. Congresswoman Waters, I want to start with you. Just share with our audience how you felt on that day. What was going through your mind as this thing was unfolding? Thomas woman waters. Oh, yes. Thank you very much for having me on today This is an important day one year from the day that the insurrection took place

On our Capitol and our capital was invaded by you know, these domestic terrorists, of course, all supported by and inspired by the former president of the United States, Donald Trump. And so I was there that day, bombarded in my office. I had been in the gallery watching the votes come in, the electoral count being done. And after a short period of time, when I recognized what the Republicans were doing, trying to oppose the electoral votes, I walked back to my office over in the Rabenhouse office building. By the time I got back, the television had been turned on, and all of a sudden I'm watching these anarchists

basically invade the Capitol. And I was shocked, I was stunned, I was surprised, and I realized if they had caught me walking back from that gallery to my office, they would have killed me. Because these right wing domestic terrorists hate me. They raise a lot of money against me. They troll me and they do everything that they can to threaten me and to quiet me and to make me shut up

about what I think about them and the way that I criticize them. But I was really shocked, because it had only been a couple of days before that that I had spent about an hour on the telephone with the chief of police of the Capitol, the Capitol chief. And I said to him, please don't let them, you know, get, you know, up near the Capitol. Don't let them get on the plaza. I also said to him, can you block off up at the top of the hill where our offices are so that they can get on there? I also said to him, are you aware that the Proud Boys are in town and they have already making some disturbances in Washington, D.C.?

And I suspect that the other domestic terrorists are here. And we've got to make sure that you protect the Capitol and that, you know, John Kennedy and Martin Luther King were killed from a high. And so I want you to make sure that you protect the Capitol and you do not allow them to get on top of the building and basically maybe shoot from the top of the building. And he assured me that they can't get on top of the Capitol. What are you talking about? And yes, I'm going to have the plaza barricaded.

And no, we cannot, you know, block off the top of the hill and the street because they have rights, you know, First Amendment rights, et cetera, et cetera. And I said, well, you know, they're dangerous and we may have some people who come to oppose them and there may be guns all over the place. Well, that's not going to happen. We have people stationed. We are watching everywhere and we're not going to allow any guns to be used or to be displayed in any shape, form, or fashion. So when I saw this, I picked up the phone and I called him

and I said, I cannot believe what I'm seeing. I am so disappointed. You assured me that you had a handle on this and that you were not going to let them on the plaza. And you told me there was no way they could get on top of the Capitol. And you refused to block off the top of the hill so that members could be protected.

What the hell is going on here? How did you let this happen? And all he said to me was, oh, we're doing the best that we can. And I tell you, I was stunned because I was watching as the world was watching that an insurrection was taking place, that this president, who had promoted the big lie that the election for president had been a fraud, and trying to make people believe, as he's made his supporters believe, that Biden is not the real president,

that he did not win it, uh, that it had been a crooked election, and that, in essence, he was the one. After everybody knew and understood what he was trying to do, even trying to convince Pence, his vice president, uh, that he should undermine the electoral vote, he should not follow the Constitution, and he should use that in a way undermine the electoral vote, he should not follow the Constitution,

and he should use that in a way that the electoral votes would not be counted. And he believed, I think, that he could still remain to be the president of the United States. These terrorists were racist. They used racist language. They attacked the police. They killed, they murdered Capitol Police. Capitol Police committed suicide after this invasion. And so it is something that's recorded in history that nobody ever believed could happen, that the United States Capitol was invaded and a coup d'etat was attempted. And what Americans should be concerned about is what's going on now

and the fact that we're all at risk and this democracy is being undermined and that the president of the United States is aligned with and associated with the domestic terrorists. And he's working with his people as secretaries of states and city council people to come up with more laws, more procedures for voter suppression. He is undermining this democracy, which means that if this man is able to prevail, that everything that you understand and know what a democracy is about, whether we're talking about voting rights, whether we're talking about discrimination in public places, whether we're talking about undermining public education for people of color in particular. All of these things are part of the democracy and the way that we, as the government

of the United States, have taken on the responsibility of ensuring that government resources are used to increase and improve the quality of life for the citizens of this country. We have fought discrimination. We have fought to make this democracy stronger. And we're all at risk, no matter what anybody else says, we're all at risk that this democracy will and could be undermined unless we form the kind of coalitions, do the kind of work, get on the street, campaign now, not wait until campaign time, get out in the supermarkets, keep a safe distance, knowing that we have a pandemic,

but get the coalition formed of all of those who want to save our democracy. Stand up against this attack on the democracy and the undermining of it. And get right in the faces of those who are disrespecting the Constitution. Know and understand that all of those right-wing Republicans who claim to be so patriotic don't give a darn about the Constitution. And they've shown themselves, and many who are already elected and in the House of Representatives in particular, are part of the planning that took place to cause this invasion.

And so, we're at a tough time in the history of this country. And we've got to be ready to fight, to stand up, and to resist and hold on to a democracy that we in particular, black people, have played such a part in strengthening and making it a better place and still have work to do. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, I appreciate you joining us on this day. Thank you. Congressman Bobby Scott, I want to go to you. This was a tweet sent out today by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

If you turn on cable news today and the channel is going wall to wall with 1-6 coverage, know you are not watching a news station. I opened my show with a fact-based summary of 1-6, but 75% of show is devoted to Chicago public schools. By far the most important news story of today.

Congressman Scott, that's beyond laughable. First of all, I spent six years in Chicago. What's happening there is a Chicago story. It's not affecting the country. What happened one year ago today, that was an international story and with international implications. Well, thank you, Roland.

It's nice to be with you. Nobody can tell it better than Maxine Waters. What we had last year was an attempt to overturn the election. The Republicans have had a national strategy and campaign to sabotage the vote, to undermine the vote with voter suppression. That's been a national campaign. But this time, they actually went to try to overturn the election. And they came with the dedication and violence to do whatever it took to stop the counting of the votes.

It was an out-of-control, murderous mob. Thankfully, and if you look at the timelines, it was only moments. They were only moments from overriding members of Congress and possibly murdering many members of Congress. The challenge now is for the committee, the January 6th committee, to continue doing its job. They're doing everything they can to try to avoid answering questions. But this is evidence now that this was planned. This wasn't something spur of the moment. It was planned. Everybody wasn't in on the planning.

But it was planned that they would go in and go into the Capitol and do what it took to overturn the election. And if they're not held accountable for last year, you only wonder what will happen in the next presidential election. Now, the challenge we have, quite frankly, Roland, is that this thing is so outrageous, the fact that they came in with a murderous mob to try to take over the Capitol and upset the vote and overturn the election. People can't really believe that. No, they didn't really mean that. And that's why this committee is so important to get the facts. We need to make sure people are being held

accountable. You have people that are on video assaulting police officers with deadly weapons, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, everything else, and getting six-month sentences. I can't imagine in any other setting a murderous mob attacking the police and getting those kinds of sentences. Now, it may be that they're getting light sentences now with a promise to cooperate so they can find out who else is involved. But we've got to make sure that we take this seriously, because if it is not taken seriously, obviously those involved in this attempt to overthrow the election will be right there next year. If we win again, they're going to be right there trying to overturn the election with a murderous mob. And if they weren't held accountable this time, they will think they can get away with it next time.

We need to make sure that we're right there and we need to keep talking about it. And, yeah, they'd like to talk about anything else other than the fact that Republican-led insurrection failed. We continued the count that night, but they came extremely close in overturning the election. As Maxine pointed out, all over the states, they're setting up little strategies where they're installing people as secretaries of state, people that will do what Trump asked them to do. People have heard the phone call where he called the secretary of state in Georgia. Can you find me 18,000 votes? He said no. Well, suppose he said, okay, we'll start looking.

There was this, in Michigan, a vote was taken and they voted not to include the Detroit votes in the Michigan returns. They changed their mind the next day and said, okay, we'll include Detroit.

And they sent the results. And shortly thereafter, they said, well, no, we're going to change their mind back. We're not going to include them. And they were telling us too late, we're already sending the results. You can't change your mind back. Suppose they hadn't changed their mind. Suppose Pence had actually gone and reported results other than what the results actually were. What would we, you know, you just don't know. And they are going out of their way to install people that will do what they're told, not do the right thing. And our democracy is at risk because these people are not above stealing the election. They've got this

big lie thing going where they've got 10 percent of the public thinking that use of violence to overturn the election is justified. A majority of the Republicans believe that the election was stolen. So when Republicans vote to overturn the election, their representatives may be rewarded. So we need to make sure that the truth gets out. The January 6th commission does its job, makes the report so we know exactly who was involved, including members, possibly members of Congress, to let this thing happen and make sure it doesn't happen again. Retired Lieutenant General Russell Honore, a year ago I was sitting, I was in Atlanta. It was a day after Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff beat back Republicans to win those two Senate seats.

I was in a restaurant where the Warnock campaign was having a lunch for staff, and this thing was unfolding on television. I stood there, my arms folded, and I was smiling. Somebody said, why are you smiling? I said, because now America gets to see what we have been saying was going to happen. I said, we have been warning folks about this, warning folks about these white domestic terrorists. And people kept saying, oh, oh, y'all just making that stuff up. No. So we saw exactly what they had been planning. You were called in by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to participate in examination of security

on that particular day. Surely, as someone who put that uniform on to fight to preserve freedom in America, it had to be sickening to watch what was unfolding and watch the fact the National Guard was not called. And then the craziness at the Pentagon. And now we hear, well, who didn't call, who was supposed to call, who gave the order. And now we hear from one of the Trump's folks that he was sitting at the dining table in the White House reveling in what was unfolding. Absolutely. It was a sad day in America and government didn't work that day because they allowed the mob to attack the Capitol. That should not have happened.

The good news is the D.C. police came to support the Capitol Police, and they were able to hold the mob back. Had that not happened, we could have lost our democracy a year ago today. And when we talk about that security, I mean, it is stunning to remember with Black Lives Matter, when they were protesting, you had this seawall of folks in military gear protecting the Capitol. We knew the Proud Boys were coming. We knew the Boogaloo Boys were coming.

We knew what was coming, but you had Republicans in leadership who said, oh, no, no, everything is gonna be fine. And then, of course, we saw what happened when they were storming through barricades and attacking cops. All these so-called Blue Lives Matter folks.

Absolutely. I think the whole operation of the White House was complicit and it enjoyed some people in the government who knew and did not speak up. And I think the 1-6 Commission is getting after that. The truth has to come out.

Who knew what and when? Obviously, the president knew and his horsemen who were around him who planned this and resourced this mob on the Capitol. But this must be addressed. And the one-sixth need to have a parallel investigation going on by the Department of Justice to get at the leaders. The FBI is going after the ground troops, but it's time for the Justice Department to go after the leaders who planned this mob and insurrection, almost overthrowing our government. This is very serious. The recommendations we made for the House, which was turned into a resolution in the supplemental and went over to the Senate, had $2.9 billion worth of improvements to include

hiring more police. When it got to the Senate, Senator Leahy said, no, we want you to do better management. We don't think you need more police. We'll talk about the hardening of the Capitol. We'll talk about that later. It wasn't funded. So the Capitol is not hardened. We don't have the additional police we need, and we don't have all the surveillance we need. We did get one of our recommendations passed, which allowed the Capitol Police chief to go directly to the Secretary of Defense and request the National Guard not have to go through the Army. And the president signed that into law last week. We did get some more resources for intelligence, but that's about it. The Capitol Police is still operating on overtime.

They need more officers. They're over 300 short. That probably could be solved just like we did after 9-11. We put over 200 National Guards at the Capitol after 9-11 for two years, done under George Bush. Why haven't we done this to date? I don't know. We made that recommendation to them about having National Guards stand by. Senator Lee and the Senate didn't want that. They didn't want a quick reaction force. But they could assign National Guard full time to the Capitol until he can build his force up and get enough people to run it in uniform. He's short people, and he needs more people.

He needs at least 400 more officers. Besides the 300, it's short. It is amazing to listen to General Honore lay those things out, Congresswoman Waters, and just to think about the fact that these folks have not given up. Again, there are more than 100 people right now

who are running for office who were in that crowd, who were on the mall that day. They are trying to take over the election boards as well. Steve Bannon has openly said, we are going to take over the entire election apparatus to put our people in power. Yes, Roland, and people had better understand

that this democracy is certainly at risk. It's not over. They are working every day to do exactly what you have described in taking over elections systems with secretaries of state and local elected officials. And they intend to use their power to suppress the vote in an effort to perhaps get this president elected in any way that they possibly can. But more than that, this president has emboldened and strengthened the domestic terrorists.

The Proud Boys have not gone away. They're still recruiting. I want you to know that the Oath Keepers are organizing and confronting elected officials in various governments all over this country. The KKK is still around. They were involved one year ago on the Capitol. And of course, these domestic terrorists

are stronger than they have ever been. For those people who say that they think that the democracy is not at risk, I don't agree with them. For those people who say the democracy is stronger than ever, I want, of course, Americans to feel safe and secure. But the only way to do that is to have a broad coalition of everybody that we can bring into it who understands the threat to the democracy, whether we're talking about civil

rights groups, we're talking about the religious community. We're talking about the health care community. We're talking about the education community. We're talking about nonprofits. We're talking about people that's involved in nonprofits who care about housing and all the other issues that have become a part of this democracy where we're trying to make life better for all of our citizens, come together and confront what is happening in this country, led still by Donald Trump, and confront the domestic terrorists, and make sure that we get the information that we need. I'm worried, even about our attorney general,

and I'm going to work to find out more about why there's some resistance to making the president's papers known and public, uh, which will help to identify what role he may have played in all of this. And as I understand it today, our attorney general is saying, uh, saying that if they reveal the president's papers that somehow this will put the country at risk.

And I want to know what could be putting the country more at risk than this people, these domestic terrorists who attempted a coup d'etat on our government. And so I am going to be raising questions. And I'm going to be finding out why it is we cannot get the president's papers and make public what we find out about him and his involvement in this coup d'etat that was attempted. So we need a war room. And our war room must be a war room about protecting

the democracy and about making sure that we do not ever have again the kind of insurrection that took place and that we are more prepared, we have more people who understand, and that we are going to not allow the democracy to be undermined. We have worked too hard. Many sacrifices have been made in order to strengthen the democracy, and we still have work to do. And so we cannot afford to have it taken over and destroyed with the leadership of a former egotistical, maybe crazy man who served as the president

of the United States of America, who wants to control and run and dictate and who admires Putin in Russia and Kim Jong-un in North Korea. He wants to have that kind of power. I'm convinced of that. And before I close off with this statement, I think I tried to warn America when I started early on to talk about his impeachment after he defined

himself in his own primary, where he talked about attacking women, where he lied, where he attacked the wives of his colleagues who were running in that primary, where we found out that he and his father had discriminated against minorities, and blacks in particular, who tried to rent and lease some of their properties, where we understood that he had a fake school, where he had taken money from young people who were hopeful that they were going to learn how to be developers. When we learned they had cheated contractors

and subcontractors and on and on and on, had abused the nonprofit foundation that he had created where he was using it like it was his own purse. We knew all of these things. And why did we think somehow he was gonna change? The man defined himself. We missed it. And when we finally went after him, we went after him in ways that did not really attack what he was developing, working with Russia and what they had done in the past in the way that

they had handled his campaign. We talked about, you know, what had just happened with the Ukraine. A lot of people didn't even understand that. We talked about it in a way that people didn't get it, that he was dangerous. But now they know. And I don't care what those Republicans on the other side are not willing to admit. The world saw what happened. Some of them have to be exposed because some of them were involved in the planning. Some of them are supporters of QAnon and, you know, the Oath Keepers and all of these domestic terrorists. And now they're in the House

of Representatives and they're there and they're destructive in the way that they're in the House of Representatives, and they're there, and they're destructive in the way that they're using the honor that they've been given to serve. And so, Democrats and those who love the democracy, we've got to form this strong coalition and protect all of the rights that we have developed. We've got to make sure that the resources of government will help not only strengthen the democracy, but help people with a decent quality of life. All of this will be undermined if we allow these insurrectionists to take over our government. Congressman Maxine Waldo, I certainly appreciate it. Thank you so very much.

Congressman Bobby Scott, your final comments. Let me just say before you say that, General Honoré, thank you so much for your leadership. We love you, and we love what you had advised, and we have to do everything that we can to get what you have told us we need in order to protect the Capitol. And I just had to say that, Bobby. Thank you very much. No problem, because we did pass all of his recommendations in the House because they were so important. Roland, I think the thing that we need to focus on

is how we can avoid this thing happening again. One of the challenges we have is that people are not above just lying. They call it a big lie. Right. And it doesn't slow people up. They keep telling it. They keep telling it.

And to the extent that we're not basing our decisions on facts, we're going to have problems. When you can dismiss the facts as fake news, and people start going along with it. We have problems. We have to be very careful who we elect in these next elections because if we put the wrong people in office, they will do the bidding of Donald Trump and destroy our democracy. You heard him on tape telling the Secretary of State in Georgia to fine him 18,000 votes.

We have similar conversations apparently made all over the country. And if you have installed people who will do what he says, we know he was badgering Vice President Pence to defy the, to overturn the election. They are in a campaign now to install people in these important positions. And when he promotes a lie, it makes it possible because two-thirds of the Republicans, according to polls, believe the lie. So when their legislators actually vote to overturn the election, they will not be punished politically because the majority of their party supports that position. We need to make sure that we don't put people in a position that they will be able to overturn the election. And remember that two-thirds of the Republicans in Congress voted to overturn the election after the insurrection was quelled and we went back to work.

After that, two-thirds of the Republicans in the House voted to overturn the election. And so when they move the decision-making process from the localities counting the votes to a situation where the state legislature can decide on a party-line vote who won the election, you have set up a situation where they can just overturn the election. Now, people don't believe that legislators would actually do that. But just remember that two-thirds of the Republicans voted to overturn the election, and we have to make sure that we elect people in this upcoming midterm election that will not go along with such dangerous attacks on democracy.

Congressman Bobby Scott, we appreciate it. Thanks a lot. General Honoré, your final comments here. There were several generals who have warned us that, look, don't act as if this nation is not in peril with 2024. Trump has made it clear he's going to run, and his people

are hell-bent on putting him back in the White House. If that man has commander-in-chief authority, God save all of us. Well, absolutely. That scenario of a potential coup in 2024 is a potential scenario. And we need to get government to do, and the government, parts of the government, our FBI, Secret Service, and Department of Homeland Security,

and the Department of Defense to do their darn job. This should have never happened. And that has to be fixed. And they need to be held accountable, those agencies. You know, the Secretary of Homeland Security was in the Middle East on a farewell tour on the day the Capitol was attacked. That's a shame. The Department of Defense were waiting for somebody to ask them to send troops over to defend the Capitol. That's a damn shame. That should have never happened. And I'm honored to be here today with Representative Waters and Scott discussing this with you.

They know what has to happen in the heartland of the country. Inside the Capitol, bring in the National Guard. Increase the retirement pay for the Capitol Police. They make $6,000 less than the Park Police. That will do a lot to improve their morale. In the meantime, bring 300 or 400 National Guardsmen in. We did it after 9-11. Put them there for the next two years.

Everybody's predictable until we can get the additional police hired. God bless America. God bless our democracy. Every generation has to defend this democracy. In the last hundred years, we went and fought two world wars over defending democracies and creating them other places. This generation must fight to save the democracy in America. God bless America. General Honoré, we certainly appreciate it. Thanks a lot. President Joe Biden spoke frankly and directly for 20 minutes today in Congress.

This is a portion of what he had to say. My fellow Americans, in life there's truth. Tragically, there are lies. Lies conceived and spread for profit and power. We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie. And here's the truth. The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. He's done so because he values power over principle,

because he sees his own interest as more important than his country's interest, than America's interest, than America's interest. And because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution. He can't accept he lost, even though that's what 93 United States senators, his own attorney general, his own vice president, governors and state officials in every battleground state have all said he lost. That's what 81 million of you did as you voted for a new way forward. He has done what no president in American history, the history of this country has ever, ever done. He refused to accept the results of the election and the will of the American people. While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it,

trying to uphold the principle of that party, too many others are transforming that party into something else. They seem no longer to want to be the party, the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, the Bushes. But whatever my other disagreements are with Republicans who support the rule of law and not the rule of a single man, I will always seek to work together with them to find shared solutions where possible. Because if we have a shared belief in democracy, then anything is possible. Anything.

So at this moment, we must decide what kind of nation are we going to be? Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm? Are we going to be a nation where we allow partisan election officials to overturn the legally expressed will of the people? Vice President Kamala Harris also spoke today to Congress and the country. Certain dates echo throughout history, including dates that instantly remind all who have lived through them where they were and what they were doing when our democracy came under assault. Dates that occupy not only a place on our calendars, but a place in our collective memory. December 7th, 1941, September 11th, 2001, and January 6th, 2021. On that day, I was not only vice president-elect, I was also a United States senator. I was here at the Capitol that morning at a classified hearing with fellow members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Hours later, the gates of the Capitol were breached.

I had left, but my thoughts immediately turned not only to my colleagues but to my staff who had been forced to seek refuge in our office, converting filing cabinets into barricades. What the extremists who roamed these halls targeted was not only the lives of elected leaders. What they sought to degrade and destroy was not values, the ideals that generations of Americans have marched, picketed, and shed blood to establish and defend. On January 6th, we all saw what our nation would look like if the forces who seek to dismantle our democracy are successful. The lawlessness, the violence, the chaos. What was at stake then and now is the right to have our future decided the way the Constitution prescribes it, by we, the people.

Let's go to our panel. Joining us right now is Greg Carr, Department of Afro-American Studies, Howard University. Recy Colbert, founder of Black Women's Views. Also Mustafa Santiago Ali. Excuse me, I'm sorry for Raji Muhammad, radio and TV host. Glad to have all three of you here. Recy, here's what I find to be real

interesting. This is media. I just posted this story. Megan Kelly, go to my iPad. Megan Kelly is sick of media coverage of January 6th. MSNBC and CNN are trying to inflate their ratings. I saw a tweet earlier from Eric Erickson where he said, this is the progressive festivus. All of these folks are acting as if this was, oh, just no big deal. And like, oh, you can't compare this to 9-11. In fact, Megyn Kelly, excuse me, I'm sorry, Megyn McCain, I get all the Megyns mixed up. They're all the same to me.

Megyn's Karen. Yeah, they're all the same. So she decided to send a tweet out blasting Vice President Kamala Harris. You're going to love this one here. Go to my iPad. This is what, so, he said, just in Kamala Harris equates January 6th to Pearl Harbor in 9-11.

That came from Disclosed.TV. First of all, they should see Vice President Kamala Harris. But Meghan McCain goes, this is really wildly disrespectful to veterans. And I'm like, really? I thought veterans fought for the freedom of America. Wasn't that what these fools were trying to stop on January 6th? It's amazing how

they're just trying to dismiss like, oh, no one really died. So, like, Ashley Babbitt was shot and killed, but other people, the cops, it was natural causes. So, why y'all making a big deal out of this? Well, I mean, it's what Republicans always do.

They try to deflect. They try to change the narrative. These are the same people that were hysterical over CRT being taught in schools, which it's not. The same people that were talking about these migrant caravans for months on end. These people are always up in arms about something or another every damn day. So they're completely full of shit to try to lecture the rest of the same country for rightfully taking a moment to commemorate something that was really an attack, an unprecedented attack in terms of what we've seen in that specific building, the Capitol, on our democracy. My position is that we have to go beyond commemorating a specific day

and really acknowledge that our democracy is under assault every day. I was happy to see Vice President Kamala Harris call out misinformation. I think misinformation and disinformation is one of the greatest threats, not just to democracy, but to our society. That's why we can't even have a reasonable discussion where we all agree on the same set of facts when it comes to coronavirus, when it comes to vaccines and so on and so forth. And so we have a lot of fights that were,

a lot of fronts in which we're fighting just to maintain some semblance of a country, of a we, the people. But in terms of any notion that there's an overreaction, I would argue that there's an underreaction to today's events and to what it means. And so I just think that Republicans, their masters are trying to change the subject. They weren't successful today. They'll probably be successful tomorrow in turning the page. But today, there was a time where it was rightfully,

you know, marked in terms of how just absolutely appalling it was. But I argue that every day is an abomination because every day we are seeing more and more assaults on the rule of law. And more importantly for me, or more specifically for me, the citizenship of Black citizens. We're going to talk about gerrymandering, what's happening down in Florida with Ron DeSantis, who's disenfranchised Black voters in three districts. And across the country, there are so many ways where they're trying to enshrine second-class citizenship for Black Americans. And we are not adequately fighting against that. And that's my bigger concern, as well as, like I said, misinformation, disinformation, how we aren't even equipped with the tools to have a discussion about it.

Faraji, Dean Cain, who plays Superman on some TV show, you know, he's like, well, how do you cause an insurrection when not one person has been charged with an insurrection? And so I blasted him and a bunch of his idiot followers have been trying to come at me. And I'm like, first of all, you MAGA maggots need to be quiet. I said, we know exactly what happened. We saw it with our own eyes. And they're like, well, no, you didn't see what you saw.

Oh, okay, I didn't see what I saw. That's literally what these folks want us to think. No, no, you didn't see what you saw. Someone even said, show us the 14,000 hours of unreleased video. I'm going, really? You think that's going to tell the walk in the park y'all want to describe?

Stop. That's the whole problem with this whole situation. I mean, the president even saying that we need to basically tell the truth about what happened on this day one year ago. And we have to tell the truth. I mean, we all saw, we saw people scaling the walls of the capitals. It's very simple. Raising the, taking down the American

flag, raising the Trump flag. Raising the Trump flag. I mean, you're scaling the walls of the capitol. So that just says enough as it is. So, you know, that picture has been circulated worldwide. But even if we look at this situation, look, here's what I don't want us to get into the space of thinking, that democracy is so strong and so robust right now that nothing like this can ever happen again. Folks, I'm telling you, there is a real problem in the country. You know, we can talk about all of the other things that are happening, but I think this is really at the top of the list for a lot of people and should be. Democracy is failing in America. Democracy is failing in America. And here's, let me just say

this. There was a, the Center for Systemic Peace's polity data set, which is the same data that the CIA task force uses to measure or predict instability and violence. And they found that here in America, the score, which is normally at a plus 10, by the end of the presidency of Donald Trump, the U.S. score has fallen to a 5, making the country a partial democracy for the first time since 1800. This is what the Washington Post reported. And one of the political scientists said, we are no longer the world's oldest continuous democracy. That honor is now being held by Switzerland, New Zealand, and then Canada. So when you're looking at we have over five years, we have fallen five points in a situation like this. It just goes to show you this is not a democracy. This is a fall.

This is a huge fall in this country. And if we truly believe that this is going to just be swept under the rug, we are going to be well mistaken. Greg, in a moment, we're going to talk with some folks out of North Carolina about a lawsuit there over gerrymandering. And the reality is this here, and we have been talking about this a lot on this show, and I called, I said,

largely white domestic terrorists for a reason. Let me remind people who Donald Trump targeted after 2020. He would mention Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Milwaukee. The partial recount Republicans paid for

in Wisconsin focused on Milwaukee. They were talking about Black people. Mm-hmm. Greg? Absolutely. on Milwaukee, they were talking about black people. Greg? Absolutely. Well, I mean, let's be clear. The elections of 2022 and 2024 have been rigged.

That's in the bank now. The only way you can unrig them now is to look at those 19 states and 34 laws that have been passed since the white riot of January 1st, 2021, and pass federal legislation. And that's not going to happen in part because, and the president of the United States basically said that today. We heard it. He, along with a lot of other delusional people in this country, have a desperate faith, a desperate faith in the country's institutions, but they are missing the point. I want to credit the white nationalists of this country because they joined their brethren all around the world and remaining focused. There's no country. Faraj, I'm glad you quoted that, brother. There's a new book by a Canadian author, Stephen Marsh, I'm looking at right now, called The Next Civil War. And he and all these scholars

and military folk, and he comes to a very basic conclusion. Only the inciting events are impending in this. The crisis has been here for some time. And there's only one question, it seems to me. The first question we should ask ourselves is, you know, what are the ways that people exert pressure on the political and sovereign decision-making process. We seem to think that voting will do it. Well, they've already undergirded voting. He would have found those votes. You see what they did to the Secretary of State in Georgia. We know that. The vice president of the United States was in the Democratic National Committee headquarters, and a bomb, a pipe bomb was outside. They had to evacuate her on January the 6th, Vice President Harris.

And today, in the world of white nationalism, Piers Morgan and Candace Owens got into a little slap fight because Candace Owens accused the FBI of facilitating planting the pipe bomb there. So this isn't even about white skin and black skin. This is about white nationalism understanding that they don't have a United States. They didn't replace the American flag with the Trump flag. They're the same flag. Ashley Babbitt's mother was on the steps of the Capitol today defending her daughter, saying she was just exercising her First Amendment rights, while them two next, Marjorie Taylor

Greene and Matt Goetz, were inside on the only thing that they had on the Capitol Dome today that the white nationalist party did. They were in there defending what happened on January the 6th and then went on Steve Bannon's show, which has been put off of Spotify, even though Apple and them still carry it, seen as one of the most racist and misinformation-spreading shows out there in the podcast universe, for a whole hour talking about the January 6th distraction. And this is where it's very clear. Trump's having a Klan rally on the 15th of January only because his quote-unquote supporters convinced him not to have it today.

And he was on Glenn Beck last night talking about, and the name of the conversation was the one-sixth distraction. See, they don't care about a country. They care about power. Joe Biden was right about that. But Joe Biden is mistaken, as is everyone, including, quite frankly, General Honore, because General Honore wasn't the only general advocating, you know, saying we need to ramp up security.

No, there is enough security. The Washington Post had a front page article yesterday that said 650,000 separate posts saying everything. We should kill people. When we take over, we're going to hang the traitors. We're posted between Election Day 2020 and January 6th. My friend Bill

Lamar down there at Montgomery at Metropolitan AME. Remember when the Proud Boys tore down the Black Lives Matter sign on the 12th of December? And then Kristen Clark and them, when they went into the lawyers' committee, filed a lawsuit against it, everybody knew they were coming. There's enough police. This ain't about doubling

up security. This is about the fact that this country will never grapple with white violence, because white violence is the definition of the United States of America. If you're going to push it back against that, you have to face the fact that state-suborned violence is at the heart of this project. I'll only say one other thing right now initially, and that is that on Fox, they were talking about Chicago public schools. On all the other places, Hugh Hewitt, that string-lipped skeletor who people were calling Charlie,

whatever his name is, Voices of Reason in the Republican Party. No, they're white nationalists. Do y'all understand that all they want is power? So there's no talking to them. Why are you talking to those people? And the Democrats missed their moment. The moment was January the 7th. They should have broke the back of these white nationalists.

You don't give them a chance to get up off the mat. Hell no. Hell no. Come on, Doc. Cheney was in the Capitol Rotunda today with his daughter walking around like he got some damn respectability. When they blew up the World Trade Center within three weeks, they were bombing Afghanistan. You seized a moment to execute your game plan. They had those plans for years.

But this was our moment. In the wake of that insurrection, every last one of them white boys should have been arrested, and you got sitting members of Congress ignoring subpoenas, and what are they doing? Well, we're going to let the process work. We're going to let the... I'm sorry, Congresswoman Waters. I'm sorry, sis. The reason they're not giving you

those national security documents is because it is national security. Don't you know that General Miley called the General of the People's Liberation Army in China in October, late October, and then again on the 8th of January to assure him that the United States wasn't going to attack China? Because if you read Bob Woodward's book, Fear, him and Costas, they say that Trump was going to trigger a damn war with China to stay in office. We need to stop playing like we're not paying attention. There is no United States of America, and we will be the ones to take the L if we don're not paying attention. There is no United States of America and we will be the ones to take the L

if we don't start paying attention. If you watch this show or my TV One show, News One Now, Washington Watch, going back to 2009, you will know that one of the places that has been ground zero for what we are

experiencing is North Carolina. Remember, we're talking about a state And the number one down zero for what we are experiencing is North Carolina. Remember, we're talking about a state where they, because of a lot of hard work, massive turnout in 2008, senator Barack Obama wins that state by 14,100 votes. Republicans then begin to change the laws saying, oh, not again. Remember, it was a federal panel of judges that said that there was a laser-like

targeting of black voters. Well, check this out. In November, Democratic State Representative Marsha Moray asked the GOP leader who was leading their gerrymandering effort, Representative Dustin Hall, if he had used any outside materials to help draw the maps. He said, absolutely not.

Well, yesterday, in court, on the stand, because he didn't want to commit perjury, he went, um, I did. But he denied relying on the maps too much, calling them non-consequential. North Carolina State Representative Amber Baker joins me now from Winston-Salem. Glad to have you on the show. So here's what I find to be real interesting. They they say, sorry, it was no big deal. Really? So why were you hiding it?

Yeah, so thank you for having me on the show, Roland. And I've been a longtime supporter. And as a first-term legislator who is very astute to what has been happening in North Carolina over the years, which is one of the reasons that I chose to run for election. The whole process, we asked for transparency throughout the entire process. The Democrats were not a part of the actual drawing of the maps, even though we repeatedly asked to be included.

And then once the maps were presented, we did. We challenged, we pushed back, and the response that we repeatedly received was, this is the most transparent process ever used to draw the maps, and these maps are really good maps. And so our reply to that was simply because you say the maps are good maps, and these maps are really good maps. And so our reply to that was, simply because you say the maps are good maps, even though we see that these maps will disproportionately favor the Republican Party, we were left with no other choice but to use the legal process in order to get maps that allow our constituents to vote for the candidates that they want.

And so that is what we're dealing with down here. Allison Riggs is the chief voting rights attorney at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice out of Chapel Hill. And Allison, I got to tell you, there's nothing that comes out of the mouth in Republicans in North Carolina that I trust. They have been doing everything they can to undermine democracy in that state, targeting of black voters, shutting down early voting, limiting it to just one location. And not only that, when I think about, they were so incensed when Democrats took control of the Supreme Court, they literally tried to strip the power of the Supreme Court and give it to the lower court where they had a majority of the court. I mean, they are hell bent on destroying democracy. And that's really what this lawsuit is about.

That's right. Our democracy doesn't work if voters can't affect political outcomes. And the case that we brought just act legally, apparently, and that partisan gerrymandering and racial discrimination are intertwined. They act in concert to deprive voters of the ability to elect their candidates of choice. I cross-examined Chairman Dustin Hall yesterday. He misled the public. He misled his fellow members. And if you are dishonest about the process by which you draw the maps, I certainly expect that and think that it's a reasonable inference that you are dishonest about the impact that these maps will have on voters, particularly Black voters. And his own expert witness admitted that Black crossover districts were destroyed, would absolutely not perform. These maps are terrible for Black voters and terrible for North Carolinians writ large

because they are completely unresponsive to the will of voters. And the reason, Alison, y'all have been effective to a certain degree in North Carolina is because by targeting the racial gerrymandering, you were able to get the courts to agree. When the decision with the Supreme Court, when they able to get the courts to agree. When the decision went to the Supreme Court, when they said,

oh, we can't get involved in political gerrymandering, kick it back to the states. Well, the problem is if the state Supreme Court has been gerrymandered, hell, you're screwed. That's right. And I actually argued that case in the U.S. Supreme Court and made the argument

that a patchwork system of justice is no system of justice at all. You shouldn't be able to be guaranteed a meaningful vote based on what state you live in, which is all the more reason we need the Freedom to Vote Act passed so that federal elections are meaningfully regulated in the way that ensures that gerrymandering is finally put to an end and our votes mean something? The thing here that when we talk about this, Representative Baker, and the reason I keep saying North Carolina is the test case, because if you look at what happens around the country, they tried it there,

and then it hopped to other states. And that's the piece, because North Carolina is a state where you have more registered Democrats, but then you have Republicans who are dominating across the board. They were angry that Cooper became the governor, and then all of a sudden, then they changed the rules and he couldn't appoint these people. And so the legislature

in North Carolina, by stripping power from the governor and from other offices, we've seen that happen in Wisconsin. When you have a Democratic governor there after Republican governor, we see it happen in other states. And so that's why what happens in North Carolina is so critical because Republicans are scared to death that North Carolina potentially could be the next Virginia, where it's no longer a solid red state.

It's very much a purple trending blue state. Yeah. And so, you know, when you look at the statistics of who votes in North Carolina, it is about 50-50 Republican and Democrats. And so we are a purple state in a sense that we elected a Democratic governor and a majority Republican House and Senate. So it is important for us to understand that of those 14 districts that are available, the way the maps have been drawn, 10 or 11 of them have been drawn to favor 10 or 11 of the 14 seats to the Republicans with three or four remaining for the Democrats.

So the way that the maps have been drawn, that even with a massive turnout, there is going to be no chance that a Democrat majority could be held in either the House or the North Carolina House or Senate. And that is by design. It is really clear that our voters will vote when they are given a choice, as demonstrated in electing Governor Cooper not once but twice. And they will reject what they consider to be a poor candidate when given that choice. Allison, that particular point is the most critical thing, and that is by gerrymandering it this way, they are saying, oh, it don't matter what your Democratic turnout is. We will guarantee we will always be in power.

That's exactly what Wisconsin has been doing. And there, again, surgical precision, using algorithms, they were so dastardly there. And what they did was Republicans had to sign a statement saying you will not divulge what these maps look like. They went to a private room to look at the maps, and I forgot the guy who died. He was, you know, his daughter, of course, who got his laptop and revealed the documents, and they were doing this all across the country, how they were using the algorithms to extract voters and moving 2,000 or 3,000 here and there to guarantee they will have majority legislatures to control policymaking. The man you're talking about was Tom Hoffler, and he perfected the art of gerrymandering. And it is a never-ending battle

to put the toothpaste back in the tube on that front. The way in which maps can be artfully constructed to be absolutely immune to the voices of voters. If North Carolina went 55% Democratic in the state, it wouldn't gain a supermajority in any chamber or in Congress. Wow. That's impressive. I mean, that's an impressive gerrymander.

It is devastating for democracy. Absolutely stunning. Well, look, we're going to keep watching this case again. It is, you know, look, every show that I've had, we've spent a lot of time talking about North Carolina. I've actually had to go North Carolina on these issues. We're going to be looking at what happens in this critical U.S. Senate race that's happening there with Sherrod Beasley on the Democratic side, Wade Nafana, who's a Republican challenger. And so good luck in this case. Hopefully you prevail. And Roland, can I just add this, too? If you don't think that elections have consequences, just remember that Chief Justice, then Chief Justice Beasley lost by 400.

400 votes. Yep. Right. And so with this this decision now in the hands of the three panel judges, ultimately it will be Chief Justice Justice Newby that will make the decision concerning how these things go. So if we don't believe that voting has consequences, this is one where 401 votes would have made a difference in terms of how this decision would have been heard. Representative Amber Baker, Adels and Riggs, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you. See, this is the point here, Faraj, that I keep making on the show

where I keep trying to tell these people and they keep saying, oh, you keep bringing up voting, man. This stuff don't matter. These folks are not playing. No. They know. They know.

They know. If they control the legislature and they control the state supreme court and they can or fine elected democratic governor then we control the laws and then when you sue it goes to the courts we control that and they're going to declare constitutional and so for all these people who are rolling you know you sitting here trying to tell us support Democrats. All right, fine. Who your ass want to support? Because here's the deal.

We know what they going to do. And they don't give a damn about nothing we care about. Now what you want to do next? I mean, that's the big question right there. And you know what, Brother Roland, I'm really at this point, and I just joined it when I was just saying this in a YouTube chat.

Look, I think it's time for us to even take in this moment of transition within this democratic structure that we have. We can reimagine it. We can strive to reform it. But we also need to create some radical political discourse, as Saul Alinsky said. We need to create some radical political discourse that's going to lead us to some real power. Why not create another political party that is in the better interest of the American people, especially black people in this country? You could create another party, but again, I'm using actual, the last major party that was created was a reform party. Ross Perot. Right.

One person got elected on a state level. Jesse Ventura. Right. That's it. Right. But look at what the Tea Party did. And that was because Ross Perot was a major billionaire. Right.

But look at what the Tea Party did. No, the Tea Party is not a party. Those are Republicans. No, no, no, no. I'm not saying that they're a party. I'm just saying the level of influence. No, no, no. No, no, no, no. I'm not saying that they're a party. I'm just saying the level of influence No, no, no. Hold on. But see, language matters.

You said we have to create a third party. The Tea Party is not a third party. Those are Republicans. Yeah, exactly. But my point is, if that if they can create a separate situation, and like I said, we can put it,

we don't have to make it, just do the same thing as the Tea Party. Right, no, no, no, that's what I'm saying. What I'm saying is you can't call a third party because they're not an actual third party. They are Republicans. I got you, I got you. But I'm saying though, Brother Roland,

is that there has to be an alternative to what we're seeing today. It can't just be Democrat and Republican for the next 20 years. But that's what it is. But that's what it is. But that's what it is. Like I said, if we want to make some radical, progressive changes, why not

put some interest? And look, here's where I stand on this. But listen to what you just said. I need you to understand what you just said. I'm going to bring Marisi in here. When you say radical, progressive, what state are you talking about? Here's the reality. Here's the reality.

Outside of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in the suburbs, Pennsylvania, Alabama. Outside of Detroit and Flint and a couple other places. Michigan is Alabama. So the problem that we're talking about here is that this is a land issue. You're having white rural interests that are having outside undue influence on the political process because your progressive voices are largely in major cities. The problem is if you're in North Carolina, outside of Mecklenburg County, outside of Raleigh-Durham, rural. And those are white folks. Texas, rural. You could talk about Harris County, Dallas County, Bexar County, Travis County, boom, rural. Georgia,

rural. So we look at these large population centers as huge numbers of votes, when you add up 3,000, 5,000, 8,000, 10,000, 20,000, 15,000, 10,000, they overwhelm the city numbers. So it's also now a land issue. And so I'm agreeing with you on creating that. But the problem is that's not going to solve your problem when, and Marisa, I'm going to bring you in, when they have the ability to control the politics because of the rule dynamics.

Absolutely. I mean, you know, the bottom line is that Republican voters don't have to be begged to participate. They don't have to be begged to be patient. They have been waiting for Roe v. Wade to be big to participate. They don't have to be big to be patient. They have been waiting for Roe v. Wade to be overturned for decades, and they still vote on Roe v. Wade every single election. On our side, we have a magic wand syndrome. I think I said it last week. We have a short attention span. We have a why isn't everything fixed yesterday. You know,

when people talk about progressive, what is progressive exactly? Because what I see, what people define as progressive is saying cancel student debt and Medicare for all, and that's the extent of their interests. But when you actually talk about things like environmental justice and economic justice, you know, stop all that race shit, stop all that identity politics bullshit that y'all talking about. We need to focus on student loan forgiveness and we need to focus on Medicare for all. And so where we continue to fall short is that we don't play the long game. We don't unite

around a cause. We don't even know what the hell we even, what the cause is to begin with because they're very different ideas, which is fine. It's fine to have different ideas, but we constantly have to beg. I'm tired of, I'm, I'm mentally preparing myself to do it, but we have to beg and beg and beg and beg and plead and, and, and, and offer a buffet of reasons to vote for the one party that at least is okay.

If not, you know, encourages the fact that we're full citizens. That's where we're falling short. So Greg, I'll pull Greg in here. I'm going to give you a perfect example. It's a perfect example. Texas. There are 31 state senators in Texas. That's it.

31. Two are black. Boris Miles in Houston. Royce West in Dallas. That's it. 31. So if you look at the map in Texas and say, how can Democrats take over the state Senate? It's damn impossible.

Because your power centers, in terms of your voting numbers, you got significant black folks in Houston, in Dallas, but Republicans are able to win because so many of the rural parts of the state are white. And so I'm agreeing with Faraji in terms of creating that different dynamic, but that only works in the large population centers. It ain't going to happen in the rural places. What you got to do is you got to figure out from a Democrat side, how in the hell are you going to flip some rural districts in order to take power?

That's true. You know, there's a French scholar that just wrote a book a couple years ago. It's just been translated into English. It's called The Ungovernable Society, Gregor Chamayou. And he uses the term authoritarian liberalism. What he's referring to is a state or a government where, in order to maintain economic stability to the advantage of corporate elites and those who are making a whole lot of money, by the way, one of the reasons why Steve Bannon can still be on Apple is because Apple's interested

in making money. They just announced they're the first trillion, $3 trillion, $3 trillion valued company in the world. So, that's their values. So, when you have an authoritarian liberal estate, the function of the government is to make sure the people who are making the money, who are attracting and maintaining and increasing the wealth, are able to do that. What you're describing, Roland, is political participation in a state like that.

I would think that probably the most important, not probably, the most important time for black people in this country politically since the end of enslavement was the period of the 1960s and 70s, because that's when we were clearest about the fact that there is no national identity. There are political actors who are trying to work and organize for their collective interests. And that was the period when we did, as Faraji was talking about, Gary 1972 was about forming a black political party. But it wasn't about forming a black political party in terms of a black

Democratic Party or a black Republican. It was, as you say, you form a collective to then have a report card and then advance your interests, and then you vote according to your interests. Now, here's where it gets complicated, gets difficult. And it's interesting to hear Alison Riggs talk about this, since she argued the case up to the Supreme Court. And, of course, as you mentioned, Roland, the Wisconsin and Maryland cases came together in 2018, the Gill versus Whitford line, where the Supreme Court says they can't get involved

in political gerrymanders, which I respect them for that, because they've got to protect their white nationalism. When we go back, there's another North Carolina case, and the only Supreme Court justice who overlaps that is the profound defender of white nationalism and blackface, Clarence Thomas. And that's the 1993 case, the Shaw versus Reno line in North Carolina, where they used political gerrymandering, but the impact was to exclude Black people. And so the Supreme Court there and Thomas in a dissent, 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court majority

said that, yeah, you used political gerrymandering, but it had a racial impact. That's why Alison Riggs was talking about how she argued the case now. Two things. Well, let me footnote that by saying elections do matter, because the three-panel jury that's hearing the case that you're talking about now in North Carolina rejected the search for discovery that would have revealed the rest of the stuff. Two of them reported by, appointed by Republicans. One of them appointed by Democrats.

All of them elected, though. Very important. Now, back to the point. The crisis we have in the United States of America, where Texas comes into play, and this is the example I think you raised, very important, is that historically, we have conflated race with political party. So whether it be Shaw versus Reno, whether it be Gill versus Whitford. The challenge constitutionally is based on the assumption that if you are black, you're going to vote Democrat. But as we see in the case of Texas, where the gerrymandering is so radical,

what you may end up seeing, which is why I'm very hopeful about this. I don't get sad about these things because I don't give a damn where the United States of America exists in its current formation. It's going to have to fracture because the 18th century foundation it's built upon, settler colonialism, is anchored in a way to protect those economic interests. And sooner

or later, when you see people in Texas stop forgetting, they say, I'm not voting, forget that. Why? Because my vote doesn't count. People then began to look for, which is why when Riggs said this, I thought it was interesting. She said, what happens when people can't affect political outcome?

That means, they said, we got two black damn senators out of 31 in Texas. You know what? I'm not going to vote anymore. Or no, I'm going to go vote Republican. Aren't those people that say, give me my gun, freedom of men and women. Black people start doing that? Guess what the white nationalist party is going to have to do? They're going to have to realize they broke it, baby. Because see, California, the governor

of California said he's going to enact laws. He's going to put referendum out and he's going to use the same legal arguments they used in the anti-abortion case in Texas to argue for getting the guns in California. Now, when that case hits the Supreme Court, when you hear oral arguments, you're going to see this white NASA's justices on the Supreme Court, Justice Beard, Justice McConnell, of course, and the handmaid. You're going to see the smoke come out of their ears, and you're going to see their heads explode.

Why? Because, see, what the Democrats are going to begin to understand is, since you don't give a damn about the country, I'm not going to give a damn about the country. I'm going to use the same legal arguments you make, and California is going to say, we don't have reciprocity with Texas. And New York State is going to say,

we don't have reciprocity with Mississippi. But it's too many black people in Mississippi, which means in Mississippi, then you'll see black people say, well, since you don't like the Democrats, we're all going to vote Republican. And we're going to have black Republicans that are Second Amendment. And if you bring your white ass into Jackson, we're going to light you up like a Christmas tree. Hey, First Amendment. Hey, Second Amendment. This is where we are headed.

People, we got to understand, as Reesey said, the long game in this does not depend on the United States remaining an entity. They are going to keep it together as long as they can run it. If they don't think they can run it, they will destroy it. And in a minute, we're going to get that memo and we may take the same approach. So I'm just going to give you, so, Fraud, you're going to get the last point here. But here's the thing I want you to, again, what I'm trying to explain, when you look at why the map matters. So look at the most populated states, all right?

So just remove D.C. from this. Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, this is based upon 2019. The total population of those seven states is 3.8 million. That's the total population of those seven states. Those seven states have 14 United States senators. The population of Harris County in Houston, where Houston is, is 4.7 million. The population of Cook County, Chicago, Illinois, is 5.15 million.

Harris County and Cook County are larger, these two counties are larger than seven states that have 14 U.S. senators. And of those senators, two Wyoming, two red, Alaska, two red, North Dakota, two red at six. South Dakota, that's eight. Why do they fight D.C.? Because they don't want two blue senators. So what I'm describing on the national level is Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, the entire South.

You have these progressive centers, these cities and counties, but the rest of those locations, they also have a number of people who they keep electing, and they're not going to change the maps because that's how they maintain power. So if these young white kids are moving from these rural places to the progressive places, they still

going to have a representative. They stay senators, and that's the challenge that we're in. Go ahead. Just real quick. I just want to ask Roland a question. Well, maybe after you finish, Farage. Roland, maybe after Farage finishes this question. I got to go to a break.

Farage, go. All right. Real quick. I'm speaking of political interest. I'm speaking of – and I'm hearing you, Brother Roland, and I think that a political mind, a brilliant mind like yourself and others who can break it down in that way to talk about the impact of land. But I'm speaking of at least getting black folks in a position to think about their interests outside of party lines and labels. I'm speaking of let's have a real conversation with black politicals who can help us to understand. We're not talking about registering a party, quote unquote, at this point, but we're simply talking about is what are our

interests, what are the issues, and how we can move forward to organize to bring people together to start working. Now, I'm the type of organizer where you can reform and then at the same time innovate and create. We can reform. We can work to continue to reform this current system. But who's stopping us to innovate in creating an alternative political reality for black people in this country? This is the fall of America that we're seeing with this democracy. New Minister Farquhar said in his book on Torchlight for America, he said the very first sentence of the book, he said, America is on her deathbed. So why are we holding up? Why are we trying to, you know, grab onto the life support machine for a situation that hasn't been in our

full interest when we can take this time and use this time to say, OK, we see that the foundation of democracy as it currently is, is on shaky ground. Let's start to plan and move forward because I'm thinking 20, 30 years down the road when my children get to a place where they're grown. And I don't want them to be dealing with some bullshit voting rights in 20 years from now. I want them to have to deal with the same issues that we have been talking about in 2021 and 2041. I want them to have to deal with the same issues that we have been talking about in 2021 and 2041. I want them to have a better sense of future. And I'm saying to us, let's at least get a legitimate conversation considering land, considering population.

But you're not going to have that future when they right now are trying to literally lock in power for 100 years. That's what we got to address. Right. But here's my whole point. That's all it is. But here's my whole point. If when a Sherry Beasley loses by 400 votes in North Carolina, Democrats could have had she, I'm just going to give an example. The guy who was running against her was pissed that he wasn't

picked to be the Chief Justice. He was on the Supreme Court. So he decided to run against her. A Republican took his spot. If Beasley had won, Democrats could have had a 6-1 majority

on the North Carolina Supreme Court. She loses by 400 votes. a six to one majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court. She loses by 400 votes, they now have a four to three majority, so the only reason you've even seen positive judicial rulings that benefit us in the past four years is because they control the state Supreme Court. But when people say, man, damn this voting stuff,

that's how a Beasley loses by 400 votes. And so... No, we can keep voting. No, no, no, but follow me here, follow me here. The Republicans don't care about, understand the hierarchy, they don't care about mainly the political power. It's judicial. Because here's the deal. They don't care about mainly the political power. It's judicial.

Because here's the deal. You can pass as many laws as you want to. If you sue and it goes to the courts and they got the courts, it don't matter what you pass. And that's what I'm saying. We have to understand. So when

people say, and again, when I got Negroes, man, you sitting here with talk about a vote for Biden over Trump, you didn't see how many judges he appointed. You didn't see how they control. You didn't see that Biden has appointed more judges in his first year than any president since Ronald Reagan, the most in history. I'm like, y'all, I'm trying to get our people to understand that I ain't going to get 100% from Biden. I'm not. But I got to be smart enough to say,

it's Biden, Trump. I got to actually make a decision. And sitting at home ain't one of them. But see, here's the other factor that very quickly, the dissatisfaction among black people in this country is rising each day. First of all, we did the poll the other day. Dissatisfaction among all groups is rising. But let me say it again.

And Greg, you can close up at the final point, and I've got to go to a break. I know you are. You can be dissatisfied all you want to. The other side focused. Right. That's the lesson. I mean, and maybe you've got to pay bills so we come back on the other side. And by the way, parenthetically, that's why we support the Black Star Network,

because these conversations aren't taking place anywhere. They've already moved to commemoration phase on all the other networks, which is absurd. This is a hot war, and y'all running around here trying to have solemn commemorations. And you better have a damn wake for yourself. But only, again, only the inciting incidents are impending. The crisis is here. So what you talk about in North Carolina, it's interesting. The farther back we go in time, the more inevitable things look. The closer we are to those things, the more they look avoidable. So, yeah, 400 votes.

And by the way, I don't, anytime I hear an election that close, I throw it out in my mind, because if it is close, that means they stole it, because we're not factoring in the ballots they spoiled. We're not factoring in the absentee ballots they didn't count. But you're absolutely right. It was close enough to steal, and we lost. But that having been said, when you think about it in that context, the closer things are, the more they look like they were avoidable. The farther away they get, the more they look inevitable. When we look at the United States of America over the arc of two and a half centuries, we see that this is entirely predictable. And so the question I would ask, and maybe,

you know, if it's not tonight, it's for another night in rolling, because you see this politically and you've been in the middle of so much of it. How can you even salvage a system that would be this radically inequitable? And so, you know, North and South Dakota cannot be reformed. Anybody going to move out there? As long as they got four senators. Right, right. As long as you can't, that's a system that can't be fixed. Right, right. The short term, and I'm going to say this in 60 seconds before I go to break.

The short term is you got to take back North Carolina. You got to take at least one. You got Beasley got to win. You can't give North Carolina two red seats. You got to take back Pennsylvania. You got one out of two. You got Pennsylvania you got to have two blue.

You got to take back Wisconsin. Okay, Feingold was a Democratic Senator. Wisconsin. You got Ron Johnson. So, Wisconsin has to have two blue if South Dakota got two. You got to take back North Carolina. Why was Georgia so big?

Because taking two in Georgia changed the whole ballgame. That's right. And so that's why when I'm talking to people and I'm trying to walk them through what I'm saying, if you take North Carolina, you take Pennsylvania, you take Wisconsin, you're able to steal Florida and Ohio, that's fine. All of a sudden, it's now 55-45

in the Senate, and you've now just negated giving up those small states those seats. All of a sudden, and so again, it's just, it's my thing I want black people to stop being is, I want them to stop being emotional,

angry, and upset and realize they're plotting. Yes. They're plotting and planning. They're plotting, planning, organizing, and mobilizing. And we got to do

the same. Right, right. So what I'm saying is I ain't got time to be mad and emotional when they are plotting, planning, organizing, and mobilizing. I got to go to a break. When we come back, folks, we're going to unveil our new office, give you a sense of what we're building here and why we're building it to lay out exactly what I just told y'all, creating a platform and a network that will allow us to control our story and our narrative. We'll show you next on

Roland Martin Unfiltered with the Black Star Network. on network. НАПРЯЖЕННАЯ МУЗЫКА ВЫСТРЕЛ I knew the plane was going to crash. I'm trapped underwater in my seat. First thing that hits me is all the negative stuff that comes up, all the skeletons and all the things that you have dealt with, panic, fear, whatever, the negativity, because I knew that plane was going to crash. Before it happened. Before it happened. The whole process, when I was about to get on the plane, I had that. It hit you. It hit me. So I battled, battled,

get off this plane. Right up to the very end, where we're getting ready to take off, the lights came on and the snow was blowing sideways. And it was like, stand up, just stand up. They have to stop the plane and turn around. If you just stand up. And I froze and the plane took off and it just rolled immediately to the side. I said, see? And then I saw this big flash out orange on the buildings over there. It had struck something and then it went to flames and then it tumbled and

wound up in the bay. But I knew. I knew. Now, what does it do for me today? It is in terms of listen. Ralph Waldo Emerson says, genius is following your first impression

with good humor and flexibility even when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. time to be smart roland martin's doing this every day oh no punches thank you roland martin for always giving voice to the issues. Look for Roland Martin in the whirlwind, to quote Marcus Garvey again. The video looks phenomenal,

so I'm really excited to see it on my big screen. We support this man, Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network

and Black-owned media and something like CNN. I gotta defer to the brilliance of Dr. Carr and to the brilliance of Dr. Carr and to the brilliance of the Black Star Network. I am rolling with Roland all the way. I'm gonna be on a show that you own.

A Black man owns the show. Folks, Black Star Network is here. I'm real revolutionary right now. Roland was amazing on that. Hey, Blake, I love y'all. I can't commend you enough about this platform that you've created for us to be able to share who we are, what we're doing in the world and the impact that we're having. Let's be smart. Bring your eyeballs home.

You can't be black on media and be scared. You dig? I'm Chrisette Michelle. Hi, I'm Chaley Rose, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. All right, folks. Welcome back to Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. So you see me wearing my Jack Gates Lion shirt. And so I just want you to understand that I went to the Yates Madden School of Communication. This is where everything got started. And so I figured with today, I wanted to represent my high school again.

That's where it all began when I was 14. And do understand what I'm about to show you was visualized then. So you don't understand that. And so this is the lobby, if you will, of the office and our new studios here in Washington, D.C. We're located right on Black Lives Matter Plaza here in the nation's capital. In in fact uh henry why don't you go ahead take a shot of that uh we're so does y'all understand we're right here on black lives matter plaza 16th and k uh and so uh that's we're here and so what we did here was this here so i've had people so you know i had my show on washington watch on tv one uh had to show news one now and then and the years, people have given me

paintings and stuff like that. And so as opposed to just sitting here, you know, putting up, you know, the network sign or whatever, what the hell, I was taking advantage of the stuff that people already sent me. And so that's why we put the pieces right here. Now in this space here, we got some great stuff in this space because we got this massive kitchen here.

And these are some some three of the degrees that I have that were given to me from HBCUs and others, honorary degrees. And so three of the six up here, we're going to load the other three somewhere else. And so this kitchen space allows for us to be able to do cooking segments, a cooking show here in this space. And so you have this huge countertop right here, microwaves right here, a cooking show here in this space. And so you have this huge countertop right here, microwaves right here, refrigerators right here. And so we're able to bring cameras in here and be able to do cooking segments or even a cooking show for the Black Star Network in this particular space and showcase it. I'm already talking to a chef

and we're developing his show. I will tell you later who that's going to be. But trust me, it's some great stuff. When we bring guests back in, when we have a special show, we can have our guests sitting in here watching our programming going on in this space right here. Sort of why we have it here. So let's go to the rest of the office. So what we did was we put LED lighting all throughout the hallways and everything to be able to give it lots of color. I got tons of awards. And so we got a bunch of the awards here on the shelves here, down the hallway here. And then of course, you're coming

down here. And so same thing. So you see different lights that we have, different color lights. And so we come into the main area of our room. Now here's the deal. Y'all see right here, y'all see right here, this is the set, the set that you always see on television when I'm on. Of course, this right here, this was an art piece that was given to me by an artist in Sacramento.

That's the, so we loaded that piece right there. We've got other awards and stuff over here. But let me show you this here. So my man, come over here, Antoine. So Nate Parker, remember he did The Birth of a Nation? He did one of the most powerful movie posters where the American flag was a noose around his neck. And so I loved it so much.

I said, Nate, I need that. So he sent me an autographed photo and so we have that here so I wanted to have that here as well and so the whole point here was that when we started the show and one of my greatest frustrations when I was at TV One was that when we had Washington Watch we had just one set that's all we had we had no room to do anything else we couldn't do anything else uh we had no space when we had uh uh news one now we were from nbc news channel we only had place from five to nine we had to be out of there by 9 15 we couldn't do anything else and so even when we had our first location i'm'm grateful with 50 Can, we were able to use that facility. But we were landlocked.

We just had one set, couldn't do anything. So I wanted a place that gave us multiple looks to be able to do what we wanted to do. And so here we got these two 82-inch TVs on both sides of me, allowing us to be able to put graphics in here as well. And so I'm going to go over here and show you something that we want to do. And that is we want to be able to, let's say we were shooting some video and we're doing something and we don't have the ability to be able to, we want some different looks. So we installed this huge background. Remember we had the black owned Drake company on the Marketplace segment, and the brothers said they did stuff for Hollywood.

I said, great. So we went ahead and said, fine, we're going to have y'all do the green screen. And so I'm going to go to this camera right here. Y'all see right now. So we decided to do a different look, a different background. The green screen allows us to do that. If y'all saw my Frankie Beverly Amaze interview, you might saw my intros and outros. That's how we shot that on a green screen.

And so this allows for us to create different looks. It also allows for us, let's say, if I'm talking and I wanted to have a big old moving video or whatever, we could actually do that by having the green screen. We didn't just want to have the green screen do anything else. So I'm always looking at different stuff and looking for some great stuff, some great ideas. So remember when we were in Chicago during the show in Chicago, and they had this amazing mural on the wall. It was colorful.

It was fantastic. Check this out. I love this. I thought this was a mural that was actually painted by somebody. Go ahead and show it. I thought that was a mural painted by somebody. And in fact, it was wallpaper. And so when I called Kenny Johnson, I said, Kenny, I said, man, we got to do this. He said, well, he could put me in touch with a sister who said it was wallpaper. So what we did was we wanted a different look. And so you see here, you pull this green screen back and we install this wallpaper. And so this allows for

us again, if we're shooting certain videos or whatever, it gives us a whole new backdrop, backdrop look. So we got the green screen here. Plus we got this here. So you mean you got the set over here. That's one look, the green screen, this wall here is a second look, the green screen is a third look, and so let's go over here. So I wanted to do something, I had this, we had this amazing US flag

that was in on my Washington Watch set. We couldn't get into the building, it was too big. We literally could not get into the building. So when I was at the Anthony Anderson Golf Tournament, I saw these amazing art pieces, and these are the pieces. And so, one, you see a Prince, you see this amazing piece on Miles Davis,

this amazing piece here on Jimi Hendrix. And so we're gonna take these pieces and mount these on this wall right here. And again, giving us a different look. A different look in terms of if we wanna take photos, be able to shoot something as well. And so now I'm just gonna pull this green screen back right here and so do y'all have the shot

of Black Lives Matter Plaza? All right so because we're right here y'all, we're able to extend the camera outside the window to give us a shot of Black Lives Matter class. And keep in mind, we're just two blocks from the White House. And so we're able to extend a camera further out this window. And so if we want to take a shot of the White House, we can actually do that. If we want to take a shot of what's happening down here, remember when I was down there broadcasting on the anniversary of the death of George Floyd? Well, we can actually do the same thing and, again, be able to give you a

high shot, be able to give you different looks. And so, again, it's reimagining spaces and thinking about how to do different things. All right, so let's walk over here. Okay, so we have this space here. And so I knew I wanted to create something different and something that was unique. And so I said, we really need like a living room set piece. So remember we were in Atlanta a year ago in December 2020, and we were broadcasting from an Airbnb. And it was funny, it wasn't until like the last few days, I was like, man, take that different look. And it was a great backdrop. And I said, we want to get the exact

same thing in our space. And so that's what we did. And so we were sitting here going back and forth, back and forth. And so about what we do, gonna look like so I got an email on a Monday out the blue seriously Email out the blue. It says brother Martin. My name is Harlan Penn. I'm a set designer I just took a job as assistant separate set designer at Howard University. I love your show I want to volunteer for your show. Now, y'all, I get emails all the time from people saying they want to help with the show. They want to do some things with the show. And I was like, all right. So I hit him, hit him, hit him an email. And look, I get people say they want to do stuff. Then they want to get paid to do different stuff like that.

It was cool. So I hit Harlan. He's a fellow alpha he says no he said he said i want to volunteer i want to contribute my skill set and so harlan literally sent me designs and designed this set piece and we wanted something that was that was uh again allows us flexibility and so so we put here this here of course uh there's an electric fireplace to give us that look what this does is allows for us to have, we can do a one-on-one interview with two chairs, but we're going to be putting a living room set here. So when we are back and we have people in studio, I'm going to be able to be here and I can have my panelists who are going to be sitting in chairs and couches. And we're going to

be in a position to have as many as seven or eight people who are on the set. Now, Antoine, give me a shot this way. Now, I want you to understand that the other ability is this here. We move that news desk back. I can fit 50 to 60 chairs in here for a studio audience. Again, it's completely rethinking how we actually do the show. Harlan joins us right now. Hey, Harlan, how you doing? I can't hear you, Harlan. Oh, I'm doing well. How are you, brother Martin?

Doing great. And so the set piece, man, looks great. And so just tell folks just what was going through your mind when you decided to put this thing together. Well, I thought about what you wanted to achieve. I thought about the space there and just how to achieve that. With low ceilings and things of that nature, there were some challenges, and I just pretty much collaborated our our ideas and that's what we came up with.

And and again you just hit me in the city, you know out the blue and say you will start teaching at Howard University. I knew I would be in the area I follow your show show for many years, and I just wanted to branch out. I was new in the community there in D.C., so I said, let me just email my brother, and let's see what happens. Well, Fred, I appreciate you sending that email. It's a phenomenal look, a phenomenal piece. And again, once we get the furniture in here, it's going to give us an opportunity to do some different things. And, folks, just so you all know, again, there's a bunch of my awards here. Remember, I was at the U2 Black Conference. They gave us these Air Force Ones, and they designed them.

And so I had them do them as roller bar unfiltered, these shoes here. My man Colin Kaepernick sent me those special edition Colin Kaepernick shoes. That's what these are. These are some Nike Black History Month shoes. That's when the Grambling won the 2016 National Championship that was signed by the team. And so we put the awards up here. And so again, it looks great. And so Harlan, great job, man. I appreciate you helping us. Is Dominique there? All right. So I was on. I was looking for different art pieces, y'all.

And I wanted something. I was like, I wanted something that was interesting, that had color. And all of a sudden, I see this piece on James Baldwin. And I was like, oh, my God, that's awesome. And so I hit this sister up. And she had done this. And I was like, it was just phenomenal. And so I hit her up.

I said, hey, I want this for our new studio. And so what we did was we actually got this piece right here. I loved it because I loved the cigarette, but I loved the smirk on James' bald-man's face like, yeah, I just got in your ass. Dominique, how you doing? I'm doing good, and you? All right, so Dominique, you're from San Francisco, right?

No, I'm from Pomona. Pomona, okay, and that's where you're based. Got it. I was born and raised in... You too. Go ahead, go ahead. I was born and raised in Pomona, and then I'm

based in Harupa Valley now. So tell us about how you did this thing. You did this with paint and markers on canvas? Uh, it wasn't on canvas. I ended up making that a print onto canvas. But the original was done with alcohol markers and acrylic paint. Gotcha. And so, and again, I saw it. And so, and so you put the, you print these on canvas and you've been selling these as well. And so was this a photo of Baldwin or was this your own creation? It was a reference photo that I had found. It was just in black and white, so I decided to put it in color.

Well, it is phenomenal. I love it because the colors absolutely pop, and it just jumps out, and so that's why I wanted it to be a part of our new set, and so I appreciate it. Thank you so much. All right. Thanks a bunch. All right, so I'm gonna come back over here because so Ange is not here and Sophia, Sophie. Okay, all right, so I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna explain to y'all the Harabella Fonte piece and Ida B. Wells Barnett piece. So let's come back over here. And so when we did the new set last year, y'all,

this was basically white and they had some lights down here. So I was like, you know what, y'all, that's a little boring to me. I can't do that. I need some color. So we were headed. It was almost, it was February. It was 1 o'clock in the morning. I was driving to Walmart because I needed some thermals.

We were going to Chicago for the NBA All-Star Game. And I just called my man Leroy Campbell and I said, Leroy, I got an idea. I don't know what you got. I don't know what could work. But I would love to have to put one of your art pieces on the set for some color, and I will also promote you as well. And so Leroy said, I got an idea. So he printed this out on canvas and then sent it to me.

And as you see, it's Remember to Vote, multiple generations of African Americans. Artist Leroy Campbell joins us right now. What's up, man? What's up, big dog? How you doing, baby? Happy New Year and all that stuff, man. All good. So tell us about this piece.

You know, like always, Roland, we've always been about the salvation of our people and the unity, and we've used every aspect of, you know, our lives from all the systems, the challenging systems to move our needle forward. So just prior to the election year, this piece meant that we were going to come together as a collective

and use what we've always done as a collective to help, you know, move forward. Because I always believed that the salvation of our people will always be about our unity. And so we've used various parts of ourselves in terms of the voting, in terms of the media, all of that has to play a role in helping us to achieve some semblance of salvation. So I wanted to congratulate you

because being an independent black media is one of those accomplishments that we need to show that when we have our own and when we take charge of doing what we need to do for ourselves, we could accomplish so much. As a result, we now have, you know, Biden and Harris. So this is an example of what we can do when we work as a collective. And you having your own media is a perfect example of why the collective is important. And the voting played a good part of that, and I wanted that piece to represent that intergenerational connection.

Everybody participating, you know, in all facets of life, nothing left, all hands on deck, and that's what this piece represents. And you called me 3 o'clock in the morning, Roland Atlanta, and I was sleeping when you called me about that. No, it was 1 o'clock in the morning. It wasn't three o'clock in the morning. It was, it was one o'clock. Calm down, but you up. You up. But that's all right.

All right, Leroy. Y'all know I got several Leroy Campbell pieces in my house. And Leroy, give everybody the website to go to. Yeah. For all y'all want to go to Leroy, give everybody the website to go to. Yeah, for all y'all, I want you to go to Leroy Campbell Originals with an S.com to see more work. And look forward to the book that I'm writing,

the memoir called Rich History, A Love Story. And look for the series that I'm working on called Thriving Community. So go to LeroyCampbellOriginals.com. And thank you, Roland, for being an avid supporter and collector for the Black art community. So go to LeroyCampbellOriginals.com. And thank you, Roland, for being an avid supporter and collector for the Black art community. All right, Leroy, I appreciate it, man. Thanks a lot. Thank you. All right, y'all, I'm not done. I'm going to go to a break. I'm going to show you

our control room. I'm going to show you these other murals that are in the office. I'm explaining to you how that came about. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. ДИНАМИЧНАЯ МУЗЫКА I'm saying just about hurting black folk. Right. You got to deal with it. It's injustice. It's wrong. I do feel like in this generation, we've got to do more around being intentional and resolving conflict. You and I have always agreed.

Yeah. But we agree on the big piece. Yeah. Our conflict is not about destruction. Conflict's going to happen. My name is Charlie Wilson. Hi, I'm Sally Richardson-Whitfield. And I'm Dodger Whitfield.

Hey, everybody, this is your man Fred Hammond, and you're watching Roland Martin, my man, Unfiltered. All right, folks, welcome back to Roland Martin, Unfiltered, the Black Star Network, as I'm unveiling our new studio space. And so Ida B. Wells Barnett obviously is a history maker, pioneering journalist writing about lynchings. And so I wanted to make sure that we show her some love on our set as well. And so that's what this piece right here is. And so this is a prominent quote of Ida B. Wells Barnett, the way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.

And again, I wanted something to balance off that James Baldwin piece, so it was like the color. And so I was going through my photo archives and I came across some photos I shot at an event that Dwayne Wade's mother had at the NBA All-Star Game. It was in Houston.

So there was a brother who was there who was an artist. And I'm looking at the photos and I could not remember his was in Houston. So there was a brother who was there who was an artist. And I'm looking at the photos, and I could not remember his name. So I put it on social media. Yo, do y'all know who this brother is? And folks hit me up. They said, man, that's Ainge Hills. Hit him up.

And so we corresponded. And so I had him do this Ida B. Wells piece right here. He joins us right now. What's up, Ainge? Well, how have you been? Congratulations on your new studio. Appreciate it, man. So tell us about how you do,

because all your pieces have lots of color. They're very vivid. Yes, they do. It's a style, actually, that I created back in 2010. And you got a chance to see some of my pieces at James Harden, I mean, Dwayne Wade's foundation. And I like using a lot of colors. It takes me a little bit,

but once I'm done with it, I think everybody enjoys it. Well, absolutely. And so, I mean, the colors are fantastic. It really pops. You know, she jumps out. And it does offer a great balance with the James Baldwin piece that Dominic did. It does.

It sure does. And that was a really good selection that you picked for me. I got to do some research on her. And it's an amazing thing that she did for our culture. Well, man, look, I appreciate it. Tell folks whether they can see more of your art. If you go to visualpaint.com, you can see more of my artwork, and you can also go to my social media handle, which is visualpaint.

Okay. All right. Ains, thanks a lot, man. You take care and keep representing H-Town. Thank you so much and God bless. All right. Thanks a bunch. Now, folks, remember, I told you all when you support this show, we also about, you heard Leroy talk about the collective and supporting, again, Africanrican americans and what we do so you know these these are black artists here harlan penn black hollywood set designer uh and so i wanted to make sure that when we're spending our money

we're spending it with folks uh who uh who oftentimes don't get the shot to do this and so zimbabwe pool uh did some work for us when we first did our studio for our lighting uh and so we worked with him on here so zimbabwe tell us about work for us when we first did our studio for our lighting. And so we worked with him on here. So Zimbabwe, tell us about what we had in this space to erect this type of lighting. Because normally you prefer much higher ceilings and things along those lines. Absolutely. So basically we made sure that we ordered some lights that basically accommodated your ceiling heights. So instead of getting some long bulky kind of things, we found a company down in Texas.

Is it Dallas? Yep, Dallas, that made these long kind of lights. And we saw that they had them up in different places that had these short ceilings. So that's how we came up with that. And then also, I wanted to make sure that we had color. And so that's, so our use of the led lighting. Oh yeah. The led lighting. Um, this was one of the, this was, this was one of your ideas. So we just came and implemented what you, what you projected to us and it worked out perfectly. You know,

it worked out perfectly. And obviously, uh, what people, so this is also the center set. And so if I wanted to do some interviews here, folks, you see that large monitor there. That monitor there shows me all the preview monitor, everything. I can turn that around. If I want to do some interviews with some people, we can actually do it with that particular monitor. And so part of the deal, which is also different, taking one big room like this and literally having to light one, two, which is also different, taking one big room like this and literally having to light

one, two, three, four different areas. You know you create challenges. That's what I do. That's why we're here, to step up to the plate and make those visions come to fruition. All right. Tell folks the name of your

lighting company. My company is called The Resource Pool LLC. It's 100% black-owned, and we're actually a video production company. We do permanent installs, temporary installs. We do it all, top to bottom. All right. Zimbabwe, I appreciate it, man. Thanks so much.

Thanks for the opportunity. All right, folks. Now, y'all see I've been hopping around here, so you see these different pieces here. And so a few years ago, I was the emcee of a gala in New York, raising money, the Justice Coalition, which Harry Belafonte is one of the founders. He's the founder. And so this sister did this piece, this amazing piece of Mr. B. And I got mad respect for Mr. B, of course, in terms of what he does. In fact, I'm going to sit here and, Carrie, y'all come get my phone, please. Y'all come get my phone.

And I meant to do this earlier. Pass it to him. I'm not sure if Mr. B is at home. So take it to him. I want to see that he's at home. So love Harry Belafonte. I've interviewed him many times. I've done stuff for him.

And so she did this piece. And I should have bought this that night. I should have bought it that night. And so I went ahead and I said, you know what? I'm going to put him on here. And so Sophia Dawson is the artist. She did this particular piece. And then that's what we, as we have here, the centerpiece right here.

And so, Sophia, how you doing? I'm doing good. How you doing? I'm doing great. So tell me about this Harry Belafonte piece. Yes, please. So when I did the original piece, I was working closely with his daughter, Gina,

and we wanted to do a piece that would honor the legacy of his life. One thing about Harry Belafonte that's truly dear to me is, you know, for the past 12 years almost, I've been working closely with people, individuals from the Black Panther, Black Liberation Movement, who have been incarcerated for their political activity

from the past up until now. And whenever I go back and I look at the photos that I usually pull from for those paintings, I find pictures of Mr. B supporting different people from the cause at different moments when nobody else, especially in the entertainment world was doing that. And his daughter has definitely taken up his legacy and continues to do that work. So that's pretty much where the piece came from for me, as far as my heart posture towards it.

Well, when I saw it, I loved it. I took a photo of you in the photo, and I remembered it. And so when we were putting this thing together for the studio, I said, you know what? I said, I'm going to find her, hit her up to do something. That was seven years ago. That was literally seven years ago. Look, I don't forget stuff. I don't forget stuff.

And I couldn't remember your name, so I said, Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez, a text saying, yo, who was the sister that did the piece on Harry Belafonte? They sent me information, and that's how we connected. The commission is Peace on Mr. B. So I appreciate it. Great job. Thank you so much for thinking of me and remembering me.

God bless you abundantly. I appreciate it. Thanks a bunch. So folks, and so here's the deal here. So I'm out. So I wanted to give Mr. B a shout. Just let him know how we're paying homage to him in our studio here. And so I'm going to go in here right now. So this is our control room, folks. And so remember our old studio, the monitors that were behind me? Well, that's these monitors right here, these 65-inch monitors. And so I'm showing you all your money at work.

And so in here, we got, of course, our switcher robotic cameras, our streaming stuff over here, all of our monitors, video playback machine, our graphics machine with all of our phone calls and folks like that. We got graphics over there, audios over here as well. The Brother from Sacramento, that's another piece that we have up there. That's what you're seeing right there. That's my man. It is. Mr. B. Mr. B. How are you, sir? I'm doing fine, sir. I am literally on my show, showing my new studio,

and I showed everybody, I'm paying homage to you, that piece that Sophia Dawson did on you at the gala seven years ago. I commissioned her to do that piece. So a photo of you, an art piece of you, is literally above my fireplace in my show studio because I love and respect you so much and I wanted to have that in here.

Go ahead. And so I told Gina, I said, look, I said we gonna respect my man, I said, and always talk about him and the work that he does. So I just want you to know that and that we love all that you've done and appreciate your hard work. Thank you very much for having me. Well, I hope all is well with you, my brother.

Tell the wife I said hello and hopefully we can see each other soon. You doing good? Yeah, I feel good. All right then. Well, Mr. B, you be well, my brother. You take care. Take care. So, folks, so he got again, everything is run through here.

Our control room, all of our all of our phone calls and things along those lines, our videos. And we're adding a new feature. We're going to start taking phone calls, have a call in for you to be able to comment on different subjects and topics and things along those lines. That's what we're working on right now. And so we're going to be debuting that this week. Only the folks who are fan club members are going to be able to call in. That's for the first month. Hey, it's called benefits. So that's how we're working at. And so we're working at right now. So we'll go back out here. So let me tell you something. So I was sitting in here. I was sitting in his office, I was sitting here, Carol and I were talking and we were set was being built. Lights are being installed. We're in here. So I'm looking out over here and I'm looking, I'm seeing, uh, these walls and I'm like, okay, what can we put

up in these offices? And I wanted this space to be very much like, you know, like an art gallery type. OK, so it hit me. I said, yo, we can put up murals on these offices on every single one of these office walls. So then I started thinking about different type of murals that we can put up on these walls. And so let's let me go show you what we did. And so, again, stuff just pops in my head, and that's what happened. And so what we decided, what we did was we came in here, and so this mural here is a mural of the First Amendment. Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion. So, boom, that's right there, the First Amendment.

So we printed out, it's on a cotton fabric that's printing out that particular mural right there. And so we're going to come on down here. And so this here is the nation's first black newspaper, Freedom's Journal, that was created. Y'all hear me talk all the time. The comment, we wish to plead our own cause too long have others spoken for us. That was of course, March 16th, 1827. So that's one of the murals that we wanted to be able to have on the wall in this office here. And so we go to this office here and you see we have black lives matter that is on that particular wall uh right there uh this was the first mural black star network curated by rolling this martin so that's one of our murals uh right there uh y'all know uh how i feel about black owned media y'all can tell this

is my office we still putting stuff up here's some Tiger Woods photos that I shot. And so I wanted to pay homage to black owned media. So we put together this this this mural here. And you see Frederick Douglass is the North Star, the Tulsa Star, Negro Digest, Atlanta Daily World, of course, the Pittsburgh Courier, you see here, Emerge Magazine, BET, Jet Magazine, TV One, WGPR-TV, the first black-owned TV station in the country, Emerge, Ebony, Dallas Weekly, where I used to work, be managing editor, again, Savoy Magazine, where I was news editor there, Black Enterprise, Chicago Defender, where I was there as well. And again, so we put this together, WERD Radio, TV One is on here, as well as shout out to Kathy Hughes, who watches our show. And so we wanted this to, again, to pay respect to Black-owned media. And so that's why we put this particular collage together as well. And so we're gonna go back out here. Let's see here, we got two more meals to actually show you. And so in this office here,

that's our equipment room, all our gear. So y'all know, look, I ain't got no problem being on hashtag team Jesus. And so that's Joshua 2415. As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. And so that mural, of course, had to be in here. And then, of course, I got to pay respects to Latasha Brown, Cliff Albright and Black Voters Matter. And so, you know, we always talking about black voters and how important that is.

And so we got that mural there as well. And so, so folks, what you see here, I'm going to bring in Faraji, Greg, and Recy as well. I told y'all we got some great things that we're doing. And so in the next month, we're going to be, we already have Rolling with Roland, the one-hour interview show that you see on. We got Richard Lawson, the interview we launched last night. We're showing that particular interview. My wife, Reverend Dr. Jackie Hood Martin, is going to be having a weekly show called Fulfill the Art and Joy of Balanced Living. We're going to be doing that show.

My man, Greg Carr, is going to be doing a show, a weekly show on the Black Star Network called The Black Table. Called The Black Table. He's going to be doing that. Faraji Muhammad is going to have a daily show that's going to be for the culture with Faraji Muhammad. And so I'm going to announce the other shows a little bit later. But I need y'all to understand the whole point here was for us, when you're talking about building a house, you cannot have a great house unless you have a fantastic foundation.

You can have the most gorgeous design house. You can have great furniture, all that sort of stuff in your house. But here's the problem. If the foundation is jacked up, the house can be condemned because of a bad foundation. And that's why we said we have to have our strong location. That's why all of our technical stuff, our streaming equipment, all of those things, having a strong control room

to be able to run all these things through was critically important. And so this also allows for us, as I said, to have different looks for different purposes. Green screen, the love wall, the photos of the artist, the set piece over here, the living room that we're going to have in here, this piece right here. When we have our Fit, Live, Win segments, we can literally do those segments in this space right here, or we can do them over there. We can actually do, so versus having somebody on who's sitting here talking about exercises,

we can actually do the exercises. Oh, there's some other art pieces in here. This is a piece of Ted Ellis. I spoke to the Jack Yates High School, one of the classes, and so they gave me that as a gift, a photo that Ted Ellis did of Obama as one of his pieces. These are some other photos in here. These are some photos that I shot of Hillary Clinton when she came through Dallas, the South Dallas Cultural Center.

We got those photos there. This is a great piece over here. I got this in the Tom Jordan Morning Show Cruise. I loved it. It's actually on leather. And what's cool, though, is you can turn it, you can have it vertical and you see the piece here. But then if I turn it horizontal, you see the

additional faces here. And so I just love the color and I said we got to do that. And then we put some other stuff up in here. When the urban league honored me, they put together this whole collage of my career. And so we have literally all the places I've worked and different achievements. That's the St. Louis Area Urban League. And so that's what we have there. to be able to do multiple things at one time in order to be able to maximize the space,

maximize our resources, and be able to do, not just have sort of one look. What y'all think? Bro. What do you think? Congratulations, fellas. Dr. Carr and Paranthia's breaking news, at least from as far as what I know.

So maybe you'll have me on your show. Oh, look, you know you'll be on all the shows. I just assume, you know, I'm waiting for that breaking news. I was like, wow, Roland, that was man. And then everybody, when you said that going into

the control center, you said this is where y'all's money is going. People have to understand this is, I mean, you didn't have this kind of flexibility at TV One. You've never had it anywhere. No, we didn't. We tried to, I mean, I can tell you

there were talks about us creating our own studio. I wanted to do it. My executive producer wanted to do it. You know, the decision was made not to do it. We knew the severe limitations we had. So here's the deal. If we wanted to do a one-on-one interview with somebody when I was at TV One, we had to go somewhere else to do it.

We now can actually do it in this space. In fact, there's somebody doing a documentary on the Harry Belafonte, and they hit up my assistant. I said, they said, well, they want to do the interview. I said, they can say, can we do it at your office? Yeah, we're going to do it right here in front of the Harry Belafonte piece. And so we can do one-on-one interviews in here. We can do multiple interviews in here. Again, we can create once we pass, you know, whatever we're dealing with COVID, we can have a studio audience in here. So that was the whole point, being able to. And so the vision was, and I'm telling you, every place that we looked, I walked into places, I'm like, that's not it. They had too many walls or whatever.

I said, all I need is one big-ass room. I did. I said, just give me one big room, and I'm going to figure everything else out. And the benefit for us here was having all these offices with the glass walls. And then my whole deal was, I'm telling you, the moment we walked in here, the first thing I said was, I'm putting LED lighting in here, and I'm going to use the offices as part of the set. So the whole idea here, because, like, when you talk about television, they always, because like even when they were like, well, do we show the control room? Yes. That shot, that's going to be, the control room is going to be in the background.

So everything, so the idea was to create a space that was sort of like this celebration of black art and also everything is all incorporated and we can all have all the different looks and stuff like that. And so that's really what it was about. Man. Brother, you know what I was thinking, looking at the work by Brother Hills and the young sisters, Fia Dawson,

who any, all those, Leroy Campbell, my colleague Harlan Penn, everything in there. And I know you did that with none of this in mind, none of this in mind, but I'm sure there are people watching saying, oh, I need that on a hoodie, or I need that in my house. You might have to monetize. Look, that black media collage in your, I'm thinking to myself,

bruh, you got to, that's got to, we got to shit. And everything in there is 100% black. Everybody giving smoke. Oh, yeah. The music pieces, it was a white artist in L.A. They were just too powerful. I said, got to get them. But everything else.

And here's the deal. Shout out to BlakeCon Media. They actually did our control room, a black-owned engineering firm out of Atlanta. And so that was the point that I was trying to explain to folks that want y'all to understand. So lighting company, African-American owned. Drake company, African-American owned. A set designer, African-American. Artist, African-American. Again, that was the whole point, using our resources to also work with other black-owned businesses to give them a shot where other media companies would never give them an opportunity to do something along these lines. And so that was the whole point of us creating it.

And so, again, we started this show September 4th, 2018, building the platform, building the show, taking our time. We started with 157,000 YouTube subscribers. Today, right now, it's almost 820,000. And so that's how we've been able to grow it. And so when we've been trying to get here, yeah, 819,361. We've had, when it came to our Black Star Network, I think we've surpassed 25,000 downloads. Again, we're being very methodical about that. Here's the other deal. I was reading the story today, y'all. The Athletic, they do about $50 million in revenue.

They valued themselves at $500. They just got bought by the New York Times for $500 million. They said they're going to be profitable in 2023. I want all y'all to know, we've been profitable since our first year and a half Now now I want you to understand and see recent lot of people don't really understand this look I could have and people came to me. They want to give me money. I could have easily gone out and raised five ten million dollars But here's why I didn't because if the moment you do that Those folks gonna be like return like return investment, return investment. And so the pressure was going to be on about selling.

The whole focus is, okay, invest, build something, flip it, sell it. I said, well, you got to build it first. And so I purposely said no to crowdfunding and to individual investors. I said, because we have to build it first. And so if the focus is all about building it to sell it, then you lose sight of exactly why you're doing this. And Roland, I just want to, you know, give you just praise because you are truly about putting your money where your mouth is and putting the action behind the rhetoric. You know, there's a lot of stuff. I won't give airtime to naysayers, but when we talk about Black media, you are the epitome of Black media, not just in you being the face of your company, but in the way that you consistently uplift Black businesses. And, you know, people that

reach out to you through your show, not all stuck up and has to ditty about it and the diversity of perspectives that you bring on your show. It's not about litmus test for what's black or gatekeeping or what people difference ideology is. As the quote says, we wish to plead our own case. You allow people to plead their case. If you have this perspective, come on here, fact-based, and plead your case. And I don't think that there's many other opportunities for people to do that of any race, of any kind of network or platform, more so than what you do. And so regardless of whether people agree with your positions, particularly you being a, you know, you favoring Democratic

politicians or not, nobody can ever, ever, ever criticize with any credibility the love that you have for Black people, Black businesses, and Black voices. And we need that authentic, true, not going to sell out, you know, platform and just passionate conviction that you have. So I appreciate what you're doing. I think this is just a, this is really a remarkable achievement for the culture, for our community that we have a place to go to, to have these discussions, whether it's an hour discussion or a 15 minute discussion and allow the voices, the prominent voices, the experts to also come and have these in-depth conversations. So congratulations to you, Black Star Network, the entire Roland Martin Unfiltered family,

all of the talent that you have on your show. And to the people that support it, because this really is a people-powered movement. It's not a troll-powered movement. It's not a get clicks and whatever is going to go viral type of movement. This is a genuine people-powered movement. And the people that watch this show and that power it care. They care about what you have to say. They care about what we all have to say, and they care about our community, and so that really speaks more value, and this is just the perfect way that we can visually see

the way that our community can do for ourself and care for ourself and tell our own stories. Absolutely right, and it's so funny you talk about trolls. Somebody was complaining in the YouTube chat, I see a photo of Hillary Clinton. First of all, I actually shot that photo. It was a great damn photo. And so I have other pieces that I've actually shot. Y'all don't realize I've been shooting photos since I was in ninth grade.

I wasn't just, I told y'all I went to the School of Communications. I did TV, radio, newspaper, photography. I did all of that. So bro got skills. But just for the folks running their mouth, I want to show y'all this here. 2004 at the Unity Journalists of Color Convention. If y'all go to C-SPAN, when I jammed up President George W. Bush, that photo is up here as well. So y'all want to talk about the Hillary Clinton photo. This is what, and if y'all see that photo right there, y'all see that photo right there,

that was sort of Bush pointing at me like, damn, you got me. That was like, you got me. And so two weeks after that, y'all can tell that was 2004 because I had a lot more hair. Two weeks after this is when I got this in the mail,

autographed photo from President George W. Bush for that. And so again, we ain't got a problem talking to Democrats, Republicans, everybody. And so, and the other thing, Faraji, the other point about it, there are African Americans who are in media who I know and who already reached out. They said, hey, you know what,

who need a space to do interviews or do something when they come to town. And so the people who I know personally, that's the other thing I need people to understand. They now, they can hit me up and say, hey, I want to do this. Can I do it in your space? We also have the ability to actually rent the space out

to folks who want to shoot projects or whatever. And that's the thing that people have to understand. You can't talk about all these folks running around, hollering they black media when they're not out here actually doing the work. You don't see them on the road. That's why we got the Roller Mobile,

the Sprinter. That's why we got two Live View units. And so we've invested, we've invested, I mean, this was a quarter of a million dollar project. People got to understand that. When people heard me talking about advertising sponsors, why they got to support black-owned media,

I was literally on the phone today with a reporter for a major newspaper, and we've been pressing the case because we cannot tell our own story if we can't pay for it. Black people have got to stop saying, man, you know, we do a whole lot with nothing. How about we do a whole lot with a lot more? Come on, come on, come on. And you know what?

Real talk, Brother Roland, what you're talking about is institution building. I mean, that's what it comes down to. What you're talking about, and I always appreciate and respect those who are able to get out and get the land, get the real estate that they need to build their dreams upon.

You own a space with that much diversity, from the green screen to the living room scene to all of the beautiful murals and all of the wonderful and beautiful paintings. I was just telling my wife, she's a black artist.

I was like, man, Roland is doing it. Look at these pieces, I mean, of Mr. B and Ida B. Wells. I mean, it just goes to show you that this is the institution. And to be, and I mean, I don't think we can kind of gloss over this, brother Roland and family. The fact that you're on Black Lives Matter Plaza, a couple of blocks from the White House, talking about the issues that are affecting black people in this country, and you're that close to where those conversations are really happening? You're that close to the Congress?

That's not happenstance. This is not, oh, we're just going to do this and then move on to something else. This is legacy building right here. And if there isn't any legacy, if there isn't any legacy, then guess what's going to happen? Our children can't benefit from that. And that's what I'm trying to, that's what I'm looking at right at this point. The fact is, is that your children and your nieces and nephew and grandchildren, hell, even

my children, we're going to be like, man, I remember when Daddy used to work here. So all of that. So, you know, I mean, it's just about institutional building. And to say that we are just beyond proud of you, and I'm very, very humbled to be a part of the Blackstar Network

family is an understatement. I am completely humbled by this. Well, I'm going to show you. We want to talk about how God works. And so I'm going to show y'all this. I'm telling y'all. Y'all need to understand how this works. So I'm going to show you. Antoine, come on.

So y'all need to realize that, okay, we were looking for, we had a hellacious time trying to find an office space in 2018. We were looking everywhere. Some of the places fell through. And it was, I was on a call, a board call, of 50 Can, Education Reform Group. It was May.

And on the call, they were talking about making cuts. Money had been down. They were talking about subleasing the office space where they were talking about literally going to WeWorks. And I said, I said, you know, they got that open space. We could do the show there. And so we got to talking. And so that's what happened. And so in our old space, y'all, we had one office that had we had one office that had our three staffers in it. But another office that was mine in the office that was next to me, the large office, that was our control room. We literally sublet that place. Now, I'm going to show you how God works. So come with me. I just told you what the place. Now, see, we got to do this here.

We got to move the set back. So that's the other key. This is a movable set. So we're able, because Carol works in an office. I got it y'all, I'm good. Carol works in that office. And so what we do is we gotta move this set here and then we gotta push the set back that way

but Carol get in her office, it's all good. So we gonna come through here. so y'all need to understand right there across the street that's where we were we were literally across the street for three years and then when 50 came was going to move out we moved out we looked other places we are literally right across the street, y'all. We're literally right across the street. And we hit several different places. And so when we moved, when we moved, we literally just walked right across the street. And so this place, we got a five-year lease, 5,200 square feet, and again, to build the kind of network we want to build. We're launching four shows in the first quarter. The goal is to launch four more shows by the end of the year.

We've got, I'm going to say, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, is going to be doing a weekly financial show for us as well. So, y'all, we're going to be working with Mario Armstrong. Mario has a show, Never Settle. We're going to be streaming that, and show, financial show, again, entrepreneur show. So multiple shows. That's why we're trying to get you to download the Black Star Network app. All those shows are going to be streaming on the network app. What we're also working on right now that I have done by the end of this quarter, we'll have our streaming network where we'll be up for a 24-hour streaming network, taking those shows plus content that we already have and then streaming that 24 hours a day.

And so that way, when you turn on your Samsung TV, we're going to be trying to get on their grid as well. So when you look at all those digital channels, boom, we want to have one of those channels as well. That is the vision. But we could not do any of that. You had to methodically put things in place to actually do that. And so that's why when I was trying to get people to understand about giving, I'm trying to tell y'all, members, our folks were sending in checks. They were donating via Cash App, Venmo, Zelle, PayPal. But there's a bunch of our folks can't trust none of that. They were sending in an average of 30 checks. And I know some of y'all are mad because I'm not giving y'all the address.

I did that for a reason. I'm going to give the address out soon. But, again, that has allowed for us to do what we do. What you're seeing, Antoine, show this here. What you're seeing right here, folks, these are robotic cameras. These are the cameras that we had in the old studio. We upgraded to these cameras right here. And these cameras right here are upgraded to the 4K.

And so we've got, so again, I want y'all to understand where your money is going. We've got 10 robotic cameras in this place. So we've got two robotic cameras over here. We've got five robotic cameras over here. We've got three robotic cameras over there. And then, of course, we have the option with the handheld right here. And so I'm just going to come over here. Just so y'all understand, because, again, that's our second equipment room. When you talk about our additional tripods and speakers and

cameras and light stands, that's all that stuff right here. This is the same thing right here. Okay. Our microphones, you look at all of our stuff right here. You look at our director's chairs. You look at our 10 by 10 and 10 by 15 tent, and you look at all of this sort of stuff, this is all about us being able to do what we do when we go on the road. So when we hit the road, we literally are setting up the same way NBC, CBS, and ABC, but we're faster, we're portable, and ain't nobody, let me say it again, ain't nobody else, Greg Carr laughing, we talk about it all the time, ain't nobody else in black-owned media doing what we're doing.

Nobody. Nobody. Somebody, it's a famous man once said, you can't be black media and be pink. I gotta remember who. Man, brother, I ain't got no words. There's nobody in the world. I mean, I'm thinking... This is worldwide, man. And it's all black. You can't be canceled. They can't scare you with no contract.

They can't worry about moving your time slot. You are the time slot. Boy, and that's... And I need people to understand. That's why that mural is so important. Y'all hear me quote it all the time. That is the mural of the first, this was the first black newspaper in American history. Freedom's Journal, March 16th, 1827. 1827, this is the third paragraph.

We wish to plead our own cause to long have others spoken for us. That is the model of the black press. I run three black newspapers. And so that's what we do here and it's getting our people to understand why we also have to support. We have to give. So that's why I said to people, look,

and y'all think I'm joking, some of y'all out there, when 20,000 of our fans, we've had, I think, Keenan will tell me what the number is, he'll text it to me, I think we're at 35 of 40,000 donors. 35 of 40,000 donors we've had. And so we've had people give as little as a dollar, people give as much as $ 40,000 donors we've had. And so we've had people give as little as a dollar. People give as much as $30,000.

Hit me up. He said, man, I'm tired of y'all show buffering on YouTube. I heard about your OTT channel. He gave us $5,000 to launch Blackstar Network. To have it built. And so that's what I need y'all to understand why this stuff is important with what we're doing

because now we have the ability to travel, to cover our stories. And here's the most important thing. We don't have to ask anybody's permission. When Reverend Barber called me and said, we're going to be protesting in Elizabeth City, we gassed up the Sprinter, got the driver. Anthony and I went down, and we live streamed down there. We partnered with Coca-Cola for the Celebration Bowl with a team of eight folks down in Atlanta broadcasting all this stuff for the week. That is the thing that I'm trying to get us to understand. I'm not trying. I am not interested in asking

MSNBC, I don't care how liberal they are, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, New York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair. I'm not interested in asking and pleading

with them to please cover us. Come on, come on. I have no interest in that. That's why that Black Old Matters mural is up there. Yes, sir. This is doing the exact same thing that Robert Abbott did with the Chicago Defender, that Frederick Douglass did with North Star, that Ida B. Wells Barnett did with her newspaper.

I want y'all to understand, matter of fact, come on, Antoine, I just realized this here. Realized this here. Ida B. Wells Barnett's newspaper was burned down by white supremacists because, and there are no, there are no copies available of her newspaper. And I'm looking for it in here. Just so y'all know, we could not find a copy of her newspaper, but we made sure the name of her newspaper is on this wall,

the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight. Go ahead. So the reason you don't see a cover of Ida B. Wells Barnett paper is because they firebombed her paper and they destroyed. And there is not a single copy of her newspaper anywhere to be found. We made sure that the name of her paper was on that wall. That's the whole point, folks.

That's the whole point with what we're trying to do here. And so this has been a six-month project, building this whole thing out. But really, this has been something that I have been focused on since I was 14 when I went to Jack Yates High School, Magnet School of Communications. So it's a lot of... Go ahead, Greg.

I was going to ask you, I wonder what George Curry would have been able to do. I see you merge on the wall. Yeah. I think about Max Robinson. I think about John H. Johnson. What if there had been a television

network? I think we probably all expect now there's going to be a surge in subscribers. There's going to be people who see this. There's going to be people who see this. There are going to be young people. There are going to be news people who say, you know, I know I work for this company, but I'd like to come

do an interview. You say, you know what? We got a space. I just think about all the people who are ancestors who you worked with shoulder to shoulder, who you knew and worked with, who if they had had something like this, but guess what it's here now so.

Yeah, I got a sister. I got a sister you to who says we want a live chat on the black star network with them. It doesn't have that well guess what we've been talking that for the past 3 months saying you all have got to put that support of it. We're paying for the feature and so you all that's what we're doing so understand what you're talking about and but now here's the deal and I need people to understand. All right, and I got no problem So why do why are we still on YouTube because we still generate anywhere from forty to seventy five thousand dollars almost upwards

We've done a hundred and three thousand dollars a month on YouTube We would prefer to generate that on the black star network Which is why I need y'all to do your part when I'm putting pressure on these advertisers to invest in black-owned media. There's no reason in the world we're not doing $10 million in revenue this year. Come on.

There's no reason. I'm seeing the money they're giving to Black Targeted. Mm-hmm. Oh, they will toss money at Black Targeted. I was on the phone today talking with several Democrats saying, y'all better make sure y'all investing in black-owned media. Don't be running out and just buying ads on Fox News and CNN and local radio stations and newspapers.

Invest in black-owned media. That's the whole point. And then, of course, you've got the trolls. Recently you talked about Roll the money always begging. No, this is called investing That's it. It's called investing because when we have the ability to take our cameras anywhere We want to take them and we got to sit here and we can pay staff And let me say let me go ahead and say this here.

And it's not bragging, but it was by design. Ain't nobody who works on this staff, not one person been paid late. Right. Come on. Come on. That's a whole bunch of other places Can't say that But

And I've worked for them I've worked for them They can't say that We've been profitable since we were a year and a half old And look Our first year was not easy I personally Invested

391,000 of my speaker fee money into the company to make sure staff got paid. I didn't have a CNN salary. I didn't have that TV One check. The Tom Joyner check, I ain't got a problem. When I started with Tom Joyner in 2008, it was $250,000. When it ended in 2019, it was down to $41,000. We started this September 4, 2018. So what I need y'all to understand is our donors, they got us through.

I told y'all in 2020 they gave $672,000. What we're talking about is building something that is sustainable, that is able to actually speak to our interests and our needs. thousand dollars what we're talking about is building something that is sustainable that is able to actually speak to our interest and so that's what we're doing and so i appreciate all of y'all been giving if you give on youtube hey that's great and wonderful but remember we only get 55 or 50 you give a dollar to us on youtube we get 55 cent give to us direct so we can get all hundred percent so go to cash app which is rmartinunfiltered.

Zelle is roland at rolandsmartin.com, roland at rolandmartinunfiltered.com. Of course, Venmo is rmartinunfiltered. PayPal is rmunfiltered. PayPal is rmartinunfiltered. And so soon, I'll have the address for y'all to start sending checks again and your money orders. Again, I appreciate those who've done that. And so it's a whole lot that we're doing. And trust me, we're building something that's fantastic and amazing.

And I can't wait to use it. First of all, I hired a company who's been handling program development. Again, it's a perfect example. Y'all, I can't do it all. I literally hired a company to do program development to get these shows on the air. They've been shooting these shows, shooting pilots over the last two or three weeks. And again, we hope to begin to debut those, roll those shows out the 1st of February. And that's what our plan is. And so we're looking forward to that. So there's a whole

lot of stuff that's happening. It's a lot more work to do. And so I hope y'all enjoy the new space. It's been, trust me, it has not been easy, but we have been trying to make it happen. And we really want to thank all of y'all, every single one of y'all who's contributed, who's made this possible, everybody who has helped us, who's been working around the clock seven days a week, getting this thing going.

Shout out to our whole staff, whether you're talking about audio or video, tech, everybody, graphics, producers, bookers, freelancers and everything, because look, you can't do it all by yourself. And trust me, every single day, it is about delivering a fantastic product for you. That's what our goal is.

Trust me, there are some days, look, we're not happy. We want to do more, but we do the best that we can. But I told y'all and I promised y'all that I'm going to maximize. Look, my grandfather, I told you, I saw a Richard Lawson interview, how he had about 50 people at his house and there were two chickens and everybody had a piece of chicken in their gumbo bowl. So I know how to sit here and maximize a dollar. And so that's what we're going to see. I see you laughing, Greg.

Trust me. My grandmother had a catering business. My mama had a cake business. I got entrepreneurs in my family, so this ain't nothing new. And I got to give a shout out to Houston Independent School District, Jack Yates High School, because, again, Thelma Johnson was my radio teacher. Mary Waits was my television teacher. Ronald Miller was my radio teacher.

And all this started there at JY right there in Houston, Texas, in Third Ward. And so, y'all, we got some fantastic stuff for y'all. We got more great interviews coming up. I can't wait to get y'all to see those shows. So, please, support us in what we do. And all my haters, please keep hating. Please keep hating.

Because every time you hate, you know what we do? We celebrate. Come on. Every time you hate, we celebrate. Right. So we enjoy it. And haters, I hope y'all enjoy this too. Y'all, I'm going to see y'all tomorrow right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network.

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