#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Roland in St. Louis; Biden tours Pfizer plant; St. Louis mayoral candidate Tishaura O. Jones speaks

Episode Date: February 20, 2021

2.19.21 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Roland live in St. Louis; President Biden tours Pfizer plant; St. Louis mayoral candidate Tishaura O. Jones speaks; Texas winter storm leaves millions without power; If confirmed, Chiquita Brooks - LaSure will become the first woman to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; Black state troopers in Maryland accuse the agency of racism; Pennsylvania lawmaker Malcolm Kenyatta announces bid for US SenateSupport #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. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man.

We met them at their homes. We met them at the recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to it. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

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. Thank you. Hey folks, today is Friday, February 19th, 2021. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, broadcasting live from St. Louis, Missouri,

where in an hour, I will be moderating a town hall featuring Tashara Jones, who is running for mayor of St. Louis. On today's show, President Joe Biden tours a Pfizer facility as the federal government continues to ramp up their efforts to get all Americans a vaccine, a COVID-19 vaccine. Also on today's show, rally being planned in Michigan after a white neighbor flew a KKK flag in a window facing a black neighbor. Yeah, not cool. Also, you can update on conditions in Texas where Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez helped raise $2 million for residents there,

along with Beto O'Rourke, while Senator Ted Cruz was in Cancun. Also, folks, on today's show, if confirmed by the Senate, Chiquita Brooks will become the first woman to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Speaking of that, Neera Tanden could very well not be confirmed as the head of the Office of Management and Budget. Why? Because West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin said he's not going to vote for her confirmation because of her

previous tweets criticizing Senate Republicans and Democrats. Dude, really? Really? That's weak as hell, Joe Manchin. Also, in Maryland, black state troopers have accused the agency of racism and discrimination. Also, Malcolm Kenyatta, a lawmaker in Pennsylvania,

says he is running for the United States Senate. And, like I said, we're hearing St. Louis, we'll be hearing from Deshara Jones, who's running for mayor of St. Louis. It is time to bring the funk on Roll the Mark Unfiled. Let's go. He's got it. Whatever the piss, he's on it.

Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine. And when it breaks, he's right on time. And it's rolling. Best belief he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics. With entertainment just for kicks He's rollin' It's Uncle Roro, y'all It's Rollin' Martin

Rollin' with Rollin' now He's funk, he's fresh, he's real, the best you know He's rolling, Martin Martin Today, President Joe Biden toured a coronavirus vaccine plant near Kalamazoo, Michigan, as the nation is ramping up their efforts to get as many people as possible tested for, excuse me, the vaccine for COVID-19. Now, the problem is that bad weather across the country has delayed some six million vaccines to folks across the country. Now, the Plant Biden Tour, like I said, is located near Kalamazoo, and it produces one of the two federally approved COVID-19 shots. Now, according to the CDC, the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been administered about 30 million times since it

received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration on December 11th. Now, Moderna is the other drug that's being used. Here's what President Joe Biden had to say today. I know people want confidence that it's safe. Well, I just toured and it's where it's being made. It takes more time to do the check for safety than it does actually to make the vaccine. That's how fastidious they are. And listen to Dr. Fauci. Dr. Fauci assured me that COVID-19 vaccines were safe.

That's why several weeks ago I went through the rigorous scientific review. That's why I took my vaccine shot publicly to demonstrate to the American people that I know and believe it's safe. That's why Vice President Harris also received her shot publicly. We all know there's some history, there's some hesitancy about taking this vaccine. We all know there's history in this country of having subjected certain communities to terrible medical abuses in the past. But if there's one message to cut through to everyone in this country is this, the vaccines are safe. Please, for yourself, your family, your community, this country, take the vaccine when it's your turn and available.

That's how to beat this pandemic. And we're making progress. We deployed more vaccinators, the people to put the vaccine in your arm. We're now making it possible for retired doctors and nurses to come back and under law administer these shots. We've put new vaccinators in the field. These include over 800 medical personnel from our commissioned corps at the Department of Health and Human Services and personnel from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, Defense Department, National Guard. We're literally lining up thousands of vaccinators because it's one

thing to have the vaccine. It's very different to get it in someone's arms. President Biden has made it clear he wants 100 million doses of the vaccine distributed in his first 100 days. He previously said that by July, every American will be able to access the COVID-19 vaccine. Also, Andy Slavitt, the White House Coronavirus Response Advisor, says federal, government, state, and local vaccinators are going to have to redouble efforts to catch up after the interruptions due to the cold weather all across this country. Speaking of that cold weather, Texas's faulty electrical

power grid has returned to normal, according to the Electric Reliability Council, who says the grid will now be able to provide power for hundreds of thousands of residents still reeling from the devastating snowstorm that pummeled the Lone Star State. Now, authorities have ordered nearly 7 million people to boil their tap water before drinking it to prevent the risk of consuming bacteria that may have seeped into the pipes. Gallons of water have been delivered in the state. President Biden has also issued for generators and diesel gas to also be brought into the state. FEMA is also stepping in doing their part as well. Beto O'Rourke, who lost to Ted Cruz by a couple of points a couple of years ago, has been working the phones with his team. He's been

tweeting that they've actually sent out more than, made more than 300 phone, 300,000 phone calls. Well, the last 24 hours, he's also been working with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to raise money for folks in need. Well, she announced that they had raised more than $2 million, and she has actually headed to Texas to stand with members there to distribute that money and resources to people as well. Let's go to, of course, our panel right now. I'm Rob Richardson, host of Disruption Now podcast.

Michael Imhotep, host of the African History Network, Caleb Bethea of Communication Strategist. I got to tell you, Rob, it must be something concerning all of the crap Republicans have talked, whether it's Ted Cruz, whether it's Dan Patrick, Lieutenant Governor, and others about Ocasio-Cortez, whether you have Governor Greg Abbott yelling and screaming about the Green New Deal,

which actually has not even been approved. And here you have Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, who they deride for being a socialist who's actually done more to help the citizens of Texas than Texas Senator Rafael Cruz. Yeah, I mean, that's that's quite amazing. Right. And you have you have folks that are just so just tied to this narrative that she's evil.

AOC is evil. She's about socialism. So we can't trust her. And I'm afraid some people are just going to believe that narrative. Like when you go on that other, if you go on Fox News, they will tell you a narrative, whatever you want to believe. You know, there, there is more nuance within a Disney movie than there is on Fox News. Fox News will make up a character and they'll, and they'll tell you that Ocasio-Cortez is bad. We don't know why she's bad. She's just bad. And all of a sudden we got somebody like Trump is good. We don't know why he's good. There's no proof that he's good. He's not doing anything to show that he's good, but he's just good. He's fighting for us. He's making America great again. People want to believe this garbage for whatever reason that they want to. I hope they see now, because it's clear as day, you have this man,

he's left, he left the United States of America. Not only did he leave his own state, he left the United States of America in order to get away from taking responsibility. And you have his opponent that lost stepping up, and you have Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, who they think is evil incarnate, is actually helping more than their own senator. I mean, people can hopefully see what's in front of them, but you know, Roland, they're not playing this on Fox News. They're figuring out a way to make up some narrative or some story that somehow is blaming Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Like she created it somehow. She is that powerful that she created it from the Green New Deal. Like you said, I mean, some people actually believe this stuff. It's just amazing.

Of course, Michael, bottom line is Fox News is derangement syndrome. They were the ones who were spreading the BS from the governor, Greg Abbott, blaming wind turbines and solar for the problem when that wasn't the problem. It was coal plants and fossil fuels. That was the problem. But they like lies. Well, let's remember, Roland, now, Fox News, that was one of the biggest propagators of the Stop the Steal rally, and the election was stolen myth, okay, until they got hit with a lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems and then also one from Smartmatic, okay?

So you have to understand who you're dealing with. You're dealing with the Fox News crowd. With Ted Cruz, now, I want to take people back. I posted this on the African History Network Facebook page yesterday, our fan page. Go back and look what House Speaker John Boehner said about Ted Cruz in 2016. He called Ted Cruz Lucifer in the flesh. And he said he called Ted Cruz. I remember that.

He called Ted Cruz Lucifer in the flesh, and he said he never worked with a more miserable SOB than Ted Cruz. Now, this was one Republican, old white man, talking about another Republican, younger, white, well, Hispanic, want to be white, whatever he is. But, I mean, so when I saw that about Ted Cruz, he got caught. He got caught. Then he booked a flight Thursday morning for 6 a.m. to fly back. He's supposed to come back this weekend.

He got caught. Now he's trying to put the manure back into the horse, so to speak. They like that joke down in Texas. But anyway, so you have a lot of people, you have many Democrats calling for him to resign, and he should, okay? But

he won't, but they should push and call for him to resign. But Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who many of them hate, and they can't really tell you why they hate her. And if you ask them what socialism is, they can't tell you what that is either, most of them. Okay?

She's doing more to help them than Ted Cruz is. And then Ted Cruz wants to blame his children. He wanted to put the blame on his daughters and bring his daughters into it. Okay? So he's spying, but it's the same guy who Donald Trump insulted Ted Cruz's wife, but then

Ted Cruz carries Donald Trump's water. So this is who you're dealing with. That's why he has to be voted out of office. He's up in four more years, I think it is. That's why he has to be voted out of office. Here's the deal here, Kelly. And bottom line is this here. When you talk about care

and compassion, you have Republicans who love to trash Ocasio-Cortez, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, Congresswoman Ayanna Presley, Katie Porter, all is always about the spot. But the reality is you see the lies and the disinformation and making things up

coming from Republicans out of my home state of Texas, and they screwed up. And you know what? And here's the crazy thing. It's actually smarter just to go ahead and say, we screwed up, we're going to make it better. No, Greg Abbott was the runaround and lie, no, not fossil fuels. It was even more embarrassing. It's a little hard to be the governor of the energy capital of America. And you can't even get the damn energy

straight when it comes to your citizens when a major snowstorm hits. And so I just get a kick out of the constant line and the back and forth, and they're paying the price for it. But the question is, will they pay the price at the polls come 2022? That's the real question. Regarding your last question, whether they will remember 2022,

I certainly hope so. Not just because of the trauma that I'm sure will be lingering after this moment in time, but also the history of the state in general over the past four years have gotten virtually nothing out of the Trump administration. Biden is trying to do his best to make sure the entire country is good. And Texans, you know, believe it or not, a lot of the state is actually blue. So the fact that it's a red state just indicates as much voter suppression as you saw in Georgia and other states. So hopefully in 2022, maybe there can be a Stacey Abrams of Texas who will turn that train around and make sure that every vote is counted so that people like Ted Cruz or Ted Cruzettes, so to speak, will not be voted

into office again. Regarding this immediate situation down in Texas, this kind of elitist hypocrisy that Ted Cruz exhibited, it's expected. It is expected. It is actually refreshing that more Republicans down in Texas have not done the same. But somewhere along the line, they realize that they are actually public servants, whether they serve themselves in the public or where they actually serve the public remains to be seen in the future. But the fact of the matter is they're still on the ground.

They're still trying to help these people out or themselves. We don't know. But they did not go to the country that they just tried to build a wall around to keep their citizens out of our country in order to escape something that's happening in their home state. Ted Cruz is going to have to answer for that. And to Imhotep's point about him throwing his daughters under the bus. I wrote an op-ed about that in Black With No Chaser yesterday, and I literally said, you know, he's not just a bad senator. He's a bad dad. What kind of dad

actually, like, he threw... He's a bad husband, too. He's a bad husband, he's a bad dad. But I'm really focused on the kids right now because they didn't choose their parents. You know what I'm saying? The wife chose them, but the children did not choose Ted. And the children, you know, yes,

they were suffering like every other child in Texas. And then for him to blame the children for doing something out of their control, when according to the New York Times, it was really the mother's fault and the group saying that she's freezing, quote unquote in all caps, saying that and flying out on Wednesday. So it's just a cluster mess over there.

And he should absolutely resign. But look. But he's not going to. And we know this. No, he's not. First of all, look, he's not going to resign. But here's the whole deal. Now, hold on, hold on, hold on.

I'm not about to spin. Here's the greater issue. The greater issue, sure, Ted Cruz is a liar. That's what Rafael Cruz is. But the greater issue, again, is how you have bad policy that impacted millions of people. People have died from hypothermia as a result.

When you have folks who are hell-bent on, well, actually, it's not even small government. See, that's a lie. See, Republicans even promote that nonsense. Republicans don't believe in small government they believe in government they control that's what they believe in they don't believe in small government okay they don't want to pay for this that's what i'm trying to say like but they spin it as small government but you know what though it's not no no no but see it's even to deal with the

infrastructure here's really what the fundamental problem is in this country. The problem in this country is, yes, we like doing shit cheap. And then what happens is stuff explodes or bridges fall or things crumble and catch on fire. And then we go, oh, what are we going to do? When I say in this country that you have to follow the money, that's what Americans do. People sit here and they want to play this whole thing cheap and they want to get away with it.

I mean, understand, the only reason we have safety protocols on cars in this country is because people died. And the car companies, oh, everything is always too expensive because they've gotten with actuaries and said, well, we're not going to spend this here because if X people die, it's going to, so we can live with these deaths as opposed to doing what's right. And this is where, again, I would hope all those folks

who froze their ass off in Texas would remember that the next time you go to the polls and you vote for these idiots like Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton, the attorney general, and the others who run Texas government. Republicans can't even try to blame this on any Democrat. No, no, no, no, no. Here's the deal. They can't. They can try.

But here's the deal. They can't, they can try, but here's the deal. Republicans control every statewide office into every one. Democrats do not control a single statewide office in Texas. So the GOP, this one's on you. No, no, it's on them completely. This is a choice that they made though, right? That to your point, just to connect it, you know, Texas decided to be independent and they didn't want to be tied to the federal system. So they didn't have any type of safety measures in place for extreme conditions. And when I say this is what you get when you get a government that, whatever you want to call it, a small government, ineffective government, this is what the government that Republicans advocate for, one that doesn't work, it's

ineffective, one that when you need it, it's not there because you've let it dry. You've given tax cuts to people instead of investing in infrastructure. This is what you get. And I hope people understand that to your point. My thing is, the irony is, had they actually invested in renewable energy and other energy options and things like that, they wouldn't be in the situation that they're in right now. If they actually weatherize the pipes, they wouldn't be in this situation right now. So there's a lot of things to consider. I agree. Now, let me ask you, let's go to our next story, and that is Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has announced that he is not going to vote for Neera Tanden, who was nominated by President Joe Biden to be his budget director.

Why? Because he didn't like her mean tweets about Republicans and Democrats in the United States Senate. Now, keep in mind, Manchin voted for a number of Trump's judges. Manchin voted for Jeff Sessions to be Trump's attorney general. Manchin voted for Brett Kavanaugh to be on the Supreme Court. Michael, this is what happens when, again, Democrats, you have a 50-50 tie, and one person can actually cause things to tumble down.

Now, here's the deal, okay? That's Manchin's vote. I'm not assuming every Republican is going to vote against a near attendant. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, any of them could actually vote for her. She still wins. But again, this shows you Manchin's thinking. But what gets me is we just dealt with four years of Republicans.

Oh, I didn't see the tweets. I don't read his tweets. Say nothing. And this dude is tripping on some tweets. She said, sit your punk ass down, Joe Manchin. Well, you know, I've said this before about Joe Manchin of West Virginia. He's spineless also. He's not as bad as Ted Cruz, but to me, he's close to it.

See, I remember after Sandy Hook and Joe Manchin was sitting there crying with the parents of the survivors and talked about he's a dad to things like that. But then when it came down to it, it was a vote or something he didn't support. It was dealing with background checks, if I remember correctly. He didn't support it. So yeah, Joe Manchin is one of those in a Trump state, he's one of those Democrats that needs to be voted out of office. I've been saying this for years about Joe Manchin. You really can't count on him, and this is an example of that. So, you know, all the tweets from Trump, and not only that, when you had the dealing with the Ukraine call and the hearings dealing with that

and then Trump intimidating the witnesses while they're being, while they're testifying with tweets. All different types of things like this. So yeah, you know, he's spineless once again. This is another reason why Joe Manchin needs to be voted out.

I just, but this whole, oh my God, her tweets. Did you really say that? I mean, sit your whiny asses down. Her past tweets have nothing to do with whether or not she could be the budget director, Kelly. Nothing. No, they don't. I do believe that you need to do thorough investigations on people who are going to be appointed to positions such as this. I do not believe that such criteria in these investigations should include tweets when you are a private citizen.

I do not, especially when said tweets do not reflect on the job that you are assumingly going to be appointed to. Manchin is definitely a hypocrite in this regard. Granted, she did say things on both sides of the aisle that were insulting to both Democrats and Republicans. of four years of a lunatic on Twitter who, and we just got out of an impeachment trial, and a lot of the evidence was based on his Twitter feed, and he still got acquitted. I do not see why we need to raise the standard or raise the bar to a Democratic nominee just because we know she's a good person. It's like we lower the bar for people that we know are bad, but we raise the bar even higher for those that we know are good. And it's just not fair.

The bar should stay where it is, and you should govern yourself accordingly. Manchin is not doing that. Rob, I'm sorry. Again, here's the deal. We're going to have to put up with Manchin's crap where he wants to control the agenda. You already see people in his state pushing him when it comes to the $15 living wage,

and he doesn't want to support that. The point of this here, you know, again, Democrats are going to have to have the guts to challenge him. But you know who I also blame? I also blame Cal Cunningham for being a dumbass for sitting here sexting while he's running for the United States Senate. I blame Gideon who couldn't beat Susan Collins in Maine. I blame the candidate who got all the money raised

at damn Amy McGrath, her soft sorry ass. Charles Booker should have been a candidate. And so the bottom line is here. If Democrats actually had some candidates who knew how to run real campaigns you wouldn't be in a 50 50 tie yeah that is part of it i'm gonna say like really to kelly's point uh so democrats have to be saints and republicans get to do whatever so that's kind of like the standards we're putting in place now so if you do anything

wrong or you say something that's a little bit off or is not absolutely politically correct, then you have to get fired. But apparently if you're a Republican, you get to commit insurrection. You get to, I don't know, betray the country. You get to do all these crazy things. So I want to make sure that while we are trying to make sure we're not Trump, of course, we certainly shouldn't go to the extreme, as Kelly said, to just take ourselves out and let Republicans drive the agenda. Second, I will say that, you know, Democrats need to focus less on trying to appear bipartisan to figure out how they can just work with Republicans who won't even vote to hold a president that tried to kill them accountable and actually focus on getting things accomplished. So to me, it's also the leadership of the party and everybody else should be pushing a couple specific things.

We've talked about it before. D.C. and Puerto Rico should make that a vote. You can tell them you don't have to get rid of the filibuster or anything else, but you've got to do this and put some pressure on Joe Manchin to do that. That needs to happen because Joe Manchin is in West Virginia, so let's be real. He's going to do everything he can to show that he's running against Joe Biden at this point, because he's in a red, he's in a red of a red state right now. And, and so he's going to do everything he can to show, or just make up reasons. We need to make sure we were looking for the long-term. If he needs to do

that, fine. Just give us a couple of votes so we can get four more senators in there. You can do whatever the hell you want to. That's what they should do in my opinion. Well, again, this is going to be an ongoing issue that we're going to have to deal with. I guarantee you this because at the end of the day, when we talk about Joe Manchin and what he is trying to do, I mean, look, him, Sinema, or frankly, any U.S. senator could stop any action. Democrats, and this is the thing, Sinema, or frankly, any U.S. senator could stop any action. Democrats, and this is the thing, let me be real clear,

Democrats need to learn how to have discipline. The reality is this here. Unless they get rid of the filibuster, unless they get rid of the filibuster, you're not going to see a George Floyd Justice Act. You're not going to see a John Lewis Voting Act. I'm just trying to understand when Sinema and Manchin says, I'm not voting for the filibuster under any circumstance, how in the hell you think you're going to get

10 votes? Please, show me where the 10 votes are coming from. You won't. Michael, you're not going to get them. So you got no choice. Use your power, Michael. Get rid of the filibuster. Pass your agenda. And who cares if the Republicans get upset?

Use your power. I totally agree with that. And they're more concerned about trying to stay in office. This is why certain certain ones of them have to be targeted, vote out of office, run somebody better that has a spine. OK,? And I want people, you know, I'm neither Democrat nor Republican, but I'm also not stupid. Okay? I've said this before. It's not about the political party. It's about the policies and what they stand for,

what the candidates stand for. But, yeah, I think they have to be targeted, and when you have the power, you have to wield it. And this is something extremely important. I'll wrap up with this, Roland. Reverend Raphael Warnock has to run for reelection next year in Georgia. OK, for the Senate seat he just won. He's finishing out of time. We see that we see in the Georgia state legislature, Republicans are trying to pass laws to make it harder to vote, crack down on mail-in voting,

things like this. They're trying to take back that Senate seat and also trying to block Stacey Abrams, who most likely will run for governor in 2024 as well. So we have to understand this and understand how we have to protect these gains that were made and build

on top of them. Again, I don't understand how is it that people don't know how to use power. All right, folks, speaking of sort of, it's just sort of strange if you want to talk about power. The story that came out of Michigan that is weird. A man displayed the KKK flag in his home window facing his black neighbor's house, all because she installed a security camera system. Jordana Dings said as soon as she saw the flag, she called state and federal authorities and posted a picture of the flag on her Facebook page.

Law enforcement received word of the incident, which prompted officers to go to her neighbor's house and demand her neighbor remove the flag from the window. Dings told the Fox affiliate in Detroit, quote, The reason the neighbors put the Klan sign up was because I put a camera on my window seal to record what was happening along the side of my house to protect myself. Three weeks prior to this, Dings says she installed a security camera because someone put a container filled with gasoline in her dumpster. She was hoping to catch the alleged culprit if it were to happen again.

So far, prosecutors will soon decide whether to file charges against her neighbor. Really? You know, Michael, folks plan on protesting, standing with their sister in Michigan. They sure as hell should make it perfectly clear to her white neighbor, you threaten this black woman, we're going to stand with her. Yeah, you know, I totally agree with that. And I'm sure there's probably some activists here in Detroit I know who will be protesting. This took place in Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan. Okay, so they, you know, Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan, you know, they have a,

it's a suburb of Detroit, a white suburb of Detroit. So they do have a history of racism and things like this against African-Americans. And I think also at the same time, with greater attention coming to this, I think you will probably have some white people in Grosse Pointe Park that will stand up in opposition to what this neighbor is doing as well. But yeah, this is just ridiculous. And this person, I want to know, where was this person on January 6th? This person that hung

the KKK uniform up, where were they on January 6th, 2021? Were they here in Michigan or were they at the U.S. Capitol? I'm just curious. Well, Bob, look, they probably were sitting here rocking their Make America Great Again hat as those fools were tearing up the Capitol on that particular day.

Folks, I got to go to a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Malcolm Kenyatta running for the United States Senate in Pennsylvania. We'll be back. Roland Martin broadcasted live here from St. Louis, Missouri. Roland Martin on the filter. We'll be back in a moment. When you think about the fact that 2043, we are going to be a nation that's majority people of color. I've really focused on this a lot, on television, on radio, in my speeches, that my focus is trying to prepare us to have demographic power while also having educational economic power at the same time. Because there's nothing worse than having demographic numbers, but then you still don't have that economic power,

that political power, and education power. Well, you know, you and I, and I think most people know and understand that education is what we've got to impress on all of our people. We've got to help people to understand that if you want a decent quality of life, if you want the kind of quality of life where you're not having to worry about your food and your nutrition

and, you know, being able to pay your bills or buy a house, then you've got to become educated. The more education you have, the larger the paycheck is. And of course, we've got to be involved in entrepreneurship, taking the talent that we have to create businesses. And there's a lot of opportunity for that. Hi, I'm Eldie Barge. Hey, yo, peace world. What's going on? It's the love king of R&B, Raheem Devon, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Folks, Pennsylvania lawmaker Malcolm Kenyatta

announced yesterday he is running for the United States Senate in Pennsylvania. Pat Toomey earlier announced he was not going to be seeking re-election. A lot of folks are running for this seat. The lieutenant governor of the state has already announced that this is one of the critical seats that Democrats are targeting in 2022, hoping to expand their majority. This was a video that Kenyatta put out.

He is an openly gay man, and he also recognizes that's going to be an issue. But he says the bottom line is that is the diverse state that he believes Pennsylvania is. Check this video out. Government hasn't worked for working families like mine. I know what it's like to see an eviction notice, to work a minimum wage job. My first one was at the age of 12 working to support my family. My dad was a social worker. My mom was a home health care aide.

No matter how hard they worked, they struggled to make ends meet for me and my siblings. And unfortunately, my story isn't that unique. It's familiar to Pennsylvanians all across the Commonwealth. Working families from Philly to Erie, from Scranton to Johnstown, from Bethlehem to Uniontown are resilient and leaning on one another. families from Philly to Erie, from Scranton to Johnstown, from Bethlehem to Uniontown

are resilient and leaning on one another. But Pennsylvania and America are at a crossroads. After four years of division and just over a month since a failed coup at the United States Capitol, we face a question of who we want to be as a country. But we also face a recognition what's been broken has been broken for more than four years. We have to answer the question at the heart of every campaign. Who should government work for?

We need policies that actually speak to working families and lift them up. We have to choose. Are we gonna go down the path of darkness? Or are we ready to bring a new day to Pennsylvania? A new day that demands we acknowledge how out of reach the American promise has been for too many of us. A new day where we confront head-on

challenges in healthcare, in climate, in gun violence, in poverty. A new day where we don't just talk about justice, but we make it real in our lifetime. in climate, in gun violence, in poverty. A new day where we don't just talk about justice, but we make it real in our lifetime. A new day where no matter who you are, who you love, how you worship, you get a fair shot.

It's time for a new day, Pennsylvania. I'm Malcolm Kenyatta, and I'm running for the United States Senate. Question Kenyatta's going to have to face in Pennsylvania, Kelly. Is Pennsylvania liberal enough not only to elect an openly gay black man? Remember, Democrats often say once you get outside of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is Alabama. I'm sorry, Roland. I'm having a hard time hearing you, but I did hear the question. I don't see

why we, or not we, but Pennsylvania as a state cannot vote a black gay man into the Senate. If we are as black, if we as black people have constantly and consistently voted white straight men into office to represent our needs, I don't see why white people can't do the same when it comes to this black gay man. It's not like his issues are any different than

a heterosexual person's. It's not like he came from a different planet. He is from Pennsylvania. He represents Pennsylvania. My understanding is very well in state representation. I don't see why he can't carry on into national representation of the state to do the same thing. Frankly, we have pushed across the country for these red states or historically red states to turn blue. Why? Because the stakes have never been higher. It's not just about voting Trump out of office.

It's about voting racism out of office. It's about voting xenophobia out of office. It's about voting elitism out of office. And the Democrats are the vessel for that message. And whoever carries that message needs to be in that seat. So in my view, Kenyatta should, I don't see why he shouldn't be in that seat. I just don't.

The issue you're dealing with, Michael, isn't the fact that, the issue is not that he's gay. The issue is that he's black. The issue is that he's black. The issue is that he's liberal. The issue is that he's gay, black, liberal. We're talking about Pennsylvania. We're talking about a state. And again, I'm telling you, look, when you talk about that state,

you talk about in terms of how folks there vote. Again, Democrats have always had sort of these moderate, middle-of-the-road. So the question is then going to be what kind of candidate comes out? Republicans, first of all, are going to call anybody liberal. Hell, they call Joe Biden a socialist when he ran in Pennsylvania. The Democrats. So let's just let's just let's just be real clear. OK, what in terms of terms of what you're dealing with here. But these are the issues that are going to come up. Let's just be real clear, okay, in terms of what you're dealing with here.

But these are the issues that are going to come up. He has been a strong voice in the Pennsylvania legislature, but we're dealing with, again, let me say it again, Democrat consultants will tell you, is Pittsburgh and Philly in the suburbs and the rest of the state is Alabama. Yeah. Alabama. Yeah. Alabama.

Right, right. Well, you know, Malcolm X used to say, anytime you're south of the Canadian border, you're in the south. So living in Michigan, you know, I totally understand that. What he'll have to do, I've seen him on MSNBC a number of times. He's very dynamic. I'm not sure who else is going to be running. We'll have to see how everything matches up. But what he will definitely have to do is build a multiracial coalition focusing on the issues, focusing on how policies, whether we deal with COVID relief, whether we deal with supporting a living wage,

hopefully it'll pass by the time this election happens, hopefully $15,000 will pass by this time this election happens, but we don't know. But showing how policies impact people across racial, ethnic, gender lines, what have you, to build that coalition to win as U.S. Senator. So we'll see how this matches up. We'll see how this turns out. But good luck to him, though. But he is dynamic. I've seen, I could tell he's passionate also. It seems like he has a real commitment to his constituents and to trying to make their lives better. The thing the thing that the thing that people have to understand, Rob, that you're going to see. Democrats are going to be extremely cautious.

They're going to be looking for, frankly, moderate candidates. When we start talking about the places that are going to be in competition in 2022 for the United States Senate, trying to find a candidate to run against Senator Marco Rubio in Florida, significant Cuban vote, Venezuelan vote. Democrats probably are going to say, hey, do you nominate somebody who also is Latino to counter that for Senator Marco Rubio? You're trying to replace Burr, who's not going to run a reelection in North Carolina. Same thing. You're dealing with a state where typically you're going to have a moderate Dem,

a maybe center-right Dem who's running. You're dealing with that as well. Now you talk about Pennsylvania as well. And then, of course, you've got Johnson in Wisconsin. Wisconsin, in many ways, is just like Pennsylvania. You're dealing with Midwestern white folks who are far more conservative than they normally are. The same state that reelected Scott Walker there. They had two terms. So the question really is for the left, OK, is how do they run candidates in these states to win the primary and to win

the general? Will the DSCC put their thumb on the scale again and pick candidates, because you've got to remember, in Tennessee, they chose a white male veteran, raised a lot of money. The sister raised $8,200 and beat him in the primary. Yeah.

And then got crushed in the general. Yeah, yeah. So I have a different take on this. I think how liberals should talk about issues is they should talk about issues and frame them that way and be proud of how they frame them and come from a point of view of passion, just like Michael said. I think it was Lyndon Johnson that said what convinces is conviction. People have to believe what you're saying. So you can be moderate on some things, but everything in moderation, even moderation. you can't be moderate on everything. You have to have some convictions for what you believe. So I don't buy into this belief that you have to be one or the other. I don't even know

what they mean when they say it has to be a moderate candidate. It is a candidate that can communicate, that can build a multi-coalition, that knows how to bring people together. And no matter what their ideology is, if they have some core convictions and they can move people, you have a chance at winning. But I think you have no chance in states like this, specifically in an off year, when you have a Democrat in office.

Traditionally, if you go with history, almost always the opposite party in power wins. You know, they're going to be, they're going to, Fox News is going to find a reason to get people upset. They're going to be interdicted. We need to make sure that you're interdicted, too. And I don't think it always takes to say somebody has to be.

Well, Rob. Go ahead. No, but Rob, but it's been real. Rob, you're in Ohio, okay? That conversation is happening right now. That conversation is happening. You have Nina Turner, who is running, obviously, for Congresswoman Marsha Fudge's seat. But the question is, what kind of candidate is Democrats going to put up in Ohio?

Is it going to be a strong progressive, a strong liberal, or is it going to be, frankly, a white moderate? He's not a moderate. I mean, like, he's— How? Jared Brown is in Ohio. He is not a moderate. Right, right, right, right. He's a very progressive populist.

So you can do it. No, Sherrod, wait, wait, wait, wait. Sherrod, hold on, no, no. Remember, Sherrod Brown has been reelected. They put up other folk. They have not been able

to win that second seat. Yeah, I know. I was running statewide. I have a lot of experience in that. Look, I won two million votes, actually, third most in history. Trump was able to bring out more people than we've ever seen. So he drove—what I want to say, what the right did is they figured out a strategy to focus and bring out the people. What we can't do is just say, let's come up with no message and don't worry about focusing on our people.

We've got to figure out how we motivate our people. And what I think we did wrong in Ohio, and I can say this, I out-raised my opponent, but I had to depend upon a greater structure that wasn't going to invest in people. They didn't make the type of investments that Stacey Abrams made. They weren't intentional about going after young people. They weren't intentional about making sure we had a real effort to make sure we were courting black folks.

And you see less voters. If you look at how Joe Biden did in the state versus how I did, percentage-wise, he did worse. So, like, there was no infrastructure put into that or long-term play. So that has to be a part of your strategy, too. And you can't just say, okay, what moderate – Well, that was going to be one of my points, Rob. But hold on, hold on, hold on. What Rob. But hold on, hold on, hold on.

What's that? Hold on, hold on, hold on. Kelly, hold on. But let's be clear. One of the reasons you did not have the infrastructure put in place in Ohio because Hillary Clinton lost to Trump by 450,000 votes in 2016. Democrats said, look, if she had lost by maybe 100,000, okay, we can compete four years later. Their deal was like, hey, we're not putting the money in.

Now, the issue that you're raising, and Kelly and Michael, you can speak to this, is going to be that issue is, do you give up on it? Is a Senate seat, how does that change? Rob Portman is not running. Is it going to be a Congressman Tim Ryan? Who's going to be the nominee? The reality is this here. I would hope what Democrats have learned from Georgia is that you can't just completely write something off. Yes, you have to have dynamic candidates, but you have to have a strong infrastructure,

and you don't start six to nine months before the election. Right now, Democrats should be focused on building coalitions and building in Ohio today. Wisconsin today. Pennsylvania today. North Carolina today. Otherwise, you're trying to play catch up. Kelly, go ahead then, Michael. That was a part of my point, Roland, especially if we're going to use what Stacey Abrams did in Georgia as a model for future campaigning throughout the country. A large reason why that model was so successful is because there was blatant voter suppression in Georgia to begin with. Now, when you say the anecdote of, you know, same as Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, the same, same as Ohio, a million people were taken off of the rolls. That's exactly my point, Roland. I'm saying that's what I'm saying. When you're talking about your anecdote about how

you take Philly and Pittsburgh and surrounding suburbs out, you get Alabama. Well, Alabama is a state that is suffering from voter suppression. So we need to tackle that. And whatever candidate is willing to tackle that, whatever Democratic apparatus, what have you, is willing to tackle that. That's how we're going to turn Pennsylvania blue, blue, not just for presidential elections, not just every four years, but for real. And that's how it's going to have to be in Ohio and every state that's red. Because like I was saying earlier in your program regarding Texas and them in this freeze, a lot of their constituents are Democrats. And the reason why that state is red

is because of voter suppression as well. So we need a candidate anywhere who will tackle that and has a model to tackle that. And also, we also need to stop putting gay people in a monolith as far as they're going to be liberal, they're going to be this, that, and third, because Buttigieg was not all that liberal. He was quite moderate.

So we need to take into consideration that maybe Kenyatta won't be as liberal as we think. You know, just because he is a minority of the minority does not necessarily mean he thinks that way. So do your research, Pennsylvania, in terms of who you want to vote for. Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly. Kelly, Kelly, have you actually...

Kelly, Kenyatta's a liberal. I understand that, but when I... No, no, no, no, no, no. We're not assuming he's a liberal. He is a liberal. The point that I'm making, which is the point that we're dealing with, that Pennsylvania

right now, Republicans control the legislature in Pennsylvania. So right now, they're trying to change the law to boot out literally, they're trying to change the law in Pennsylvania. And in fact, I reached out to Kenyatta to get him on the show to discuss this, where they want to go from

judges being elected statewide to them elected via district model so they can control the primary? And the Democrats have historically elected folks like Casey, Senator Casey, who is deemed a moderate center, maybe center right candidate to appeal to non-democratic voters, to appeal to independent voters. What I'm saying is that's real that he is going to have to deal with that, Michael. If I'm Kenyatta, what I'm doing is, I'm focusing on driving

an agenda to pull his voters out because you gotta win the primary first, but Democrats are going to be dealing with this very issue. Is this candidate too issue. Is this candidate too liberal? Is this candidate the right mix

to appeal to independents, all these other people? But what Democrats have better learned from the race in Maine, the race in Iowa, and Amy McGrath in Kentucky, is that if you have a candidate, Michael, that can't excite the voters,

it don't matter if they're liberal. It don't matter if they're moderate. It don't matter if they're conservative. Your ass is going to lose. And you can raise $50 million like Amy McGrath and you can be left with $30 million and you got blown out.

Yeah, I agree with that because you're going to have to have somebody who can galvanize support, get people to turn out and energize people. OK, energize people. And we have to also understand, see, this is going to be this is going to be a off year election. It's going to be a midterm election. So typically, in midterm elections, the turnout is less than a presidential election. So you have to have somebody who can energize the base, and then they have to take a page from Stacey Abrams

and turn out those disaffected voters, turn out those voters who normally don't vote, target the youth, but deal with the policies and show directly how policies will directly impact people's lives and make that life better. But yeah, you're right about that. I'm going to tell you right now, what Kenyatta's going to face are Democrats trying to decide early on how they're going to pick a middle-of-the-road person and what should be happening. This is what really should be happening. I'm going to quickly, very short, 20 seconds each.

I think what Democratic activists should be doing right now is applying pressure to the DSCC and Chuck Schumer and say, don't you pick our choices before the primary. I believe if Charles Booker could have beaten Amy McGrath, if they had not made her the anointed one, she barely beat Charles Booker. He would have gave Mitch McConnell a hell of a lot better race than, frankly, she did. So I just want to get your thoughts about that. Should the DSCC sit out primaries? First, you, Michael. Yeah, I think they should sit out and let the people decide who the candidate is going to be as opposed to trying to anoint the candidate.

Definitely. Kelly, should they sit it out or should they put their thumb on a scale and pick a candidate who can win the primary, who they think can win the general? I don't think that they are in touch enough to make that decision at this point as evidenced by last election. So I do think they should sit it out.

I don't think they will. But in the case that they do not sit it out, I really need them to listen to the constituents of Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions. And I also really need them to do their thorough research on each individual candidate who is running under the Democratic ticket and not just because of some type of backroom deal in which they want a certain person in office because of X, Y, and Z. They definitely need to do their research if they're going to not sit it out. But I do believe that they should sit it out. Rob, what do you think? They should do the exact opposite of what they normally do. They lose a whole lot, so do the opposite of what they usually do.

So they should sit out and let good candidates be good candidates because they're not very good at picking this. I got you. All right, folks, I certainly appreciate it. Thanks a lot, all of you, for joining us today. I've got to go to a break. When we come back, we're going to chat with Tashara Jones. She is running for mayor of St. Louis.

We'll be chatting with her right here here on roller martin unfiltered uh after this break we'll be back in a moment um for black americans right because of slavery because of of the the complete destroying of the past there really is no direct connection to various African countries. Right. But the reality is for Latinos, and even if you use that phrase, first of all, I'm from Texas,

so in Texas, Hispanics is used. Other parts of the country, they say no, call me Latino. Other folks, Chicago, call me Chicano. And so you also sort of have that going on. There's a connection with country as well. And so if you're from Mexico, if you're from Colombia, if you're from any other particular country, it's, yeah, I'm here, but I'm also from there. As opposed to,

no, no, no, this is my country. I'm involved in everything here. I think that's also something that's also at play. It is at play and it's unfortunate because it happens even when we're not talking about politics. I think that Latino is the word. It's very divided because we all have this allegiance to this other place that we came from. But I believe

that that's not helping us. That's not unifying the country. We need to come together and understand that this is where you're raising your kids. This is where you're raising your kids this is where you are this is where you're paying taxes this is where you're living this is your country this is where that this is where it matters know that there's not a piece of your life that government in some way does not involve i mean i i cracked up these conservatives down to your name everything down to your name everything i mean i mean just if you if you actually sat down and said okay what part of my life let me try to find something in my life that government in in and does not have a part of i can't think of a single thing

you can say fine they don't impact my marriage which they do because you gotta get that marriage license yep yep from the birth to the tomb and if you're gonna be here in the united states of america whether you like it or not you gotta know about it you gotta know it's history because when somebody knows about you more than you know yourself that's slavery that's volunteer slavery so it's almost like double the education we got to pick up of what this place is all about, how it works, how it runs. I'm a

firm believer being in 112 countries that you got to think global and act local. But you better ACT, act local. What still impacts and what creates change is when we mobilize. When we say we're not powerless and if I get with you and you and you and all of a sudden it's 10 and 20 and 100

and 500 and 2,000 and 5,000 all of a sudden you have mobilized people that creates that voting power and then when you throw somebody out it catches their attention real quick. But not only just that, they have to know what it is that they're standing for. Because if you have friends that talks politics, then of course we're having a decent conversation and I'm being educated at the same time. But if my group of people are not talking about that, then I still don't know. So I can unite with you, and then I'm making sure that you have the voice, but what if you don't have the courage to speak? So you're still getting a group of people together

that don't know how to do nothing. For me, the reason I see the value, so my parents worked elections. They volunteered for campaigns. They ran phone banks. I remember being seven, eight, nine years old. It was like, you had no choice.

It's not like you had to vote. It was like, yo, go over there for the next eight hours, stand there, and hand out these pamphlets to anybody who's walking in.

And then we'll bring you lunch. And then you got some water for yourself. It was kind of like, okay. Again, that was, it wasn't likely my brother could say no we're all right we're gonna stay at the house i didn't work that way and so for me um that wasn't that was a huge part of my upbringing and look at you now and it's very interesting because for me service was a huge

part of my upbringing and that's just something that's just you know it's a natural thing I don't think twice about going out and doing community service I don't think twice about giving up my Saturday morning even if I stayed out late on Friday night I don't think twice about going to church in the mornings I think so I think that might be even bigger than than the civics piece in schools I mean I think that at this point having that in schools at least gives the children the opportunity to go home and ask their parents so mom dad what is this what do you think we should do about this this is what I learned in school today let's talk about it at

least gives the children something to bring home and start a conversation with however if the parents start that for the children then you know then the children can go to school and say hey why am I not learning this here why why don't I have a civics class you know know what I mean? And we'll have more Roland Martins running around here. The King movement of 1955 is the first time in a very violent civilization, Western civilization, any sizable group of people started to work to change by insisting we can use non-violence power to create the change. Gandhi said that non-violent power, the power of life, is the greatest and most creative

force, power of the universe. And that if we human beings turn away from conventional wisdom towards using the gift of life, which is ours at birth, we would be surprised what the future of the human race will look like. All right, so a lot of y'all are always asking me about some of the pocket squares that I wear. Now, I don't know. Robert don't have one on one on now I don't particularly like the white pocket squares I don't like even the silk ones and so I was reading GQ magazine a number of years ago and I saw this guy who had this this pocket square here and it looks like a flower this is called a

shibori pocket square this is how the Japanese manipulate the fabric to create this sort of flower effect. So I'm going to take it out and then place it in my hand so you see what it looks like. And I said, man, this is pretty cool. And so I tracked down, it took me a year to find a company that did it. And so they make about 47 different colors. And so I love them because, again, as men, we don't have many accessories to wear. So we don't have many options. And so this is really a pretty cool pocket screen. And what I love about this here is you saw when it's in the pocket, you know, it gives you that flower effect like that.

But if I wanted to also, unlike other, because if I flip it and turn it over, it actually gives me a different type of texture. And so, therefore, it gives me a different look. So, there you go. So, if you actually want to get one of these Shibori pocket squares, we have them in 47 different colors. All you got to do is go to rollinglessmartin.com forward slash pocket squares. So, it's rollinglessmartin.com forward slash pocket squares. All you got to do is go to my website, and you can actually get this.

Now, for those of you who are members of our Bring the Funk fan club, there's a discount for you to get our pocket squares. That's why you also got to be a part of our Bring the Funk fan club. And so that's what we want you to do. And so it's pretty cool. So if you want to jazz your look up, you can do that. In addition, y'all see me with some of the feather pocket squares. My sister was a designer. She actually actually makes these they're all custom made so when you also go to the website you can also order one of the customized uh feather pocket squares uh right there at

rollingsmartin.com forward slash pocket squares so please do so and of course uh it goes to support the show and again if you're a brena Funk fan club member, you get a discount. This is why you should join the fan club. Think about the fact that 2043, we are going to be a nation that's majority people of color. I've really focused on this a lot on television, on radio, in my speeches. That my focus is trying to prepare us

to have demographic power while also having educational, economic power at the same time. Because there's nothing worse than having demographic numbers, but then you still don't have that economic power, that political power, and education power. Well, you know, you and I, and I think most people know and understand that education is what we've got to impress on all of our people.

We've got to help people to understand that if you want a decent quality of life, if you want the kind of quality of life where you're not having to worry about your food and your nutrition and, you know, being able to pay your bills or buy a house, then you've got to become educated. The more education you have, the larger the paycheck is. And of course, we've got to be involved in entrepreneurship, taking the talent that we have to create businesses. And there's a lot of opportunity for that.

I'm in the world of fiction. I mean, that's what I do. I'm an actress. I spent 35 years in this business. I've been in the business since I was 14. I was discovered in a basement theater in Philadelphia, a basement called Freedom Theater. And that's what I do. I play for a living. And I look and see that we're in a world that, I mean, it's bizarre where you can't tell

the fake from the real. These people are not faking it. That's what they're going to, they're willing to put that's, that's, they're willing to put their whole lives, their family's lives, their whole, everything they've accomplished around looking pathetic and weak around a table because this man showed up and told him that, you know, that he was the one and everybody should follow him. He didn't even have a good, he didn't even have a good argument. He's not Martin Luther King. He has no words. He has nothing. He's just rich and white and male. And so people want to see that power on display and then tell us that we're not, you know, that we're crazy. They can't do it anymore. That's

the good news. So the King movement of 1955 is the first time in a very violent civilization, western civilization, any sizable group of people started to work to change by insisting we can use non-violence power to create the change. Gandhi said that non-violent power, the power of life, is the greatest and most creative force, power of the universe. And that if we human beings turn away from conventional wisdom towards using the gift of life, which is ours at birth, we would be surprised what the future of the, which is ours at birth,

we would be surprised what the future of the human race will look like. A lot of activities in my neighborhood that was in close proximity. You know, my mom wasn't always there, so I didn't always have a ride to places. And you know, you wanna be able to walk down the street and get to something that's some food for your soul

in your community. You know, I relish the days of being in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and when I had to go out there and live with my people. They had actually black-owned corner stores. My uncle owned one. My Uncle Donald owned a cleaner's and a corner store. And he a city councilman down there now. It's like that was big for him.

He was like, yo, man, you got to own something. Got to own something. His wife was named Louise. It always killed me. I used to call him George Jefferson. His name was Donald because his wife was named Louise. And that was big to see my family own and stuff. And it just cultivated what my dad told me.

My dad, he didn't say a lot of good stuff, but the three things that he did give me, play chess, you'll be a thinker. You don't have to work for nobody. He told me that. thinker. You don't have to work for nobody. He told me that, he said, you don't have to work for nobody. The same energy that you put into for somebody else, you can put that same energy into for yourself. And then he'll go into his field.

See, they talking about black people don't wanna work. Black people just don't want no jobs. You know what I'm saying? We don't work for nobody else. We want our own stuff. Give me my own stuff, I come to work every day. You know what I'm saying? He go into his own field. And stuff. I come to work every day. He goes to his own field.

And, like, I don't work for anybody. I'm Deion Cawley. You're watching... Roland Martin Unfiltered. Stay woke. All right, folks, welcome back to Roland Martin Unfiltered. We're broadcasting live here from St. Louis. I've been saying for the last couple of years, any of you who watch this show,

we've been emphasizing the importance of all elections, not just presidential elections, not just U.S. Senate, not just Congressional, but also gubernatorial races, state races, and also local races. Every race matters, whether it's mayor, whether it's city council, whether it's school board. And so after we spent some time in Georgia, of course, covering the race of John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock running for the United States Senate, I told you that we would actually be traveling to other cities in 2021, covering various races, talking to candidates about what's happening. And so that's what brings us to St. Louis. There's a mayoral election taking place next month.

And one of the folks who is running for mayor, running for the second time, Tashara Jones, who joins us right now. How's it going? Good. Good to see you. Thanks for coming to St. Louis. So you ran last time, and that was, for a lot of folks, a frustrating experience. You had a number of African-American candidates who were running, and none won.

You came in very close in second there. This time around, there are three African-Americans who are running as well. Total of four candidates? Total of four. Total of four. What do you think the black community in st louis has learned from the last mayoral election uh hopefully they've learned that local elections matter and you need to show up for every election whether it's dog catcher city council and

you know obviously president hopefully we've also learned to coalesce around one candidate. While we still have three African-Americans in this race, the thing that's different this time around is that we have approval voting. So people get to vote for as many candidates as they want to in the primary. So you have ranked voting? It's like ranked choice, but they're not ranked. So the top two vote getters then go to a runoff a month later. So, but those who are voting, they're only voting for one person. In the primary, they can vote for as many candidates as they approve of. So there are four candidates on the ballot. So a person can cast four ballots? Yeah, they can vote for all four candidates if they like them. Wow. Now that's a little different. Yes, it's different.

It's real different there. So with that in mind, what was the turnout in the last election? 28%. So that means that 72% of eligible voters did not vote in the election. Exactly. So what have you been focused on since that last election? Because at the end of the day, you think about the race with Cori Bush. She was blown out by Congressman Lacey Clay. She then runs again, beats him the second time because they looked at

what happened the first time, what they employ in the second campaign. Yeah, so this time, well, the last four years, we've spent all that time just having conversations with people, telling them also about the current administration's record. And they've also seen that there hasn't been much movement. So we celebrated, well, not celebrated, but we marked five years since the death of Mike Brown. And people saw that, you know, nothing has been done or almost nothing has been done based on the reports that we put together through the Ferguson Commission to address systemic racism in the region, to address criminal justice reform. And so people are angry and people are upset. So hopefully they are incited to vote this time around. We also saw record turnout in the August primary where Cori Bush won. So hopefully we'll have that same sort of turnout, which was actually upwards of about 40 percent. Hopefully we'll have that same turnout on March 2nd. So what what is what has it been like? What is the messaging been like? Obviously, we're still operating in a covid world. But what has it been like to get people to understand the importance of elections like this? Again, I mean, most the reality is most elections when you're in a presidential year, it's because of that level of energy and money. You've been inundated with ads as well. Then there's a massive drop-off

when you have other elections. Right, so there is a drop-off. And so we have been going back to our supporters. I also ran in that election. So we have a database of people that we knew came out and voted. So we've been going back to those supporters and making sure that they know another election's coming up. So hopefully we'll see not the same turnout in August, but something close to

it. When you talk about what has to change, you've been involved also in this battle in the last several years when it comes to your position as a treasurer. I've had Kim Gardner on as well. It seems as if there is a constant assault on black elected officials. I've had folks from the black police union on as well talking about those issues. And so race is dominant, if you will. I dare say three black candidates, a white candidate, but the fifth candidate still is, which is really the huge one, race in this city. And when it comes to having power. Yes, absolutely. Racism is in the center of all of our decisions. St. Louis is one of the most hyper-segregated

regions in the country. If you drive just, I don't know if you've driven from north to south here, as soon as you cross Del Mar Boulevard, the atmosphere immediately changes. And so we have to address that. We have to address the systemic racism that led us to this point. We have to address that there are, just like investment in some neighborhoods are intentional, disinvestment in Black neighborhoods has been intentional. And so we have to reverse that trend. And as far as our local media, it seems like they have an all-out assault on Black, especially Black women in this town, Black women in leadership. As you look at the editorial board

from our local paper, they have written nothing but crazy editorials about me, about Darlene Green, Kim Gardner, Cori Bush, the list goes on and on. And so for the folks who are watching and listening, what are the demographics of the city? Because a lot of people out there assume that St. Louis is a majority black city. It used to be, but we are now majority minority. So we're about 46% black, 46% white, and everything else is Hispanic and Asian. Now, has that been because African-Americans have been moving to other cities in the county? In many ways, the same thing we saw would happen in Atlanta, where suburban cities have grown tremendously because of blacks leaving the core of Atlanta.

Absolutely. Absolutely. In the last census, they are projecting that we lost 21,000 African-Americans since the last census. Wow. Now, I interviewed Wesley Bell today. We're going to be having the interview later this month. And one of the things that he said is that he said that what he hears a lot from young folks is I can't wait to graduate and leave. How are you going to address that because if you're having a drain on talent the reality is that's really how cities die. It's sort of like churches. If you're not, if that next generation isn't staying at the church, that church gets older, folks begin to die out, that church will eventually fade away because there's simply not enough members to support it. What is your plan to stop that from happening? Well, we have to provide opportunities for our young people to

thrive. And right now we don't do a good job of that. So that means we need to push diversity within our union. St. Louis is a huge union town, and there are so many tables that I sit around with union leadership, and they don't look like me. So we need to push there. We need to take care of our industries. Right now, our industries are like biotech, healthcare, so how can we push diversity there? We have two flagship universities that train doctors that go all across this country, yet we aren't training our doctors that graduate from our local high schools. So how can we develop a pipeline to train the next generation of health professionals? We have a HBCU in the center of town.

How can we lift up that HBCU to train the kids of the future so they can take these jobs and take my position someday? But we don't do a good job at providing opportunity for our young people to thrive and survive here. Here's another huge problem that you have to deal with, and explain to folks, because you serve in the legislature as well, this weird relationship in this state, in St. Louis, where essentially the legislature wants to run the city. Right. Explain for folks who don't quite understand that dynamic. Yeah, so our legislature tends to,

they say that they love local control, but every chance they get, they take away St. Louis' local control. I'm sorry, hold up. You mean the people who say less government and big government and get out of our business? Okay, I'll just check it. Exactly. And I'm a recovering legislator, so I saw this in action when I was in the legislature. But I think that we don't do also a good job of building relationships with our legislators. I served with our current governor. And so if elected, I look forward to rebuilding that relationship. And I think relationships are primary. So we have to do the hard work and also have them realize that if they try to destroy

St. Louis, they destroy the state. We are the economic engine of the state. Between ourselves and Kansas City, we provide two-thirds of tax revenue for the entire state. So you would think that they would be pushing development and pushing things our way to help us instead of trying to hurt us. You talked about biotech and health care. We've seen a number of Midwestern states lose their luster. When you talk about Illinois, when you talk about Missouri, when you think about Wisconsin, when you think about Pennsylvania, Ohio, a

lot of people also, white folks getting older, passing away, younger folks leaving these states as well, losing their representation in Congress and other places like that. So from a business standpoint, what is your strategy to actually attract businesses, attract corporations? What type of, where's the potential growth on the business side that would actually cause folks to move here and stay here? Well, I think one of the things we saw through the pandemic was the ability of people to work from anywhere in the country. And recently, Square has decided to relocate a lot of its employees from Silicon Valley to St. Louis. And so I've been talking with the CEO there and Jack Dorsey, Jack Dorsey and his partner, Jim McKelvey. And we were talking about how can we create an environment where 10 other companies in Silicon Valley want to follow Square to Midwestern cities?

Because you've also seen the birth of some other cities like Nashville and Indianapolis and Kansas City even. So we need to talk to the leadership in those cities, see what kind of changes they made to attract those businesses and try to do the same thing here because i am not a fan of reinventing the wheel or trying to come up with something out of the blue we need to see what works and replicate it here or what often happens is when when folks are running they say if we could just go back to how things used to be because what what used to be the dominant industries here in st louis the dominant industry used to be the dominant industries here in St. Louis? The dominant industry used to be we have a huge auto. We used to have a huge auto industry. The auto plant used to be actually right next door to where we are right now. And Boeing or what used to be McDonnell Douglas used to have a huge plant here.

And now so they have other plants across the country. We still have some of that here, but not as big as it used to have a huge plant here and now so they have they have other plants across the country we still have some of that here but not as big as it used to be and obviously being in st. Louis and how's your bush huge as well right yeah but in bed bought in as a bush and now they're they have a smaller footprint here too and so in trying to make the connection to folks here to say a greater future, what has that conversation been like? What has it been like in talking to black voters and white voters who may say, OK, no, we have two different agendas here? Well, I think the number one agenda for both black and white voters has been crime, crime in public safety and criminal justice reform. We just saw one of the most violent years on record in 2020 here in St. Louis.

We had over 260 murders. But also an issue for attacking crime in public safety, it has to be a regional approach, because there are, when you're looking at St. Louis from outside, you don't see that there's a difference between St. Louis City and St. Louis County and that the elected officials are different there. So we need to provide a united front on making sure that we're attacking our problems as a region,

not just as a city, because it doesn't it doesn't stop at the at at our borders or the mississippi river right because we're right across the river from illinois so how do or how do we uh engage our partners in east st louis and help east st louis build up um and address poverty all around the region well the the thing about what you just laid out in my interview with Kim Gardner today, she talked about the size of this city's police department and a massive number of police. And so every time you turn around, people say, oh, if you have this issue with crime, we'll just have more cops. But what is the root cause of your crime issues here? The root cause is poverty and mental health and substance abuse services.

So police don't need to be the only answer when you dial 9-1-1. And St. Louis has the largest-sized police force of 10 other cities our size. Okay, repeat that for the person who might have missed what you just said. St. Louis has the largest police force of 10 other cities our size. Even larger than Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, which are the same population, they have smaller police forces than St. Louis. Wow. So obviously the idea of saying, hey, more cops is not the solution.

No, it's not. It's more social services. It's more social services. It's more diversion programs. It's more the things that Kim Gardner and Wesley Bell are working on. It's making sure that, again, that cops aren't the only answer when you dial 911. Because also, St. Louis has more police shootings per capita than 100 cities in the country. But you also have what has been described by both those individuals I talk with, what

they call one of the most racist police unions in the country. Amen. How have they been? I take it they are not a fan of you running for mayor. No, they are not. They are not a fan of you running for mayor. No, they are not. They are not. And I served with the business manager, Jeff Rort, when I was in the legislature. And I've told anybody who will listen, he does not have an audience in my office.

They're going to have to change if they want to deal with me. And so for folks who don't know, again, some cities have a strong mayor council form of government. Some have a city manager form of government. What's the form of government here? What authority does a mayor really have? So they say that St. Louis has a weak mayor form of government because I require at least one other vote to make any spending decisions through the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. But I submit that a mayor is only as weak as the person in that job because you can still have a weak mayor form a government but a strong leader can do strong good things in that position. When it comes to

overseeing the police department is so what is that like because what people often talk about the issue is collective bargaining, those contracts, that a lot of the problems that we have is when police unions dominate those particular contracts. When is the contract up in this city? And what are you saying to the people that you're going to make changes to the police department to deal with these police shootings? So currently, as I understand it, the collective bargaining agreement is being negotiated as we speak. And that's with a small group of people that includes the personnel director, the director of public safety, and obviously the police union and a couple of others. And I'm not sure if they're going to reach their negotiations before we get to April 6th or April 20th,

which is when the new mayor will be sworn in. But I know that there are some things that need to change within that agreement, especially related to discipline, which currently keeps us from holding officers accountable. How so? So there are some provisions with it. There are some differences between the policies and procedures in the police department, and there are provisions within the collective bargaining agreement that talk about discipline.

And so those pieces need to come out. Because if you're talking about a collective bargaining agreement that talk about discipline. And so those pieces need to come out. Because if you're talking about a collective bargaining agreement, you're talking about salaries, hours, things like that. But there's a discipline piece in there. So as far as I understand it, the way that there's like a time period that keeps us from holding cops accountable between like how how many days um a particular uh officer has been suspended versus it doesn't match up with the policy that's in the personnel department and because it's different there's there are loopholes

basically i mean you i mean and look you just dealt with this we talked about City having you know issues financially dealing with issues with crime I mean the city just settled for five million dollars a black police officer who was undercover during the protest White cops didn't know who he was Viciously beat him and in the city had to pay this black cop. They settled for $5 million. And what I'm trying to understand is,

where are the fiscal conservatives in St. Louis? Are they angry with these police settlements, these police abuse cases? I haven't seen them. I have not seen anybody be angry. There was another case that I think that also may be settled of a female officer who was killed while they were playing Russian roulette one night with other officers. So that's another pending case, and they tried to cover that up.

So if there's any outrage, I haven't seen it. That is, and what's interesting is, look, I cover cases, I cover stories all across the country. And I can tell you, I probably have done, the only other city I would dare say that I've probably covered more cases of problematic police officers would be NYPD compared to St. Louis. Wow. I mean, it's like if something comes up and it's not one of those cities, because I remember we did the story where they were busting these cops who were using racial

epitaphs and other things in the Facebook group. Significant number of St. Louis police officers. 22. And then you had a battle going on with the police chief as to whether or not those folks should go. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That has to be disconcerting if you're a black resident where you have folks who are unwilling to even get rid of racist cops.

Right. Or, you know, the other part of that is our civilian review board. We have we passed legislation to create a civilian review board or civilian oversight board. And the number of cases that have none of the cases have been sustained. And and it's a tricky way to describe it, I did talk to the people there. There's a form that's supposed to be filled out when a citizen has a complaint against an officer. And that form is supposed to be shared between internal affairs and the civilian oversight board. But only internal affairs is only using their form. So they may have thousands of complaints, whereas the citizen oversight board only has like tens. Like 42 complaints versus internal affairs has thousands or hundreds because when they say, well, why haven't people, why don't we have more complaints? Well, because the person didn't ask for that form.

Okay. So what the hell is the point of a civilian review board then? Exactly. And the civilian review board, who appoints them? They're appointed by the Board of Aldermen and the mayor. But this is a communication issue. I don't fault the civilian review board. I fault the Internal Affairs Division for not using the right form and not being a fair player here because they know that the form exists but it's the burden is on the person making the complaint to request the right form. How do they know? So, here's what I don't understand. Why is it the city doesn't simply stipulate because the city

oversees the police department. It's in the ordinance. No, this is the form that you give. Right, it's in the ordinance. That's the form that's supposed to be used. Or how about this here? Okay, so when somebody makes a request, does the name of the person who they reach out to,

is that required to be on that form? I don't know. See, again, here's the way my mind thinks. If the internal affairs is giving people the wrong form, fine. From a city standpoint, require that Internal Affairs person, they have to put their name on the form. So if somebody says, this is the form they gave me, and it says Jim Jones handed me this form,

y'all think you can go to Jim Jones and say, why in the hell did you hand the wrong form? Exactly. To me, that's how you fix that. I mean, because I mean. You have to hold people accountable. That's the game they're playing right there. Exactly.

So how do you have an internal affairs, which is supposed to be investigating wrongdoing of police, pretty much saying, nah, we're going to try investigating wrongdoing of police, pretty much saying, nah, we're going to try to cover up as much as possible. Would you say that that probably is the greatest issue that's going to drive this election, this relationship between police and citizens and accountability? That's one of them, and addressing crime in our community. We have the reputation of being one of the most violent cities in America, and so when people look at coming here or relocating here, companies look at

coming here, they're like, no, because they type in St. Louis and that's the first thing that comes up on a search. So no, I'm not going to want to go there if they're the most violent city in America. So how do we push back on that narrative? How do we take care of our people? How do we change that narrative to make people want to come here? But we have to take care of our people first. And how are you proposing to change that narrative? Because the reality is that has been built up over a long period of time it has been so because it it's been built up over time uh it's not going to change overnight but i think a strong mayor with leader with strong leadership skills who's going to be a strong champion for

this region and for this city um is is what's going to change that narrative. We talked earlier, you mentioned you talked about having two flagship universities here. And St. Louis University, Harris Stowe. When it comes to addressing these problematic issues here, how are you incorporating them into this? How are you having them as stakeholders at the table to address what's going on? See, I don't think they've ever been asked to be at the table. So we have to bring them to the table. We have to bring everybody to the table

because it's not just the problem of city government. It's not just the problem of the churches. It's not just the problem of the churches. It's not just the problem of the schools. We have to bring everybody to the table to see how we're going to put our collective heads together to put a path forward for our region. We've done at least seven or eight different reports to all say in the same thing that people need more jobs and opportunity and workforce development and training, and we need to invest in North St. Louis, we need to address our school system, our school system's fragmented, all of the things, right?

And nobody's ever taken the reports and actually done something with them. So how do we take all of these reports? And of course, race is at the center of all of them. It talks about the systemic racism that's inherent in this region. So we need to take all of those reports, put them together in a strategic plan and start addressing these issues. But everybody has to be at the table in order to do it. Actually, I think probably what you ought to do is, I think what you ought to do is if you, if you running, what you should do is you should have a bonfire. You should take every single one of those reports and burn them all. Because here's the whole deal.

If you, I don't care what it is. I don't care if it's a business. I don't care if it's a neighborhood. I don't care if it's dealing with the city. If all folks have done are issued reports, then the only folk who've actually gotten any work are the folks who write in the reports and the printer. Right.

Because this last one on economic development cost $800,000 to tell us what we already knew. Okay, so, okay, who spent $800,000? Not us. Not us. But it's from the development fees that they get through SLDC. It's a crazy setup. That is crazy.

You pay me $800,000, I'll get you a report. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. And so the folk who do these reports, that sounds like that's the only people who are actually doing well. Right. What is the relationship? First off, I'm going to go back to the business relationship in a minute. I still want to go back to the two, to the college and universities. You talked about the poverty piece. You talked about that. You have these two distinct universities. And so how do you, or are they doing it, how are you driving folks from your school system

to these universities, and maybe not just for a four-year degree, but two-year programs, certification programs, where you also are helping folk build a skill set. We're not. We're not. And we have more than two flagship universities. We have, there's Maryville, St. Louis University, Washington University, Harris-Stowe, and Lindenwood. And so I started a program called the College Kids Children's Savings Account Program. And we open college savings accounts for all kids in public school from kindergarten up.

And what I want to do as mayor is bookend that program. So we start the accounts at kindergarten because we're trying to increase families' financial capability. But also also how are we addressing the needs of our kids as they're coming out of high school? So we should be matching them up with union apprenticeships or two- or four-year vocational school, or how are we using our existing university systems to really reach out to all of our kids to say, hey, you know, you can come here for free or reduced tuition. But I don't think we're not pulling those two pieces together. So it's just curious to me that if you have a fundamental problem in the city you don't have a situation where you are involving all of

the stakeholders and so um that that that that's strange so how in the heck can anybody think something's going to get fixed if you don't pull business health, law enforcement together and say, we have a collective problem. Right. Right. Exactly. You can't. And that's the threat that I've seen in cities across this country where they have already tackled these issues, where they're growing. Right. These small Midwestern cities that are growing, they pull everybody to the table. But for some reason in st louis even between the city and the county we can't seem to do that but that stops if i'm elected i already have great relationships with with uh elected officials in the county um and

and we need and i have been pushing that's the only thing that i've been saying we need to solve our problems as a region not just you can't just put it on the city we have to our problems as a region, not just, you can't just put it on the city. We have to do it as a region. Everybody has to be at the table because our destinies are linked. Business. One of the things that I've heard from several people is that you have business interests who act as if they control the city and not elected officials. Clearly you agree. Yes, I've seen that. I've seen that during this pandemic. We had two different health directives from the city and the county. For a while, you could still eat inside in city restaurants, but you couldn't in county restaurants because our county executive is a medical doctor and knew that it was not safe to be eating inside.

But in the city, there are certain business people who were pushing the mayor to say, no, we need these restaurants open because, you know, and I get it. You know, I get it that, you know, COVID was horrible for a lot of businesses. Still is. And it still is, right. But we shouldn't have different health directives based on, you know, whether or not you're on one side of the street or the other. Well, one of the things that, as you were talking about in this issue of crime, is there a,

I think back to how I grew up in Houston. My parents were founders of our neighborhood civic club. Do you have an extensive neighborhood civic plan here in terms of where you are charging neighbors with creating clubs to control their own destiny to be able to to assist folks in whether it's dealing with issues with crime but dealing with economic issues because one of the things i say often when we talk about these elections that i explain to people that elections are the end of one process at the beginning of another and that if when you look at cities where they've actually been able to

do uh some great things it is because people also were challenged to be to have an investment in the change in the city and so what is your plan what is your strategy to do that to say look y'all you can't look to me to solve these problems I'm gonna need you who if you're living in this area when you see something to say something if you if there if there's an overgrown lot or their trash needs to be picked up, I need you to be able to make that phone call or create the kind of civic-minded organizations in these neighborhoods to also change them while you're also trying to make changes at City Hall. So it's real simple. We need to have more town halls with our neighborhood associations. In some parts of the city, you have active neighborhood associations, and in some, they're not that in some And so I plan on having t bringing all of the depart

So when we're sitting in as covid lifts, when we're with with neighbors in th they say, you know, we've or you know, this lot is overgrown or, you know, these are the issues we're having, then that department head is right there to handle that situation.

And it's nothing new. It's not rocket science. It's just meeting the people where they are and addressing their problems. And so when you talk about, so the areas where you don't have strong neighborhood associations, who lives there? We do.

African Americans. So how do you change that? Because, first of all, you're going to need the neighborhood associations to have town halls. Right. So how do you change that? Are you charging church leaders? Are you charging community leaders? So what is happening there?

I think people will be involved if they see that someone is responding to their needs. And right now, they don't even see government responding to their needs. They don't see their trash picked up on a normal basis, their streets being swept. So if we start doing the little things that they expect from their government, I think that they will be more involved. Also I think that we need to, we have a whole, we have a really high percentage of renters in the city. And so how do we change those renters into homeowners?

And that way, that also engages people in neighborhood associations. Now, are they, do you have a high percentage of renters versus homeowners because you have low availability of houses to purchase? Is that because of the home foreclosure crisis where basically large hedge funds went in and bought up allotments? We saw this really happen in Arizona, a lot of different places, where they bought up with the banks and allotments of 20,000, 25,000 homes, and they don't want folks to be homeowners because they're making more money of folks being renters. It's a combination of that and also a combination of redlining. And there's the racism again. There are homes just probably in this neighborhood where we're in now that if you purchase it, it won't appraise out because

there are no comps because there's been no lending in the neighborhood. So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If there's no lending, there's no comps. If there's no comps, then it won't appraise out. So how do we push back on financial institutions to lend more in black neighborhoods? Because right now they don't. and i see the reports every year i call these banks and credit unions to my table and say what are you doing you need to do more okay so i also i answer this since you've been operating as a treasurer

are the banks that are practicing redlining is the city's money in those banks? Some of it, yes. Some of it, yes. We have about 13 banks that we do business with. And I push back. I push back. And we have to continue to push. Who has the power to pull the money out of their banks? The treasurer.

I mean, that was one of the things that Maynard Jackson did. One of the things that Maynard Jackson did when he said there were no blacks on boards of directors, he called the banks in and he said, look, y'all need to find some African-Americans on your board of directors. And they said, well, there are none. We can't find any. And then he said, no, they exist. And they said, well, we're not going to place any. He then called the city treasurer in and say, pull the city money out of their banks.

Then all of a sudden, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Because, look, at the end of the day, every discussion I have, I don't care what it is, every discussion comes back to money. This is America. If you're not talking about the money, you're actually not talking about anything of substance.

And that really is it, dealing with the money aspect and challenging folks in that way. Same thing when you talk about growing black businesses. I go back to Maynard Jackson again for Atlanta. And I tell people all the time, I think, forget him being black mayor. I said, probably one of top five all-time best politicians in America ever because he understood how to use the power of the political office to change the economic conditions. Exactly. And so have you spent time studying him and others to say,

if I am able to be elected this is how I'm going to lead and operate. Yes, absolutely. My father who was Comptroller of the City of St. Louis was a protege of Maynard's and one of the things that he's all told me that Maynard said all the time is that I didn't have set-aside programs I just set it aside. Yeah. And that's what I mean about intentionality, right? Just like disinvestment is intentional, investment is intentional. And so we need to make intentional decisions to say that we're not going to give you tax dollars, our tax dollars for investing in neighborhoods that don't need another tax dollar.

But we can give it to you over here where this neighborhood needs investment and you're going to work with this community to make sure that investment happens with them and not to them. See, I think one of the things that, again, looking at how to use the power, you look at how do you grow black businesses. And again, something else that Jackson did,

said, look, the city pays 180 days. These black businesses cannot float their companies that long. Say it fine. You know that they are city approved and they're getting city contracts, requiring any bank the city puts money in to provide credit lines to businesses that have city contracts. He said you know they're gonna we gonna pay them so the money is gonna come in and so that's one one of the ways to help those businesses grow by pairing if you able to get a city contract you can be able to get a credit line from a bank that's already that we're putting money in so essentially you're recirculating taxpayer dollars. Yeah, absolutely. And and that's one of the one of the practices I have now in the treasurer's office. If there are if we have responses to RFPs and it doesn't include black businesses, I keep it open until they're black businesses that come to the table. And I am catching hell right now for giving a multi-million dollar contract

to a black woman-owned business who can do the work. She did her bid. She won it outright on her own. But because she was also a campaign donor like everybody else, then all of a sudden there's an issue. But she does the work. As if, I'm sorry, so the requirement in St. Louis that in order for you to be on the contract, you can't be a campaign donor? No, there's no requirement. Because if that was the case, then nobody would be doing it. Nobody would get a contract.

Exactly. See, that is the, I think one of the things that we've been talking about on my show, really for the last year, and I've been using this hashtag, where's our money in economic social justice, that what happens is we spend a lot of time about criminal justice reform, mass incarceration, and I keep saying, if you don't make the money a part of that, they got no problem with us talking about uh everything they don't have to

deal with the money but as coretta scott king said when she said when my martin started talking about the money that's when they killed him exactly that's when they killed him because he talked about universal basic income uh the the the uh they talked about the march on washington but it was for the march on washington for and freedom. Right, they always leave that part off. So yeah, you know, he was transitioning to silver rights

in addition to civil rights, and so they intersected. A few minutes left before we end this, and we saw, I spent lots of time, like I said, in Georgia. Folks have been, and numerous stories have been done talking about

the work of Stacey Abrams, Right in a Fair Fight, the New Georgia Project. Do you have, is there an entity or multiple entities who are looking to replicate that effort? R by saying, look, we can't

wait on campaigns, we can't wait on politicians to do it, that we have to be able to mobilize and organize people. We saw the level of energy that took place after Ferguson. Is that happening, and what role are they playing in this election? Yes, absolutely. That's Action St. Louis led by Kayla Reed, and she's doing a fantastic job. If Action St. Louis had not been here pushing the envelope, educating our voters, we would not have seen the election of Kimberly Gardner.

We would not have seen the election of Wesley Bell. And they were a key player in my race in 2017. They've endorsed me in this race in 2021. They have since launched what's called the People's Agenda, and they are going to use that to hold our elected officials accountable. They've been pushing on closing the workhouse, which is a jail that should have been closed years ago. It's uninhabitable. And so, yes, we have Action St. Louis on the ground, pushing the envelope, making changes in elections and electoral politics, educating our voters, registering people to vote. And I see them becoming the next New Georgia project. There's somebody out there who is saying, I had no time for this. I don't trust

none of y'all. I don't think any of this stuff is going to change. It's not going to have any relevance for me whatsoever. So the camera on the left, look into that one and talk directly to that person as to why they must be engaged in this election, vote Mark II. Let's talk directly to him. What would you say to him? I would say two things. Number one, you should be able to succeed here regardless of your skin color, who you love, how you worship, or whatever zip code you live in. And right now, St. Louis does not provide that opportunity for you. And as mayor, I will provide that opportunity for you. And the second thing I would say is, you know, it's one thing to have a vision and a platform, but it's something totally different to actually implement that vision and platform. And that's exactly what I've done in the treasurer's office over the last eight years. I'm the only candidate in this race that has the executive experience of turning a

vision into a platform, the management experience of managing a staff of hundreds and a budget of millions of dollars, and the national relationships to put St. Louis back on the map. Because that's what we want, right? We want to make sure that st louis participates in the growth like other midwestern cities our size and it is our time and you need a champion and a fighter in the mayor's office and i will be that mayor now someone uh and i've seen some of y'all comments you know y'all know during the show we look at uh what y'all say on youtube and facebook and periscope and all that sort of stuff like that.

And someone said that, Roland, there are three black candidates who are running and why aren't you talking to all three? Because only one called me. So the point I'm making is here, and y'all know, we travel around this country. We reach out to people, people reach out to me as well. And I said on the show, hey, we're going to go to these places. And then when I reached out to Cheryl, I said, hey, love to sit down and chat with you about the run for mayor. The reason, and this is why I keep also arguing to folks who are watching, well, you must support what we do, because the reality is MSNBC will not call her until she wins. Let me just go ahead and unpack that for y'all, okay?

Same thing. These folks will not call on Cori Bush until she upset Lacey Clay. Y'all remember Justin Fairfax. I had him on my show several times when he was running for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. But it wasn't until he won Lieutenant Governor of Virginia that MSNBC called him. And he said that his first interview after he won was not going to be on Rachel Maddow's show, was going to be on my TV One show. He said, because Roland called me when they didn't call me. And so that's why it's important for us to understand the power and the importance of black platforms, for us to be able, as the first black newspaper, Freedom's Journal, wrote on March 16th, 1827, we wish to plead our own cause.

Too long have others spoken for us. And so we certainly appreciate all the folks who watch. And that's why we want you to support what we do. You can do so, of course, by going to our Cash App, dollar sign RM Unfiltered, paypal.me forward slash rmartinunfiltered, venmo.com forward slash rmunfiltered. Zelle is Roland at rolandsmartin.com. And, of course, you can also mail to us,

New Vision Media, Inc., 1625 K Street, Northwest, Suite 400, Washington, D.C., 2006. We always end the show with all the folks who support us. So y'all can go ahead and roll those credits beginning. Tashar, we certainly appreciate being with you here, having this conversation. Good luck. March 2nd. And of course, as any candidate, you probably don't want to run off. But if there is a runoff that's taking place in April, when? Yes, April 6th. April 6th.

And then a new mayor sworn in when? April 20th. Dang. That ain't much time between the election, the runoff, and then business starts. No, it's not. We need some serious election reform there. All right. Well, certainly good luck with that. We certainly appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Thank all of you. I'll be back in the studio on Monday. Don't forget, next week, though, we're on the road. We're going to be in Atlanta on Tuesday. Then, of course, we'll be broadcasting live from Tuskegee, Alabama. I'll be interviewing Fred Gray, 90-year-old Fred Gray, civil rights veteran, on Wednesday in Tuskegee. And then we'll be in Jacksonville, Florida on Thursday. We certainly appreciate it. Thanks a bunch. Y'all take care. Holler!

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 met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real.

It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I always had to be so good no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling.

The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at taylorpapersceiling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. This is an iHeart Podcast.