#RolandMartinUnfiltered - SCOTUS Tackles Unhoused Crisis, Fla. Former Felons Voting Rights, Mental Health v Illness

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

4.22.2024 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: SCOTUS Tackles Unhoused Crisis, Fla. Former Felons Voting Rights, Mental Health v Illness #BlackStarNetwork partner:Fanbase 👉🏾 https://www.startengine.com/offering/fanbase The Supreme Court confronts the nation's homelessness crisis by hearing arguments about the legality of local laws used against people camping on public streets and parks. We'll talk to the Center for American Progress' Senior Director of Courts and Legal Policy about how the court's ruling could impact the thousands of unhoused people. In Alabama, a proposed law making Juneteenth a state holiday will also allow state employees the choice to recognize freedom or Jefferson Davis, a symbol of slavery.  Desmond Meade will be here to update us on the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition's lawsuit against Governor Ron DeSantis and his attempt to keep former felons from voting.  Operation Hope's founder, chairman, and CEO, John Hope Bryant, was on CNBC's Squawk Box this morning, discussing how Gen Z views capitalism and the difference between equality and meritocracy. I'm going to break down that conversation. And in our Fit, Live, Win segment, we will be joined by a psychiatrist who will help us understand the difference between mental health and mental illness.  Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox  http://www.blackstarnetwork.com #RolandMartinUnfiltered and the #BlackStarNetwork are news reporting platforms covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Today is Monday, April 22nd, 2024. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. The Supreme Court confronts the nation's homelessness crisis by hearing arguments about the legality of local laws used against people camping on public streets and parks. We'll talk to Center for American Progress' Senior Director of Courts and Legal policy about today's war arguments. In Alabama, a proposed law making Juneteenth 8 state holiday will also allow state employees the choice to recognize. Freedom or Jefferson Davis,

one of the greatest traders in American history. I keep telling y'all these Republicans support the Confederacy. Desmond Meade will be here to update us on the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition's lawsuit against Governor Ron DeSantis and this attempt to keep formerly incarcerated folks from voting.

Operation hopes founder, chairman and CEO John Hope. Brian was on CBC CNBC Squawk Box this morning discussing how Gen Z views capitalism and the difference between equality and meritocracy. Got a couple of things to say. Plus not fit live win segment

will be joined by psychiatrists who will help us understand the difference between mental health and mental illness. And of course, first day of Donald Trump's trial in New York City, also New York City, massive protest on the campus of Columbia University.

It is going to get worse, folks. We'll talk about that as well. It's time to bring the funk. I'm Roland Martin, unfiltered, on the Black Star Network, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine. And when it blips, he's right on time. And it's rolling. Best belief he's knowing.

Putting it down from sports to news to politics. With entertainment just for kicks. He's rolling. It's Uncle Roro, y'all. Yeah, yeah. It's Roro, yo Yeah, yeah It's Rollin' Martin, yeah Yeah, yeah Rollin' with Rollin' now

Yeah, yeah He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best You know he's Rollin' Martin Now Martin The Supreme Court heard arguments today on whether ticketing homeless people is cruel and unusual and violates the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. City and state officials across the country are closely watching the case, which will decide whether the homeless have the right to camp in public places.

People who live in these encampments are also following the case as they are concerned about efforts to criminalize the population rather than build shelters and affordable housing. The case is the city of Grants Pass v. Johnson, which was brought by several involuntarily homeless people in Grants Pass, Oregon, who challenged the city's ban on public camping. Justice Sonia Sotomayor grills Grants Pass, Oregon's attorney, being evangelist on why CELIF officials

want to enforce criminal penalties for the unhoused. Say only homeless people who sleep outdoors will be arrested. That's the testimony of your chief of police, two or three officers, which is if you read the crime, it's only stopping you from sleeping in public for the purpose of maintaining a temporary place to live. And the police officers testified that that means that if a stargazer wants to take a blanket or a sleeping bag out at night to watch the stars and falls asleep,

you don't arrest them. You don't arrest babies who have blankets over them. You don't arrest people who are sleeping on the beach, as I tend to do if I've been there a while. You only arrest people who don't have a second home. Is that correct? Well, who don't have a home? So no, these laws are generally applicable. They apply to. Yeah, that's what you want to say. Give me one example, because your police officers couldn't. And they explicitly said if someone has another home, has a home, and is out there and happens to fall asleep, they won't be arrested. Fall asleep with something on them. Well, joint appendix page 98 is one example of a citation issued to a person with a home address.

But more importantly, I think what we're getting at here is that these laws regulate conduct of everyone. There's nothing in the law that criminalizes homelessness. I really want to... That's what you say, but if I look at the record and see differently... Hmm. Devon Ombre is the Senior Director of Courts and Legal Policy for the Center for American Progress.

He joins us from Washington, D.C. Devon, glad to have you here. So, I mean, that was a great line of questioning right there from Justice Sotomayor because laws need to be specific. And what she was getting at is if somebody just accidentally falls asleep, what, are you going to ticket them? People falling asleep while on a picnic at a park, can we ticket them? Not sure how far this could extend. And she makes some really great points that this law of general applicability, so-called, doesn't

actually do what it says. It is specifically aimed at unhoused people, not just average people on the street. What was being said by the other justices, especially the conservative justices? It was interesting to listen because the thing that struck me was a lot of the lack of compassion that was elicited from the chief justice because he was seeming to implicate that just being in a shelter for one night

erases the status of being homeless. And the litigator for the individual plaintiffs were saying being unhoused is not having a permanent address. And being put into a shelter or obtaining shelter for one or two nights, even a week, does not obviate the problem of being unhoused and homeless because it doesn't change their status. As soon as they lose access to that shelter, they become unhoused, homeless again, and they're subject to these laws. And they're escalating fines. The first fine is $275. The next fine is $600. A recidivist found sleeping outside multiple times will be criminally trespassed and can be jailed for up to 30 days. And this is essentially a reestablishment

of debtors' prisons that were gotten rid of hundreds of years ago at this point. So, I mean, obviously you have a lot of cities that have been dealing with this. You hear folks in San Francisco, you hear folks in Los Angeles talk about these different things. And as always, whenever we're having these discussions about why something is happening,

very rarely do we want to deal with the root cause of this. We really want to focus just on that in and of itself. So if you talk about homelessness, you have to deal with, well, how many of those folks are actually dealing with mental illness, which then gets at the lack of funding for mental illness, which gets at the cutting of funds

over the last 20, 25 years for community, social social and services centers. Then you also have to deal with the exorbitant costs that we're also seeing when it comes to housing and how things have shot up. Very rarely of those part of the conversation? Adding in drug addiction and then just pure unfortunate economic situations that some people find themselves in due to layoffs, a lack of work, what have you. And you see increases in policing costs. You see increases in jailing costs without even talking about the lack of affordable housing in so many markets these days where people can't afford to live in a one-bedroom apartment without having roommates. It's becoming untenable for a lot of people to function, and yet we're seeing an increase in funding for policing, an increase in funding for jailing.

Whereas if we were investing in these root causes of drug addiction, of mental health, of general wellness, then it would cost these municipalities and localities a whole heck of a lot less. It would be less of a drain on society. And I think there's probably a likelihood that you would see much more benefit, beneficial outcomes of people rejoining society and being productive members of society when these unfortunate or unchecked mental health issues have resulted in them being unhoused for so long. So based upon listening to these arguments, obviously it's one thing to sort of prejudge or to guess,

but based upon listening to the various questions, what did you glean from this in terms of what potentially could be a decision? So I think the more liberal justices are looking to find a solution. I think a lot of the questions really dug deep into what do the courts need to be doing with regard to staying away from being policymakers, because this is such a complex and complicated issue. Can the Supreme Court hand down edicts that say this is what you need to be doing. And I think the court very much wants to shy away from that. I believe it was Justice Jackson who was discussing the possibility that this case be mooted because

Oregon has passed a statute prohibiting laws like these passed in Grants Pass from going into effect and being able to effectively criminalize being unhoused. There's also the question that Justice Thomas brought up as to whether the case itself was moot because all of the individual plaintiffs have not been found criminally liable under these local ordinances. So whether it's just civil cases at this point, so whether it's appropriate to bring it under an Eighth Amendment claim like this for cruel and unusual punishment like this case is, is yet to be seen. The other thing is that there are a lot of municipalities that are existing under a prior Ninth Circuit case that has made outlawing being homeless or unhoused illegal. So, you know, there's already some kind of controlling law in effect in the states covered by the Ninth Circuit that other other areas are.

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Follow it. All right then. We certainly will be seeing what they decide. Devon, thanks a lot. Thank you so much. All right, folks, going to go to break. We'll be right back. I'm Roland Martin on the Blackstar Network. I was just in my backyard. I just said I was manifesting about life. I said I would love to come back because it was a great time. And these kids need that right now. They need that

male role model in the schools, I think. back because it was a great time and these kids need that right now they need that that that male role model in the schools i think even on tv yeah because people are scared to go into the high schools you know the high school you know i mean i would love to bring it back and i think we could bring it back you know what do you think i think i think we'll just ask the people and ask your people we'll do a poll y'all want to hang a Mr. Cooper? Yeah, I say, let's go. We all look good. You know, Ali look good. You know, Raven look the same. Marquise, Don Lewis.

It'd be funnier than half the bullshit you see out there on TV now. God damn. What the fuck? What happened to TV? Yeah, yeah. It's some... I'm like, oh, my God. Fanbase is pioneering a new era of social media for the creator economy. This next generation social media app with over 600,000 users is raising $17 million

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see what kind of trouble we can get into. It's the culture. Weekdays at 3, only on the Blackstar Network. What's up, everybody? It's your girl Latasha from the A. And you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Now, folks, doing today's oral argument, Justice Neil Gorsuch questioned U.S. Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Needler about why he thinks people can be issued criminal penalties for public drunkenness, but not for sleeping outside when they refuse to go to a shelter or bed. To status. And now you're saying, well, there's some conduct that's effectively equated to status. And but you're saying involuntary drug use you can regulate that conduct that doesn't qualify as status you're saying compulsive alcohol use you can regulate

that conduct in public public drunkenness even if it's involuntary that doesn't qualify as status right right you're saying you can regulate somebody who is hungry and has no other choice but to steal. You can regulate that conduct even though it's a basic human necessity, and that doesn't come under the status side of the line, right? Yes. Okay. But when it comes to homelessness, which is a terribly difficult problem,

you're saying that's different because there are no beds available for them to go to in Grants Pass. What about someone who has a mental health problem that prohibits them, they cannot sleep in a shelter. Are they allowed to sleep outside or not? Is that status or conduct that's regulable? I think the question would be whether that shelter is available. It's available. No, available to the individual. It's available to the individual.

It's just because of their mental health problem, they cannot do it. I think there might be, I mean, that's the mental health problem. Status or conduct. Well, the mental health situation is itself a status. I know that. Yes. But it has this further knock on effect on conduct. Is that regulable by the state or not? I think that I think that if the, you know, alcohol,

drug use, that they have problems, too. And that and but you're saying that conduct is regulable. How about with respect to this pervasive problem of persons with mental health problems. I think in a particular situation, if the person would engage in violent conduct as a risk... No, no, no. Don't mess with my hypothetical, counsel. I like my hypothetical. I know you don't. It's a hard one, and that's why I'm asking it. I'm just trying to understand the limits of your line. Don't mess with my hypothetical. How about not use hypotheticals when you get to the Supreme Court?

My panel, Dr. Amakongo Dabinga, Senior Professorial Lecturer, School of International Service of American University, joins us from D.C., Dr. Julian Malvo, Economist, President and Mayor of Bennett College, also an author, also out of D.C., Derek Jackson, Georgia State Representative, out of Atlanta. Glad to have all three of you here.

That's probably the thing for me I don't understand on the Congo. These justices love their hypotheticals, but they're not real. You got a real damn case. So that's just what kills me. Well, yeah, like I hate hypotheticals. I hate them because they're not real. Well, yeah. Like, I hate hypotheticals. I hate them. Because they're not real. Right, right. Bro, you know,

I mean, obviously we talk about so many serious issues on this show, but this one, this is certainly a level, it just sounds evil. You know what I mean? Like, the way they frame it, you know, the way they have these conversations, and, you know, with your guests before the break, like to criminalize this and to come up with these hypotheticals that, oh, well, whether somebody has a.

It's like you almost bringing in the mental health issue again, something that Republicans don't support in terms of getting more mental health access. And I'm so glad we're going to talk about mental health versus mental illness later. But coming back to this particular issue, they remember they did this with the Super Bowl, like Los Angeles in like 2022, they like got rid of all of the homeless people around like SoFi Stadium because they wanted to make sure that they had a pretty picture of the community. This is disgraceful. These are people, and they make us act, they act as if homeless people who are unhoused, it's a choice. They just decided that they just don't want to live in a house anymore and that whatever happens is on them. And I thought that the way that Justice Sotomayor framed it, I thought it was really masterful, because you're really targeting

people who don't have the opportunity to have their own consistent home. And you want to throw all of these hypotheticals, which is kind of showing where they're leaning towards. And I'm very concerned about where they're leaning. And I think that this is something that we need to talk about more in our community as an election issue, because the Biden administration, though they don't talk about it enough, they have serious programs working with local and state agencies not only to tackle the issue of homelessness, but to prevent it. And so I know that this is in the news for other people, but we've talked about this on this show before. And we need to keep talking about it because you never see conversations about homelessness and people who are unhoused in presidential debates or in state debates. It's never brought up. They're kind of thrown to the side. And now they're really looking at throwing them to the side, whether it's through incarceration or other means,

just to get them out of sight with no real conversations about aiding them and no longer being unhoused. This is disgraceful. And I'm really concerned about what the Supreme Court is going to do on this case. See, Derek, the issue for me is, and listen, homelessness is a problem. I mean, listen, I've been to L.A., I've been to other cities, Chicago, and man, you may be downtown and you're like, what the hell am I seeing? Which means that policymakers have to come up with policies and it's not criminalizing. I mean, you can hand out tickets to homeless folks, but if they already broke, they paying those tickets. And so now what are you going to do? You're going to jail them. OK, that means that the cost to jail them actually will exceed what you could potentially do if they are somewhere else.

You on mute? There you go. According to the last census, there are a quarter of a million unhoused citizens in the United States, over 250,000 unhoused citizens in the United States. In Atlanta, we have 3,000. And so the reason why this is concerning, regardless of the decision that the Supreme Court makes around this case, it's not going to solve the homeless unhoused situation. You highlighted enforcement. We don't even have enough room for common criminals to put in our jails, more or less someone that is sleeping on a park bench. So that enforcement piece is challenging by itself. The other dynamic to this, too, Roland, is this. Think about, you know, other issues that we can actually solve, right, that really help define our level of humanity in the United States. Other issues around affordable housing, mental health that we're going to discuss later on during the show,

mental illness. We're here in Georgia. We've closed all of our state facilities. And so when we're dealing with the unhoused and homeless, they're either in our emergency rooms, depending on their situation, as they combat a mental illness, and also look at the composition of the unhoused. We're talking about families. We're talking about veterans. I served in the Navy for 22 years, so we got veterans out there as well. We got some folks who are just on their bad end of society right now. And so whatever decision the Supreme Court makes, it's not going to solve their hypothetical

situation. You know, and that's really what this thing is about, Julian. You've got to have policymakers who want to confront the problem of the homeless. You can't just whine and complain about how it looks having people, you know, filling up the sidewalks. You must deal with the root problem. Otherwise, you're just kicking a can down the road. You know, Roland, the problem is bigger than the Supreme Court. Although the Gorsuch's comments, and I love your hypotheticals, they're playing with lives. They're playing with important people's lives when they start playing hypothetically, what if, what if, what if.

What if, as Brother just said, you know, 2.5 million people or 250 million people homeless. I got the numbers wrong. But basically, all these homeless people. Here's the root of the problem. There is inadequate affordable housing in this country. Why is there inadequate affordable housing? Because corporations have been buying up single-family homes that could be Section 8 homes.

Yep. That are the kind of homes they've been buying up. Yep. And turning them into cash houses called predatory capital. In fact, there's a report that says that by 2030, that's just six years from now, by 2030, 40% of all U.S. homes will be owned by private equity. Precisely.

And their goal is not to sell the homes. Their goal is to make people renters. So they are paying escalated rental fees. They have a perpetual income stream, a perpetual income stream. And they lock people out of wealth development. And it is happening all over the country. Obi Kongo made a really important point when he talked about just the evil inherent in this. But again, I said this is bigger than the Supreme Court.

This is public policy. Marsha Fudge, as HUD secretary, was beginning to deal with this. She left, of course, because with this Congress, you couldn't pass gas, much less legislation. But she's gone, and the interim woman, I believe, is very good. Todman, I believe her name is, is very good toddman i believe her name is is very

good but nothing is going to be passed it's a public policy issue about how we deal with the poor how we pay the poor minimum wage federal minimum wage has not gone up in more than a decade and so it's it's all it's all i want to stay there because the problem here is this here. It sort of reminds me of when we were talking about the downscale customer service jobs. Historically, those were jobs for young people and for folks in their early 20s. Well, what then began with technology, things begin to happen. You used to have grocery clerks.

You used to have bank tellers. You used to have a whole slew of jobs that folks could earn high 20s, low 30s, mid 30s, high 30s, low 40s working those jobs. Well, when those jobs. Well, when those jobs disappeared, the folk who were at that level then dropped down to the Walmart greeter jobs and things along those lines.

So when those people dropped down, well then they pressed the other folk who were depending upon those jobs further down as well. So when you talk about these homes here, so now people who should be living in single family homes, they now are renting places, and so folk who traditionally would be in those apartments, they now are being pushed out as well.

Go to my iPad, Anthony. This was a story even in the conservative Washington Times. 44% of flipped single-family home purchases in 2023 were by private investors. That means, Julian, the folk who actually should be traditionally buying a home, likely first-time homeowner, likely a young couple in their early 30s with a child, they now are being stuck in apartments. And so you now have a serious problem of housing and you have policymakers who don't want to deal with this,

the private equity folks. They don't want to deal with the mental illness, don't want to deal with other sort of stuff. And then they go, oh, we got a homeless problem. Well, yeah. But if you don't have homes, with other sort of stuff. And then they go, oh, we got a homeless problem. Well, yeah. But if you don't have homes, you have a homeless problem. And if you deliberately take homes out of the market, take single-family homes out of the market,

you're creating your own problem. And none of these people, they're, you know, we understand fully how politicians purchase congressional and Senate seats. We understand fully that they, like a David Trone in Maryland, throwing millions of dollars, $45 million of his own money

into his campaign against the brilliant Angela Ossobrooks. But, you know, he's putting all that money. Is this going to be someone who's going to stand up against these equity investors? No, because he is one. You know, you go down the list and you're not going to know someone who's going to stand up against these equity investors? No, because he is one. You go down the list and you're not going to. No, they're not going to stand up. And so we basically have no congressional living caucus. We've got a congressional black caucus. But we need to have a congressional caucus that really deals with how people live

if they're moderate income. But your point about the automation, I tried to pay a bill today. It took me 20 minutes to get a person. Press one for this, press two for that. One, two didn't give me anything. I started screaming, and then somebody picked up the phone and said, are you okay? I'm like, no.

But here's the deal, though. I'm a Congo. Perfect example, today. And listen, for the last five or six years, I have gotten more phone calls, more text messages, I mean, you name it, from folk trying to buy my home in Texas. I paid the home off 2009, I guess.

So I've owned it outright. My parents have been living in my home. My sister and her two nieces lived in the home for quite some time. Sister gets remarried. Both of my nieces are out. My nephew moves to Dallas. He's now living in my parents' home. So at one point you've had,

so three generations of family members. Now, the benefit to family members, they're not paying rent, so they're living mortgage-free. They're paying for utilities, things along those lines. And so that is an economic benefit, because they are able to be able to build their life and not have where most places,

40 to 50 or 60% of some people's income is going towards where they live. And so my parents, our dad will be 77 on Thursday, mom is 77 in November. And so they are even in a situation, so their Social Security, railroad retirement,

is not having to go 50, 60 percent to housing because I own the home. But they've been blowing my phone up like crazy trying to offer me cash. Now, the home was purchased. I think it was one hundred and twenty two thousand dollars. When I purchased the home in December of 1999, the value of that home today is, and I posted this on social media because I made a post about it. The value of that particular home today is $344,850. Now, for the person who is watching going, wait a minute, hold up. You bought a house for $122,000 in December 1999. Here you are 25 years later and it's worth almost three times as much. Here's why. Anthony, go to my iPad. So as you see here, folks, this is U.S. home construction from 1900 through 2021. And you'll see 1900,

1.78 million homes were built in the United States. And then 2.65 million, 2 million, 4.16 million. And then you get to the 50s. Now, why is that important? Because now you're dealing with right here, you're dealing with really 1950 to present day, you're dealing with the folks, namely white, who were able to buy homes when it came to the GI Bill. So 10.08, 9.49, then you see 12 million, 12 million, 12 million, 14 million between 2000 and 2009. Then you see a massive drop 2010, 2019. Why is that? 2010-2019,

folks, that was a result of the home foreclosure crisis in the previous decade. And so we had massive foreclosures. 53% of all black wealth wiped out. Now here's the problem. The next decade, we are far behind in the current decade. A realtor.com report said that we're 7.2 million homes behind in this decade. So here's the problem. If you say, let's just say from 2020, 2029, let's just say we build about 7 million homes and we built 6 million homes in the previous decade. That means that in 20 years, you barely built the number of homes that was built in 2000, 2009. So what do you now have? You now have an increased population, more demand.

You do not have the housing stock. So if we continue on this rate, we're going to be in an even more difficult situation. And Oma Congo, those private equity people, the reason why they are desperately trying to offer me cash for my home is because they absolutely know there's less stock and they want to snap up and here's what they're doing they are successful in this way because they're offering so much money people are saying yes not realizing it's going to make it very difficult for the next generation to be able to own homes absolutely i just got a message i get get a message every week for my house as well. And I'm like, how you get my number? I don't even know who these people are.

Man, they call and text all every damn day. Yep. What did I hear from my own friends? I mean, so you're absolutely right. And one of the things that we didn't talk about from that graphic that you showed, which was just horrific, was also the amount of people who lost their homes

due to the COVID pandemic. People lost their jobs and their incomes, you know, were out on the street, you know, people who are unhoused was on the rise as well. And we also have to add to the fact that many of these private equity folks are not based in the United States. And so people from across the globe are buying up American property, just like they're buying up American land and farmland and the like. And so, so much of what we had in this country is not owned by regular, everyday people. And when we get into this next election cycle, when we get into these next few years, you're going to have more people who are out there going to be homeless. And that's why I think the Supreme Court is going to rule against people who are unhoused,

because they want to have an institution or a system already lined up in place to be able to deal with these people, these people, quote, unquote. And the fact of the matter is, they don't want to deal with policy like you just talked about and Dr. Malveaux was talking about. They don't want to do that. And so really, at the end of the day, we have to make sure that, as Dr. Malveaux also talked about, a congressional caucus on living, we have to make sure that we're raising awareness about this, because if we don't, particularly families that might be underwater a little bit but might be able to save their home, if they have certain policies or are able to work with the Biden or local administrations, they're going to get a call from one of these folks, and people are just going to say, oh, yeah, I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to sell.

People are going to sit on it. The values of the communities are going to go down, because these houses are going to be unoccupied for a while. Or like you said, a renter class is going to grow. And then those communities are going to continue to be in decline. And our communities are going to be hit first. So this is an issue that is not spoken about enough. And it's really important right now that we connect those dots. I was not aware, Roland, of that 20-year gap. We talked, in 20 years, we'll build as many houses as it took us to build in a decade. But it really makes a lot of sense. And these guys, these policymakers and the like who don't care for the unhoused, this is what they want. And

they play off of our ignorance. And so the more we know, the more we have to share, particularly to these next generation. I know a lot of cops and 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. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1,

Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast.

We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is.

Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Caramouch. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. 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. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

...of homeowners, we can be able to get them in positions, particularly through voting, where they can make real laws that are going to help our communities across the country. So the reason I'm purposely clicking the dots, and I know there's somebody watching who's saying, all right, what does this have to do with the homelessness issue and Supreme Court decision? Because they are all connected. So if you don't deal with mental illness, community services, you don't deal with an insufficient Department of Veterans Affairs in dealing with veterans and PTSD, and then you're not dealing with lack

of building affordable housing, and then when you're not dealing with these cities that keep dealing with these so-called mixed-use development where, oh, we're gonna build this affordable housing and with it, we're-called mixed-use development where, oh, we're going to build this affordable housing, and with it, we're building this mixed-use development and, you know, all sorts of restaurants and trendy little areas and open-air parks, things along those lines. Well, the reality is they throw in very few affordable housing to qualify for the tax breaks, all right? And so only a handful of people can actually get in those places. And what they're really doing is going after the people

who can afford the $300,000 to $400,000 to $500,000 homes that they're building in these downtown developments. And so for the people who are watching, I need them to understand that public policymakers play a role. When Julianne was talking to my Marsha Fudge, she said point blank, we have limited, there are limited things the federal government can do to deal with home building. She said this is specifically a local and state issue. And that's the piece that people don't seem to understand. And the other dot that we have to connect to your point, Roland, is this. As a

lawmaker, we right here in Georgia, during our last legislative session, tried to expand the homestead exemption for our seniors because our seniors are on fixed incomes. And we also discovered that 85% of our seniors own their homes outright and on a fixed income, but they can't afford the taxes, Roland. Right. Now, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. So explain to the person at home, what does the homestead exemption do? Great question. So the homestead exemption, what it does, it allows for the government. So in our case at the state level, we can say, for example, the bill that I brought forward was if you're over the age of 65 and you have no children in the school system, you're exempt for paying school taxes, and you can get $4,000 off of your property tax because your property tax continues to increase with the market value. And so that can save, on average, a senior citizen roughly $6,500, maybe $7,000. That helps when your taxes of your

$200,000 home, it wasn't $200,000 when you purchase it. It was $50,000 when you purchase it. But now, 30 years later, it's now $200,000. so that homestead exemption will give them a $7,000 break off of their property tax. And see, and just for people to understand, and I was just looking at some stuff over the weekend, Julian, it was kind of interesting. So I'm just at home, and I just moved into a new house here. And I thought about where I came from. I thought about the house that I grew up in. And I was texting somebody, and I said,

I grew up in a small wood frame house, I said, 1,500 square feet. And then I went online, and I was like, so I put in the address then I went online and I was like so I put in the address I went to Zillow and I put in the address And I typed in it was like damn hold up. It was 1231 square feet And I saw pull this up go to my iPad and when I go on going to Houston before I sort of pulled it up and

this was literally the house that I grew up in. First of all, what I hate is we had great landscaping. That was the work of my dad, my mom, but really me and my brothers and sisters. We were the manual laborers. But the thing was crazy to me, and it was just blowing my mind, that this house here is $175,000. I wasn't even surprised that it was $175,000. And then I pulled up some other homes that were on the street my grandparents lived on eight blocks away. And that was a house that was newly built.

It was a brick house, very nice inside. That house was $399,000. I was like, huh? You know, part of that is the natural rising of prices. Right, right. But what I was looking at, I was looking at the neighborhood. I was looking at amenities, things along those lines. So the reason it blew me away was, wait a minute, are you serious?

Almost 400,000 for that house in that neighborhood, which then brought home the reality of, because we have so few stock, that I don't care where the house is, I don't care in what neighborhood, it is sky high because you don't have available stock. And so now, that's just a single family home. Now you go, wait a minute. Imagine folks much lower income. They can't afford to even pay some of these rent. And that ties right back into the homeless problem that we're seeing where people,

if they can't make some payments and they get evicted, they can't get into a shelter, they are out on the street. And that's where policymakers are going to have to stop complaining about seeing people sleeping in cars or sleeping in parks on the sidewalks. They are going to have to confront the policies that are contributing to the homeless problem in America. Julianne, 60 seconds before I go to break. San Francisco Mayor London Breed is using vacant

land to build affordable housing. She promises to build about 80,000 units. She is up for re-election. And she's got started on the process. The issue is building more housing. And to y'all's point, not a day goes by when some colonizer knocks on this door

or puts a note through my window. Is your house for sale? My answer is MF. Do you see a for sale sign in front of this house? If you do not, the house is not for sale. Don't ask me those stupid questions. But basically, you've got an era of speculation about housing. It's pushing prices up.

We have to figure out how to build more affordable housing for people of moderate incomes. Average Black family earns about 60 grand, average Black family, over overall numbers higher. So what can you do with 60 grand? What the rules say is you shouldn't spend more than a third, really it used to be a quarter, now it's up to a third of your net income on housing. Lots of people are spending half and even more than that. Yeah. And so it's just stunning. And so I just don't, I just think that people don't understand and just go back. I wish I could get rid of half of this side here, but it's so crazy. I just showed you, I just showed you some of the houses

and what the costs are for some of those houses. And if you see the map here, go back. You might see right here, this is literally in the same neighborhood. You will see a $75,000 lot, and then you'll see an $85,000 lot, but then you'll see a house that's $338,000. But then you'll see another one that's $260,000, one that's $275,000 lot, but then you'll see a house that's $338,000. But then you'll see another one that's $260,000,

one that's $275,000, and then you keep going, then all of a sudden you'll see a $70,000 lot, you'll see a $380,000 house, that's 2,100 square feet. I mean, and again, just so people understand, if you're a first time home homebuyer, you're competing. And I guarantee you, when I look at these, I guarantee you, because I grew up in Clinton Park in Houston, I guarantee you what happened.

I guarantee you that if you go through the 77029 zip code, you're going to find private equity owning a bunch of these houses because there were families that that when they grew up, you know, my parents eventually, you know, sold their home there. But imagine if you have families where parents passed away, kids didn't want to come back there. They sold the land. Private equity snapped that up. And that's what you're seeing. And so this is going to continue unless policymakers do something about it. You cannot have private equity owning 40 and 50 percent of all available homes in the country because they have no interest in selling. They want to jack the rents up and take as much money as they can from from Americans.

And so that's going to be an issue. All right, folks, got to go to break. We come back. Man, John Hope Brown was on a squat box. Talk about his new book and also talking about his attack on DEI and how we're facing this crisis in the country. Very interesting conversation. Want to show you some of that. Of course, we do some. We come back. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. The Black Star Network support us in what we do. Why don't we go through the housing issue right there?

Because the conversation that we had, you ain't going to get that conversation on CNBC, on Bloomberg or these business networks. You're damn sure not going to get it on the cable news networks. And I keep telling you all this here. This is stuff that you don't hear people talking about because all the rest of these networks, they've been Donald Trump all damn day on trial. I mean, they've been 24-7. I'm not spending even 24 seconds on that, but we've got to be able to have our platforms that are speaking to the issues that matter to us. So your support for Roland Martin Unfiltered and the Blackstone Network is critical. Our goal is to get 50,000 of our fans contributing on average $50 each. That's $4.19 a month, $0.13 a day.

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We'll be right back. With me, Greg Cawley. Dr. Kwesi Kanadu, author, scholar, and healer. He is one of the truly representative thinkers and activists of our generation. I had a dream, you know, a particular night. And when I woke up, several ancestors came to me. And they came to me and said, we really like what you're doing, but you have to do more. His writing provides a deep and unique dive into

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You know, I saw this article over the weekend that I thought was kind of interesting. And what tripped me out in looking at the article was that it was a lot of people I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated,

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way.

In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban is. Benny the Butcher.

Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. 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. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. It talked about taxes and talked about President Joe Biden's plan. He wants to tax folks, families that make $400,000 or higher. And I thought it was interesting.

And there was a brother who was quoted in the article who said, you know, this is not fair. I don't feel like, you know, I'm rich because with 400,000 and as a result, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to pull the story up. He goes, you know, I'm going to vote for Trump. And the headline was, I don't think of myself as rich, the Americans crossing Biden's $400,000 tax line. So I thought that was it was just interesting seeing that. And the reason it's a trip is because, one, a lot of people literally have no clue about taxes in this country.

They have no clue about how this actually came about. And I want to go to Julian first because I posted this. I'm going to show the article in a second. And I posted this, Julian, because the first thing I said was, okay, I wonder if his brother went to college. and I wonder if he got any Pell Grants. Where does the money come from? Then I said, well, I wonder if the brother realizes that, you know, does he think about when he's driving on roads, how's that paid for? Does he think about when he's in Tampa and they have disaster relief, hurricanes, tornadoes,

floods, where that money comes from? It always trips me out, these folks who complain about taxes but never think about the stuff that taxes pay for, and then how dare you do it? And don't even realize that Biden's plan is not increasing your taxes, Julian, on the $400,000.

It's increasing your taxes on what you make above the $400,000. Don't understand the tax system at all, Roland, as you know. They also don't understand, as an example, this brother's fussing about $400,000. If you pay into the Social Security system, you're capped out at about $160,000. So all these people who make more than $160,000 are not paying into the Social Security system,

which is why we have so many inequities there. As you mentioned, roads, bridges, regulation. We've had several challenges with airplanes, parts falling out the sky and carrying on. The Federal Aviation Administration is a regulatory agency that basically is financed by our tax dollars. We're about to go into a season of extreme heat. OSHA, Office of Safety and Health Administration, is the one that passes regulations about breaks and things like that. And quite frankly, your friend, Mr. DeSatan down there in Florida, they just passed a law that said that prohibited localities from regulating breaks. Who works outside in the summer, rather? Round folks, black folks, people who are agricultural. They get heat stroke.

OSHA needs to step in there. So there's so many things that our taxes pay for. Our schools, of course, local taxes pay for. But also Title I schools, which are schools that serve people below a certain income level, neighborhoods before a certain income level, Title I, get federal grants because the taxes, local taxes don't pay enough for them. So, I mean, everybody fusses about taxes, you know, sometimes a good reason. But the fact is we have to look at what the taxes are for, how the taxes enhance our lives. And what we're getting—I'll tell you, I had an argument with some conservative on the radio recently,

and the woman was talking about eliminating taxes. And I said, how old's your mama? And she said, why? I said, I just want to know. I'm curious. She said she was 78. I said, does old's your mama? And she said, what? I said, I just want to know. I'm curious. She said she was 78. I said, does she get Social Security? She said, I said, taxes pay for that.

Even if it's not the Social Security taxes, they don't fully cover it. The Social Security Administration is also, because all these people talk about they don't like taxes, need to look at their lives and look at their pocketbooks and figure out what they're getting for those taxes. You know, what I thought was interesting, Derek, when I saw this piece here and go to my iPad, Anthony, this is the piece itself is in The Wall Street Journal. I don't think of myself as rich. The Americans crossing Biden's four hundred thousand dollar tax line uh and you know this guy aaron littles of tampa says he feels unfairly targeted by the four hundred thousand dollar cutoff okay now what's and so there was a quote in here let me find it uh and i sort of laughed when i saw his quote uh because uh he was he was highly offended uh by the uh by this um and uh wait wait till i find it he goes uh i've hit the american dream and now i'm going to have to pay more taxes that doesn't feel

great to me it's demotivating d Derek, his was crazy. I, this, you know, when you hear that, it's strange to me. It's strange to me when I hear that. And part of the reason, part of the reason, Derek, why,

part of the reason why I was, I was looking up, part of the reason why I was looking up, part of the reason why I was looking up, I was looking at where I grew up. Because Saturday, I stood in, Saturday I stood in my new backyard. And I saw this, I saw this.

And so I thought about where I grew up with my parents, neither one who went to college, parents who never made more than $50,000 a year. And I thought about where I am now. I thought about moving into a new home, still owning my home in Texas where my parents live and my nephew lives there. And the life that I have,

and the last thing I'm about to do, Derek, is say some bullshit like, oh my God, raising taxes is demotivating. No, it's not. But also I have to understand that, you know You know what? The road that I drove on, the cops that patrol the area, the lights, the sewer system, the highway, all those things are paid via tax dollars. Now, I totally understand folks saying, I want to keep as much money as I can make. And so as a business owner, I understand that.

But when my accountant tells me, hey, Roland, when you buy these things, you can write all of that money off. Well, that means I'm going to go buy some other stuff for the studio to make us better, to lower my tax threshold. But the fact of the matter is, when I write that check, I also understand how I want it to be used, how I don't want it to be wasted. But this notion of, oh, sure, let's demand this and this and this from government, but I don't want to pay for it. I want somebody else to pay for it. Where in the hell do you think it comes from? You know, Roland, when you think about this discussion

or this debate between socialism and capitalism, folks who have received a lot of those tax dollars by way of incentives and grants, They don't talk about that. PPP, where they think that money came from, Roland? Right, these grants. Pell grants, as you've already outlined, mention about the infrastructure. And so when you think about where our tax dollars pay for the hospitals,

the schools, the infrastructure, the fire department, all these things is sourced by our tax. I want to highlight, Roland, is this. When you think about the industrial revolution that took place in the United States, the Rockefellers, Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, all of them, how do you think they started their company? The government incentivized them to lay that rail. Where do you think Boeing get their dollars from to build airplanes? Government. So these tax dollars are being used to help individuals basically push their business forward. Right. Steve Jobs, you know, he got a lot of money from government to help build out Apple and so on and so forth. So I just find it very interesting when we have this conversation around socialism and

capitalism, those who, like Elon Musk, don't tell the truth, that they got $600 million to help him become the multi-billionaire that he is. I'm a Congo. I find this to be interesting. So some fool named Sean Ryan on our YouTube chat goes, "'Where has socialism ever worked?' Anthony, go to my iPad. Sean Ryan is typing on a thing called the internet that was actually created by the United States government. Government researchers

created the internet. You see right here, this article was published in Scientific American's former blog network, and it says right here, okay, right here, that the Pentagon our pin that was the internet's immediate predecessor and It talks about when the internet was founded when it was privatized We can go on and on and on the bottom line is it was government Researchers that put us in the position right now folk don't seem to pay any attention to that the point I'm making is, if we're going to sit here and, I mean, we can debate and we want to argue.

Like, I had a guy on Twitter, he goes, well, I think the $400,000 is, I find this to be hilarious. He goes, the $400,000 is just arbitrary. I said, OK. And he was talking about how, what his family makes and if my wife is this and I'm this here and I'm listening to him talk and I went, hmm, I wonder if he even understands what the median average income is in the United States. And he was just, and again, he was just sitting here talking and talking.

And I was like, okay. And he was complaining about this arbitrary $400,000 mark. And I had to remind him of this here. Is that, y'all this right here this right here is from the U.S. Justice Department. This says the following

this is called Census Bureau Median Family Income by Family Size. The following table provides median family income data reproduced in a form of design for ease of use in bankruptcy forms.

You'll see right here. Okay. Starting with Alabama. It shows one earner all the way to family size. You'll see here that the high, so Hawaii, let's say four people, four people.

Hawaii's at 125,000. Connecticut is at 137,000. Let me go see if anybody's higher than Connecticut. Maryland's 138,000. Okay, New Jersey's 140,000. New York is 117,000 So New Jersey is the highest with four kids the median family income in New Jersey 140,000 on the Congo

This fool this dude is complaining and he y'all here's the numbers right here for people Yeah, it's right here. It's. Four people. Y'all, it's right here. It's justice.gov. The data is right there. 85,000, 108, 89. Let me see what the lowest is. So New Jersey's is 140,000. So the market is 85...

Massachusetts is 148. Okay, Massachusetts is 148. So they're the highest. Okay. So right here,. So they're the highest. Okay. So right here, Alabama is 85,687. Let me see if anybody, right here, Mississippi is 74,888. New Mexico is 70,316. Let me see if anybody lower than New Mexico. No. So New Mexico is $70,316.

Massachusetts is $148,713. That's median family income. I'm like, bro, you complaining that $400,000 on the Congo is arbitrary when you're making two and a half times more than what the median family income in Massachusetts make. This is why I try to tell some people, listen to what your dumb ass is saying. I cannot sit here as somebody making that salary. Well, this is just a damn shame. That's why I went back and looked at the house I grew up in

to remind my ass where I came from. You are absolutely right. You know, Dr. King, when he talked about socialism versus capitalism, you know, he says in America we have socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. This idea the poor got to pull them bootstraps out. But when you're talking about rich, when we talked about, you know, Tesla and other groups, they get that government assistance and that help. When we talk about these stadiums,

these big stadiums that these owners of these teams never pay for, taxpayers' dollars, they build these things. At every single juncture, we talk about what taxes are doing for our economy. And I like when I see these guys called the patriotic millionaires, like some of America's richest individuals who constantly say, tax us, tax us, tax us. We want to pay our fair share. Because on the flip side of this also, Roland, is we've got to look at the stock market and what is happening of all of these people making all of this money under Biden's economy. And the stock market is raving in ways that it hasn't been as well. So it's like they're trying to get it on both ends. And so if we are not mindful of this, we are going to have people like that, the guy in that article, Little's or it's never his name, is they're going to become the new face of the people who are suffering under Biden's tax policies, when every economic

indicator for the most part has been up under Biden compared to Trump. And if you're not going to look at what you have been able to get in this country, what you have been able to build in this country and want to have no type of instance or instincts of wanting to give back, then it's definitely shame on you. But this is what our government, our so-called leaders are doing. What did Trump say in 2016 when Hillary Clinton called him out? He said, not paying this amount of taxes, it makes me smart, you know, being able to get away and right in the system. And so we see every single day they want to continue to gain the system. And the fact that her brother would say that and say that, you know, I'm going for Trump,

when he's gonna do everything else to go against you as a black person, but you might get that tax cut, that's really all you're in it for? That's really... It's disgraceful. It's really disgraceful. Uh, and so Mark Cuban was tweeting about this. And Mark Cuban actually posted this. This is when Mark... The check that Mark... The direct deposit that Mark Cuban was tweeting about this. And Mark Cuban actually posted this. This is the direct deposit that Mark Cuban made to the government.

He posted this. KPMG, his accountants, said that Mark Cuban, his taxes for this year, $275,900,000. And Mark Cuban said, I'm proud of what I've been able to do, how much I've been able to make, and I happily will make that direct deposit because I understand that these things cost. Just something

real quick, 30 seconds. I got to go to the next guest. Go. It's a false dichotomy about socialism versus capitalism. What we're talking about is a compassionate capitalism, which that's a false dichotomy about socialism versus capitalism. What we're talking about is a compassionate capitalism, which that's a whole other story. What we're really talking about

is a capitalism that is fair. Right. That's what we're talking about. No one is advocating Soviet-style socialism, so it's a false dichotomy, but it allows crazy people to sort of say,

oh, gee, we're veering towards socialism. No. What we want is a compassionate capitalism where everybody pays their fair share and we have compassion for people at the bottom. All right, folks, when we come back, we're going to talk about a lawsuit in Florida against Governor Ron DeSantis,

his attack on folks formerly incarcerated. You know he's been trying to keep those folks from... I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.

But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way.

Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher.

Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill, NHL enforcer Riley Cote, Marine Corps vet, MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. 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. And to hear episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Voting because he understands that they could form a huge voting bloc and knock a lot of

Republicans out of public office in Florida. That's next. Rolling back unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. Hatred on the streets, a horrific scene, a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence. On that soil, you will not reflect on it. White people are losing their damn minds. There's an angry pro-Trump mob storm to the U.S. Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance.

We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at every university calls white rage as a backlash. This is the wrath of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. Here's all the Proud Boys guys. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people.

The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women. This is white people. fan base is pioneering a new era of social media for the creator economy this next generation social media app with over 600,000 users is raising $17 million and now is your chance to invest. For details on how to invest, visit startengine.com slash fanbase or scan the QR code. Another way we're giving you the freedom to be you without limits. Hello, I'm Marissa Mitchell, a news anchor at Fox 5 DC. Hey, what's up? It's Sammy

Roman and you are watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Florida Governor Rhonda Sanders and other Florida officials are being sued over alleged voter intimidation and confusion regarding the voting rights of folks formerly incarcerated. Some have said felons voting rights. So the language there, 74 page civil lawsuit following U.S. District Court in Miami says the lack of a reliable database to determine voter eligibility for individuals with convictions is unconstitutional.

Desmond Meade, who leads the group, they're behind the lawsuit. He joins us right now. And Desmond, this is the thing, what we saw. Rhonda Santus had folks arrested who were formerly incarcerated who were told they could vote. And every single one of those cases got thrown out

when the judge said they were told they can vote. What the hell is this here? But that wasn't his intent. He wanted to set a chill, it was making a chilling effect to cause people to say, hey, man, you know what? Listen, I don't even want to chance it because they were arrested, they were inconvenienced, they had to go to jail. It was all kind of drama they had to go

through, and that's really what their goal was. Yes, well, first of all, Rob, listen, thank you so much for Roland for having me on the show tonight. But let me tell you, yes, it's just a complete mess here in Florida. But I want to be very clear.

At the core of our lawsuit is a very fundamental question that I believe have not only implications in Florida, but also national implications, right? And that question is simple. Whose responsibility is it to determine voter eligibility? Like, we've seen cases in other states where people relied on the state, where the state issued voter identification cards, but yet they were subsequently arrested and, in one case, convicted of voting illegally when they should not have been convicted as such. And so we've seen that exact same thing play out in Florida, where everyone who got arrested, everyone that the police stormed their homes and was pulling people out in Florida, where everyone who got arrested, everyone that the

police stormed their homes and was pulling people out in the middle of the night and arresting elderly people, right, every last one of those individuals had the same thing in common. They were all issued a voter identification card. And if a person cannot rely on the state to determine whether or not they're eligible to vote, then who the heck can they rely on? And that is what sits at the crux of our lawsuit. And we want the state to admit that they have known about a failed election system since Bush v. Gore, when hundreds of people were removed from the voting rolls in an election

that was decided by a little over 500 votes. And so we want the state, we want the court to force the state to, first of all, admit responsibility for determining voter eligibility, but to invest the necessary resources to create a system that is accurate, that people can rely on, and that they can feel confident to be able to go and vote without the fear of arrest. Absolutely. Absolutely. And the other thing is this here, you got to have the clarity. This is early on

because what they do is they always want to wait late. Oh, it's just too late, too late. No, folks need to know now. They need to know this summer if they can actually register to vote. And what they did is we saw what happened when Amendment 4 was passed, overwhelmingly in the state. The Republicans went back in and played around with it. They said, oh,

no, no, you got to pay all your fines. And so they came back, and their conservative Supreme Court backed them up on it. And so that threw another monkey wrench in it. And that's what the fear is. They will try to do the same thing come this year to, again, keep those 1.4 million people from being eligible to vote. We're rolling this two things. One thing I want to, well, the main thing I want to make clear

is that this thing is really not that difficult. It's really not that complex. And the reason why I say that, because right now in Florida, if I were to get traffic tickets in multiple counties in Florida and don't pay those traffic tickets, right, and my license gets suspended, if I go to any county in the state of Florida

to say I want to get a driver's license or reinstate my driver's license, I don't care what county I go to, they will immediately be able to say, nope, you cannot get a driver's license because you owe money in these four or five different counties. This is how much you actually owe, right? And until you pay that, you won't get it back. But the minute I pay it, guess what? I get a clearance and I'm able to get my license reinstated immediately. And so there is already a system in place that can tell people what they owe.

If they have outstanding traffic tickets, why can't there be a system in place for something even more? Well, I think it's more important than driving and that's being able to vote, being able to cast a ballot. So are you still hearing from people who were formerly incarcerated who are like, man, I don't know what to do. I told the story of the brother in Texas who voted in 2020, stood in line six hours, story was done, Republicans came after him, and this brother, he was eventually cleared, but he literally said to the Houston Chronicle, I'm not voting because I don't want to go through this again. That right there is what

the fear is. That is the chilling impact that resulted because of the result of those arrests. But how we're stepping up, you know, listen, I say that when people push at us, we push back even harder. So we stood up a legal defense fund. We stood up a bail fund, to where if people are getting arrested, we're bailing them out of jail. If they're getting arrested for voting illegally, we're getting pro bono attorneys from across the state of Florida who have agreed to represent these individuals. And what we've seen is that the majority of these cases end up becoming successful because we have strong advocates that's representing these individuals. In some cases, and we've seen reports in the past where in other states, maybe that person

didn't have a strong representation, or maybe the state sometimes try to scare you or use scare tactics to scare someone into accepting the plea deal. We see that happen. And so how we counteract that is by building a strong and formidable army of attorneys across the state of Florida that would stand up to the state and push back and say, heck no, right, this person did not do anything wrong. They relied on the state. They did not have the requisite intent to even be charged with this, right, much less getting arrested. And so, therefore, our band of attorneys are stepping up to let people know that, listen, we got your back, right? If you honestly believe that you are eligible to register to vote, even the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals have said this, right, that when a person

honestly believes that they can vote, they should not be treated like a common criminal. They should not be arrested and thrown in jail. Questions from the panel. Derek, you're first. Appreciate your work in this space. I continue to try to make the case that the John Lewis Voter Rights Act, if it was an act in place, it will mitigate and resolve these kind of issues. Do you agree or disagree with that? But the only problem with that is that the states have a certain amount of rights as it relates to whether or not they can allow its citizens to vote. And that John Lewis Act would have probably only apply to federal election, right? Which, I mean, we have some win there as it

relates to federal election. But we've said over the years that the politics that impact us the most are local politics, right? Our governor, our state attorney, the judges that sit on these benches, the sheriff's that's running for office. Right. Those are like very key races that we have to be involved in. And the John Lewis Act would probably not cover those races. Julianne. First of all, thank you for your work and congratulations on your prior victories, especially with the legislation that was passed to allow formerly incarcerated people to vote, even though Florida played with it. I'm interested in what—you have an army of attorneys who are, I assume, pro bono representing these people who have been charged with voting illegally.

My question is, what's the cost of that, even though they're pro bono? representing these people who have been charged with voting illegally. My question is, what's the cost of that, even though they're pro bono? What kind of resource use is that? Because of this malicious attack on these voters, it's costing money, resources, effort. Tell me about how much, not just dollar terms, but in terms of diverted resources that could be used for other very important voting rights issues. Yeah, so, and you make a valid point, you know, and that's why there is that deep level of appreciation for these attorneys that are volunteering their time to represent individuals. You know, we also have volunteer attorneys that are also representing people in court to get those fines and fees actually waived so they can convert it to community service hours. And then at the end, they could have that judicial order that basically say

that they're free and clear and they could vote without fear of getting arrested. And so we have attorneys that are representing people who have been charged, and we also have attorneys that are representing people who want to get clarification on their voter eligibility. And if they have fines and fees, we're going into the courts and getting those fines and fees waived. But when it comes to the cost, I can only speculate that it's in the probably millions of dollars when it's all said and done. You know, when you account for an attorney's time that he spends on a case, the time that our researchers spend researching a case and doing the state's job for it, you know, there's

millions of dollars that could have been allocated or reallocated and used in other places. So, once again, we are grateful for the attorneys. And every day we're getting more attorneys that are volunteering to take maybe one, two, or even three cases on our behalf. And we're grateful for that. And we just have to keep pushing. But the cost of the burden, and I want to be very clear with this, and we're saying this in our lawsuit, should not be on a nonprofit. It should not be on us. The burden of determining voter eligibility should rest and reside with the state.

All right. And especially when you have a state like Florida that like to preach about election integrity, well, election integrity starts with the state doing its doggone job. I'm a Congo. Thank you so much, Jasmine, for your incredible work over the years. It's really powerful and it's impacted so many lives. I want to know if you could speak to whether there is a racial or political dynamic in terms of who's being targeted. Because from a distance, we see it's Black folks and people who are more likely to vote Democrat.

I've heard about stories about people in retirement communities like the villages that's primarily Republican, people who have actually voted twice intentionally and didn't receive any types of reprimand or little reprimand. Could you speak to some of that disparity in terms of who's actually being targeted? So, yeah, you know, I don't know if part of this is good news or bad news, right? But, you know, I think one of the best things that happened was actually the first two people that went to trial for—that were arrested by this election integrity unit were actually people who were registered Republicans who voted for Donald Trump. And I thought that that was great, right, because I knew that it wasn't coming for them.

Maybe it was. I don't know, because at the time, you know, the governor was a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, right? But what we've seen with the arrest of these two individuals that were registered Republican was an amazing opportunity to talk about voting in a way that went beyond just race. But when you step back and just look at the counties that were targeted, you would see more progressive leaning counties. You would see more counties that had a heavy African-American, Latino population that was being targeted as opposed to other counties, right? And then you've seen the cases that you were talking about that the courts threw out was the cases in which our lawyers challenged the jurisdiction of the statewide prosecutor to even bring those charges, right? And because what we were seeing was that the statewide office of prosecution was selecting the counties in which they wanted to assert the power of the state attorney, right?

And in counties in which they didn't want the state attorney to make a determination about whether or not to file charges, they exerted their so-called authority to do so. And it just so happened that the only counties they did that in were counties that had progressive DAs or DAs that were from the Democratic Party. They never took over—they never usurped the power of a DA that was a registered Republican. They never did that. And so that was very telling.

It was very disappointing. But, like I said, the silver lining is, is that even when they were just coming and targeting specific counties, right, when they cast that net, it caught some of their own people and now it allowed us to have a much broader conversation about how ridiculous this is how in the hell the state could start arresting people because of mistakes that they made

not the mistakes that a person made any other questions from the panelists alright well Desmond we appreciate it, man. Good luck in the lawsuit. All right. Thank you so much. Yeah, and I'm surprised, Desmond. Well, first of all, you at the office,

but I know at home, you would have had your lights and all your other... Just for everybody who's watching, you know, Desmond tries his best to keep up with technology and yours truly. And it just drives him crazy because he'd be like...

I think I'd do a darn good job, bro. Desmond would be like, yo, bro, I got something new. Then I'd go, that's nice. Here's something I got. He's like, damn, I gotta get that one too. So we're always... And his wife, Sheena... I'm gonna get my son, Baby, on the job.

And I'm pretty sure Xavier's going to bring it for you. I'm going to get my son, Xavier, to get on the job for me. And his wife, Sheena's like, stop it. You can't compete with Roland. Stop buying stuff, Desmond. Yeah, I'm going to get you one of these days. All right. We'll see. All right, my brother.

I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. All right, folks. Got to go to a break. We. All right, we'll see. All right, my brother, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. All right, folks, got to go to a break. We'll be right back. Roland Martin Unfiltered, the Black Star Network. Support us in what we do. Join the Bring the Funk fan club. See your check and money.

Order the PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. Cash app, dollar sign, RM Unfiltered, PayPal, or Martin Unfiltered. Vimo is RM Unfiltered, PayPal, or Martin Unfiltered. Vimo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle, Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. Download the Black Star Network app. Apple Phone, Android Phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. Be sure to get a copy of my book, White Fear, How the Browning of America is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds,

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Let's go, back in a moment. I was just in my backyard. I just said I was manifesting about life. I said, I would love to come back because it was a great time, and these kids need that right now. They need that male role model in the

schools, I think. Even on TV. People are scared of going to the high school. You know, the high school. You know what I mean? I would love to bring it back, and I think we could bring it back. You know, what do you think? I think we'll ask the people. We'll ask your people. We'll do a poll.

Y'all want to hang a Mr. Cooper? Yeah, I say let's go. We all look good. You know, Holly look good. You know, Raven look the same. Marquise. Don Lewis. It'd be funnier than half the bullshit you see out there on TV now.

God damn. What the fuck? What happened to TV? Yeah, yeah. It's some... I'm like, oh, my God. Thank you. million and now is your chance to invest for details on how to invest visit startengine.com slash fan base or scan the qr code another way we're giving you the freedom to be you without limits

on a next a balanced life with me dr jackie how to live the dream without it turning into a royal nightmare. We'll meet an entrepreneurial couple who've been living the dream for nearly 30 years and they're still going strong, speed bumps and all. I was all one trying to hold back, but he thinks he can do anything. He's like, no, we're going to do it. You know, let's do it. Let's just jump into it. And it has worked. It's a thing of beauty, literally.

That's all next on A Balanced Life on Blackstar Network. Hi, everybody. I'm Kim Colson. Hey, I'm Donnie Simpson. Yo, it's your man Deon Cole from Black-ish. And you're watching... Roland Martin, unfiltered. You can always count on Alabama doing some stupid stuff. House Bill 4, if signed into law, will allow for Juneteenth,

which was, of course, celebrated on June 19th, to become a state holiday. But state employees could choose between recognizing Juneteenth or the birthday of one of the greatest traders in American history, Jefferson Davis, on June 3rd. I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Sh Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real

from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working

and we need to change things. 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.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. podcast. Third. Now, Juneteenth celebrates the end of slavery in the United States. Jefferson Davis Day honors the man who wanted to keep slavery. Hmm. Some see this bill as a compromise, a way to give people a

choice and make Juneteenth more acceptable. Is this some bullshit, Derek? I always find it amazing, Roland, that any time this relates to black people, let's just make this plain. We always got to compromise. We always got to share, right?

This is almost like saying black lives matter. Well, what about White Lives Matter? Right? I mean, it just frustrates me to no end. They should not have a choice in Alabama. Juneteenth is a federal holiday, but you're going to try to, you know, lessen the blow for the state employees in Alabama and give them a choice? Really? You're going to give them a choice? So do we have a choice, Roland, for Fourth of July?

Do we have a choice for Black History Month? They gave us one. They got the other 11. And so I just find it's always that we have to compromise when it comes to black people. It's just frustrating to no end. But the crazy thing here, I'm a Congo, so y'all want to make the day that is designated

to celebrate the end of slavery in Texas, a state holiday, but you want to give the option to celebrate the birthday of the enslaver and the man who wanted to keep the, who led the Confederacy, to keep the very thing that you are celebrating. Go ahead. And the celebrated man who said that he didn't even want the Confederate flag blown at his funeral, you know, when they lost, right? If they lost.

Look, this is amazing. This country, I don't know any country in the world that celebrates losers as much as the United States does. They want to keep the Confederate idea alive, the idea of the lost cause alive. And then the question I have, Roland, is how does this get taught in schools? Because we see what Alabama is doing as it relates to getting rid of our history and all of this fake critical race theory legislation that people are passing. How are they handling this?

What is this going to look like in the books? Because I'm sure they're not even going to be talking about Juneteenth in the books. And so they give the employees the option to choose which holidays they want to recognize. But then in the books, they can't even read about the stuff. You can't even teach about it. The hypocrisy is so real, but it shows how they're just trying to hold on to everything in every way, shape or form. And we have to continue to fight. We have to continue to speak up. We have to continue to call out this hypocrisy. And all of those white folks who lived out in Alabama who claim to go to the rallies and believe in Black Lives Matter and say, are y'all speaking up or are y'all challenging

the government on this? This can't just be a Black people issue. If you believe that our history matters and that our lives matter, you should be speaking up as well. But, again, Roland, we continue, not we, but in this country, there are so many elements here who want to continue to celebrate the losers. This is what Trump is playing off of. And if we continue to push back, we will eventually win and stop having to compromise on situations like this. This is the start, but it's not going to be where it's going to end because we're going to get the full recognition. And Jefferson Davis, the loser, is not going to be there. It's just a matter of time. This is where we are today, but it's not where it's going to last.

Julianne? I'm just laughing, Roland. I can't stop laughing. The temerity of Alabama, the utter nerve of them to try to pair Jefferson Davis with Juneteenth. The problem is that, while it's hilarious on one hand, it raises challenges on the other for Black employees in particular. People have to make a choice. Will people be pressured to make the Jefferson Davis choice? What role will human resources play in this? Will this be a red flag for racists? I mean, there are a lot of questions that are raised. How will the choice be made? You go on H.R.I. 1, Juneteenth? So while it's hilarious and it's ahistorical, it's so ahistorical, people keep behaving as if the Confederacy were just some states' rights group.

When you go and read the Confederate Constitution, they talk about being built on the premise that black people are inferior, built on the premise. So when you celebrate Jefferson Davis, what you're celebrating is the premise that black people are inferior. Now, we know that there are many who do believe that. But but but let's be clear. Don't give me this. Oh, we're just celebrating our history. The Daughters of the Confederate Revolution. We're just celebrating our ancestors. The ancestors were sacks of you-know-what who basically rebelled in enslavement because they could not have had a Southern economy without free black labor. So when you celebrate Jefferson Davis, that's what you're celebrating. And when you're celebrating Juneteenth, you're celebrating freedom, the end of enslavement, the imperfect end of enslavement, because it has continued.

Again, the pairing of the two is cynical. It's cynical beyond cynical. And it's ahistoric. And again, we're talking Alabama. We looked at the numbers in terms of incomes. We could look at the numbers in terms of education. We could look at the numbers in terms of education. Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, sometimes Arkansas, consistently at the bottom of the pile. And this is bottom of the pile thinking. All right, folks, real quick break. We come back more on Roland Martin, unfiltered on the Black Star Network.

Back in a moment. Me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach. Have you ever had that million dollar idea and wondered how you could make it a reality? On the next Get Wealthy, you're going to meet Liska Askalise, the inventress, someone who made her own idea a reality and now is showing others how they can do it too. Positive, focusing in on the thing that you want to do. Writing it down and not speaking to naysayers or anybody about your product until you've taken some steps to at least execute. Lease, ask a lease. On the next Get Wealthy, right here, only on Black Star Network. Next on The Black Table, with me, Greg Cullman. Dr. Kwasi Kanadu, author, scholar, and healer. He is one of the truly representative thinkers and activists of our generation. I had a dream, you know, a particular night,

and when I woke up, several ancestors came to me, and they came to me and said, we really like what you're doing, but you have to do more. His writing provides a deep and unique dive into African history through the eyes of some of the interesting characters who have lived in it, including some in his own family.

The multi-talented, always fascinating Dr. Kwesi Kanadu on the next Black Table here on the Black Star Network. Fanbase is pioneering a new era of social media for the creator economy. This next generation social media app with over 600,000 users is raising $17 million and now is your chance to invest. For details on how to invest, visit startengine.com slash fanbase

or scan the QR code. Another way we're giving you the freedom to be you without limits. Real. All right, folks, our black and missing for the day. Jayla Rimbert has been missing from her Lawrenceville, Georgia home since April 1st. A 25-year-old is 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighs 90 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. Anyone with information about J. LaRimbert should call the Gwinnett County, Georgia Police Department at 770-513-5700. 770-513-5700. All right, folks.

Donald Trump and the New York Attorney General's Office finally reached an agreement over the $175 million bond in his civil fraud ruling. Both have agreed to allow the bond to be backed by California-based companies so long as the collateral remains in cash, among other stipulations. The dispute centered around the underwriter Knight Specialty Insurance Company. They are part of the Knight Insurance Group, chaired by billionaire Don Harkley.

The New York Attorney General's office was concerned over the details of the bond, saying the company should be under full control of Trump's collateral and was not authorized to write business in New York. Also, of course, speaking of Trump, the first day of his testimony ended early today due to a juror's medical appointment before being dismissed. Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo told the jurors in his opening statement, this case is about criminal conspiracy. He laid out the prosecution's case, describing it as a conspiracy between Trump and Michael

Cohen, his former attorney. Colangelo said the former publisher of the National Enquirer will testify that he met with Trump after the election and Trump thanked him for dealing with the stories about women claiming to have had an affair with him. Trump's lawyer told the jury that he did nothing

wrong and that they will find him not guilty. Testimony resumes Tuesday morning. All right, folks, time for Fit, Live, Win. This is National Minority Health Month, and we're examining mental health versus mental illness. We all are on the mental health spectrum, but that doesn't mean we have the illness. To talk about that is Dr. Don Brown,

a child, adult, and sports psychiatrist out of Houston. Don, glad to have you on the show. So explain the difference when you talk about people who struggle with their mental health versus those who have mental illness. All right, let's get Doc's signal straight. Looks like it froze. And so I'm going to do this here, go to a quick break.

We'll come back, we'll get our signal straight. We'll be right back on the show. I was just in my backyard. I just said I was manifesting about life. I said I would love to come back because it was a great time. And these kids need that right now. They need that male role model in the schools, I think. Even on TV.

People are scared to go into the high schools. You know, the high school, you know what I mean? I would love to bring it back, and I think we can bring it back. You know, what do you think? I think we'll just ask the people. We'll ask your people. We'll do a poll. Y'all want to hang with Mr. Cooper?

Yeah, I say let's go. We all look good. You know, Holly look good. You know, Ali looked good, you know. Raven looked the same, Marquise, Don Lewis. It'd be funnier than half the bullshit you see out there on TV now. God damn. What the fuck?

What happened to TV? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's some, I'm like, oh, my God. Hey, yo, what's up? It's Mr. Dalvin right here. What's up? This is KC.

Sitting here representing the J-O-D-E-C-I. That's Jodeci. Right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered. All right folks, we're talking the difference between mental health, mental illness. Dr. Don Brown joins us. So, Doc, explain the difference. People talk about they're focusing on their mental health.

Even when you talk about folks with depression, we hear they have the blues, but that's not mental illness. So explain the two. Yeah, so we are all on the mental health spectrum. First of all, thank you for having me, Roland. I appreciate being here. Mental health is simply what we think about as far as our psychological, sociological, emotional well-being. So it's how we think, how we act, how we respond to situations, how we're able to get through the tough times, how we're able to battle out the stressors that we may experience on

the day-to-day life. So, you know, if you want to put this in simplest terms, it's how we think rationally, recognizing our limitations, our boundaries, making sure that we're coping well with our changes from the day-to-day functioning, our losses, our trauma that we may experience, and making meaningful contributions to society. Mental illness, on the other hand, is a disease. So it's identified clinical features that contribute to conditions or disorders, illness, whatever word you use, what language you use, but it's a disease. So these are conditions like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, OCD, ADHD. These are identified conditions that are commonly used or are commonly treated by medication management, therapies,

different other non-medication therapies to help a person get through their day-to-day functioning as well. And they also present on a spectrum such as ADHD or autism. So not everyone who has depression may have, you know, decrease in their appetite or sleeping poorly. They may also present with decreased focus and concentration or even sadly suicidal thoughts. So it's a spectrum condition based on the severity of symptoms, based on the actual symptoms that deserves treatment. But have you seen it escalate?

Somebody who has mental health issues and then all of a sudden it escalates into mental illness? I have, and that's why it's so important for us to take care of our day-to-day functioning because mental health issues or issues can also present an increased risk for someone to experience an actual illness or a condition. So yes, we have seen these numbers largely escalate. Naturally, I can give you some stats here.

One in five adult Americans have reported mental health illness within a particular year. So that's about 44 million adult Americans each year have reported some type of mental illness, not even a symptom, but an illness. The suicide rate in ages 10 to about 35 is the second leading cause of death. When we're considering black males, it's known as a silent epidemic. The suicide risk in black males over a five-year period has escalated by 43 percent. In black women over a 10-year span, that's also escalated as being number one in ethnicity and gender, as being suicide

being the number one risk factor in women and black girls. So, you know, suicide attempts can also present risk factors for actually completing suicide. So that's like people or teenagers who often come to me and say they're, you know, reporting self-harming behavior, like cutting or self-immunizing their bodies. That actually places people at increased risk as well. So these numbers are staggering. So it is important that we take care of our day-to-day functioning in order to prevent these risks from becoming stats and then also illnesses that people require treatment. So we're all about preventative care here. Questions from the panel. Derek, you first. Dr. Brown, appreciate the work that you're doing.

And my question, as it relates to Georgia, since 1997, Georgia started closing their state facilities, those who were experiencing mental illness challenges either end up in the hospital or the jail cell. But now we're starting to turn the corner 25 years later, and we're building a facility. And the challenge that we're having right now, we can't find enough clinicians, and it's going to take a couple of years to build this facility. What do you recommend for us to do to mitigate this problem while we open up a new facility that we haven't had in the last 25 years? It's a very good question. I'm actually a multi-state license. One of those states is Georgia. And one of the things this is is a multilevel problem, right? So you start with the federal obligations to make sure that we have financial information

or literacy, as well as financial means to make sure that we're actually supporting psychiatrists to actually go to these roles, right? I mean, if you think about how many psychiatrists are produced, it's about 54,000 psychiatrists in the United States currently. One percent of those psychiatrists are actually in the office. Eighty-five to 86 percent are actually government-funded psychiatrists. And then those of one percent who are in the office, for example, are from the biopic community. So when you're thinking about the people that you're treating in these office, for example, are from the biopic community. So when you're thinking about the people that you're treating in these facilities, when you're thinking about where these facilities are located, which states, where there's the funding that's supporting these facilities,

not just opening them, but maintaining the opening and making sure that the people are getting what they need and deserve. And then the aftercare. So to prevent them from re-entering, you know, these facilities as well, all of these things and all of these components are part of the infrastructure that we're currently are very problematic because there's just not a sustainable infrastructure that we can actually use right now to make sure that we're providing equitable and adequate care for these individuals, first of all, to prevent them from having to go to facilities, but hopefully just to go to the day-to-day maintenance appointments versus going to long-term residential facilities because they've been dealing with a mental illness that has been gone unnoticed and therefore untreated. So there's a multitude of issues there.

Then you think about the uninsured and underinsured. You know, when you have uninsured, you have people who can't afford insurance. And we're not talking about medical insurance. We're talking about mental health insurance, which often doesn't come with their medical insurance. And often it's a separate insurance plan that people are forced to get if they're dealing with a mental health crisis or illness. And then you talk about the underinsured. These are individuals who have insurance, but it's not adequate enough to provide equitable care or they don't provide care at all. So, you know, these are, again, some issues that we're dealing with. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun?

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Julianne. Dr. Brown, first of all, thank you for your work and thanks for the stats that you shared. I think they're really important and we need to drill down on them. I'm thinking as you were speaking, I was thinking of Ntozake Shange for colored girls who considered suicide when the rainbow was enough.

Because I'm thinking especially about black women's mental health. Been two really notable black women suicides recently, Black women who are highly accomplished. So these became very public. Lincoln University in Missouri, where a sister was an administrator, killed herself. What's up with these visible Black women and suicide? And what can we do to make sure that these very highly visible women get the support they need? Often when you've got it all going on, people think it's all, everything's okay. But, you know, as someone who experiences depression, I will tell you that sometimes you look good and it's not good. What can we do to provide support systems for Black

women who are in crisis? Thank you so much for raising this very important topic. I actually lost a close friend last month who died by suicide who was actually an outstanding citizen and physician in our community. One of the problems is that there's not safe, adequate care for even the professional woman, Black woman, to get care. Maybe a fear of someone, you know, finding out about her personal lifestyle. Where would she go, especially if she's a physician like my friend, in order to receive services and maintain the privacy of the treatment that she receives?

This mentality that black women wear these capes and wear the crowns and take care of a society, you know, that was kind of the analogy that we often use from enslaved days that is basically outdated tools, right? So, you know, pulling up the bootstraps and making sure you suck it up and you're going to be okay mentality has also, you know, trickled down from generations to generations to everyday modern living now, which doesn't suffice to the demands of the society of working black women today. So it's time to take off those capes. It's been time to do that.

Understand we're human first. Understand we have needs regardless of your socioeconomical class, race, culture, whatever community you come from, you're human first. And recognizing what mental illness looks like. You know, what does depression look like? So if a grandmother came into my office, a black female, and said she was tired, does that mean she's physically fatigued? It also can be she's emotionally tired. You know, having cultural competent physicians or clinicians that are trained in these areas to relate to the populations that they're seeing is important, to make sure that they're

identifying these symptoms when they're not specifically laid out like they are in our diagnostic statistic manual. And everyone doesn't fit that. I mean, that manual was designed for the average white male. And so less than 1% of minorities were even used to identify what depression looks like. It's time for us to really sit down and talk to our patients, but also listen. Listening is so important in our community groups, in one-on-one with, you know, my patients, with our spiritual groups, our just girlfriend groups, and understanding that, hey, listen, let's share stories. Because I think that if people can identify that they're not alone in this journey,

then they're more apt to talk. They're more apt to trust. They're more apt to reach out, especially when they need help. And so understanding what resources are in communities is important so that when your friend does need help, you know where to refer them, understand how to make sure that they're safely monitored. And then also if they do need hospitalization what does that look like after their discharge because that's sometimes people fall through the cracks there so there's so many things that we could actually talk about and make sure that we are aware of so that we know how to manage this for us or for the people that we love omicongo dr brown i really appreciate all of your incredible work and advocacy for the people that we love. Omokongo.

Dr. Brown, I really appreciate all of your incredible work and advocacy. I have a question relating to the COVID pandemic. People talk often about long-term COVID, about the medical issues that people still have after getting COVID, but I wanna know what your thoughts are about long-term COVID as it relates to long-term mental health and mental illness, because there was so much stress and depression and things that transpired,

and now people kind of act like because we're out of the physical pandemic that some of those stresses that arise during that time must be gone as well. Can you speak a little bit to that? Very great questions here. Yes. And so the thing about the pandemic, it actually presented a situation where none of us could prepare for. Before 2020, we were already dealing with the great questions here. Yes. And so the thing about the pandemic, it actually presented a situation where none of us could prepare for. Before 2020, we were already dealing with the mental health crises that, again, those stats that I mentioned, particularly in African-American women and girls, as well as black men, they were already epidemics in these groups. And so now here comes the pandemic to catastrophize further what people had already been dealing with and still continue not

to be able to deal with on so many terms. So like you're mentioning, you know, being infected with COVID, maybe job loss during COVID, financial stressors, domestic issues, right? All these things contribute to COVID that people have not been able to even manage right now. So not just the physical symptoms of clogged, you know, what I often hear as foggy brain. I'm an ADHD expert, also have ADHD myself, a mental illness. And I often hear people talk about, well, I can't focus, I can't concentrate, which are some common symptoms of ADHD, but also common symptoms of depression, common symptoms of anxiety. People stop not really, you know, still going back to their primary care

doctor just to get physical evaluations. I'm ordering labs, and they haven't had labs in years to understand that there may be medical, underlying medical contributing factors since COVID that they haven't followed up on that remain an issue that are now affecting their cognitive or executive functioning. And so there's a multitude of factors here. And so as a psychiatrist and medical doctor, I'm actually finding myself asking all of these questions when I'm presented with patients who are talking about just decreased focus and concentration, finding out that many of them have not been able to receive adequate and equitable services for their mental health care.

So yes, this long COVID phenomenon has raised issues in certain communities, particularly biopic communities, and they actually continue. So we still really need to identify these things. And I urge my primary care doctors to really specifically ask about people and how they're feeling, and then lead the conversation into understanding, well, does this feeling also predispose them to having mental health challenges or even a mental illness? Because again, we're missing the boat

when we're missing out on asking these type of important questions. All right, well, Dr. Shula, appreciate it. Thank you so very much. Thank you for having me. All right, folks, that is it for us. Let me thank Amakongo, Derek, and Julian as well. Did not get to the, I pushed it, didn't get the John Hope Bryan story.

I'm going to do that another day. But I appreciate y'all being on today's show. Thank you so very much. Folks, don't forget, support us in what we do. Join our Bring the Funk fan club. Our goal is to get 20,000 of our fans contributing on average $50 each. That's $4.19 a month, $0.13 a day to raise a million dollars to help us defray the cost

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