#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Roland moderates 2019 #APhiA Convention Public Program: Maximizing The #DivineNine's power

Episode Date: July 27, 2019

7.26.19 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Roland moderates 2019 #APhiA Convention Public Program: How can we maximize the power of the #DivineNine? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Members of the Divine Nine, first we'd like to invite Mr. Ricky Fratter, Ricky Lewis, the first vice grand basilisk of Omega Psi Phi to the podium. Please give him a round of applause as he comes forward. We now want to invite the grand pole mark of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity to the podium. Give him a round of applause as he comes forward. Just go down. We would also now like to invite Tracy Atkins,

the Far Western Region Director of Delta Sigma Theta, to the podium. We'd also now like to invite Katina Simeon, Director of the South Central Region of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority to the podium. We now would like to invite the honorable Chris Raid, the International First Vice President of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity to the podium. And now we would like to invite the International President, Valerie Hollingsworth Baker, the International President of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, to the podium.

And we have Ms. Liberty Rashida Liberty, the International First Grand Anti-Bacillus of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority to the podium. Give them a round of applause as they come to the podium. We have some other elected officials who are in the audience with us also, one of whom I'd like us to acknowledge with an enthusiastic round of applause as he comes to the podium. The Honorable Aaron Ford, the Attorney General for the great state of Nevada. Give him a round of applause. The Attorney General for the state of Nevada. Give him a round of applause. The Attorney General. Have a seat right there.

Thank you. We are so honored to have these distinguished guests with us today. Please be seated. And now, to moderate this part of the discussion, where we as the Divine Nine will discuss the solutions how we will use our collective power as men and women of university preparation and training committed to public service committed to uplift committed to making life better through scholarship leadership and service and now to

facilitate this discussion please join me in welcoming brother roland martin the social justice commentator of america and the world brother roland martin the social justice commentator who fears no man who will stand when others say it's all right. You know. How y'all doing? So they sent me this here, the dress code is jacket and tie. I said, I ain't wearing no damn jacket and tie.

Just letting y'all know. I got to be a little different. Glad to be here. Glad to see all of you. Literally just landed from Detroit for the NAACP convention where we've been for the last three days. And I hate I can't be here for the rest of the weekend because I leave tomorrow for the National Urban League convention. So we'll be there. So it's a busy week.

National Bar Association is also this week. So we just call this Black Week. Can't be in all the places, but we're here. And so we want to start. So let me set the tone for this. We're going to talk about solutions. And I spoke about this two years ago when I gave the Brotherhood speech to the to Alphas. And then I spoke at the Delta Convention this year.

And so to put this in context. So if you understand. So we talk about Divine Nine. We sit here and we talk about a lot of membership and we all get all excited. But the reality is, if you look at black America, there is no other institution that has vertical and horizontal leadership like the Divine Nine. In terms of we're international, we're national, we're regional, we're state, we have grad chapters, undergrad chapters, and we have local initiatives. And I dare say we are wasting our power. We are insulated internally, but not leveraging our power externally. And I'm going to begin, I'm going to start this way, and I leveraging our power externally. And I'm going to begin, I'm going to start this way,

and I'm going to speak, so I want the Delta representative and Omega to speak to this. I'm also vice president of digital for the National Association of Black Journalists. And when we called out CNN for their lack of no black producers, no black senior producers, VPs, SVPs, EVPs, and direct reports, first, the first fraternity that stood with us, of course, was Alpha. I hit Brother Ward on Thursday. We hit the letter on Friday.

And Delta stood with us. Omega stood with us. The impact of that is when they named a black SVP head of diversity, we said we're still not satisfied. The next week they named a brother to be head of diversity, we said, we're still not satisfied. The next week they named a brother to be vice president of the digital side, we said, we're still not satisfied. The next week they named another sister to be executive editor for the digital, we said, we're still not satisfied.

But the point is, AT&T, who owns them now, got the message when alphas and deltas and omegas and the NAACP and other groups stood with us because when they saw that many black folks saying we are concerned about your numbers then they responded speak to again how we get outside of ourselves getting so locked into our business and how we need to be leveraging our numbers to force change externally, not just in political and not just in politics, but in community as well. Go right ahead. Good evening. I am Tracy Akins, as mentioned before. So I think one of the most important things that we have to understand is we have to use our numbers because we are heavy in numbers so we have to use those numbers and leverage that in our communities because we have

people that are sitting in certain positions and those positions we have to use them to our best advantage so that we can get outside of as you indicated just outside of, as you indicated, just outside of ourselves, but because those people are working in the community every day. So we have to take our numbers and truly work in our community. That's what we said we're here to do is to work in the community. So we have to start in that community and make our headway there so that we can get done whatever we need to do in every environment. But Ricky, are they seeing us in our colors on a consistent basis or are we living off

of our folk who came before us? Ricky Lewis. I told y'all y'all going to need to buckle up. So if y'all think it's going to be a little, if y'all want to be nice and y'all should have invited my wife, she would have prayed with y'all. it's going to be a little uncomfortable, if y'all want to be nice, and y'all should have invited my wife. She would have prayed with y'all. She's a minister. God gave her a wonderful spirit of comfort, but God gave me a spirit of discomfort. So I'm just letting y'all know right now, it might be a little uncomfortable in here, but y'all deal with it.

Go ahead. Thank you for that, Ricky Lewis, First Vice Grand Bachelors. The legacy of our organization is on the men and women who came before us. But I think they expect us to do a little better now. I just think sometimes I wonder of all the national meetings we have and the millions of dollars

we spend in these nice fancy hotels and rental cars and all the food we buy and the gifts we buy. What if we just paused our national meetings for a year? We just, all the divine now, we just pause for a year and all that money we normally would spend, let's put that somewhere, some investment,

let's buy some Apple stock or something of that nature. Just think about the possibilities we could do that. I think that's what our ancestors, think about our founders who came before us and the shows that we stand on. But Valerie, are we too risk averse? Are we so scared of losing our 501c3 status? Are we so afraid of what others might say that that prevents us from leveraging our power in terms of pushing things at school boards uh in terms of pushing things to county commissioners uh and again we meet for our meetings but do those folks see red and white black and gold purple and gold uh blue and gold blue and white do they see those colors and then when they see us coming in they're like

well i don't know who these people are all dressed alike, but I might want to respond. Are we too risk-averse? No. We got to do a better job of telling America who we are collectively. We do a good job, I think, individually, but we can't do this alone. We were, Debra and I were

in the NAACP convention a couple of days ago and we were on a panel and we talked about collectively spending more time together. We can't do this alone. And we've got to go at the local level we just talked about and spend more time saying to America that we are here. We talked about $1.5, $1.6 million collectively. That's a lot of folk.

And collectively we've got to organize and spend more time talking about what are we gonna do with 1.5 1.6 million million folk we've got to market that and I'll push back I don't think we have to market that I think we got to do some stuff that's worth marketing so it's one thing to market something but I think it's different when we actually have something to market and what I mean by that is when I look at so I'll take the state of Ohio and if the representative of AKA can speak to this. Alicia Reese, state representative there, has been

trying to get a ballot initiative to guarantee the right to vote in Ohio. She's gotten more than 100,000 signatures. They're going to need more than 300,000. Alpha Kappa Alpha is the only member of the Divine Nine who has made it their state mission to help her get those signatures. Now, y'all can clap. Now, here's the deal.

A few years ago, when they had the ballot initiative there, I moderated the Divine Nine panel for Congresswoman Marsha Fudge, and I asked all the presidents who were there in terms of what was happening, voter suppression there. They went back and checked, and there are 120 Divine Nine chapters in Ohio alone, which means that if the Divine Nine chapters in Ohio alone. Which means that if the Divine Nine said every chapter is responsible for 2,000 signatures, the Divine Nine alone

can get that put on the ballot. Go ahead. You know, I think that particularly under the leadership of the president that we have right now, Dr. Glenda Glover, we're just not scared. I think that we are, you know, we all tread lightly on our 501C7 status, but we realize that we have a president in office who is telling minority congresswomen to go back home. So we are done being silent. We're done. We want to put our names, our money where our mission is. We mean it when we say that we're going to support our own. And when I make the point about, and again, anyone can jump in, so we don't have to have a sprinkler head conversation to go right ahead. So grab a mic and jump in. When I make

the point about we have to have something to market when I say we're risk averse we can speak to issues we just simply can't endorse candidates and I think what has happened is we are so risk averse of oh what might happen to our status not realizing no everybody else speaking to issues so can we and so what what and I'm gonna go down the line, what should be that, how do you, give me an example of how your organization, it could be a chapter in any part of the country, how they have

used the power of that chapter or the state or the national to drive an issue and you saw results. Anybody can go. I want to speak to that. Specifically with Sidney Gamoreau and the ladies of Sidney Gamoreau, we were directly impacted by the death of Sandra Bland, or should I say homicide. With that initiative there, we brought more attention

to police brutality through our organization because we had a direct impact from a Divine Nine sister who was hurt while in custody. Through the partnership with NOBO, through partnerships that have expanded beyond our organization to all the Greeks, we have been able to teach and educate our community on how to engage with the police, how to bring attention to when we're constantly getting hurt while confronted by the police. I believe this is one of the bigger issues for us where we said we have to rally and do something. There's still more work to be done in this space, so I know you're about to counter. But we have opened the door for the conversation through the unfortunate situation with Sandra Blaine. But when we talk about that, though, what also happened when you had Black Lives Matter,

you literally had some diviner organizations who told their members, don't wear their letters. To protest. And Brother Tillman, when he was general president, he and I talked, and literally when that went out, that night he sent a statement out, he said, no, to all members of Alpha, wear your letters to a Black Lives Matter protest. But that's what I mean why some of us are so risk averse. There are folks who

literally are saying, well, no, I don't know where we need to go. And again, I'm talking about how we use our power. When you get that 14-year-old black girl who had her face mashed down by the cop in Texas in McKinney, I called out the National Organization for Women, but I also said to black sororities, y'all need to be speaking up for that sister too, because she might have a member, and if she don't have somebody in her family who's a member, we still should be speaking up for sisters like that, the sister who's in South Carolina, who got snatched out of the desk by the cop as well. What I'm saying is, and it don't take a week to release a statement. We got to be in the moment in the first 24, 48 hours using our

leverage and don't think for a second I'm just talking about Divine 9 because I'm also in the Boulay and trust me they also know I challenge the Boulay the same thing saying we got to be more than social parties and getting together because there's no sense in having power that's unused. So you mentioned Sandra Bland. Who else? Give me an example of how the organization has used their power to drive an issue. This past election cycle in Phi Beta Sigma, I just recently got elected as the first vice president,

but was recently serving as the social action director. One of the things that I was most proud of our brothers during this past election cycle, during the midterms, was the level of engagement of chapters that we had around the country. One of the things that I shared with them was that registering people to vote was not enough, right? Registering folks to vote is not enough. You have to educate your voters on the challenges

and what's going on in their communities. Connect the dots. You've got to connect the dots. But once you educate them, then you have to take them to the polls. See, there's a three-part series to this, and so a lot of our organizations were satisfied with just registering folks to vote. But what I was excited about was the town halls that we had, the candidate forums that we had, educating the community on the ballot initiatives that were taking place across the country. Now, how did that happen?

Was that directive sent from top down? Absolutely. To say this is what we are doing? Absolutely. As the National Social Action Director, I share with our chapters that we have to look further and go deeper than just feeling that we were satisfied with meeting the quota of registering people to vote. So you registered folks to vote, had town halls, and so how did you get them to the polls? We had chapters that had, we had 1-800 numbers, call the Sigma, take you to the polls.

We had brothers that rented vans. We had folks that rented cars and were in their communities, and it was literally busing and taking folks to the polls, not only just on Election Day, but actually from early voting. They had from early voting all the way to Election Day. And so that's the way that we have, that's what we did. And as we talk about, as our organizations in leveraging, we have to make sure we have to go deeper.

We have to go deeper than just registering folks to vote. Educating them and then getting them to the polls. And then after you get them to the polls, then you follow up afterwards, after the election cycle. What went wrong? Did we get the results that we wanted? And keep on drilling down. Before the next comment, again, I need to put it in perspective, our hierarchy. Unlike any other institution, when our international leadership presses a button, the directive goes to everybody.

You take AME, you take other hierarchies, folks have options whether to follow it. And that's what I was saying, how we can use our power differently. Go right ahead. And then I'll go here. Thank you. I would say that we are doing the same thing for State of Phi Beta Sorority Incorporated. But one thing I would have to also say is that even with education and educating in our communities, we need to be able to go inside and educate ourselves, and that's what we have been trying to do

with our Get Engaged programs because that helps to get the mindset change of our organization. You said a Get Engaged program. What is that? Well, Get Engaged, meaning when we're doing things in social action, we have a step meaning, okay, when you say we need to respond to an issue. And, of course, we're going to respond to it, but just responding to it and saying this is our stance.

What are we going to do about it? So the get engaged piece that came out several years ago is when we mobilize our organization, our members, to really go out into the community and to be engaged and to try to talk to our members in the community, try to get them to understand what is going on and how we can help them and how we can bring about change in their lives and how they're thinking about certain things so that they could be more aware. Okay, so hold on. Let's break it down.

So this Get Engaged program, how often do you meet? Where is it? How many cities? How many chapters? We have Get Engaged throughout all of these cities in the U.S. and we're trying to- Is it only for members or open to the general public? Well, the members are involved, but we send it out into the public. So we have our seminars, we have our webinars, but we actually go into the actual communities

where we live. Got it. And we try to really have one-on-one sessions, per se. And we go through our neighborhoods we actually walk the neighborhood we ring the doorbells we we talk to we talk to our neighbors we want to see what is going on and how we as an organization in their areas can help and what we can do to start the grassroots movement and thank you Roland good to see you you tricked me by the way, he and I went to Texas A&M together

We go back a couple years I texted him before I came downstairs and said, you gonna be at the convention? You gonna be at the party? He just said, yeah Didn't tell me you were gonna be moderating my panel, man First of all, you a cap but this ain't your panel Okay, alright

Let's just go ahead and be clear Let's just be clear. Watch this answer and we'll see whose panel it really is. I mean, you might be the Attorney General, but you're still a capo. And I am still pretty, too. Since you asked it, I mean, come on now. I'm glad you affirmed yourself. So I'm going to try to walk a line with this response, Roland,

because I don't purport to speak on behalf of my fraternity. My grandpa Mark is down there, and he can do that. But here's what I can tell you, and I want to take the opposite approach than what the gentleman said here a second ago about the top-down approach and the questions you've been talking about. I can tell you from personal experience, and before I talk about my personal experience, I need to acknowledge a few of the other elected officials here. I know I see Councilman Cedric Crear, your fraternity brother here from Las Vegas, and I see my former

colleagues, Dina Neal, Assemblywoman here as well. I want to acknowledge them. Let's give them a hand. I don't know if I'm missing any others, but here's what I can tell you. During this last campaign cycle, I was the Senate Majority Leader, and I was running for Attorney General. And what I did observe from every chapter that's represented in here, every fraternity that's represented in here, I spoke to.

And not only did I speak to them, they spoke to me. They had me at their meetings. They didn't just seek to educate me, they sought to be educated. They sought to ask questions about what the Office of Attorney General did. They sought to see what they can do to help spread the word about what the Office of Attorney General did. I saw them in the communities. I saw them at the polls. I saw them pre-polling. I saw them at their candidate

forums. I saw every fraternity and sorority that's represented in here at the local level doing work. And that's an important acknowledgement that needs to be made because oftentimes as you've indicated go ahead that's worth a clap it really is but because oftentimes what's overlooked is the actual work that is done a lot of people complain about what you're not doing as if to say that what you suggest they do is the only way that you can serve. There are many ways that you can serve, and what I saw happening at the local level here were people chiming in, fighting on issues, talking about issues, getting educated on issues.

You're right, not necessarily endorsing candidates because that's not what they can do. But what they can do and what they have been doing, at least locally as I observed it, is ensuring that our communities are engaged, that they're informed, that they are able to meet the candidates, and that they assist the candidates who support the policies and the practices that are important to them. Tommy? Tommy?

I say I need an example. Come on, Capo. Oh, I can handle it now. Let me just say this. I want to go back to the NAACP as well. The other day when we were there, we saw a lot of people who were getting up in age. But they came for the struggle and the fight. And one of the things that dawned on Deborah and I, the question

is who's going to take their place in this struggle? We make a lot of men and women in our organizations, and they are not engaged in this fight like those folks that came to the NAACP. And they don't have that same kind of commitment, and we've got to do something about that to help them. Now, we have all of us signed the MOU, a Memorandum of Understanding, with the NAACP. From an infrastructure standpoint, they have the most successful voter registration, voter education, get-out-the-vote programs that we know of. Urban League has them as well.

But as we get ready, we need to do a better job of helping in our communities as we get ready for the election and the census and all those other kinds of programs. We are engaged with them. We can't do this alone with our organization, with the numbers we have. So we have got to do a better job with that. As Aaron said, we went to Aaron. But we've got to do a better job at the local level and assist

the NAACP as they transition and as they look to new leadership. When I took over CAPA's grand pole mark, I went to the Brotherhood and I said, I want every new member, alumni and undergraduate, to be a member of the NAACP. You've got to have a CAPA card and an NAACP, you got to have a Kappa card and a NAACP card. And they bought off into that. We delivered 5,059 new members to the NAACP since I took over as a Kappa. That also translated into dollars for them. And so we can do this. And when they do demonstrate in their direct action, I authorize the wearing of their paraphernalia. After all, that's why they go out there to show who they are. And so there are policies

that we all have on when you wear a paraphernalia, and they've got to get permission. But we need to allow our young people to support them when they do direct action, because they have an infrastructure when they do protest and demonstrations because I go out there with them when they have their protests and demonstrations in these seasons and these times that we have. So I'm saying that we need to do a better job collectively. Okay, hold on. What does a better job mean? So I don't, again, what does that mean? What does that look like?

That means when they go, we need to go with them. Right, but what, but what, here's why I'm pushing back, but anybody, how is, within your infrastructure, how are you creating the mechanism that trains them, that organizes them, that mobilizes

them, and then send them out? And what does that look like? So we have training sessions with them now, for example, in preparation for election time. We have webinars. We have training sessions. We have social action. Okay, now when you say election time, mid-term or national elections, or are we talking about county, state, governors, city council?

Because the whole point of this is us not just focus on a mid-term or election but impact the local races as well and again what does that look like training how long is it is it open to the public is it just members right now our social action chairman do midterm in the national election and that's what has to change because the reality is the polling data shows nearly 60 percent of people say they're more impacted by what happens locally than what happens nationally. The reason we have voter suppression right now in the country is because in 2010, black folks voted in 2008 for Obama. Folks did

not vote in 2010, and 16 state legislatures flipped all across the country, putting Republicans in control of 31 of them, and that's when voter suppression bills all came down in those particular states that's what stay in your ground came down and so part of this and the reality is we talk about criminal justice reform mass incarceration if we ain't voting for the district attorney that has

that's the person that has the most impact on mass incarceration and so what we have to do is take our voter initiatives and they can't be every two-year initiatives. They have to be everyday initiatives because there are city council, county government, state elections, water board, you name it. And the reality is anybody who knows what school boards, you could literally take over an entire school board with 10,000 votes. So if we actually just mobilize ourselves, we could literally take over an entire school board, which means we now control

the bond program, we now control who gets hired, and we control the policies. And so that's what I mean by trying to push us to go beyond and say, no, take this thing beyond the national election. You wanted to respond. I saw you grab the microphone. You wanted to say something. Go ahead, Sigma. Just a few things.

So I think one of the things that we all have to recognize is, you know, we're making new members all the time. And you're bringing in a generation of folks who don't know about engagement. And so to your point, engagement for Divine Nine has to be every semester. It has to be continuous. Now, one of the things that we're doing in Sigma is, you know, now, as social action director, you know, I will honestly say we were about it in our organization. We developed a guide for our chapters that they can go to from top to bottom as it relates to how to put on a voter registration event, how to put on an event in your chapter. Because why?

Because you don't have all sharp men to join your organizations initially. And so you have some individuals that are coming from different backgrounds. And so we have to do a better job of providing tools for our chapters as it relates to what they're gonna need. And I will tell you this, and I always say this to all my chapters, you wear your letters. You let them know that we were here. As long as you don't bring reproach upon the name of Sigma,

and that should be for all of our organizations, because they need to see that we are in the fight, that we are there. John Lewis, we love him, right? But there is another generation of John Lewis's that are coming, and they need to get ready. And so we have a responsibility in all our organizations to continue to train the next generation. We make new members all the time. We need to engage new members all the time.

We need to train them all the time. We need to stay in the fight all the time. We need to deal with the issues all the time. We have got to be at it all the time. So we talk about how do we organize and mobilize. I know there's Delta Days on Capitol Hill. I was spoken there. I know Alpha's had the event this year.

Who else has a day or a series of days where they drive their membership to Capitol Hill to interact with all members of Congress? Raise your hand. All right. So let's see. Capitals do. Keep your hand up. I mean, raise your hand. All right. So let's see. Kappas do. Keep your hand up. I mean, Kappas do. Deltas do.

AKs, Sigmas, Zeta Phi Beta, of course, and Alphas. Now, who has the same thing on the state level? Now, all states or do all states do it? Go ahead. So go ahead? Go ahead. So, go ahead. All states have Day at the Capitals. Every single state is represented in every single region. And so that comes from the top down.

So every single state in the United States is represented with AK Days at the Capitol. And they show up. I'm here to tell you. I was a former city majority leader. We do. Right. Assemblywoman Neal was there. They show up. I'm here to tell you. I was a former city majority leader. We do? Right. They show up. They participate. This is what we do locally. And the reason I'm asking that, because again, the whole point

of this is solutions, because look, I'm not interested. Look, I didn't come here to say let's have a nice conversation amongst ourselves, and then we go to the Gerald Albright concert. No. You have to leave here with something to say, if we're not doing that, let's take that thing back home and then do it back home. You want to

jump in? Go ahead. Okay. We take it a step further. You know, we have this thing called Sigma Week on the Hill. And what, and what I have and what our leadership has done is that we recognize the importance of investing in the next generation. So what we do is we identify two collegiates from each of our regions. We have seven regions, 14 young men that we bring in, all expense paid for the week. And what we do is that we train and invest in them what advocacy looks like. Not only do we take them to the Hill, not only do we bring policymakers in with them to show them, as we talk about college affordability this year with their issues. But what we've done now is we've begun a pipeline of young

men who are being trained and then we end the week with Sigma Day on the Hill where we have all of our alumni brothers who come in. But for the week, it's about that next generation. And so we've now done it three years in a row. We've now created over 30 young men who are in this pipeline, some of them who have now run for national positions and regional positions in the organizations beginning this pipeline of advocacy because that's what we're missing it's not just about leading we need more advocates a new another pipeline of advocates that's one of the things we've done differently roland if i could if i could add to this um one of the things that we do, so our connection or social action committees, every single chapter in the sorority is required to have a connections chairman. I think one of the things

that we realize is that it is a problem. Engagement is an issue. And so what we've started to do from the top down is hold them accountable. So those connection chairmen are required to submit reports nationally every single year to detail what they're doing in their chapters every single year. And so we try to hold them accountable. We try to make sure that it's not just an every two year thing. We want to give you strategies for making sure that you're promoting civic engagement throughout the year. When we talk about infrastructure, I spoke at the Alpha's Tampa grad chapter. They had

a mentoring program. Literally, during the middle of my speech, I said, y'all be perfectly honest, I'm about to tie this mentoring program. Folks were like, what the hell is wrong? The point of the gala is for the mentoring program. I said, here's why. I said, because how many people are actually in the program

and so I began to walk them through I look at the discussion early to double education and I said imagine if in the next five years we created 50 alpha academy charter schools across the country then imagine if each Divide Nine member did that. That means that if you took an average school of 500 students, that means we will be in control of 225,000 students for nine months or the whole year. And again, I think for a lot, I think a lot of us, we realize that we are members of large organizations, but I really don't think we fully understand how large we are. Second, unlike all other black organizations, we are self-funded. Our conventions aren't predicated on corporate sponsorships. And so again, it's

how we also use our resources. And so if you could push your organization, give me one idea, each person, I'm going to go down the line here. There's one thing that you would love to see using your organization's infrastructure that's big what is it i want you to go big i'm sorry because who wants to who wants to go first well one of the things i share with our brothers uh last week we were in nevada um and one of the things that I shared with them is the future of Sigma. And what I expect from them is that we need to create our own economic, our own ecosystem. Okay. Our own ecosystem. And what does that look like?

And I just started from the end and started bringing it to the end, so I'm just going to do the end as an example. If we're not taking care of our senior Sigmas, if we don't have our own assistant living facilities by the year 2030, 2040, we have failed. We should be having our own Sigma wellness initiative. We should have our own Sigma assistant living facilities where we have the nurses of Sigmas, the administrators of Sigmas, that we're taking care of our own brothers in the last years of their life. And we can take it all the way back to the beginning, so I love when you talked about the school piece, but one of the things that I hope that we're going to turn towards the end is that we're going to have these Sigma assistant living facilities all over the country taking care of our brothers in their last days, and that's us controlling that.

All right. Somebody else. I need your big idea. I would say since we are always meeting every year, we're meeting someplace. If we're going big, we need to all get together and purchase some property that has a building on it that we can all meet at. And therefore, we're not taking our dollars and giving it to the marriott we're not giving it to the hilton we're not giving it to the sheraton but we're keeping it with us so that's if we're going big i say that's how we start to go big i would say um just from a just from a financial equity positioning we know that

in order to have wealth and to build a generation of wealth, real estate is number one. If you don't have a real estate infrastructure, you're failing financially. If you also do not have an investment strategy, you're failing. And I'm coming more from a financial standpoint

because that's what I do in my professional career. But I know that we're 46% more impoverished if we do not own our own. And so with that, I would say collectively, I know all of us are speaking to our own individual organizations, but we're not going back to the original question as to how do we build that infrastructure together. And my sister here hit right on it when she mentioned the real estate piece, but I think there's also an investment infrastructure that needs to happen where we tear down our walls of our colors, but get more focused on the mission of our people

and look at how we can collectively own real estate and collectively invest in our infrastructure. All right. Batter up. She said what I would say, which is if I'm thinking big, I'm thinking more collaboration. I talk about that all the time. Less individual goals and all of the Divine Nine coming together more.

And I'm talking about locally, regionally, to push our platforms out to the broader community. I think if I'm thinking big, I'm thinking about collaboration. As his sister said earlier about the investments as well as property, I started this conversation that way. Let's pause these national meetings, take all this money we spend, buy some property, get some investments, like I said earlier, and we can do anything we want to do. We invest in property and equities and get a return on our investment if we pause some of these national meetings that we do. Next. I would also like to see that, but I like to focus on education.

What you said earlier was when I became the president, that was one big thing about creating charter schools across the U.S. I think we started working on that, looking into that so that we can get our bases together, but that is like one of our goals. And our second goal is that we also want to have some training in a classroom-type setting for our members and others who are looking into going into politics needed to let them know that they need to be more of us out there so that we could that so that we

can challenge and push the needle where it's supposed to go because that's what really happens we have a lot of other people talking for us but we need a lot more of us that we can go out there and know what we need and what we can help that we can go out there and know what we need and what we can help, and we can help them to do that. And I think that with having a collective session with all of us thinking about that, it would be so important because together we are so much stronger than we are when we're separated. And I think we have to really focus on that and put it back on us to know

that let us talk about that. Let us focus on one thing that we can all do and get involved with and make our voices heard for the next generation, because that's so important, especially with education. I'd just like to say that for that piece of education, for Zeta Phi Beta sorority, I have promised that for as long as I am the president and moving forward, because I want our session to vote on this, but we plan on at least giving a $100,000 scholarship to a deserving student each year so that that will help the focus of that. They will not have to be challenged and think about the funds that they would need to go to college. And this will help, and we can build on that. And the more of us that do that together, look how much that would help more children. Because we give a lot of money, but when you get sizable amounts of money to help one student and just pick five students and you give

them a hundred thousand dollars each to go to college that's something that's something big that helps the children and that's what's really important go ahead so we all are membership driven organizations and i think that we really need to think collectively to come together. I would suggest that we're probably about a year, maybe a year and a half away from not being able to bring members into our organizations through our intake processes. And I think we need to collectively come together and bring some of our brilliant minds together to figure out what we're doing

and look at our intake processes because if we don't, I think we're going to perish as fools because there are things happening out there that's going to hurt us whether it's on the alumni level or the undergraduate level and I think that there perhaps is a formula on how to do that. But we need to sit down and talk because perhaps if you're doing something that's working, we need to come together

and figure out what that is because I just don't think it's working. And you don't need a rocket scientist to see that. But I think we need to come together, close the door, and figure out what we need to do to try to fix it because university presidents are telling us that we love you, but we're just not going to allow you to continue to do the things that you're doing on our campus, our jobs and our universities and our colleges and our students. We're just

not going to allow this to continue this way. So I think we need to come together and figure out where we're going. Thank you. So, Roland, I'm a politician. And I, again, won't purport to speak on behalf of my organization or any other organization here, but if I had a dream for all of these organizations that are represented here, it would be that we focus on the individual. As a politician, to be sure,

if labor unions come talk to me or they raise their voice, then they get my attention. If the chamber comes talk to me, absolutely, as an affiliation, it gets my attention. But I'm going to repeat something that one of the mayors up here said a minute ago.

When you call me, and when you call me, and then you call me, and then we ended up getting 15, 50, 500 calls from individuals, then we really stand up and listen. Ask the two people who I just mentioned to you a second ago, Dina Neal and Cedric Greer. When people call us and they're letting us know that there are issues that are going on, we don't want you silent on them. We want you to focus on these.

We want you to handle the issues. Then that's important. And I think that one of the things that all organizations can do is to empower the individual, to empower the individual member, even if we can't, for example, as Kappa Alpha Psi endorse Fred Jackson for city council. Each individual member can ensure that Fred Jackson, the city councilman, is doing what he's supposed to be doing. And I think it's important that our organizations empower the individuals. And not only that, almost a director from head down say,

actually get involved and make it happen. So I'll close it out this way. We've talked about, we'll talk about this, this big idea. First one I gave you is I'm a firm believer in terms of us running our own charter schools. But how many folks heard a couple of years ago in Atlanta, they created this Tulsa real estate fund. They raised through a crowdfunding campaign $9.6 million in seven days. I am sick and tired of black people talking about gentrification.

If white folks know the property is for sale and we know the property is for sale, why aren't we buying the property? If you're talking about a big idea, my chapter, Powell, McCromick, Texas A&M, our graduate brothers and we created our own investment club. We had about 20 brothers who came together and literally after about a year, we had more than $300,000 that was invested. There's no reason in the world from a chapter, from a chapter standpoint, a state, regional, even a national, that you don't have each member of the Divine Nine has a national investment fund. First of all, what it's going to do is teach our members money, how to invest money. I don't give a damn about Red Bottoms. I don't care about Gucci

or Prada or any of them because we don't even work there. But we can't talk about financial literacy if we literally don't put it into practice. If you talk about collective, the amount of money we have, all you got to do, and I've been to the AK Convention, the Delta Convention, Zeta Convention. They sell, if they can put the letters on something, they sell it. So we have to just go ahead and actually do it. We have members in our organizations who are financial wizards, and we're not tapping their expertise. When you talk about Robert Smith, worth $5 billion, alpha. When you talk about Bob Smith worth $5 billion, alpha. When you talk about Bob Johnson, kappa.

When you talk about, you have individuals who have created wealth, who have hedge funds, who are doing these things. We have to tap into it. So my charge is don't leave here saying, man, we had a great program. And if you come to next year's public program for your organization and you're having the exact same conversation, you wasted everybody's time. We've got to put this into action, put our numbers into action. We can

do it economically. We can do it to impact politics. We can do it to impact social action. And then when somebody there says what is alpha and kappa and omega and Sigma and Zeta, what are all these black Greeks doing? All we got to say is

this is what we're doing, not what y'all got to say. Before Brother Roland Martin leaves, Brother Martin, come back on the stage. In this period in American history that is so equal to 1898, when white supremacy was the order of the day and taking the right to vote and political power from African Americans was the order of the day for political advancement for one segment of society against another.

It is 2019, and when persons refer to fake news, aren't we glad that there is a strong black man who is unapologetically, intellectually prepared to stand against injustice and call it for what it is every single day. Aren't we proud that Roland Martin is a member of one of the greatest fraternities in the world but more importantly aren't we proud that he ain't scared of nobody and I know that that is not grammatically correct but he ain't scared of nobody. Give my brother a round of applause.

Give him a round of applause. In such a time as this, we don't need timid folk. We need strong people. And so tonight I want to thank our first panel of strong mayors who talked about all politics as local and to our members of the Divine Nine. As I have the privilege to travel this nation and this world on behalf of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, there is one consistent message that I always leave with. Is that when they see us, when that police officer stops my car or when that sister is threatened and as Roland said when our children are violently attacked they don't ask you are you a member of alpha Phi Alpha

fraternity they don't ask you if you are a member of AKA Zeta Phi Beta Phi Beta Sigma or Kappa Alpha Psi or Omega Psi Phi. We are guilty as charged because of the color of our skin. And I say as our ancestors have said, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired and as we say in Alpha we're going to fight till hell freezes over and then we're going to fight on the ice so I say what my dream is you want to know what my dream is? my dream is

is that in 2020, when I wake up in November, my dream is that black and old gold, purple and gold, crimson and cream, pink and gold, purple and gold, crimson and cream, pink and green, blue and white, blue and white, purple, blue and gold, that we will send a collective message to this nation and to this world

that white supremacy is dead and we are going to change what is in Washington, D.C. no matter what because our children's children shall never have to fight the same fight that our ancestors fought. ancestors fault and if I die trying and I don't care who occupies the Oval Office but I am determined that my children's children will not have to live in a country where they are told to go back to Africa. When they are told to go, our ancestors built this country And I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to stay here until hell freezes over. And then I'm going to fight on the ice.

God bless you and God keep you. Let us remember that the fight is ours every single day. Again, I want to correct myself. I referred to my brother wrongly. We want to again thank Brother Dr. Gregory Benson and his wife Kim for sponsoring this event. And I also want to invite each of you to join us for a reception in the event center

just next door so that we understand that it's time now to put down cotillions and parties and step shows in such a time as this. We don't have time to be stepping and strolling. We need to be putting a ballot in the box and walking the streets and going to the state capitals and saying never ever shall we go back.

So now let's go celebrate what we've done and now move forward. God bless you. Give this panel another round of applause. Give them another round of applause. Thank you so much. This is an iHeart Podcast.