#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Roland in Chicago; Chauvin sentenced; DOJ sues GA over voting law; Trooper tases suspicious teen

Episode Date: June 26, 2021

6.25.21 #RolandMartinUnfiltered LIVE from Chicago! Ex-cop Derrek Chauvin sentenced to 22-and-a-half years in prison; DOJ sues Georgia over evil voting law; Redistricting battle begins as the GOP makes a request for Census info; Trooper tases "suspicious" teen; Senate confirms President Joe Biden's second nominee to the U.S. appellate courts, Judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi; Amhurst Reparations Fund approved; Rev. Barber talks Moral March on Manchin; Technological gap persists in our schools; House and Senate Democrats are introduce bill that would make it easier to prove racial bias; Walmart Willie harasses Black man in TexasSupport #RolandMartinUnfiltered via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛ https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered#RolandMartinUnfiltered is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend.

At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit adoptuskids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. Today is Friday, June 25th, 2021. Roland Martin, I'm Phil Chip, broadcasting live from the SAVES room here in Chicago.

Our top story, Derek Chauvin sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison for the murder of George Floyd. We will talk to a reporter who was in the courtroom, also break down what this means. Also on today's show, we'll talk about the voting rights march taking place tomorrow in the nation's capital, putting pressure on Congress to pass a bill to fix the voter suppression laws being passed by Republicans. We'll talk with Latasha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. Also, Reverend Dr. William J. Barber with the Poor People's Campaign as they continue their moral march on West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. Also, now Essence throwback. We'll hear from Fred Hammond and others as we get focused. Beginning today, the Essence Festival 2021 virtual taking place again this weekend.

Folks, that and more. It's time to bring the funk on Rolling Martin Unfiltered. 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 rolling.

Best belief he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics. With entertainment just for kicks He's rolling With some go-go-royal It's rolling, Martin Rolling with rolling now He's broke, he's fresh, he's real

The best you know, he's broke, he's fresh, he's real the best. You know he's rolling, Martel. Martel. All right, folks, we're here broadcasting live from the Sage Room here in Chicago. And so glad to be here. So we're going to have a great couple of hours. We want to start off with, of course, the big news out of Minneapolis, where Derek Chauvin, the white foreign police officer who was convicted of murdering George Floyd,

learned his fate today and how long he is going to spend time in prison. This is what the judge announced. I'm not basing my sentence also on public opinion. I am not basing it on any attempt to send any messages. A trial court judge, the job of a trial court judge is to apply the law to specific facts and to deal with individual cases. And so, Mr. Chauvin, as to count one, based on the verdict of the jury, finding you guilty of unintentional second-degree murder while committing a felony under Minnesota Statute 609.19 Subdivision 2, Paren 1, it is the judgment of the court that you now stand convicted of that offense.

Pursuant to Minnesota Statute Section 609.04, counts 2 and 3 will remain unadjudicated as they are lesser offenses of count one. As sentenced for count one, the court commits you to the custody of the Commissioner of Corrections for a period of 270 months. That's 270. That is a 10-year addition to the presumptive sentence of 150 months. This is based on your abuse of a position of trust and authority and also the particular cruelty shown to George Floyd. You're granted credit for 199 days already served. Pay the mandatory surcharge of $78 to be paid from prison wages. You're prohibited from possessing firearms, ammunition, or explosives for the remainder of your life.

Provide a DNA sample as required by law. Register as a predatory offender as required by law. And then you will receive a copy of the order and also the attached memorandum explaining the court's analysis. Anything further from the state? If this needs to be said, we just ask that it be executed forthwith. The defendant is remanded to the custody of the sheriff to be transported back to the DOC or whichever custody he is currently holding. Anything for the defense?

No, Your Honor. All right. Thank you. We are adjourned. Prior to the sentencing, the family had an opportunity to offer their victims' comments to the court. The powerful video of george floyd's daughter gianna what do you miss most about your daddy well i asked about him all the time and that's kind of it. Yeah. Well, when you ask about him, what are you asking about? Well, I was asking how did my dad get hurt?

Do you wish that he was still here with us? Yeah, but he is. Through his spirit? Yes. Yes. And when you see your daddy again one day, what do you want to do when you see him? I want to play with him. What kind of games do you want to play with him um i want to um play with him have fun going to play right um and that's it yeah we used to have dinner meals every single night before we went to bed.

My daddy always used to help me brush my teeth. Aww. Do you miss him helping brush your teeth? Yes. How do you hope that the world remembers him? Well, they help him because those we are joined here in Chicago. Amisha Ramsey is going to be hanging with me, co-host for the day, journalist based out of St. Louis. Also next to her, Kimberly Fox. She is Cook County State's attorney, a familiar person to this show, Alexandra

Sims, political consultant, CEO, APS and Associates, and also Xavier Ramey, CEO for Justice in Fawn. We're going to kick this thing off by going to Minneapolis, where journalist Georgia Forte was in the courtroom, Georgia. Welcome back to Roland Martin Unfiltered. Describe for us what it was like. Obviously, Chauvin was convicted. This was a lot different than when the verdict came down, when he was convicted. But what was it like there, folks, waiting to hear about the sentence for the death of George Floyd? Well, there was a lot of anticipation leading up to the sentencing of Derek Chauvin. And actually being in the courtroom today, I'll say it was very intense. Not only was Derek Chauvin's mother inside the courtroom, you guys heard from her, but also his

ex-wife and her two sons were there as well. On the other side of the courtroom was Floyd's family, his brothers, as well as Attorney Crump and Tony Ramanucci. And so the courtroom was full and everybody was, for the most part, anticipating that Derek Chauvin was going to get more than 22 and a half years. In fact, when it came out that he was getting 270 months, I received some text messages from folks who are outside since I was inside the courtroom saying that people were very upset on the street. They felt like he should have gotten the maximum sentence. We heard from all four of the victim impact statements that everyone thought he should have gotten that. And that was backed up by the prosecution with all of the different aggregating factors. We heard

Attorney Frank go through the fact that there were children who were present when Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd. We heard him go through the fact that there were accomplices. This was not something Derek Chauvin necessarily did by himself. And the duration of the use of excessive force also played in and contributed to them saying that these were aggregating factors. On the other hand, Attorney Nelson, the defense attorney for Derek Chauvin, we already know he, every step of the way, has tried to get this case dismissed.

He's asked for a mistrial. Even today, his request for a new trial was declined by the judge. He was asking for a probation. He said, look, my client doesn't have any criminal history. You should consider that. And the part, Roland, I think for me that was the hardest to sit through because at the end of the day, yes, I'm a journalist,

but I'm also biracial and I identify very strongly with my Black heritage. It was very challenging to listen to Derek Chauvin's mother make these remarks about his career and talk about even his accolades and the fact that when she pinned his badge on, it was her happiest moment in her life. And it felt a little out of place, out of context for that moment. But what I will say is what I'm hearing from other people who have analyzed that statement is it kind of felt like a dog whistle. The last thing I'll say is people were not expecting Chauvin to say anything at all. He did offer condolences to the family. And then he also made this very weird remark that no one was really sure what he was referencing. After he offered his condolences, he told the Floyd family that there was some information that would be coming out that would

bring them peace. And whether that was the sentencing he was alluding to, or whether he's talking about the DOJ investigation, no one really quite knows exactly what Derek Chauvin meant when he said that to the Floyd family. Well, I think that this entire trial for a lot of people has been traumatic. I mean, to see the Floyd family go up there again, and I thought it was really important that they had all of the brothers of George Floyd telling the judge, pleading to the judge for the maximum penalty and listening to Giovanna. I mean, it really just broke my heart personally.

However, I feel like when the judge heard their pleas, it was kind of this waiver in between of, well, let's be fair, but also let's give them some justice as well. And I feel like the verdict with the 22.5 years, I mean, it's possible that Derek Chauvin should have got the maximum. Georgia, on that particular point, how did the courtroom respond to that video from Gianna? Well, I'll tell you, George Floyd's brothers were in the back of the courtroom with tissue. They were crying. Every time I looked over, they were wiping their eyes. And I know that these are nuances that aren't necessarily picked up on camera. While on the other hand, Chauvin's family, they were very still and only spoke a few times. But you could tell just in, you could see somebody stressed in their eyebrows. They were often looking down, some of them turning red.

So there was some anger and some shame. You could even see the shame on their faces. So it was a very emotional and intense time to be inside of that courtroom today. Georgia Forte, journalist there in Minneapolis. We certainly appreciate it. Thank you so very much for that perspective. Thanks a bunch. Kim, I want to start with you. A lot of people really don't understand the law. Folks have assumptions. People say he should have gotten more. Also not realizing that states differ in terms of how much time you have to serve. So already people are saying, oh, he's only going to serve 15 years, where other states sometimes you have to serve 85% of the sentence. And so just explain to folks watching just the nuances in how the law works. And you have to understand it depends on the

state you're in. That's right. It is state specific. So we're looking at Minnesota law. And what he was looking at was a range that was from probation, which is what his attorney was asking for, up to 30 years. And that 30 years included what we call aggravating factors. So it's not just that he killed someone, but these aggravating factors made it even more egregious. The fact that he did this in front of a child, the fact that he was a law enforcement officer, and we have higher expectations for them. And so those are the factors that a judge is supposed to look at. What is the crime? What are the penalties that we can assess? And what are the aggravation? So this made it more

heinous or mitigation. So mitigation is he's never been arrested before. He was in law enforcement. He had, you know, what are the things that make him, that should make his sentence even more light? And so, again, it depends on the state. Here in Chicago, you'll recall we had an officer-involved murder involving Jason Van Dyke in the killing of Laquan McDonald on video, shooting this young man 16 times as he lay on the ground. I don't think you could think of anything more egregious than what we saw in that video. And yet Jason Van Dyke is only serving six and a half years. And so you see the wide disparities that happen. Under Illinois law, he could have been sentenced to far more. And so this 22 and a half years will never feel like justice. I don't know that

justice is anything less than Gianna having her father with her, but it's why we see the disparities of a Laquan McDonald murder only getting six and a half years to George Floyd getting 22 and a half. One of the things that I have, I was doing a radio a little bit earlier that I've been trying to explain to folks as well. A lot of folks have been saying, okay, not justice. But the reality is that the power of the protests, they have made a difference because I dare say you can't recall in the last two years the number of police officers that have actually been convicted. We're talking about before, they wouldn't even go to trial.

They wouldn't get indicted. And so you are seeing a shift in the consciousness of grand juries, but also this is the impact of having different DAs. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think prosecutors across our country, you know, so I think not only has this case shook our entire country, you know, I think being locked down in COVID brought attention to this case. So everyone had to watch and see racism in their face. But then you see, you know, prosecutors like our state's attorney here, you see them across

other women like Ayanna, Aramis Ayanna out in Orlando, you see Rachel Rollins, you see a bunch of progressive prosecutors being elected to push because that's important roles, right? Those are important roles that really mean a lot in times like this. And I think that I also want to give credit to millennials. I think that millennials have stepped into these roles and have done protests weeks after weeks after weeks. Just this week here in Chicago, we had a protest. And I think that without this terrible situation, this terrible case, we wouldn't have brought

light to that. And that's when you see progress. And you see convictions, but you need laws to change also right so prosecutors can get you to one step but there's use of force laws that really protect officers um and i can't say that enough not only in illinois but across the entire country so not until we change some of the police officer bill of Rights can we really move forward. Xavier, that's why I think the nuances of the law makes a difference.

And what I mean by that is, what people are learning is that, because before it was all focuses on Congress and you're sitting there going, but they can't change a state law. Then it became, okay, well, let's focus on state legislatures and governance. Well, but they don't control, they're not the judge or they might not be the DA. People now, I think, are understanding civics a lot better and realize that there are multiple touch points that you have to deal with when you're talking about dealing with this. You must deal with the police union contracts with the cities.

You must deal with the Bill of Rights. So it's like there's all kinds of different pieces to it. There's no one way to have police reform in America. Yeah, what you're pointing to is something I often call the ecosystem of justice work. It happens with many different people, many different touch points, and often across the arc of time, the reality- Oh, they can't hear you for some reason. So let's just borrow that microphone there and let's fix that problem. Yeah. What you're alluding to is what I would call the ecosystem of justice work, that a lot of this work happens across many different people, across time, variances in state

law and such. The reality is that what you're talking about is a question of how do we actually achieve justice? Like what is justice? How do we keep black people safe? How do we actually ensure safety in our communities? And the question of the apparatus of that, I think, is at the core of the question of police reform. And it starts with the question of police, right? At the core of the marches last year and what really rose up was this conversation around the viability and the necessity of police officers as a measure and a powerful meaning maker for safety particularly as it relates to black and

brown people and I think what's been lost in the conversation and even in the sentencing that we saw today what's been lost in that conversation is this question around what really is justice what actually create what actually would bring George Floyd home meaning would have prevented his death. And at no point would that be 22 and a half years or 100 years. At no point would that have been a police officer. It would have been an ecosystem,

a network of relationships, distribution of economic resources, the question of permissibility, the reduction of bias as it relates to anti-blackness, and these sorts of things. But it happens and it's every individual's job, which makes it difficult, and it's every system's job, which makes it even more complex. Okay, I have a question for you.

We talked about the varying degrees of sentencing. So you have the larger scale, then you have a lesser scale. How much of this was the public opinion for us to see this outcome of Derek Chauvin getting the sentencing he did from the judge? Listen, the judge said that he wasn't taking any of that into account. He was looking at the specific facts and the law and taking out a motion. But I would be hard pressed to say that this judge knew not just that Minneapolis was watching, the world was watching, and that there had been this outcry that he could not give the minimum. I mean, another thing that we should point out, that even with the heartfelt sentiments of George Floyd's daughter

and all of the other impact statements, he'd already had this ruling done. He had his 22 pages when he sat down at that bench. Yeah, yeah. He didn't go in chambers and bang out 22 pages. No, he had it ready. And so while those statements, you know, were impactful for us, they weren't changing where he was. But I certainly believe, again, based on history just here in Chicago,

where Jason Van Dyke can shoot someone 16 times and get six and a half years. And there was, and, you know, just to the point you made, Roland, there's a sense of like, ah, we got something. And what we have seen in the course of the last several years with this persistent pressure, with this persistent, like, that's not enough either. Right. And so I think we have seen that shift. And I think that shift and i think that shift is because the laws haven't changed it is the expectation and the accountability to the public that has changed and i think that's how you go to 22 and a half years which doesn't feel

like a lot but it is a lot in the history trajectory of what we've seen in these types of let's be real clear okay 22 half 22 and a half years is a hell of a long time when we have seen police officers get no build, when the grand jury has no indictment whatsoever. And I know people are saying, oh, you know, you shouldn't accept that. But the reality is what you are seeing, you're seeing a dramatic shift. And I can guarantee you that there are police officers who saw this verdict and they are thinking a little differently tonight when they go out and hit those streets and how they interact with people because now, because more folks are videotaping, now because you have more cities that are passing or implementing body cam footage,

now when that cop lies and then that footage shows something totally different, it's no longer I can just say whatever I want on that police report and then the courts believe it and then everybody believes it and the public goes, hey, well, that's what the cop said. Now, all of a sudden, it's kind of like, oh, no, no, no, no, we're going to show you this. And you're hearing stories about record numbers of police officers retiring. Right. Even here in Chicago.

Which is not a bad thing. Here in Chicago, we've heard. They're resigning. They're saying that this is a different atmosphere, and that atmosphere of accountability is what we want. And to me, if you can't do the job without worrying about a camera, then it's probably good that you get that clock and see yourself to your retirement.

And that's what I'm saying. I see these job openings as an opportunity. We were talking about reformed police departments. Yes, to get rid of, and I have no problem saying it, police thugs and to be able to go out and recruit a different type of 21st century police officer to patrol communities. Yeah, there's a lot I learned about recently, and it's about, you know, when an officer, you know, commits a crime or kills an individual, a regular civilian.

Okay, all right. So hold on one second. So there's an issue with this microphone they can't hear. So let's switch. So pass that microphone down to me. Just pass it down to me, that one right there. All right, y'all come get this and fix it, please. When an officer kills a civilian

for example here in illinois they have almost 48 hours of time in between when they kill the civilian to prepare their statements to an advantage like you and i wouldn't get 48 hours not at all to get your life straight right Right. To get your life straight. Right. And that's something that you can have the best prosecutor in the state ready or in your account. That's something that they're protected under. So those are types of laws that have to change eventually so that you can see more prosecutions. Well, I'll give you an example, Xavier. Again, we talk about what has changed.

It was only a couple of years ago in the state of Georgia. If a police officer was going before a grand jury, the officer got to sit in the grand jury. Grand jury proceedings are secret. The officer literally got to sit. Kim, the whole point of the grand jury is to be secret. You don't know who comes to testify in Georgia for all of these years. The officer could sit there and watch anybody who testified. Hell, there's a reason why cops didn't get indicted in Georgia for all of these years. The officer could sit there and watch anybody who testified, hell, there's a reason why cops didn't get indicted in Georgia.

He's sitting right there. But again, the law was changed when it became exposed and that only it came about after the death of Trayvon Martin, after Black Lives Matter, after people began, light began to be shown on this system and the nuances and how grossly unfair it was in terms of how police officers were being treated versus the average citizen. I just want to say this. The conversation around policing, police reform, sentencing, et cetera, I'm going to bring this back,

and I'd love to hear y'all jump in on this point. What we're talking about right now is negotiating the validity of the current system and whether that system and its mechanisms and levers for justice actually served it. The conversation around what George Floyd sparked across the world was one about a different model, a different system, a question around whether justice could be achieved through different mechanisms for safety. The conversation around police getting 48 hours is still a conversation around policing.

When you look at Biden's new budget around public safety and around the military, it's going up. When you look at our mayor here in Chicago's budget around policing, it's going up. When you look at the question of what was the net effect, and I'm not talking about this case. I'm talking about moves that create a higher improbability of black folks that look like us being subject to the types of experiences and potential fatal experiences like George Floyd experienced. And when I look writ large across america that's not what i see i don't see consent decrees being being uh enforced where they exist

i'm not seeing them being uh requested or demanded uh by by many of our our legislators but this is why i'm saying you have to connect the dots because a conversation about changing a system cannot overlook you have to change the people who actually change the system there were people who are protesting last year about the George Floyd who said I don't believe they're gonna change that's why I'm protesting I'm sitting going um you can't change policy unless you deal with the people who voting on policy you a protest in the street means nothing unless the policy changes which

means you might have to change the politicians who are voting on policy and so that's so that I've heard that I've heard people go man this thing is not gonna change so I'm gonna go protest I'm going yeah but you can't protest and not vote it's not gonna change they don't do anything no no no protests usually are saying something can change and we can accelerate that rather no that was there were actual surveys done of actual protesters and people said this is my way of showing they said i would rather do this than voting and i'm saying okay you can't change policy unless you either change the minds of politicians or you change the politicians and that's what i'm saying the dots have to be connected when i'm

talking to millennials and gen z's and folks are like yeah but i'm not quite what i'm saying the dots have to be connected when i'm talking to millennials and gen z's and folks are like yeah but i'm not quite sure i'm going you can't say we need a whole new system but keep the very same people in place who with the whole system you gotta change the people who vote on the system it's a both end right right it's it's about the power of influence the legislators have the power of control and decision making. Right. But the streets can also vote to boot them out and then put in people to get what you want. Kim, go ahead. Yeah, I think you're both right. I mean, I think the conversation has elevated in the last year these narratives around abolitionism, abolitionists.

You would hear that and people would be like, what you talking about? What does it mean to not have police? And it has reframed the conversation of what do we think about safety? How do we define it? I think that's the point you're saying. But at the same time, while we have these conversations

and we use the word reimagining a new system a lot, you need people in there with the imaginations to do it. And I'm sorry, you can't kneel on a man's neck for over nine minutes and kill him and not be held accountable. And so the existing system that we have right now that needs to be fundamentally changed also needs to work in the way it was designed. And punitively for people that look like me and you, we're going to go to jail. We're going to serve time. For a long time. I promise you that.

People like Derek Chauvin wouldn't. And so for me, it is we do have a fundamentally flawed system. However, in order for us to change it, we do have to have people in those roles. They get there by the people in the streets. I've made no mistake. I sit in my seat because of the protests related to the murder of Laquan McDonald and black people in this city who said we can do something different. What does that look like? I wouldn't be here without that. So that's right.

And Rekia Boyd. And Rekia Boyd. And that was the movement in the street. And so we can do that. System's still flawed, but it's not what we don't have what we had a couple years ago. Right. And so I think it's a both and. I think it has to be while we get to that new place, having the right people in the places we have now to fundamentally shift what we're doing. And that's why you are seeing such an emphasis on voting. That's why the work of Black Voters Matter. They have been having a caravan that started last week in Mississippi.

They are in Richmond, Virginia today, traveling to the nation's capital tomorrow for a mass rally, trying to put pressure on Congress to change the laws. Today, eight years ago today, it was a Supreme Court that pretty much gutted Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act and the Shelby B. Holder decision that has led to a lot of the voter suppression bills being passed by Republican state legislatures all across the country.

This week we saw, of course, on Tuesday, where the Democrats were unsuccessful in breaking the filibuster, but that does not mean that the fight has ended. LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, joins us right now. LaTosha, you and Cliff Albright and others, y'all have been doing the work. As y'all have been, y'all haven't been just driving from the South. You've been having rallies every single day, actually registering people along the way. We've been live streaming those events here at Roland Martin Unfiltered.

So talk about how we have to get people to understand that the cases of a George Floyd and the sentencing of a Derek Chauvin and the election of judges and the election of DAs and the election of attorney generals, all is all related. They all go together. Juan Roland, thank you for having me on. And you're absolutely right. You know, that's what we want people to understand. Even for the work that we do, we're not a civic engagement organization. We're a power building organization. We want people to think more deeply about power. We want people to think about voting to the extent that voting is one of the tools actually of building political power. And so that we make a decision around who is in and who's in office.

I think we did we lose Latasha. I think Latasha froze there. So first of all, y'all understand they're literally on the road. So she's actually on the bus. And so they'll let me know. They'll let me know when we get her signal back. So we continue the conversation with her. I'll come out. I'll come back to the panel here, and anyone can take this. This same thing, the public pressure of trying to, and what they're doing is methodically walking people through, I call it civics 101. Unfortunately, we don't have the schoolhouse rock on Saturday mornings, because it's a whole lot of folk ain't got a clue about civics these days uh and the work that they're doing is vital and what we're even with the election of president biden and

vice president kamala harris that was by a small margin and so when we talk about every vote matters the work that they're doing it does matter yeah but you know rolling to that point i think a lot we we always talk about this right like the Like the flashpoint of presidential elections, and then everybody goes home. And this notion around civics is, and I wish we did teach more of it, teach people how the system works, how they can engage with it. The sitting back and saying, well, I did my job, I cast my vote, I did my thing. That is not. That's how we end up with. Now it's another. You end up with, I mean, that's why change takes 50 years sometimes.

Because people, the pressure requires a continual pressing to ensure momentum. We lose momentum every election cycle. We start looking to the midterm rather than looking the day after the election or the day after the inauguration. These sorts of things, I think, are part of what I wish was more present in the American fabric and in our everyday culture. But I would say, too, it's not even just these big elections. I'm watching, you know, the school board election, their school board meetings, and they're talking about critical race theory like they know what they're talking about. And they clearly don't.

And just this like this flashpoint, like Republicans have found a way, top and down, right? Like we will be focused on a presidential, and they're like, let's get that library board. Let's determine which books are going to be able to come into our communities. And so I think this education campaign that Black Voters Matter is doing is just that, that it is every level of power, every decision-making body you need to know about and have some input in, because we have had systems in place where we don't know our history because you have school boards that actively refuse to teach it. And what we're seeing right now in this conversation around their version of critical race theory that they think is happening

is the exercise of that power. And we're seeing that in real time. Latasha is back. Latasha, to that particular point, as I know one of the things that you all have heard as you've been traveling, how people also realize school board races matter, water district, all of these unsexy races that people don't get a lot of attention but impact people on a local level.

Absolutely. You know, as Ms. Fox was saying, at the end of the day, what we're seeing, what we know to happen, is that all... All right, so let's do this here. Talk to people about voting. We're not saying that voting is going to solve all our problems.

We're not saying that voting is the end all or the be all, but that voting is one tool. And when a community is in battle, when a community is at war, when a community is literally fighting for their very humanity, we have to use every single tool available to us. And so as we're talking to people about voting, it is not our point to try to convince people to believe in the system, but we want people to believe in themselves. And so as we talk about the power of the vote, we talk about that as one tool that we actually can use our

agency to determine what conditions we're governed, who is in position that is governing us, and what policy priorities are at play. That is very important. It is very critical. It makes a difference what DA is in office. It makes a difference if the mayor believes in housing or not. It makes a difference if you have a city council that will make sure that there's equity in the development around the city. And so part of our work is really around voting as a means to an end, that we use voting as a tool. It's not the end in itself, but as a tool to build power so we can advance an agenda in our community. You're currently in Richmond, right? She's in Richmond?

Yep, I'm with D.C. To D.C. What are some of the reactions that you have gotten from the people as the boots on the ground when you're talking about getting people registered to vote? Is it something in believing in themselves? What is that like? You know, this has been, we've done several tours. This has been an extremely powerful tour for us. People are frustrated. People are tired. People want to see change. And everywhere we've been going, we've been going to large cities.

We've been going to this Atlanta and that Nashville and Birmingham and Raleigh and the cities that you know. But we've also been going to rural communities and small areas like Cuba, Alabama and Columbia, Tennessee, you know, and Berkeley, West Virginia, that no one has ever heard of, or very few people have heard of. And as we're going, the message has been consistent. People are saying that they want a government that's going to be responsive to them and their issues and their needs, and that people are very upset about what is happening with this voter suppression tactic. They can call it whatever they want to. They can fix it up all they want to and say,

oh, this is about voter security. But anybody who is reasonable and rational knows that what we're seeing right now is an attack on black voters because we showed up and showed out this last election cycle. And for us, the work isn't just on voter registration. Voter registration is one component of the work. The work is really around voter education

and voter mobilization. That one, we have to use a strategy of knowing that our numbers, that in cities and communities and states around the nation, that literally we can use our collective power to put people in office, to take folks out of office, and to decide what are going to be the policy priorities. So we have to really recognize this is a strategic tool about how do we literally advance and shape the kind and transform the kind of nation, the kind of communities that we actually deserve. And so that's part of what, when we're talking to folks, less than even registration, that ultimately people have been turned off from the process because they, you know, even the message of, well, you got to vote because someone died for you, that's true. And we should honor that. But people are trying to figure out what is going to change the quality of my life right now. How can I make sure that I'm getting away? I'm getting my bills.

People are wondering how can they get. All right. Let me know. We have Latasha back. They they must be in the sticks in Virginia. So let me know. We actually have her back to the point that she was making about rural voters. We spend a lot of time. We were in Georgia for the runoff of John Ossoff and Pastor Raphael Warnock. And that's one of the areas where Democrats have largely ignored. Republicans have always run up huge vote totals and they're not large centers. But when you're running up, when you're picking up 70, 80 percent of the vote and then you put all those small areas together, that's the margin of victory a lot of times and we can't ignore there's a lot of us who live in

those areas not as in a Georgia but also in rural Illinois that's what I was gonna ask her because I think that as she's traveling she's probably running into different voter laws also also state state by state. And they spend a lot of time educating people on, this state is different. And what has been put in place literally to keep our people restricted state by state. Illinois actually does a good job of allowing us to register same day, but when you're in Virginia

and some of these other southern states, that's not the case. But I think when you're talking to rural voters, you'll find that some of the best tools are really getting to know the neighborhood, getting to maybe know the pastor, getting to know literally who are some of the biggest surrogates and stakeholders in the community that can sway other parts of the community. So all you really need is some lockdown and door-to-door knocking, and you'll hold on to that constituency base. Yeah, a lot of this really makes me think about the question of technological access as well. We've been talking about voter mobilization. The other side of it is voter education. We're touching on that a bit around civics. I'm thinking back, Kim, when you were running

in that first race, that was when that app Ballot Ready first came out. And so many people started to participate because they actually knew the rest of the folks on the ballot. They had the access to information about all those judges, all those water reclamation district commissioners, these sorts of folks. And so there was less intimidation once they got into the ballot box. And I think that's another part of the conversation around voting that needs to continue being a major part of how we focus on not just getting people into the booths, but making sure that they feel comfortable and educated to make a decision in their best interest and not just be there for, well, I know that the two people I know and they

had the most money, so they sent the most representatives to my church. And so I'm coming to vote for them. And that's not how you that's not how we get more people into this pool. I think another thing that people when you are working with with our folks and registering, expanding the electorate is very expensive. I think that's something that's also educating people how to vote takes money, and it takes making sure that you're touching a voter maybe four or five times before election day. Registering is one step, but then you've got to call them, text them, call them, text them about four, five, or five, five or six more times before election day, and that costs money. So another part, I know people don't want to hear it, but another part of being civically engaged is money, too.

And we need people to be giving money to some of our candidates that we believe in as well. Well, and I think when you talk about the money piece, but it's also using our power to change these dynamics. And I've said this in the past. I've got no problem saying it. Part of the problem with many of these elections, especially when you talk about who's targeting black folks,

you've got too many smart as white boys who want to spend money chasing a Republican white woman in the suburbs who ain't going to vote for you anyway. OK. OK. Numbers don't lie. If you turn out more of your likely voters, you are likely to win. So you might want to spend money on more of your likely voters, which also means that you have to be thinking about that a lot earlier. I've been saying, right, look, the 2022 midterms next year, every House seat's going to be up. You've got about some critical U.S. Senate races in Wisconsin, in Georgia, got the re-election of Warnock, in Arizona with Mark Kelly.

You've got the open seats in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, Rubio versus Demings in Florida. You also have the open seat in Ohio. Those are going to be critical. The question now is how are you putting the coalition together to turn folks out? But then again, you also got to have policies that you can actually tout that's going to get somebody to vote. And so when Democrats don't move on the voting bills in Congress, look, you're not going to be able to successfully go out and say, well, we passed Juneteenth. I'm fully supportive of that, but you've got to have something else behind that. And so that to me is also one of the things. And what I've said to black politicians, they've got to be willing to look at the Democratic Governance Association, the DSCC, DCCC, and all of these progressive PACs who also act like black folks don't exist. You had a major advisor this week to Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn,

who came out and said that Democrats were spending way too much time on the voter bill. They should be focusing on some other bills. Otherwise, the donors are not going to be excited. And I said, your ass need voters excited. Just because you got money. I said, you give all the money in the world and get your behind kicked. I said, so you better have some policies

that's going to excite somebody to say why I should vote for you. And again, that's part of the deal. There is a real racial dynamic that exists within the Democratic Party, also with them hiring white ad agencies to control dollars. And then all of a sudden, nah, we don't want to spend real money on black community. Yo, we got that. And I'm sitting there going, no, because there are fewer

of us who are self-identifying as Democrat, which means you're going to have to work for this thing a lot harder than you did before. Well, I think the best example of what you're saying is when they spent all that money on wendy davis in texas that year instead of putting that money into a state like georgia and now they're learning the democrats learned oh we could have put that money into georgia no no no no no no the problem the problem in texas and wendy davis was not they put the money in wendy davis the problem is they they put the did not put the money in texas with two million eligible but unregistered Latinos. That's the problem.

I was trying to be good, bro. No, hell, I ain't trying to be good. I ain't. I was trying to. Why are you trying to be good? This show is called Unfiltered. No, we don't do good here. We do honest here.

I was saying, you're right. They put it in the wrong group. They didn't put it into us. No, no, no, no. What I'm saying is you could have put the... This is what Democrats do. They put the money behind candidates without realizing it doesn't matter

if your folks don't turn out. In Texas, there are two million eligible but unregistered Latinos. What you have to do in Texas, you have to do what happened in the 60s with CORE and SNCC. You have to literally take $50 to $100 million, say we're going to move 2,000 people into communities in Texas. They're going to live there.

They're going to, I mean, what did Ella Baker say? She told SNCC, take your college clothes off, put your overalls on, and go talk to those folks. She said they might have a third-degree education. She said, but they know what they're talking about. The problem is you've got smart-ass white boys with iPads who think the algorithm is going to determine who wins, but if you're not actually connecting to somebody first to educate them, two, get them to register, then three, get them to turn out, it doesn't matter. Even if you put money in registration, if they don't turn out, you still lose.

And so, yes, Georgia proved it. And so in 2012, I was at CNN, we were going to air, and Chris Van Hollen, who's now a senator from Maryland, was over the DCCC. I said to him, y'all can flip Georgia and Texas. He's like, no, we can't. I said, that's the problem.

That's why your asses keep losing. He looked at me, I said, if you don't put the money on the ground and turn people out, at that time there were 800,000 unregistered black people in Georgia. Now because they changed the law to automatic voter registration,

that went dramatically down to less than 5% of people not registered. But again, that's sort of what they do. They only think of it in a cycle to cycle. It's a ground game. And I think, and so what LaTosha and Black Bullets Matter is doing. They are about how do you cultivate the ground.

Is she back? Y'all got her back? Yep, I'm here. LaTosha, to that particular point, cultivating the ground year round. Talk about that. You know, Roland, the way that I see it is there are three things. If you want to say the 3M strategy, it is money, message, and mobilization, that you've got to put money on the ground. Part of what we would see is that oftentimes in these areas, these predominantly

African-American areas, and some in rural areas, some in suburban, some even in urban areas, you saw this very episodic last week, I would call it the last week, the last three weeks around the Negro up money, where they would drop some resources out and you're supposed to go folks go round black folks up to go vote for them, right? Which is not effective.

It's shown it's not effective and it's certainly not empowering. And so one, even for us, our model, which is why we created Black Voters Matter Fund, we actually put half our budget directly on the ground, investing in our partners to do the work that they're doing. Last year, we invested and raised and invested over $10 million to 600 black-led grassroots groups on the ground. Many of those groups, you might not know their name, you haven't heard of them, but they're the work, they're the actually the sol father of the earth. They're the folks that are doing the work. And that's where the investment should go. The second thing, it really message matters that at the end of the day, if you've got a message that you're that literally you're marginalizing, you can't say black.

We're unapologetic in what we're saying. We're even in our message. We're shifting the paradigm that this is about our people. This is about our community, that at the end of the day, this is beyond. You can be a great candidate. You could be a political party that we like, but ultimately, none of that matters if we're not connecting our own issues to realizing or feeling like this person

or these people going into office is going to help carry our agenda. And so the message matters. So we shift the paradigm to put the focus on us and our power. And the third thing is around basic mobilization. That at the end of the day, you have to, what does it take to engage people?

It takes listening to folks. That instead of just going out and you're talking about the candidate as if the candidate is going to be the savior of our community, being honest with people about the limitation of voting, but also about the power of voting. So for us, it is literally putting money on the ground, having a message that is honest, authentic and resonates with people. And then three, being able to have a mobilization strategy that is not exploiting the community,

but is actually putting the power in their hands and that we follow suit and we're in alignment to get behind them on what it is that they want to do to build power in their community. That has been our Slack vote. Tell us about the event tomorrow in D.C. So we are doing the Freedom Ride for voting rights. We have been on the road for eight days. Tomorrow will be our ninth day. We're going to D.C. We're having a voter rally that literally we have over 40 partners that have joined us that we're saying that we're fighting back against voter suppression. That 60 years ago, there were people that got on these freedom ride buses to make sure that they tested segregation. And as a result, their work, they won.

We believe the same thing has to happen, that we're not putting our fate in this country in the hands of anybody, or even a political... Fundamentally, what we believe in is we believe that democracy is the best vehicle, literally, for us to be able to use our voice to shape the things that govern our communities,

to shape the policy priorities in our community. So tomorrow between 12 and 4, we'll be on the mall in D.C. We're headed there right now, actually, on the mall in D.C. at 3rd Avenue between Madison and Jefferson. We'll have a day of programming. We'll have culture. We'll have music. We'll have poetry. But we'll also have people who are literally standing in the space to share their experiences and the work that we're doing. This is the moment. This is our moment to send a message. We can't let what happened on Tuesday that we had on Tuesday. This is 50-something years past the Voting Rights Act and the voting rights movement. There's still we're talking about voter suppression that even when we left Georgia on Friday, when we left Georgia on Friday,

the Republican secretary of state announced that he's going to purge another 100,000 voters from the polls. Who do you think that's directed in? In addition to that, they're also removing a board of electors from the boards. Like Helen Butler, who's a longtime civil rights activist, has ran and worked with Joseph Lowry, has been a staunch advocate for voting rights for no reason is being kicked off the board, quite frankly, because I believe because she's black and she's a black voter and she represents the interests of Black voters. So we're seeing this enormous, egregious kind of attack on Black voting power, and we've got to respond with the same level of intensity that those folks are actually creating to try to marginalize us. We're seeing this in 47 states around the country.

We can't be silent on this. This is our moment. So we're asking people, even if they can't join us, what they can do is support our work. You can text FREEDOMRIDE to 797979, or you can join us virtually. We can join us on your platform, Roland, between 12 and 4 tomorrow. Please join us virtually. If you can't come to D.C. But we're going to ask some of you all who are willing to shine your wheels up and come on ride out, come join us on the blackest bus in America while we stand in the space to protect, to fight for our civil rights because the work continues.

Well, y'all got the blackest bus in America and we always enjoy having you on the blackest show in America. That is, that is. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you for having me rolling. Oh, you know how we roll. I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Oh, you know how we roll. I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Folks, speaking of speaking of using everything at your power today, the Department of Justice announced they're going to be suing the state of Georgia for the voter suppression bill that they passed. And DOJ said that that bill clearly was targeting black folks. Here's Kristen Clark, who runs the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. Our complaint today alleges that several provisions of SB 202 were passed with a discriminatory purpose in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The Georgia legislature passed

SB 202 through a rushed process that departed from normal practice and procedure. The version of the bill that passed the state senate on March 8th was three pages long. Days later, the bill ballooned into over 90 pages in the house. The house held less than two hours of floor debate on the newly inflated SV202 before Governor Kemp signed it into law the same day. These legislative actions occurred at a time when the black population in Georgia continues to steadily increase. And after a historic election that saw record voter turnout across the state, particularly for absentee voting, which black voters are now more likely to use than white voters. Our complaint challenges several provisions of SB 202 on the grounds that they were adopted with the intent to deny or abridge black citizens equal access to the political process. The provisions we are

challenging reduce access to absentee voting at each step of the process, pushing more black voters to in-person voting, where they will be more likely than white voters to confront long lines. SB 202 then imposes additional obstacles to casting an in-person ballot. Like all of the provisions in SB 202, the changes to absentee voting were not made in a vacuum. These changes come immediately after successful absentee voting in the 2020 election cycle, especially among black voters. Well, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp was not happy with that announcement. This is what he said, quote, this lawsuit is born out of the lies and misinformation the Biden administration has pushed against Georgia's Election Integrity Act from the start. Joe Biden,

Stacey Abrams, and their allies tried to force an unconstitutional election power grab through Congress and failed. Now they are weaponizing the U.S. Department of Justice to carry out their far-left agenda that undermines election integrity and empowers federal government overreach in our democracy. Folks, y'all got a graphic. Please show it. As Secretary of State, I fought the Obama Justice Department twice to protect the security of our elections and won. I look forward to going three for three to ensure it's easy to vote and hard to cheat in Georgia. See, here's why that's bullshit. Because that's all a lie. It's all a lie. And the reality is, so I love this whole idea of, oh, this is voter integrity and protecting the election.

Like, we all know what this is about. We know. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, I mean, voter fraud is such a red herring in this whole conversation around safety, around security. It's like critical race theory. They all know. Yeah, the reality is, and I think it's going to be interesting to see a Department of Justice that specifically pursues voting rights through the lens of racial equity versus voting rights as it pertains to general access. Because now they specifically said black.

I'm with that. I appreciate that. But I'm also just going to say, like, I think this say that I'm not going to say that I'm not going to initiate that. But I'm also just going to say, like, I think this is the typical thing we see from Republicans all the time. They're going through this often coded language, dog whistle type stuff, red herring arguments to try to diminish

the power of black voting. And given that many people, especially black folks, we live in a lot of the metropolises of these large states. At the end of the day, a lot of the question around access, even, just like getting to the polls. The law we saw in the last year around giving people water when they're standing in these long lines. I don't understand how this doesn't come off as suppression to the broader populace of the Republican Party. I'm not talking about the Mitch McConnells.

I mean the everyday person who's like, no, that sounds about right. We shouldn't allow water for people who are waiting in line. But, Kim, this is about how you have to use every weapon that you have. The law has always been used to 30 is expanding access. And why now? Right. Right. Like all of a sudden. Be cuter about it. Right. Don't lose two Senate seats and then two months later be like, you know what? Less voting boxes like be be smarter with it. And so I think that's right. I think it's not even just the red herring.

I mean, it is the, it's like a flock of birds. It is, you cannot lose as badly as they did. They flipped two Senate seats in Georgia. Like, we reveled in it, but it is, really was unheard of. And so now this unprecedented push to put these laws in place, which are clear acts of suppression and to have the DOJ. And I think they should be commended because they do know that it was places like the cab. It was Atlanta. It was these centers that were black centers that they were fighting against the most. And by the way, the former president, you know, was unapologetic in coming after Kemp and Raffensperger about like.

Find me 11,000 votes. I mean. And so now we're going to find them by like making sure that we cut down the roles of people who are doing that. And so it's the it's like ironic to me that you get punched by the former president i mean punched i mean he like was having kemp rapsenberger putting them out all the way on front street and they were defending themselves and this man is gone and now in still trying to be in keeping with what the republican party has come that's what they but that's who they are now he campaigned against them correct y'all kissed his butt and he still campaigned against you you the fool

i also love how he had to put stacy's name in that statement hold on because because i'm so mad well but he put the name in there because he's also scared about next year oh yeah that's what he's scared about That's what you're scared about. As you should. You're scared about next year. As you should be. Yeah. So, and so it's, but the thing is, and this, we still go back to it, and I have these people who are constantly saying, well, Rowling, you're always talking about voting, you know, how's it going to change something?

In fact, I even had this one fool on YouTube, and see, they think I don't read stuff, but I do. Because this fool said, well, how is this march they have going to change policy? Well, if I have a march and I enlighten someone who the day before wasn't enlightened, and I now get them interested in the process, they now can then begin to petition the government to change the policy. See, that's just what really just sort of amazes me when some of our folk are so stuck on stupid that they say these things as if people aren't changed when they see marches or they see protests. And it drives me crazy when they go,

man, that's not going to change nothing. Yeah, probably you sit on your ass at home, not going to change anything. But I can show you examples where people were empowered and things did change. That's probably the most aggravating thing for me. And then I love when they say, well, marches don't matter. Well, I tell you what, it's amazing how half a million were marching in Hong Kong,

and then you had the Arab Spring. It's amazing how marches still seem to work all around the world. And many of them literally use where I'm a man sign, which black sanitation workers wore in Memphis. But you got black people who say, all right, stuff don't work anymore. I'm like, okay, gotcha. Right. So they got the memo, but we just sort of overlooked the memo.

Okay. All right. That's how some people are. That's how they roll. We got to take a break. We come back. We're going to talk more news of the day. Also, we're going to talk about education.

My man Wayne Watson is sitting back here chilling. Y'all can tell he retired because he ain't got no socks on. You know, he ain't got no tie on. You know, tell how he rolls. Absolutely. We're also going to talk about black gold media, the importance of that. Where's our money as we continue to fight for those advertising dollars? All of that, we're broadcasting live from the Sage Room here in Chicago.

Roland Martin Unfiltered, back in a moment. I believe that people our age have lost the ability to focus the discipline on the art of organizing. The challenges, there's so many of them and they're complex. And we need to be moving to address them. But I'm able to say, watch out, Tiffany.

I know this road. That is so freaking dope. Racial injustice is a scourge on this nation, and the black community has felt it for generations. We have an obligation to do something about it. Whether it's canceling student debt, increasing the minimum wage, or investing in black-owned businesses, the black community deserves so much better. Sixty years ago, the Freedom Riders rode buses to fight against segregation. They won. And now, as voter suppression is sweeping the country,

we're riding out again. Join the blackest bus in America and hundreds of organizations on a week-long freedom ride for voting rights. From June 18th to June 26th. Come out to our rallies in New Orleans, Jackson, Birmingham, Nashville, Atlanta, Columbia, Raleigh, Charleston, Richmond, and Washington, D.C. If you can't join us in the event on the route, you can just meet us in D.C. on June 26th. Or if you can't ride at all, then show your solidarity by hosting a rally right in your own town on June 26th. No matter where you are, everybody can be a Freedom Rider. To learn how to get involved, text FREEDOMRIDER to 797979.

We got power, y' swimming oh yeah we're all about learning how to swim here working with uh the ladies of sigma gamma row and usa swimming uh we're trying to get people to learn how important it is to learn how to swim. And being here, being around my people, I feel it's so important to give back for them to learn how to swim. Yeah, but now you got white folks checking IDs at the pool with black people. Oh, no. Don't you worry about

that. You get in there anyway. You learn how to swim. That's what's important. And so, you talk about that. I mean, the reality is, when you look at so many African-Americans, first of all, you've got to have access. Absolutely. And so, look, I grew up in Clinton Park in Houston. I can tell you there's always a battle with the city,

people cutting hours, closing hours. 100%. In many of our communities, we don't have community pools like we used to. Oh, absolutely. I grew up in the Bronx and grew up in New Jersey. I had to take two buses just to get to the pool. But you heard that. I took two buses to get to the pool.

The problem with our community is that we don't take swimming and change it from just being a great sport, but it's a life skill. We need to learn how to swim. Because once it starts getting warmer, the kids go to the lakes. They go to some kind of body of water. Parents need to understand that it's important

to learn how to swim to save their lives. And so what are you doing with Sigma Gamma Rola Travel? Right now, we're getting in the water. We're teaching all these ladies how to get in the water and learn how to swim. So we've been, USA Swimming has been doing such a great job about trying to make this a priority of teaching how to swim. And the partnership with Sigma Gamma Rho is just getting the older ladies to understand, the people that are in college and above,

to learn how important it is to learn how to swim. So you got people out there who say, look, I mean, I'm 50, I'm 60. I can't learn how to swim now. Absolutely. I just, this past Mother's Day gave my mom, she's 67. I'm going to get in trouble for that. Give her her first swim lesson. She's now going underwater by herself.

This woman's been scared all her entire life. You've been swimming all these years and she just. Do you know how tired she is of hearing that? You mean your son's an Olympian and you don't know how to swim? No, now she's getting in the water. She's kicking by herself on a kickboard. So there's no age. There's no age to not learn how to swim. Go out there. I don't want to hear any excuses.

Go out there and learn how to swim. See, I ain't trying to swim, but I go ahead. No, no, no. I'll wade. We can look at the water. I'm good. I'm good. I'm on a golf course. Okay, I'm on that too. Not very well, but I'm on there.

See, I'm very well. Oh, okay. So the amount of time I can spend swimming, I'm working my golf game. You know, it helps because everything's cross-body in the water too. So it works to help on your swimming. No, that ain't going to work.

That ain't going to work. That ain't going to work. That's a nice try, but that ain't going to work. I tried. All right, well, good seeing you, man. Good luck with it. Yes, thank you for having me. I I tried. All right, well, good seeing you, man. Good luck with it. Yes, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

All right, folks, Essence Festival virtual this year. It begins today. That's right, tonight. Got concerts happening as we speak going up until 10 p.m. You can go to EssenceStudios.com, Essence.com to check that out. Of course, we're going to have a recap of this weekend on Monday's show. Then, of course, next weekend, July 2nd through the 4th, the second weekend of the virtual festival, then we have our recap on July 5th.

So we certainly appreciate Coca-Cola for being our partner in this. All right, y'all, let's talk about this story. Always Florida. When you hear crazy stuff, you can always say, it's Florida. When you hear crazy stuff, you could always say, it's Florida. Check this out. A state trooper is under investigation because he followed and tased a teen who looked suspicious. 16-year-old Jake Rotman, Jack Rotman, was on his way to his girlfriend's house when state trooper George Smyrnios approached him in the patrol car robin ran through bushes into his girlfriend's backyard that's when the trooper chased him and approached him with his taser drawn watch video

the chance behind I'll do a reset. Check this out. This is what the trooper actually said. His behavior, demeanor, and body language appeared to be a burglar. It looked to me like he had just committed a crime or was about to commit a crime. Roman was arrested and charged with failing to obey a lawful order. They always use that one. Resisting without violence, they always use that one.

Possessing fewer than 20 grams of marijuana. However, his mother says she's going to use racially profiled. She's going to sue the Florida Highway Patrol for excessive force. He is still on active duty while Florida Highway Patrol investigates the incident. Is the video down ready? Go roll the video, please. The chance line's back. The chance line's back. Is the video down ready? Go roll the video, please. Put your hands behind your back. What is this?

Let me. . Oh,. Ow! . Ow! Put your hands behind your back. I'm going to do it again.

Whoa. I didn't see you commit a crime, but you look like you just did. I'm trying to figure out what the hell that look like. America. Yeah, I mean, police have the ability to stop you if they have a reasonable suspicion of you having done something or doing something. And it doesn't extend to just you are in a place

that I don't think you should be. There are standards to that and so i think and the use of force because he is not complying with you when again your what is your reasonable suspicion looked suspicious doesn't cut it there he looked like he just either robbed someplace or he was on his way to robbing someplace that I went to law school 24 years ago and that is not what I learned in criminal law that ain't it yeah that's that's not it let me should go ahead well when I look at that video the young boy he was on his phone he wasn't really a threat or anything of that nature.

My thing is we always talk about black parents have this conversation with their sons. When an officer approached you, you follow the guidelines, and it didn't really look like the boy was really paying attention to the officer. What part of the responsibility was it for the boy to kind of comply or talk to the officer? Just my thoughts. I mean, I'll just say this because I've been chased by a lot of police officers in my life as a black man who grew up on the west side of Chicago. And part of what sometimes goes through your head is get to a safe space, get to a place where there are people who can testify. Because the reality is if you are

alone as a black male in America and a police officer is coming up to you for whatever reason, the first thing I usually want is somebody else in that space. Right. I've run. I've driven my car into my neighbor's driveway because I know for a fact if somebody else sees it i might have a chance

could that have made it worse absolutely is that what i shouldn't have done probably yeah but you want a witness i need a witness i need a witness because my black skin is not enough of a witness my testimony is not not enough of a witness police have the the benefit of the doubt they've had that since they were started a slave patrol they have the benefit of the doubt. They've had that since they were started a slave patrol. They have the benefit of the doubt in America. And the reality is, is many black, black young people and black folks know when it comes down to it, it's going to take a lot to convince any judge, any jury, any person, including your, your potentially your lawyer, that it wasn't you or you shouldn't cop a plea and these sorts of things. I'm just saying there's a psychology behind it as well

where it's not just about what the law says, how the parents, black parents teach their kids and this sort of a thing. When you're in that moment, it's different. I'm just still trying to figure out what's suspicious. He looked like he either just robbed something or he's on his way to

robbing something. That's generational. No, no, no, no, no. I'm just trying to figure out how you let that come out your mouth. Like, even in this day and age, you go, I might not want to say that publicly. I mean, you started with, it's Florida, so I mean, for me, I just

I'm so tired of videos, but, you know, I don't want to watch another video. And just watching him hit the ground like that, that looked like he could have had other injuries. You know, it's just sad and scary. And even having to say, what should he have done? What should the cop have done? This is not our responsibility. These are our communities.

You know, that's not our he's supposed to keep us safe. So, yeah, it's bold for him to say that. I can't believe he said that, but in some ways I can, because what he looked like was he looked black. So that's why he looks suspicious. I'm just going to go ahead and beat this drum again. This is why I said early in this conversation the question around police reform and policing has to be has to be had around the

question of what is the what is the what is the best mechanism for creating safety not just creating security not not uh allowing it to go through the lens of cognitive biases or anti-blackness or happenstance or i hope he had a black girlfriend He'll say that on the stand one day, not that kind of stuff, but actually saying what produces safety in our communities, what reduces the probability of bias in forming an officer and how they not only stop someone, but how they use use of force to subdue someone for something that the officer made up in their mind. Right. That then that person has to then go through the legal process to then free themselves from something that literally never existed in the earth outside of an officer's mind.

Wow. That police are not creating safety. They are there as security. There's a difference. Let's talk about this here. The growing number of police chiefs who are announcing that they're going to stop these basic traffic stops. I saw one police chief the other day who said, look, this is not really what we should be focused on. And when you think about a lot of these shootings, a lot of them, somebody being stopped for no reason, being stopped for broken taillight. That was the whole issue with Walter Scott when Michael Slager shot and killed him.

That's the meaning of $20 bills with George Floyd. Right. I mean, these small, petty things. So talk about that, you know, how important that is to say, look, if you police officer, stop looking for small stuff to snatch folks. Why don't you focus on what people say? Don't y'all have something bigger to do? Yeah. I mean, that's been the evolution that we've seen in policing around this broken window strategies around stop and frisk that then evolved into stopping cars. So once, you know, stop and frisk laws started to come off the books, what you started to see was an increase in traffic stops. And so what we know is like,

you know, a traffic stop, that's a ticketed citation. You don't need that. We have cameras everywhere. And it does create a dangerous situation to the point that Xavier just talked about. It elicits fear in the person who's being stopped. And so if you want to minimize those encounters, stop creating them. But I think for a lot of, and we should also be clear where we see traffic stops happen the most. And I will say that in the city of Chicago, there was a study done by the ACLU that showed the traffic stops on the South and the West sides of the city of Chicago disproportionate to traffic stops in other parts of the city.

And so it is a strategy. And look, white folks ain't that safe drivers. Now, come on now. There's a whole lot. Let's just go ahead. Or congregators. Right. But it's not, it's sort of like, same thing, we talk about crack cocaine, powder cocaine,

we talk about stopping the frizz. Like in New York, I'm like, if y'all want to stop in the fridge, hell, go to Wall Street. Y'all can make a lot of drug busts. Go to the local university at the PWI. Yeah, I'm just saying, but that's, and every time we see these sort of studies, they got to ask, hold up. But it's not, but that's your point.

It's not about safety. If it were about, like, if people drive the same, right? And there's more of them. Yeah, that's how you know it's different. It's the same thing with drug use to the point that Xavier just made. If we know studies have shown over and over and over people smoke weed at the same rates, except you look at who's getting arrested and charged and prosecuted, it tells you where are you doing your policing. There you go.

And so if you wanted to go get a big weed bus, you would go to one of these universities on a Friday night and catch someone. But that is not your targeted population. And so I think all of these laws, and I'm heartened somewhat, again, lots of work to do to hear people in law enforcement say we should not be doing this. It doesn't make not just our community safe, it's unsafe for everybody involved to have these unnecessary stops

to create these unnecessary tensions where the propensity for violence is there. If you just let me drive, you say I'm safe. Not to mention some of these offices have limited resources and there is real violence out there. So there could be a lot of other resources spent in other direction where they could be spending their time. Xavier, to the point she just brought up about the violence out there. Now, you know, all the rage is, oh, my God, the violence in our cities, in Chicago, in Atlanta,

and all sorts of different things along those lines. And I was having a conversation earlier today on a radio network. And I said, when are we going to be willing to have a conversation that, hmm, maybe the income inequality that we've experienced where billionaires were able to earn a trillion dollars during the pandemic and people lost their jobs. When are we going to have that real discussion about violence? And I can tell you, and it was an off-the-record conversation, but Trump can kiss my ass. I don't care.

So we're at the White House. I don't care. We're at the White House, and he's having one of these meetings with the TV anchors. And he was all the time about immigration, immigration. Okay, fine. And so I forgot how we got into it. I said, well, let's do it.

I think he mentioned Chicago. I said, well, let's talk about Chicago. And I then began to say, I began to say to him, I said, what's your plan? He goes, oh, you know, when Rahm came here, Rahm was talking about education and jobs. He's like, Rahm, you don't get it. And then he started going on and on and talking about how he met this one cop. And he was like, I met this cop. And he was a tough guy. You could tell he was a tough guy. He was ordering people around.

And he said he told me we could have a crime problem in Chicago fixed in a week. And we're a few extra days left over. And I was like, and as he's talking, I'm sitting there going, yep, you probably met some white irishman uh uh who was trying to say let's just go bust some heads uh and let's let's let's do some john burge type stuff then we'll solve this problem uh then i said well what's your plan he went strength i said i'm sorry excuse me i said strength is a word sounds like something you attribute to coffee. I said, what's your plan? And he goes, strength. I said, that's not a plan.

And when he said it again, I literally just, I had a notepad. I closed my notepad. I was like, y'all can take it from here. I ain't got nothing else to say. Because it was so idiotic. But the point there was, whenever there's this discussion about the increase in violence in cities,

folks do not want to have a holistic conversation and then go, why? What is it? And to me, you cannot ignore economics and education if we're having a conversation about increase in violence. You simply can't. As John Hope Bryant always says, you ain't never seen a riot in a community or neighborhood where the credit score is 700 or higher. Right. Yeah. You know, the question around violence first starts with our ability to create an idea of what violence is, to your first point, right?

You talked about policies, economic policies, these sorts of things. I always start with the World Health Organization's definition of violence because they know all about health, apparently. So I say, what do you, how do they define violence? And there's actually several different ways that they look at it. And one of the ones that's most important to me really is this, the last word that they use, which is deprivation. The notion of deprivation is, I think, a loose one to many people, but it allows us to expand the conversation away from just physical violence to one of political violence, to one of economic violence. It allows us to understand that when you actually, for instance, in the city of Chicago, when you shut down 50 schools and 90 percent of them are in black and brown neighborhoods,

and you then, 10 years prior to that and while you're shutting those down, you also remove over 80,000 units of housing predominantly in black neighborhoods and then when the census bureau comes in and says well how many black folks we got well chicago lost 200,000 people and 180,000 were black those housing vouchers never went to them they never got to go back to kamrini green they never got to go back to where the ida b wells projects were any of that kind of stuff and nobody called that violence until a black boy picked up a gun. That's the sort of thing where I'm saying, like, going back to that civics conversation that we had earlier,

we don't teach people how to understand how violence is created. We teach people how to understand how to see the effects of a violence we never named. And that's very different. That's very different. This is why I go back to the question of how do we create safety, not how do we ensure security. Security is for property, safety is for people. When we talk about the question of policing, the question of not just what reforms should we have for police, the first question is should we, what is the best mechanism for creating safety? And it goes back to this question

of then the question of deprivation, which the other side of that is provision. Where are we actually creating resources that stimulate a higher probability when consumed to reduce the probability of violence? And we never try that, Roland. We never try a scaled solution towards actually resourcing black and brown communities. We always trickle in and trickle down from these bad solutions while ensuring that we still have to we still have to deal with these solution sets from 400 years ago that have never served us never been proven to work

and increasingly continue cycles of harm against us so i i say all of that to wrap it up just to say that expand the definition of violence and we may be able to actually have a better calculus for safety no well they don't because because they want the violence they want the definition to be very narrow because they want it only to be, let's go out and arrest the people, throw them in jail to make other people very comfortable. Fear-mongering is how it works. That is a complicated, nuanced answer. We know that healthy, thriving communities have less violence. When you turn on the news and you turn on, open your newspaper and you show the carjacking, you show the shoe, it is fear. And what's most interesting is that when you

talk to people in communities that have been impacted by violence, who will be the first to tell you that the systems don't work for them, that they want a more holistic approach. And it is the people who live furthest away who want the more punitive approach because they feel like it is encroaching on them. And so the narrative, they know what the deprivation, they know, and not as they can articulate it as beautifully as Xavier does in these communities. I'm from Cabrini. I knew my grandmother told me in 1981, they're coming for this land. They're coming for this land. The violence that we saw in the 70s and 80s in Cabrini, where it was a national model for violence and dysfunction. If you go

over, and I welcome you to, to go over to where I used to live on Larabee and Division, and you see the number of resources that have been poured into there, and you look at the crime rates there. It's not the people. It is the conditions in which you have allowed people to either survive or thrive. And that's where we see violence. That's where we see it. And our notions of the response to that, because if it is provision, if it is investing in the economic vitality of our neighborhoods in our mental health and our trauma in our physical health they were applauding a few years ago that they got a whole foods in

englewood one of our neighborhoods in chicago they were like ticker tape parades because we can get fruit meanwhile where i grew up there's a mariano's a jewel and uh right a piece. But we have to understand that where we see violence, the traditional violence that people talk about, we see that deprivation. But the response will be flood the neighborhoods. The response of strength is send in the National Guard. And they will convince folks that that response to the fear that they are seeding

is a more easy, direct response to the fear that they are seeding is a more easy direct response to investing in our communities. And we have to fight against that. I want to bring in Reverend Dr. William J. Barber with the Poor People's Campaign. Y'all go ahead and clap. I hear y'all. I'm clapping too. I heard y'all back there a minute when he was talking

as well. I heard y'all. Reverend Barber, how you doing? I'm doing well, man, and I so apologize for you trying to move me into too many places at one time, but always glad to be on with you, brother. You're the real deal, man. Can you speak to that point that State's Attorney Kim Foxx was just making about, because you were the Poor People's Campaign,

and that's one of the things that y'all have also been talking about, getting people to understand about the attacks on the poor, where also the police response to violence in communities about that, but not the hunger, not the lack of jobs, not the lack of investment. ago you know there was a sociological uh study that was done and interestingly enough it was done uh on on rats and they they took some rats and they put them in uh apartment-like complexes that would be like public housing with thin raws and no resources and let them get hungry and all that and literally they went crazy uh i'm gonna pull that up for you one day when our late night talks. But, you know, Coretta Scott King. Hold on, Doc, Doc, Doc, you don't have to use rats. Dr. King actually wrote about that when he moved to the west side of Chicago.

And he said literally within one day he saw how his children, how they responded to one another in that enclosed environment, which was totally different than how they lived in Atlanta. He wrote about that in Chaos on Community. Where do we go from here? That's right. And part of what, after he died, one of the best things,

one of the things that Coretta Scott King said, you know, she was asked about violence, both the violence in the street, which you know Dr. King said becomes the force of the unheard and the unlisted to, and the assassination of her husband. She said, wait a minute. She said, if you want to talk about violence, poverty is violence. Denying people a basic job, living wage is violence. Denying health care is violence. Denying culture is violence. Denying public education is violence. And it's always amazing to me how you get people that want to start talking about violence, but as your previous guest said, they don't want to talk about the violence of the culture that produces the violence.

You know, we talk about so many people died, for instance, from gun killings last year. And they always have this violent operation. What about the quarter million people that died from poverty? And 750 people a day. And so until we address the violence of this violent society, then we have it. And it's amazing how we know what works, as your assistant said. You invest in certain communities, you don't hear about any of this violence.

But when certain communities come, it's just like the difference between when I was in school and certain kids would get expelled and other kids would get counseling. If certain communities get caught with drugs, they get treatment. If others get caught, you have a war on drugs and throw people in jail. And one of the things, and I'm just using how I feel, what pisses me off right now about this whole marijuana thing. You know, I got a lot of brothers and friends from my era that went to jail for selling what people now making all kind of money off of. You know, and so there's the hypocrisy within the nation.

And we don't deal with the fundamental violence of deprivation that then produces community of violence. And I'm one that believes, you know, I've buried too many. I'm a pastor. And, Roland, you know, you've talked about it. I have buried too many young people who shouldn't be dead. And in those situations, I want people to pay the price for killing people. I mean, I'm not one of these folk that doesn't believe there aren't times

when people need to pay the price. But if you're going to have a conversation with me about violence, you better be ready to have a conversation about the violent public policy that creates so much of the violence in our communities or the atmosphere for it to at least germinate. Reverend Barber, can you tell us, you got arrested this week in D.C. with Reverend Jackson. Can you explain what that means just at this time for that act to go through? Yeah.

Let me say something online, and Reverend wants me to say this too. We actually got arrested with people from West Virginia and Kentucky. And Roland has been one of the only persons that have really got that narrative and put it forth. You know, in a lot of the media, they saw us. But actually, it was a white coal miner named Pam Garrison, daughter of a coal miner, and an 80-year-old black woman that led us that day. I want more of the media to pick this up. There were hundreds.

We had hundreds of people there. We had two buses rolling that we had paid for, had logistics drivers, and mysteriously that morning they got canceled by the company out of West Virginia. So we had four busloads of folks that came from West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and other places. And they led us, people from, and they were saying, black and white, that they were tired of Manchin lying on them and saying that he was doing what West Virginians wanted. When actually 79% of West Virginians want the For the People Act and the Voting Rights Act restored as they are, not compromised. And they also want living wages, $15. So we marched on Manchin's office the week before with hundreds of people, and he didn't show up. By the way, his office is in the Lotto building in West Virginia.

You should know that his office is in the lotto building in West Virginia. You should know that his office is in the lottery building across from the hospital. And they wouldn't let us come in his parking lot. They wouldn't give us a permit. They wouldn't let us have sound. So we marched from a former Civil War battlefield over a mile. And the line was almost a half mile long. And we went to his doorsteps, and the people from West Virginia, we call it from the hood to the hollers, they tacked on his door their demands,

and they asked me, they said, come to West Virginia, because we got a story to tell, and then they said, we want to go to D.C. We said, well, let's pack up the buses and go, and they actually led us. They were the people who got arrested. We could have done a lot more. In fact, we are planning some additional things. I'm going to announce those things next week on your showroom. I don't want to tell anybody until I tell you first. But here's what people are saying. The compromise is ridiculous. First of all, the Manchin compromise would take out the ability, would weaken the ability of the attorney general to bring actions against the state.

Now, today we just saw the attorney general taking action, right, against Georgia. But Manchin's compromise would weaken that. Second of all, that compromise would codify into the law voter ID while we're in court fighting against voter ID and while we have won against voter ID and while truly there is no fraud that needs a voter ID solution. And the real solution is simple, signature attestation. You sign your name, and if you lie, you get a five-year felony. That's what has worked in North Carolina forever and other places. And then the third thing about his compromise, it doesn't deal with the dark money. That's removed, right, so that the dark money can still flow.

And the fourth thing is, his compromise takes out the felony disenfranchisement piece that would have a tremendous impact on poor communities, black communities, and people of color. So the compromise is a capitulation. It's not a compromise.

And I don't think any of us, I don't care if you're in the civil in it, then you aren't really getting anything. What we really should be doing is having top civil rights lawyers analyzing and tearing apart that compromise and showing it for what it is. So that's why they were there. And we were also there because those folks said, we want to connect the denial of the voting, passing the For the People Act, and also the denial of living wages by the same people. You know, Manchin was against 15. He's against the compromise, and so is McConnell. McConnell is just mean, but Manchin is being manipulative.

Now, why did we go to jail? We wrote, those people wrote and said to Manchin is being manipulative. Now, why did we go to jail? We wrote, those people wrote and said to Manchin and McConnell, we are your constituents. We want to meet with you. We didn't hear anything back from them. They said they wanted to meet with themselves and their own religious leaders and voting rights experts. So they said, well, if they won't meet with us, they wouldn't let us in the building. And so we said we would take the street. But we took the street, and more of us got arrested, by the way, than on the insurrection. That's a whole other story. But for Reverend Jackson, myself, and the other clergy that stood with them,

what we are saying is it's time for us to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience and direct action. Just having a rally is not going to be enough for what we're dealing with now. We've got to get in the streets. We've got to go to these Senate officers. We've got to sit in them, all of them, Democrat, Republican, and say, which side are you on? And if they say we're against, you know, the Florida people act as John Lewis wrote it, we're against voting rights, then stay there and sit there and make them arrest you. They say they're for you, then you can get up and go out and say they're for it.

But this is a moment, and it needs to be interracial. It needs to be multistate. And we're going to be announcing some of that next week. Because here's the last thing. How did we get those things, voting rights? We didn't get them by just sending a letter. We didn't even get them by just having a rally. We got them by agitation, industry, litigation, and legislation, and then voter participation. And those four things brought us here. Those four things are going to be necessary to save this democracy in this moment and to expand these rights for the future.

Well, Reverend William Barber, it's always a pleasure having you on the show. I look forward to having you back next week to break down the next course of action. We'll be right there live streaming it with you. And so we certainly appreciate it. Thank you, my brother. God bless to your panel. Take care. All right.

There goes an alpha man. That's what I'm saying. All right. When we come back, our Education Matters segment, we'll chat with my man Wayne Watson. Now I'm retiring, but long time educator. We're going to talk about, again, talk about education and its impact also dealing

with this issue of violence and redefining our communities. Plus, we'll be talking with the only black-owned radio station here in Chicago about the future of black media. That's Melody Spann Cooper, my old boss. She crazy, but I ain't gonna tell you none of those stories.

All of that next, Rollerbutton Unfiltered, broadcasted live from the Sage Room here in Chicago, back in a moment. George Floyd's death hopefully put another nail in the coffin of racism. You talk about awakening America, it led to a historic summer of protest. I hope our younger generation don't ever forget that nonviolence is soul force right hello i'm nina turner my grandmother used to say all you need in life are three bones the wishbone to keep you dreaming the jawbone to help you speak truth to

power, and the backbone to keep you standing through it all. I'm running for Congress because you deserve a leader who will stand up fearlessly on your behalf. Together, we will deliver Medicare for all. Good jobs that pay a living wage and bold justice reform. I'm Nina turner and i approve this message how's this s has been for you it's been good man it's been good you know i've been in this for 39 years. Gospel, sing gospel. Platinum, Grammy. And it took Snoop Dogg to bring me on stage, on the big stage. I finally made it. My man Snoop.

Love you, man. So how did that whole thing come about? It started with the Bible of Love. And it actually started years before that. Maybe, man, it was a BET Awards show. We bumped into each other about it started with the bible of love and it actually started years before that maybe man it was a bet awards show we bumped into each other about it had to be 12 13 years ago i might have still been with commission and he said man i'm doing a gospel album and probably write it to up and smoke tour because i'm doing a gospel album man under the shadow of the almighty God. And I was like, okay, cool. But he was sincere about it because he looked me in the eye and told me,

and we didn't even know each other. Now, almost 15-something years later, he was really starting to do it. And then all of a sudden he said, now, I want you to be a part of it. Would you hear this? You know, would you hear this song? And I had Jesus in me so many times, man, and I talked to him. I mean, his heart was so censored about it. He said, man, I'm still working on me, man.

You know, he wasn't trying to front. He said, I'm still working on me, man. I've been blessed with so many second chances, man. I heard it. I said, man. And so when we did the record, he said, man, would you do this with me? I said, man, I want to have you on Essence. I'm like, yeah, man, I'm in, whatever you need.

John P. King, then Kirk Franklin. I mean, that was, and again, if you're in the artist, you're going, hold up, I'm watching all of them with Snoop Dogg? That's right, that's right. And you know what the beautiful thing is? I'm glad we're watching, you're watching me with him. Because I got a chance to sing to his audience,

to an audience that wouldn't normally come to see me. No weapon formed against me shall prosper. It won't work. And we're blessed in the city. And I got a chance to minister. He pulled me on his set. He took the last 30 minutes of his set and gave it to us. I said, man, nobody does that unless they touch my God.

And then, of course, you got those haters, those critics, and you addressed them. Absolutely. You know, man, because I got a firestorm on Facebook, man. I mean, they ripped me from top to bottom. See, I'm 57 now. I don't give a flip, and I would say flip. Yes, yes, yeah, we got it on tape.

But my thing is this, man, I have been living fearful of doing things for god in the past i've walked away no no because what the saints man listen the bible says everything that have breath praise the lord sincerely it don't mean people that are wrong but that man is sincere and that's my dude you know we don't hang like me and sneak don't just sing out at the dog my eye i'm coming over we never with you. We've never hung before. But when it comes to this, man, I'm like, dude, I'm with you. And whatever criticism you have to take, I'll take it. I'll gladly take this.

And I have no care about it. Now, the Clarkson's, they were like, Fred, dude, they just talk about us in the city. I said, man, you understand. And I tell every artist out there, every urban artist out there, if you're a rapper, I don't care if you're Kendrick Lamar, I don't care who you are, I don't care where you are in your life, how low you feel you may go. If God touches you to sing a gospel song or to give him praise, do it, but do not need the church to back you on. You do it because you know God said it. And don't look for nothing because all you're going to get is criticism. I'm with you.

I'll rock with you. But don't God said it. And don't look for nothing because all you're going to get is criticism. I'm with you. I'll rock with you. But don't worry about it. Do what God told you to do because trust that he's talking to you. And leave them knuckleheads alone. How you doing? Fred Hammond. Always.

This is my man. I love this dude to death, man. I love it, man. I appreciate it, baby. I appreciate it. Everybody, this is your man, Fred Hammond, and you're watching Roland Martin, my man, Unfiltered. All right, folks, the Virtual Essence Festival.

The Virtual Essence Festival begins tonight. Go to EssenceStudios.com, Essence.com. Tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday, we'll have a recap from this weekend on Monday. And then, of course, next weekend, July 2nd through the 4th, and we'll have a recap on July 5th. So, again, the Essence Live Loud virtual experience taking place at EssenceStudios.com and Essence.com.

And so we certainly appreciate the folks at Coca-Cola partnering with us to get the word out about that. All right, folks, when we talk about the issues of poverty and violence and all that sort of stuff, you can't ignore the reality of education. My next guest was a long-time Chancellor of the City College of Chicago, also President of Chicago State University, educator for a whole lot of years.

He might know a little something-something about this whole issue. Glad to see Dr. Wayne Watson. What's up, man? How you doing? Doing quite well. But I don't know why you, that little youth group pin you got right there. Okay now. So, what's that little group, what's that?

Omega Psi Phi. Oh yeah, that's a little small. All right. That's a little small. Compared to Alpha Phi Alpha, that's a little small organization, so you know. But that's a cute lapel pin. It ain't like this. It ain't like. So we that's a cute lapel pin. It ain't like this.

It ain't like this. So we're getting ready to get started. What? It ain't like this ring, this alpha ring. But I know who's your daddy. Who's your daddy? Look at this. I love it. I love it.

Love it. So we were talking earlier about, again, when we had this conversation about violence, and we're already seeing it. You're seeing Republicans trying to attack Democratic mayors, saying, oh, they're allowing violence to be out of their control. And when Trump made that point at the White House, when he said, well, he said, Ron, can't we talk about education? And Trump was like, well, that doesn't matter.

But you can't talk about violence in neighborhoods if you do not deal with the reality of education. There is no question about that. You know, when a baby is born, a baby is not born a racist. A white baby is not born a racist. When a black baby is born, it is not born to be subservient. It is something called education that takes that baby and turns it into a racist and a privileged person.

It is something called education that takes that black child and turns it into someone that is subservient. One of my frat brothers, Carter G. Woodson, said, if you control a man's mind, you don't have to tell him to go to the back door. His very nature will make a back door if you control his mind. And he will go to the back door every time. White people, they have an educational system that tells them, you're going to go to the front door. And racism is key to this whole thing of education.

That's why when one of you said, well, we don't have Civics 101, that is just a small building block in education. That was intentionally taken out. Black people have started voting. Black people have started putting people in called Harold Washington, have started putting people in called Ralph Metcalf. And I said, wait a minute. We can't, let's pull this thing called Civics 101 back so that people don't grow up thinking that they need to vote,

that they understand how the police department is connected to the legal system, the judges, the lawyers, how that system in itself is built. It is built. And its foundation is racism. The racism you find there, the racism you find in the educational system, the racism when the pandemic hit. My first response was a lot of black people going to die. People said, why? I said, because when you talk about racism, one of one thing that you do is deprive people of health but code would also expose uh the big problem with our education system because all of a sudden kids had to go to school online uh they realized who didn't have laptops who didn't have

internet and they did have internet they had slow internet compared to high speed internet and so it was a whole bunch of our children who fell further behind because of the last year of COVID. That's right. And racism is the criminal justice system, the educational system, we have no choice but to attack and destroy and eliminate racism. So when this violence conversation comes up, how must folks ensure that it's not solely a police response, it is an education and economic response? It starts, you know, and my children and my wife will tell you, when a young black child gets shot, I feel bad. And in the first place, well, why? Because I feel as though I, as an educator,

I am indirectly or directly responsible for that child being shot. Because if the policeman had been properly educated, he would not have shot that child. If the young brother who was doing a drive-by had been educated, he or she would not have shot that child, all right? There's one common denominator that you're going to find with a lot of these statistics as to these shooters, you know, within our own race where we kill each other. Ninety nine percent of them do not have a job.

And 90 percent of the people who are sitting in prison are illiterate. And that is not by accident. That is not by accident. So they intentionally make sure that we are not educated. They intentionally make sure that we're getting ready to put through a trillion-dollar bill out of Washington, right? Infrastructure, right. To redo the roads, to do, guess what? I want to see the legislation put through that is going to require that the road workers union is required to have black people working on it. We have a billion dollars getting ready to spend in Illinois to rebuild the roads. What's the most one of the most racist unions in the state of Illinois?

The road workers. So you want to solve some problems, give some people some jobs. A young brother does not have time to stand on the corner and shoot somebody if he's been working and carrying bricks for eight to ten hours a day. You know, we are taught self-hate. This whole thing about critical race theory. I know what it means, how they define it today, but really it's nothing but miseducation

that has allowed us to take our eye off the prize. Well, the whole debate on that, that's all Fox News driven. And none of them, they don't even understand even the critical or race, none of that sort of stuff. You had a question? Yeah. Can't call you professor. You overspent knowledge. I'm curious about how you draw a line between where an effect is systemic.

Because you called out this point uh no child is born racist um and i'm curious to know from you within that you know because i study racism as well and um no child may be born racist uh but the system in which they are born immediately does privilege them and so they are born into racism as either a a provoker of it and an enabled person within it or a person who can be victim to it on the other side. And so I'm curious about your distinction as it relates to white folks and whether you think that racism is just where they are or racism is something that is taught to them. It is taught in both a formal and an informal way.

The informal way is with the family you know that the mother the father the grandfather you know that that small community that's the informal yeah in a formal way when that child goes to grammar school it then becomes formal and one supports the other and that is why i I say it has become the DNA of America. Because you cannot separate... Can you separate what from water? No. Then you cannot separate racism from America right now.

It's part of our DNA. And now, I can give you a physicist who can tell you, racism from America right now. It's part of our DNA. And now, I can give you a physicist who can tell you, yes, I can separate what from what. Well, guess what? That is what we need. We need to look at racism, and it doesn't take a lot of studies.

I can give this brother five hours, and he can pretty much solve most of the problems we have in racism. We know the answer to it. We know the answer. We don't need to set up another study. God, please don't set up another study. We can have a study on reparations. No, we don't need that. We know what's needed.

So we cannot, it can't, water can water can be you know what can be separated from water dna can be separated the racism in this country can be stopped we just have to have the will to do it and we come back to what's going to promote the will. They have to realize that the protests, that they're the back. Who was it that said Frederick Douglass? Power conceives nothing without what? Demand. Never have, never will. Without demand.

That will make them stop and say, let's separate the wet from water. Let's separate racism. So you talked a little bit about how it hurts you when you see violence, right? So I hear so many folks wanting to solve the problem immediately. And then we know that that's not going to happen. Because you just said we all know what the issue is, right? So what do we do as a people to do the short-term and the long-term solutions at the same time? It kind of goes back to what we were talking earlier about criminal justice.

It's how do we solve for the immediate violence and rethink a whole structure that's not working for us? So as an educator, how do you work with that, thinking about in the meantime, what you can do and in the long term? I'm being honest, you just happen to be sitting here. We have to put the Kim Foxes in. That's right. To stick the finger in the boat to keep it from sinking right now. All right? But we also have to put the Chris Walters in.

All right? We like him to. So that they can stick the finger in the boat to keep it from sinking right now. But we also must put the support mechanisms. We must put the stability mechanisms so that she doesn't think that every little decision she makes, she's going to get fired tomorrow. The same thing with Chris. All right. One of the best things that happened to me, I was the vice chancellor in the city colleges of Chicago and a guy named Harold Washington said, you know, we're going gonna give you tenure and everybody said what we give him tenure for Harold said because he is going to be making some decisions that I don't

want him looking over his shoulder trying to figure out where his mortgage is gonna come from I want him to realize that he had the foundation that one thing that Harold Washington did and he delivered it through someone named jackie grimshaw that he did gave me the foundation to make decisions as a chancellor not based on fear not based on my mortgage but based, I knew I had a support system to make the right system, decision of integrity. So I could think long-term as well as stick my finger in there to keep the boat from sinking. And that's what this system needs. That's what Chris needs. We have to give them support. I knew that if anyone came at me as the chancellor, I had an entire black community

that was going to come to my rescue. Chris must know that. She must know that. All right? And they must have the dollars and the support and the ability to, within a short period of time, to bring some people to, as Broden said, protest. Demand. Demand. When they look behind Kim, they need to be able to see 500,000 people. They don't see Kim. When they look behind Chris, they need to see 500,000 people. That's what they fear. They don't fear Chris. They don't they fear. They don't fear Chris.

They don't fear Kim. They didn't fear me. They fear the community I have behind me. They fear a Melody Spann. They knew that if they messed with the chancellor at that time, that WVON was going to light up. Okay? It was going to light up. Okay? It was going to light up.

And as a result, they then, what have they done? They learned from that. They said, we're going to control the media. Black media. Black media. What did the city colleges of Chicago lose in the last six years? TV station. TV station.

How did city colleges, a TV station. TV station. How did City College, a TV station that had won three Emmys. But a TV station with a strong enough signal that could be seen all over. It went to Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana. But yet Rahm Emanuel and the then-chancellor, Sheryl, I forgot her last name,

Sheryl Hyman, they sold it. They sold it. They sold it. And to this day, you cannot find out who they sold it to, Roland. Are you serious? Find out. Oh, you trying to make me do some work now? No, no.

Oh, oh, oh, I'm going to find out. Because guess what? Because I wanted that TV station to go to a Melody Spann. I wanted that TV station to go to you. I wanted that TV station to go to a Don Jackson. Because if that TV station had not been sold and kept within the City College of Chicago, we could have controlled the message. Or if it was going to be sold and was sold to black people,

we could have controlled the message. I'm going to make you angry. It was sold for $14.5 million. In Chicago? In Chicago. That's a steal. In Chicago. A station with that signal, that's a $200 million purchase.

No question about it. No question about it. But yet there was no investigation of it. Oh yeah, we're going to find that one out. See, unfiltered. We're going to find that one out. You know about money, we're going to know who the hell bought that station to let you know. See, now you gave us a perfect segue because we've got to bring in Melody next. But again, that's a part of the deal because the thing that we constantly talk about is how all of these things are intertwined. And our responsibility is to connect the dots to get folks to understand that, which is what we try to do on the show all the time.

Man, good seeing you. Love you, brother. Tell your children I said what's up. Hold on one second. We've got a quick break. When we come back, where's our money segment? The future of black media. We'll be talking with Melody Spancouper, WBON Radio, next on Rollerball Unfiltered, a broadcast from the Sage Room in Chicago.

Back in a moment. Before Till's murder, we saw struggle for civil rights as something grown-ups did. I feel that the generations before us have offered a lot of instruction. Organizing is really one of the only things that gives me the sanity and makes me feel purposeful. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie.

I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie.

I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. you get black history by default. And so no other craft could carry as many words

as rap music. I try to intertwine that and make that create whatever I'm supposed to send out to the universe. A rapper, you know, for the longest period of time has gone through phases. I love the word. I hate what it's become, you know, and to this generation, the way they visualize it.

Its narrative kind of like has gotten away and spun away from, I'm practicing the wobble. You've been frozen out. Facing an extinction level event. We don't fight this fight right now. You're not going to have black on you. I tell you. All right, folks, welcome back.

Roland Markdown, the future broadcasting live from the Sage Room here in Chicago. See, I told y'all my next guest ain't got no sense whatsoever. And so when Wayne walked off, Melanie's coming, sitting down, Melanie's like, can I get a drink? We got a bar here. And I'm like, there's no prohibition on getting a drink. So,

y'all can, I mean, look, I don't drink, but y'all can, the bar is open. They take money. So, it's all good. So, yeah, that's how crazy she is. WVON Radio, y'all, VON stands for the Voice of the Negro, has been here for a very long time. Her daddy, Purvis Spann, was close friends with nearly everybody who was in music. She now runs the station.

But we're going to talk about it not being a station, how black media now has to think of themselves as media companies, not black newspapers or black radio. Mellie, what's happening? What's happening? I see you still wearing tennis shoes. Yeah, I am. Uh-huh.

They ain't changed. Absolutely. I still got bad feet. And listen, and then you can tell when Chicago's ready to go back to work, right? Right. I come in here, we ain't seen each other for over a year. They back in the Chicago fashion. Look, dresses, suits, come on, man.

Let's just stay relaxed. In certain parts of COVID that I want to... So you were real happy. You were like, oh, because that was your thing. I had to put the wig back on. You know, I still want to do the virtual meetings. There's some stuff I want to keep. Y'all are saying so. I texted Belly. I said, hey, I want you to do the virtual meetings. There's some stuff I want to keep. Y'all are saying, so I texted Belly.

I said, hey, I want you to come over and talk about black meetings. She said, hold up. First of all, one, is there going to be an audience there? She said, are there going to be people there? She's like, okay, this is going to be live, too, with lights and everything. So I knew. So she's like, I mean, she's got to get her hair done. I'll put my hair on.

First of all, so much has changed. I spent six years here, 2004, 2010. So I've been gone now 11 years. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. What has changed in terms of black-owned media in this city? Because, look, Chicago Defender,

not even arguably the most historic black newspaper in the country. Ebony Jet. We can talk about that. But Defender, I can't even go there. Ebony Jet, look, they're trying to revive it, but it was in bankruptcy. It was all kind of stuff. So much has changed.

And I don't, and I've been saying this, people think I'm crazy. I keep telling them, I don't think we really understand the value of strong black-owned media institutions. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that. And when you get in a city as robust as Chicago, right, and you're sitting next to the person now who's probably has the biggest operation, it's scary. It's scary because I can look and see what happened to the other ones and say, am I next? Right? Yep. And so what we have to do, some of this is done to us, and then some of this is self-inflicted, right? And we have to own that. Because as the world turns, we can't stay stagnant. We have to create

and recreate. We have to reimagine these brands, right? My father was a genius, I think, because my father understood he wasn't going in the radio business just to say he owned a radio station. He went in the radio business because he knew that it controlled people. He knew that it moved people, that once you could get a hold of these properties, that it was about the movement of people, right? And I think that we lose that. We get addicted to, you know, the story or that's not what we're here to do. And so one of the reasons why VON, which is our flagship station, has been around so long,

it never left its mission. It's been the voice of black Chicago, right? And as long as there are black folks in Chicago and they ain't going nowhere, I don't care how they try to push the numbers, the fudge, then we repopulate up in this place. Okay. Um, um, there's going to be a station that, that tells our story. It's just the essential storyteller. Right. Um, and I think sometimes we lose sight of that. We lose sight of that. How do we reimagine these businesses? The other thing I think that has

kept us around rolling is that we're not just broadcasters, we're entrepreneurs. And we're in a city by the sheer fact of how it's built, its segregation, starts movements that people can't capture. It's the thing that makes us powerful and then also kind of messes us up, you know? But you can't find a city like Chicago where black folks start at 22nd and go all the way to 280th. It just don't happen in other places. People look for black towns and Negro towns and soul town. Well, hell, this is it, right? With such a wide swath of people, And that's just on the South Side.

So when we understand our power, that's when we speak. Truth to power. We understand our power. Kim Foxx is sitting here as a re-elected state's attorney. They threw everything at her. Everything? Everything. $15 million?

Couldn't understand that movement. Can't understand that movement. So when we, as a people, not just in, but around the world, really understand our power. Wow. That's why I love what you do. Cause you crazy. You just say anything, do anything, want to fight all the time, want to investigate, but you're an agitator. And that's what we have to do on behalf of our people. We have to agitate. And that's why we're still here. I think that, I think part of the thing that's a struggle for a lot of people today, is they really don't have an historical understanding

of what black media did to bring us to present day. And when I've said this publicly, when I've said that my fear is what we will look like 30, 40 years from now, I said we will rule the day if we do not have strong black-owned media. I said when you're going to have to go ask somebody else, can you please tell our story? I said, no, I said, trust me, you do not want that. People don't want to own up to it, but there is a difference in not having a significant Ebony and Jet. Absolutely it is. There is a difference.

I'll give you another good example. When was the Emancipation Proclamation signed? Long, long, long time ago. When did they find out they were free? Well, other folks found out, Texas found out two and a half years later, but yeah, it took a while. Okay. Took a while. Couldn't press the button. There was no media. Now think about it. You think about our ability to turn on a VON or, or get on social media, digital media and say, Hey, hey, guess what's going on? That's a powerful way to move people. And we take it for granted. We really take it for granted. I tell my team all the time.

That's why it was so powerful when you were in Chicago in that morning drive, right? You get up every morning instantaneously. Hey, y'all, look, this is what we're going to do, right? This is what we're going to do. You don't't have that you don't have that ability to do that in markets where people have to be a little more concerned about what they say right a little more control right so uh we do we have to and it's a great time um for black owned media it can be if we keep the pressure on these advertisers, right? So George Floyd got them all ready, right? And they so want to make this a moment, but we're going to make this a movement, right? Let's make this, let's keep this going. I mean, we've been, when you

talk about, again, the content, because see, what I've also been saying is it's not just that you have black-owned media. What are they talking about? There's a reason I don't waste time. I know some of these people who appear on Real Housewives show. They will never be on my show. Why? Never. I like the Housewives. No, no, no, no, no, no.

That's fine. I'm good. If y'all want to watch them shows, cool. They ain't allowed in my house. But the reason being is because we have been inundated with entertainment and not information. And so there's so many black sources out there that focus on entertainment. And then folks are walking around clueless. And my whole deal is if you want that, cool.

So there's a reason I don't talk about when somebody black got married or when they got divorced or that they having a baby. If y'all want to discuss Nick Cannon having four babies this year, y'all got to go somewhere else. Did he? Yeah, he did. Well, he had four delivered. He didn't have them.

But, yeah, you know what I mean. He knows about it, though. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. First of all, I read everything. And I also talk to nick but the thing but the thing is when that's all we're fed yeah to me that is the equivalent of a full desert so so and we've been that way i mean when you talk to people who were around when dr king was around the majority of black people didn't follow Dr. King as much as they want to say that they did, right? They didn't. He didn't have the majority of folk with him. And so truth tellers

oftentimes, you know, find themselves in a very lonely predicament, right? And it's a calling. It's a calling on you to do this. You could, you know, Roland, your brand is so huge. If somebody could control you or you would allow somebody to control you, you'd be on CNN still or some of the others, but they can't silence the truth in you, right? I actually had what I was, this is a true story. David Borman was the Washington bureau chief. You know, I don't care about calling names.

And when I had a launched line of Ascot ties and bow ties, he turned to me, he said, now you know if you were full time at CNN, you couldn't be doing all the things that you're doing. I said, I know. And that's why I will never be full time at CNN. Because the thing for me, I've always understood controlling and owning the content.

And so, and I've told this story before when they, Winnie Mandela came to Birmingham, Alabama and they couldn't find anybody in Birmingham, Winnie Mandela. So they called me and I was like, yeah, I'll go. So I flew down, we had about 20 minutes with her. She was absolutely fabulous. That woman was a major flirt. Oh my God. She was hilarious. No, she was flirting the whole time. I said, she grabbed me one more time. I said, when are you going to get cut? So here's what happened. So the interview came. No, it was hilarious. If I show you the photo, you're like, yeah. I say, uh-huh. But she was absolutely hilarious. So we come back and they go, oh, we got a problem. I said,

okay. They said, well, why don't you ask her this this this? I said why the hell y'all interview I Asked her what I want to ask you. I said so y'all wanted her to answer something else Y'all I asked you to winter and I bet it was a better interview Well, but I didn't give a damn what y'all wanted and so then they said we're not gonna run interview I like I so I wanted the president network John Klein was like yo you folks in Atlanta not gonna run an interview Give me the damn interview. I'm going to run my TV one show this weekend.

And we did. When Winnie dies in 2018, we restreamed the interview. The only reason you can see me interviewing Winnie Mandela is because I had a black-owned outlet that I controlled as the host and managing editor to air it on. If not, that interview would be sitting on a tape, on a shelf in Atlanta, never seen. That's why we can't, you cannot, and I say it for, I ain't got no problem with Robin Roberts, Don Lemon,

and Joy and Reed, but here's the reality. They do not control their shows. They have to ask permission. And not only that, Roland, there's so much content out here that is held by these major conglomerates that they're not even using that becomes so relevant to what we're doing, right? That we can put out, get much more press, more eyeballs watching them or ears listening to them, they don't even get it. They do not get it.

So, Melody. Yes, Alex. You have been able to really survive, and you are the big name. How do you feel about new media in this new day and age, especially for millennials, and how do you look at publications like Tribe? Does it give you pride? Love them. I love them.

I mean, we get topics from them. I mean, they become, you know, a pipeline to us, right? And as I said, Alex, the world has to change. We can't sit in just these traditional spaces and expect to reach the masses of people, right? Young people, millennials coming up, wherever you need to reach them, reach them. Reach them, right? You don't have to do something that is not authentic in reaching them,

but figure out a way. The best thing I think that we can do is what our friend Melody Hobson talked about. I'll never forget, Time Magazine started doing these 100 conversations, and she started talking about reverse internships. You teach me. You look at me often, Alex does, and she'll call and, you know, ask advice and stuff.

But I'm getting advice from Alex now, right? And we have to be intelligent enough to say, hey, there's some things that I've been doing for a long time it may not be good anymore I want young people around me because I get to stay young right and that is where so many of us lose it we think that we know everything we think there's only one way to do no that's not true and if you're not going to stay relevant you're not gonna stay in this business. I ain't been taught a damn thing about millennials. No, I'm just messing. Ain't nothing wrong with the millennials.

No, ain't nothing wrong with the millennials, but also I tell them you can't YouTube everything because when you're out in the field and the internet don't work, you've got to figure that sucker out. YouTube's old now, Roland. Huh? YouTube's a little old now, Roland. No, no, no.

I'm talking about, trust me, we have these battles all the time. Because what will happen is folks will be like, oh, I can look it up. And I'm going, no, no, no, trust me. There's going to be a moment where you can't look something up, but you've got to figure that thing out. I said, ain't no manual for everything. You printed out the map quests. Huh?

You printed out the map quests. Guess what? What happens when the internet go down? Now you're like, damn, I don't know. I can't turn left. I can't. You don't know no monuments. You don't know what.

It's just like my husband, Pierre, we went to Popeye's and the computer went down. The baby couldn't even give us a change. She's like, uh, Pierre was like, give me back $4.60. What are you doing? Right? Right. So we have a lot of these back and forth because I'm always, what I always say to the next generation is you might know how to use the tool,

but do you know how to weaponize the tool? So just because you know how to shoot the camera, just because you know how to use that camera, can you get into the room when nobody else can get in? See, and that's an art that you have to learn how to talk your way in the rooms. And so I've sort of taken folks through and I'm like, don't think if I can call Will Smith and call Jada, because I said that don't happen because you know how to use your iPhone. You've got to learn how to create a connection and relationship and teaching folks that. You had a question for Melanie? No. I was just thinking about the fact that

as a people we're so creative and quick and I think about things like black Twitter. I think about just how we're the first to do it and then other folks replicate it. And I just think black media can be some of the first to do that too on a new wave and really break into it. But I think what we got to do though is we got to stop being

defined by white validation. Especially when we're the ones setting the trends. Right. See, that's just it. See, let me real clear. Let me real clear. I saw that VON. There were things that other black targeted stations would do

that folks would jump and embrace. And then would be like, well, you know you know this happened it really wasn't this it really wasn't that I'm like oh and trying to walk people through that and and that's a real deal when Wayne talked about self-hate there is self-hate even with our own media and we have to deal with that a whole lot with some folks looking good Kim like oh look what a nervous self-hate she's like let me just go ahead hit my drink let me go ahead actually what I will say what I've

appreciated about vo in is that in in a city like Chicago, you know, my tenure has been rocky in the mainstream media. And there had been an attempt to define what the people wanted around criminal justice. And if you read certain publications, it would be a totally different narrative. You don't win an election. To Alex's point, my last election, my opponent spent $15 million. Of his dad's money. $15 million of his billionaire father's money. And if the local outlets were endorsing that and VON, I knew what they cared about.

And they were unapologetic about come and talk about the issues that matter to us. And what I will say, and I guess that's my question, is how do you in a city like Chicago where journalism has been like under attack and dwindling, the Tribune is now a shell of itself just in the last couple. Yeah. And how the maintaining relevancy and authenticity, how have you been able to strike that balance? Because it is the authenticity of VON that I think keeps your audience.

Your audience doesn't waver because they know what they're getting. How do you do that in a changing landscape? Well, you build trust. See, our audience knows that we're not going to sell them out. If you got a campaign, Kim, it's okay. You ain't got to come to VON. We got you, right? And anybody that comes up in there that wants to say, as a matter of fact, we invite guests on just to get them on your behalf. You know, you don't even have to know that. But you come from a city where there was this activist media.

We were activists. Lou Palmer. I mean, you know, we have a legacy of that. Vernon Jarrett. Right, Vernon Jarrett. So many of them, right, Roland? Yes, right? LaRone Bennett.

Yes, come on now. Come on now. Ethel Payne. Thank you. Right? Ida B. Wells. Right? So we never leave that.

Claude Burnett. We cannot be bald and and here's the thing um we are not in it for the same reason some of these stations that the majority of us listen to are in it for right we didn't start like that and my dad always said you're not gonna finish like that right you remember it's to move like that, right? You remember, it's to move the people. It ain't to move all people, but to move the people. 97% of VON listeners vote. They don't care. They going to the polls. They on other stations begging them to go to the polls. These people like now, they're calling on election day. Now, what was that judge name? You follow me? So that's a powerful thing.

And here's the problem. We talk about respect of that. And I tell these advertisers that all the time. During election time, you can't buy a spot on VON, right? The same station that they say don't have any numbers, don't have any listeners, on election time, they know they got to come there. There you go. But the clients can't.

Right. You can't figure out outside of election time that we able to sell some hair care products. And you understand what I'm saying? So what I love about what we do and what allows me to get up energized every day is we're doing it for our people. See, I'm not confused about our people.

That's right. I love our people. I'm not confused about our people. That's right. I love our people. I'm not confused that you're down there representing us, right? You're not going to always get it right, but you're the baddest thing I know. You look like me, right? You represent my interests. So that's what we have to stay on and stick to.

We get confused, you know, and we start listening. So I just sit right there. Tribune can do whatever they don't want. And I have had my challenges and no business person has not had challenges, right? That's right. But I'm very clear that I'm representing a community that's strong, that's vibrant. Listen, Chicago might have a black eye. Still ain't no city like Chicago in terms of black folks. When you think of what even has come from here, right? Right, Roland?

When you were here, the power of the connectivity, because it's such a big city, but it's a small town. Everybody knows everybody here you can connect with. And from that, we make movements, and we're able to get things done. So I'm very proud to be local, right? And to be in a city like this that embraces a station that's really older than me.

The station's damn near 60 years old. But my dad say, as long as you can control the people and stay focused on how you started. Who are you? The voice of the stay focused on how you started. Who are you? The voice of black Chicago. That's it. That's it.

It's also important because I appreciate, again, Kim coming on my show and coming on the VON because that's the other piece that I'm always telling, especially any black elected official, black folks in corporate America, don't sit here and run the white media and then you want to know us when you get your ass in trouble. Right, no, but I'm saying, but you've had to do like I've had to do, pull some folks aside and say, let me holler at your ass for a second.

Look, you don't even have to pull them aside. Smoke them out. Right. Smoke them out, baby. There's nothing more powerful than that microphone. That's why, so right now, speaking of Nancy Pelosi's staff is pissed off at me. Because no, we've been asking her for a whole year to come on. And last year, Schumer's

been on four times. I've had on Clyburn, every democratic presidential candidate, including Biden and Harris, Sanders and Warren, all of them being a whole line of folk. I'm like a whole year. Y'all can't find those seven minutes. And so, so they upset because I've been putting these graphics out. Where's Nancy? Yeah, I'm going to show y'all. Y'all know I'm ignorant. I don't care. I'm going to sit here and dog you.

No, I'm going to show you. I don't care. And then somebody reached out to them, and somebody said, well, does he think by doing this, that we going to accept this. And I was like, it don't matter until she showed the hell up. And then she did an interview with April Ryan and I celebrated that. I said, that's cool. But that's one, you got to do everybody. I said, but you can't be ignoring black media. And that's the whole deal. But I would say, I'm not going to name the person. I ain't going to name the person. Ooh, I want to name the person so bad because he'll cap them. But, uh, I ain't going to name the person. Ooh, I want to name the person so bad because he a cap up.

But I ain't going to name the person. But there was somebody black who would always want to come on the station when he would come to town. Chicago? He wouldn't return your phone calls. And one day, y'all, he was booked to come on the air, and you went into the control room like, mm-mm, his ass.

And you, you know, you know, no, no, remember you, y'all, you know, you know, no, you said, first of all, you said, y'all can't put him on the air until he talk to me. And then you got him online and you straight cussed him out and said, don't you come to my city and always come on my station, but when I call you,

you don't return my phone calls. Oh, I remember. Who was it? I can't lean over. I got a lot of little microphones on. Hold on. I'm not a... No, no, you remember.

No, no, you remember. But my point is, Melanie was so ignorant, she was like, uh-uh, like straight cussed him out. You remember? You remember? Y'all passing notes in class. Yeah. You remember?

No, no, but my whole point is. Oh, absolutely. But my whole point is, sometimes we got to check some black folks. Like, don't be trying to just use me for stuff. You better return my calls. Well, you know, how soon we forget. Not too many people even remember him now. You know what I mean?

Think about that. Enough said. Last point for you. 50 years from now, where do you want VON to be? I love that. I want to want VON to be? I love that.

I want to sell VON to the next person who God wants to have it. You know, we're not building these companies. We have a Spanish radio station now, and I get the OTT platform, Vaughn TV. We're not building these things as institutions to our egos or to ourselves. When you are legacy building, it's about community. And, you know, God has made me in charge of this right now, but I'm not the only person that can do this. And so, matter of fact, I'm hoping I ain't got to do it too much longer I mean a girl would like a little free time go out with my girlfriend and have

a drink but anyway we're teaching them we're showing them that can take this company to the next level my husband and and I were talking, maybe we've taken it where we're supposed to take it. Who's next, right? And I think that's what we have to do as entrepreneurs. I think sometimes we stay at the party too long, right? And so there's other dynamic, talented people who are ready for next level. And so that's, in 50 years from now, if God will allow me to be here, I want to be somewhere on the beach

with a vodka and tonic line in my hand. Right? Well, I would tell y'all this. Melly is absolute. She could rival Don King as being a hype man, a hype woman, a hype woman. Y'all, because when I was here, I came to Chicago. I ran to run a Chicago Defender.

And it was a trip because it was some Negroes in this city who were mad that I was here. They were protesting me, and they didn't realize how ignorant I was. I remember they were protesting me in front of the building, and everybody in the building was all scared. I was like, what the hell are y'all scared for? I said, go get me some subscription forms. And so there's one dude who I had fired because he was stupid. He was sitting here passing out, he was passing out flyers to my boycott and defendant. And I was, I would walk up to the car, I'm like, move out of the way. He a dumb ass. Y'all should scribe to the paper. I said, cause they ignorant. And the rest of the people were like, I can't believe you're doing that. I said, man, I ain't scared of these fools.

And so Miller was like, I got to put your ass on the radio. And then Dr. Watson, he was just standing there. But Dr., I don't know if you remember this, but Dr. Watson did something so bold with his TV station when we had the first ever sit down with Reverend Jackson and Minister Farrakhan, right? And Dr. Watson put it on TV and we allowed you to do

the post discussion. Do you remember that? And that was the first time I'd actually heard Roland on radio. And afterwards, I'm like, Uncle Ro, Ro! Right? We were getting ready to go 24 hours and it was this big thing about moving cliffs. Remember from morning?

I needed them to go afternoon, and you went in morning drive, and you killed it for us. So I can't thank you enough. Your talents are just, to me, immeasurable. Your voice is so necessary in the plight for black, just not one city or the next or in the world, Roland. You have a big voice and we want you to continue to do

what you're doing. We got your back. And we really appreciate it. I had an absolute ball here. I had an absolute ball. It was always fun doing the show on WVON being here at the Defenders. So those were six great years. It was just

too damn cold here. I had to leave. It was too damn cold. It was too damn cold. I'm sorry. I gotta go where the sun is. You gotta get your coat for here, Defenders. So those were six great years. It was just too damn cold here. I had to leave. It was too damn cold. It was too damn cold. I'm sorry. I got to go where the sun is. You got to get your coat for here, from here. Yeah, I'm from Houston. No, damn it.

I need sun, okay? I need sun. And he's in D.C. Right. That's where my stuff resides. I ain't never there. By the way, I talked to Jackie today. Okay.

Talked to the whole family today. That's right. Call everybody. It's all good. She there. She know the whole family today. It's all good. She there. She know I ain't there. I've been in New York, L.A., and I've been in the past five days. Oh, wow.

That's right. We're going to be on the move. Vaughn TV, tell everybody what it is and what they're watching. So, Vaughn TV is our new OTT digital platform. When you were talking about Cabrini Green, we got that show on there, 70 Acres in Chicago, the story of Cabrini Green, we got that show on there, 70 Acres in Chicago, the story of Cabrini Green. It's cultural content on purpose. You can find it

on Roku, Apple TV Plus, and Amazon Fire. You need to tell Roland to give me some of that content to put on Vaughn TV. He's tripping. But we got some good stuff. And you can go to VON.TV and find it on your mobile devices. It's good stuff. It really is good stuff. She know, she know I'm not tripping. Everybody write Roland and tell him to give VON.TV some content. See, look at her. Look at her.

She know I'm not tripping. And see, she try and throw that out there. See, y'all, she tried. Uh-uh. Y'all going to have to wait four more weeks. Uh-huh. Then y'all going to know. All right.

We can still share content. Huh? We can still share content. I don't know what to talk about. Okay. Because you told me to get paid for the content. Uh-huh. And I don't drink, so I can't get paid in alcohol.

I can't get paid in alcohol. I can't get... Folks, that is it for us. Let me thank everybody. Kitty Johnson, we were, of course, we were at the Bureau, at the Sage Room today. I appreciate it. We wanted to bring this show on the road. I'm actually here for our National Association of Black Journalists board meeting,

so that's why we're here. And so I said, what the heck, we're going to do the shows while we're here. We've done this other places as well, so y'all know we're going to continue doing that. And so next week, so here's the deal. I'm not in studio next week, y'all, because we're literally moving. And so we're still going to have the show next week, but we're going to be completely virtual using the StreamYard platform. We're going to be debuting from our new space

on July 5th. Trust me. I've already showed y'all the video. It's off the chain, but it looks like we're literally going to be located right there on Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., and so we're really looking forward to that, and so it's going to be great. We've got

some fantastic things planned for everybody, and so y'all know how we roll, and so've got some fantastic things planned for everybody. And so y'all know how we roll. And so we got some good stuff that we're doing. And so we want y'all to also continue to support what we do. Join our Bring the Funk fan club. Of course, you know, every dollar you give goes to support this show. Cash app, dollar sign, RM Unfiltered.

Go ahead, pull it up, venmo.com forward slash RM Unfiltered. PayPal, paypal.me forward slash RM unfiltered, PayPal, or PayPal.me forward slash RMartin unfiltered. You also have Zell, Roland at RolandSMartin.com. And so y'all can support us there as well. And, of course, we always end the show every single Friday showing all members who contribute to our show, so y'all can check that out. And so thank you so very much. I'll see you guys on Monday.

Don't forget, we'll be live streaming tomorrow's rally, Black Voters Matter from the nation's capital. So look for that. If you want to see all the events they've had for the past seven days, just go to our YouTube channel. You will see it all there as well. Thanks to the crew here in Chicago. Thank you so very much.

And everybody else here, thanks a lot, y'all. I appreciate it. Y'all know how we always end the show. It's the same way. Holla! Martin! I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family.

They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like, he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,

and the Ad Council. This is an iHeart Podcast.