#RolandMartinUnfiltered - SCOTUS Upholds Trump Policy, FL Officer Drags Woman, Tory Lanez Guilty, In-N-Out Racist

Episode Date: December 29, 2022

12.28.2022 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: SCOTUS Upholds Trump Policy, FL Officer Drags Woman, Tory Lanez Guilty, In-N-Out Racist The Supreme Court will allow U.S. border officials to continue expelling migrants under a policy known as Title 42. We will discuss what this decision means for border states and immigration policy in the future. A white officer is caught dragging a woman on the ground. We will show you the disgraceful incident and give you details on what happened to the officer.  The Tory Lanez Saga continues as a California Jury finds him guilty of shooting Meg Thee Stallion. We will talk to a media source tracking this case from the beginning and a legal expert to explain why they believe a jury found him guilty of all charges. In our Tech Talk Segment, we will meet a High School senior changing the game in gardening by helping people identify plants without learning botany. Support RolandMartinUnfiltered and #BlackStarNetwork via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered PayPal ☛ https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered Venmo ☛https://venmo.com/rmunfiltered Zelle ☛ [e-mail] Annual or monthly recurring #BringTheFunk Fan Club membership via paypal ☛ https://rolandsmartin.com/rmu-paypal/ 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. stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at taylorpapersilling.org brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them.

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Hold no punches! I'm real revolutionary right now. I support this man, Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told. Thank you for being the voice of Black America, Roland. I love y'all. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal.

See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scape. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? It is Wednesday, 28th, 2022. I'm attorney Robert Petillo, sitting in for Roland Martin, who is currently on vacation

and will be back in early January. Here's what's coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. The Supreme Court has blocked the Biden administration's attempts to allow Title 42 to expire. Title 42, of course, being the Trump era policy, which curtailed immigration and the seeking of asylum by migrants based upon coronavirus fears.

Coronavirus restrictions have been gone. Why is Title 42 still in place? We'll have a discussion on that. Additionally, a Florida officer has been fired after video surfaced of him dragging a handcuffed woman into jail. We will have a discussion and full breakdown of exactly what happened.

A NFL Hall of Famer is going to an HBCU. We'll tell you what coach and what school and break down the entire story later on in the show. Also, rapper Tory Lanez was convicted in the shooting case involving Meg Thee Stallion. Now, I'm not gonna lie to you. I have no idea who any of these people are.

I have no idea what happened in this case. Therefore, we're gonna bring in some experts and celebrity blogger, Freddie O, to talk about this and then have our legal panel discuss what exactly will happen next in this situation. Finally, in our tech talk segment, there is a high schooler who is changing the game when it comes to gardening,

creating an app that will help individuals identify plants while having to study botany. This is very important for our urban gardeners and to get young people interested in growing and cultivating their own food. So we'll have that discussion later on in the show. It's time to bring the funk on Rolling Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. Whatever the piss, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine.

And when it breaks, he's right on time. And it's rolling. Best belief he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics. With entertainment just for kicks. He's rolling. It's Uncle Roro, y'all. It's Rolling Roro, yo. It's Rollin' Martin, yeah.

Rollin' with Rollin' now. He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best, you know he's Rollin' Martin. Yeah. Martin. President Donald Trump made it very clear the minute that he announced he was running for office, his belief that America needs to curtail immigration from south of the border in particular, specifically Central American and South American countries. He called Mexicans rapists. He said that some of them might be good people. And when he got into office, he instituted his famous Muslim ban to curtail even travel from Middle Eastern countries. And when he got the opportunity, him and his cadre of white supremacists, including Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, crafted Title 42. What Title 42 does is enable our border officials to turn away migrants who are seeking asylum

under the emergency powers of the president based upon coronavirus fears. Now, of course, during a worldwide pandemic, you allow extra power to the executive branch to keep people safe until we find out what exactly is going on. But long since, we've seen every other coronavirus-related regulation be rolled back, everything from masking in schools, social distancing, working from home, Zooming to every meeting, et cetera. However, conservatives remain steadfast in continuing to enforce Title 42 because it's part of their overall plan and scheme to limit immigration from Central American and South American countries. So much so that 19 Republican states sued the federal government to prevent it from allowing Title 42 to sunset this

spring. This case went before the Supreme Court and, of course, with a 6-3 majority on the court, the Supreme Court voted to stop the Biden administration from allowing Title 42 to expire, therefore setting up the stage for oral arguments in February, where we'll get a final judgment. Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of the conservatives on the court, actually sided with the progressives and authored a dissent along with Katonju Brown-Jackson, articulating the fact that this is beyond the scope of the powers of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is now stepping out of simply calling balls and strikes and is actually setting national immigration policy,

in this case, according to Justice Gorsuch. To talk more about what we can expect going forward on Title 42 and what this means to the migrant community, we're joined by a professor from Georgetown University, Dr. Nola Haynes. Dr. Haynes, how are you doing this evening? I'm great. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for joining us. Can you talk a little bit about what Title 42 has done to migrants seeking asylum here in the United States of America? Can you hear and see me? My Wi-Fi has not been my best friend lately. Yes, we can. If you can hear me, I was just asking, what do you think Title 42

has done to the migrant community here in the U.S. during the course it's been in place? You know, I'm happy that we're talking about this tonight, and I'm happy that you mentioned the travel ban, because immigration much ban a group of people that they do not want here in this country. And as you pointed out, yes, we were all struggling through COVID. So an argument can be made at that time, drastic measures had to be taken. But as you also mentioned, there's no need to continue these measures. With the travel ban, the reason used was global terrorism. That was debunked. And the reason that it's continuing now is because, technically, yes, we are still in a global pandemic, but it is nowhere near as good as immigration.

I understand that a lot of southern borders are overwhelmed with the situation on the border, but this is not the fix. And then secondly, this is also a matter of security because we have to ask the question, who gets to be secured? Why is it just people coming in from the southern border having problems trying to get in, seeking asylum? And seeking asylum is something very specific. You are seeking to be safe. You are seeking to be secured from a very dangerous and violent situation in your home country. And my overall worry is, what is this going to look like for other immigrants seeking asylum, browner countries, say Ethiopia or Haiti. I work in Afghanistan space. This makes me worry for the ongoing situation there. So this is a situation that has far-reaching implications. And I think that there are people in our country who want to keep

a certain group out of our country. And I think that they need to look within themselves and ask themselves why, because everyone deserves to be secured. You know, what do you think it means? I was very taken aback by Judge Gorsuch or Justice Gorsuch joining the progressives on the court and saying this is outside the purview of the Supreme Court. What do you think it means going forward, the fact that conservatives have this majority on the court, where they can override even someone like Justice Gorsuch, a staunch conservative, expanding the role of the court in setting national policy? You know, I listen to my students on this one, and they ask all the time,

so what's the purpose of the Supreme Court when it is very clear that it is political? And the Supreme Court itself is supposed to be apolitical, but yet we describe justices based on their political standing. That's the problem. So I see that perhaps this may wade into the waters of further discussion about the legitimacy of the court. And I know that the justices have pushed back on that notion. But when, you know, I'm in the classroom and I'm teaching the next group of world leaders and I'm listening to them and I'm taking their feedback, they don't believe in the United States Supreme Court. Once upon a time, if Congress was polling terribly, if the president was polling terribly,

the United States Supreme Court always was polling favorably because there was a feeling that about the question of legitimacy. And that is actually within the purview of the United States Supreme Court once they actually decision make. What's going on? Go ahead. Continue. Go ahead. Well, I think the other question that has arisen is you care for this, of course, will be comprehensive immigration reform. We have the Schumer compromise in 2013 that Republicans walked away from. We had the Obama compromise in 2015 that Republicans walked away from. We had the Obama compromise in 2015 that Republicans walked away from. We had Schumer come back in 2018 with Trump to try to pass comprehensive immigration reform that they walked away from. What are the chances of actual immigration reform

happening any time in the next two years? Oh, that's a tricky question. With the way that the House and the Senate is set up right now, I did not mean to bring the, my goodness, I'm thinking about the Kevin Hart joke. But anyway, the way that the House and Senate is set up right now, you know, we'll see. I am very hopeful that something will be done, but I will tell you this, dropping innocent people off in front of the vice president's home is not a way to solve it. Denying asylum seekers safety and security is not a way to solve it. So it definitely needs to be comprehensive reform, because right now we are being—we are contributing to the violence and the harm that these people are trying to escape.

Can you imagine seeking asylum in a country that says all are welcome? I mean, this is a country full of immigrants. I mean, it seems to be completely antithetical to what we say that we stand for. And again, the question has to be asked, who gets to be secured? So what group gets to come in and seek asylum versus the groups that are kept out seeking asylum? And this is something that needs to be considered when we are thinking about Title 42. Because it's impacting people coming from South and Central America, and that is an issue.

Because if it's impacting them, like I said earlier, what other groups will it impact that's seeking asylum? And, you know, one last thing. This is not the only time that the foreign administration tried to hack away at immigration, particularly with the travel ban. The travel ban, the later iterations of the International Nationality Act that allowed for people from brown countries to come into the United States in the late 60s. This was one of the things passed in a large civil rights bill across time that a lot of people don't think about. And so, this is not the first attempt to keep people out that have melanin in their skin. And I just want to continue to say that. And I hope that this, you know, I hope this temporary ban will be just that, a temporary ban. You know, it's interesting you mentioned people seeking asylum because after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you had thousands of Ukrainian refugees coming

to America seeking asylum. And there was none of this consternation. There was none of this talk about being overrun and then destroying Western civilization, as we hear from some on the political right. What exactly would comprehensive immigration reform look like? We've heard various arguments, whether that be amnesty, a pathway to citizenship, expansion of A to MB visas? What do you think has to be included, something that could actually get bipartisan agreement? That's a really big question for someone who works in that area that I do not work in that area. What I will say is I think that, so first of all,

there are tons of different types of visas. So it depends on what sort of visa people from Ukraine are coming in on. Like, say, for instance, a lot of our allies, it should be across the board the same for everyone. If one set of rules apply for asylum seekers, it should apply for another group of asylum seekers. There are those who say, but it's different when the U.S. has some level of direct involvement, say Afghanistan or the way that we assist in military and security assistance in Ukraine. Okay, that's one argument. But at the end of the day, I think that asylum seeking laws should stand across the board. And I do understand the additional element of responsibility, like with the Afghanistan situation. But for me, at the end

of the day, it does not work in our best interest when we are turning away brown folks and we are letting in folks who have less melanin. I don't think that's what the country wants to stand for. I don't think that's what the Biden-Harris administration wants to stand for. And I think going forward, we literally have to look at it through that lens because right now, it's not a good look. It is not a good look at all. You mentioned the direct influence of American policy on immigration. Do you think that we have to start holding the American government accountable for its role in creating this immigration crisis? President Trump tried to overthrow the government of Venezuela

a couple of years ago, replacing Maduro with Juan Guaido. And because of that, we have a massive migrant crisis coming from Venezuela, walking all the way up Central America to come to America. America snorts up about half the cocaine the world produces. And because of that, drug gangs are running rampant, the FARC in Colombia, the Northern Triangle in Mexico. Does America need to change its policy to Central and South America before it does anything about immigration here?

Well, first of all, you're not about to get me to step on the landmines, first of all. And secondly, I don't like to comment on things that really are not in my wheelhouse. And I really can't speak to what's going on in Central America in terms of the drug situation, in terms of what the former administration's goals might have been there. What I will say, what I do know about in terms of how we view security and how we think about who gets to be secured, that's the lens in which I think about this. In terms of U.S. involvement and people snorting coke and cartels and stuff like that, that's not my wheelhouse. But I will say that everyone deserves.

Hello? All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. We're, of course, going to keep an eye on this. Oral arguments will be coming up in this case in February. And then we'll find out if the court either will make a ruling on whether or not the 19 states consume the federal government over this or if they will stay this again. And we'll have another conversation. So thank you so much, Professor Dr. Nola Hayes from Georgetown University. We'll be back with more Roland Martin Unfiltered streaming live on the Black Star Network. We'll be back after the break. 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 Lott. And this is season two 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.

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and the Ad Council. I love directing. It's a different kind of piece. I do believe that the 30 years I was acting was to prepare me for what I'm supposed to be doing and that what I really am good at. But when you were acting, were you even thinking about directing? Nope. So what the hell happened?

If you had asked me 15 years ago, I probably would have said, no, I don't know. I was doing Ava DuVernay's first film, I Will Follow. And during that process, I think because it was her first film, maybe I... Did she self-taught? Absolutely. I probably gave too many suggestions. And at some point, Ava said to me, I think you're a director and you don't know it. On the next A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie, it's time to tie up those loose ends.

Setting yourself up for balance, success, and even prosperity in the new year. Financial expert Pamela Sams joins our panel. She will give us a checklist of things that we need to do before the calendar turns. We develop our money mindset by the age of six. And so we have our sometimes six-year-old self still operating in the background of our money scripts. That's next on A Balanced Life on Blackstar Network. I'm Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach. And my new show, Get Wealthy, focuses on the things that your financial advisor and bank isn't telling you,

but you absolutely need to know. So watch Get Wealthy on the Black Star Network. You want me to do something crazy, but I don't know what to do. I'd rather just sit here. Hi, this is Cheryl Lee Ralph, and you are watching Roland Martin, unfiltered. I mean, could it be any other way? Really, it's Roland Martin. We're gonna keep this conversation going on Title 42.

I wanna bring in our panel on this discussion. We have Dr. Jason Nichols, Senior Lecturer, African American Studies Department at the University of Maryland, as well as Attorney Joe Richardson, Civil Rights Attorney. Gentlemen, how are you doing this evening? Wonderful. All right. I'm going to start with you, Dr. Nichols, on this issue of thank you guys so much. I want to start with you, Dr. Nichols, on this question of Title 42. In particular, what this means for our migrant community, because America, you know, we have that big green statue in New York that says, bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free. And then we also have a border wall at the southern border turning people

away. What does it say about America that we have this policy in place and you have an unaligned group of nine Supreme Court justices that can keep this going seemingly indefinitely? Well, first of all, I think it's really important to reiterate the point that you made with your other guest, and that is that Title 42 is not and never was a solution for the failure of Congress to act on immigration reform. It is about, it is a public health measure and it was not an immigration measure, which is being used as right now. I think, first of all, we know the legitimacy of the Supreme Court is certainly in question. If not, you know, we need to be looking at other things like court expansion and everything. We have people on the Supreme Court who are completely compromised and probably should not be there. And we need to look at term limits and other things. But this is, you know, what it means for these migrant communities.

I heard, you know, what I could hear from your other guest was interesting. I think it's important to point out that there are Black people, particularly Haitians, on the border right now. So it's not about necessarily what's going to happen in the future. That's actually happening at this very moment. Asylum, of course, is a legal process in order to gain entry. And it's not as though Congress doesn't have solutions, bipartisan solutions that are before Congress right now. You know, even someone who we usually will talk about and despise, John Cornyn, has the Bipartisan Border Solutions Act, which talks about expediting, you know, removal for people who don't fit, but also about building more

intake facilities so that you don't have the situation that you have right now in El Paso, Texas, where the city is really struggling to house a lot of people. And Title 42, I just want to make this one last point, Robert, and that is that Title 42 has not even stopped the amount of border encounters. As a matter of fact, CBP has had more border encounters under Title 42 than prior to its implementation. So you look at, for example, fiscal year 2019, it was about 900,000, 800,000 to 900,000 border encounters, and now we're up to 2.3 million. So if Title 42 is doing what Republicans are talking about it's doing, wouldn't that number be lower? It's actually not. So what it's doing is allowing for people

who have legitimate claims to asylum to not be able to go through the legal process to gain entry. And that's really troubling. You know, Joe, it's interesting to me that Republicans are suing to keep Title 42 in place, claiming that it's in order to stop illegal immigration. However, people who are asylees are by their very nature not illegal immigrants. They are people who are seeking asylum, who are fleeing war, crime, famine, the natural disasters in their home countries. And, actually, what you end up doing with Title 42, by overwhelming custom and border patrol with people who are simply trying to turn themselves in and claim asylum, well, then they cannot be

patrolling the other areas where the actual illegal border crossings are taking place. That's where your coyotes are at. That is where you're getting your fentanyl coming in. That is where you're getting human trafficking coming in. They're not seeking asylum. Can you talk a little bit about what policy solutions have to be put in place? Because as Jason said, there's bipartisan legislation, but it seems like nothing can get off the ground. What will bipartisan solutions to this attitude look like? Well, you know, first of all, where there's a will, there's a way, right? And at the risk of throwing, going back to, you know, desiring something from the Reagan administration in 1986,

there was a huge amnesty program, and that's because they were honest. It's not because Reagan was progressive. As a matter of fact, him and Bush, when they were honest. It's not because Reagan was progressive. As a matter of fact, him and Bush, when they were running against each other in 1980, they bent over backwards to appear more accommodating to immigrants and to illegal immigrants and to the undocumented. Because they were honest about the fact that these folks work and these folks get hired. The reason why our undocumented brothers and sisters come, first of all, is they're often dealing with a war-torn country.

They're dealing with the instability, particularly in Central America, that may have been not exactly helped or hindered by our actual policies. They're dealing with those things. And there are certain guarantees that everyone that is seeking asylum are supposed to get. And the problem with Title 42 is Title 42 takes away from those. And of course, as has been said and alluded to, it's part of the larger narrative and the larger attempt for certain people to keep America from getting darker faster.

Now, as it pertains to potential solutions, there's been a whole lot of folks. The point that was just made about Senator Cronin. A couple of years ago, Pete Aguilar and Will Hurd put together something very narrow that had the potential to do something. It increased border security because you always got to get more money for border security, but it also would have protected DACA and it also would have done some other things. So there have been some opportunities there. But while you don't deal with it, people still make it over the border. People are still more subject to coyotes and some other things because of the safety issues, the people that you're turning away. The irony in all this, two ironies, first of all, is that while you say that you're doing this to make America more

safe, you're actually making it less safe. And whatever our global pandemic is, or was, or shall be, we know much more about it, right? So at the risk of agreeing with Gorsuch, the emergency, if it existed at all, right? You know, we can talk about that some other time. Sure, there's some emergency related to the pandemic, but the idea that we are less safe because we're not allowing helpless brown people

to come into the country is ridiculous. And then the final point that I would make, so of course there has to be some kind of narrow path. And who knows, with this presumption with so many moderates in Congress now, people that need to hold on to their jobs, et cetera, there may be a narrow window for something to actually get done because it will be the most honest thing. The final point I'll make is that it is interesting that the Supreme Court is pragmatic and has no problem with making policy when it gets there. People used to like to talk about how, oh, the liberals are all, they're lawmakers. They're legislating from the bench. Listen, Republicans legislate from the bench all the time, and this is a perfect example of it.

You know, it's interesting that we talk about the racial composition of America and that being what is stopping Republicans from agreeing on things such as comprehensive immigration reform. If you go all the way back to the Mexican-American War and the period before that, the reason we have the current borders that we have right now with Mexico are based upon white supremacy. Mexico got their independence from Spain about 20 years earlier. They're chilling. They're trying to expand their country. Then you get a group of white Americans who illegally immigrate to Mexican territory and then declare themselves the free nation of Texas. After that, President Polk invades Mexico, claiming that Mexican bandits are raiding areas

which are in their own territory. They defeat Mexico, and then they actually occupy Mexico City for a period of time. And there was a proposal before Congress to annex the entirety of the country of Mexico, all the way down into Central America. And they decided against it for one reason, white supremacy. They did not want to bring that many Latino citizens into America, changing the racial composition of America, and thereby ceding power to another racial group besides white European migrants. That is the whole reason we have the Gadsden Purchase

and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which very much set our southern border. So you cannot separate racism from American immigration policy with Central and South America because incumbent on that, the genesis of that policy has been racism. Now, I wanted to hop on this point about the fact that America caused many of the issues

that people are running from in Central and South America. The reason that they are seeking asylum in part are the banana wars, where America was overthrowing government so Chiquita Banana could build plantations on their land. The war on drugs, where you have the Reagan administration paying off the cartels to finance money for Iran-Contra. All the way to the series of coups that America has led in Central and South America, overthrowing leadership, destabilizing those nations throughout the Cold War to prevent, quote-unquote, communist infiltration. Professor Nichols, is there going to be a point where America admits to their role in this and therefore offers solutions? Are we still going to just act as if this is just random match to reason these people are coming to America? So, firstly, I want to just make a statement based on your assessment of the Spanish-American War, which is correct. And that is, there's a saying along the border, and it's in Spanish, and it's, yo no crucé la frontera, la frontera me cruzó a mí,

which means I never crossed the border, the border crossed me. So people have always recognized this. This is why, you know, if you live in a state and it's called California or it's called Colorado or, you know, all of that is because those actually were, you know, that was actually Mexico. And, you know, many of you live in cities like San Francisco or Los Angeles or San Jose. It's, you know, now you, you know, you probably knew this before, but I think it's important to also say that. And the United States, of course, is not going to admit its wrongs. This is public knowledge. But when you talk about, of course, the destabilization of Nicaragua, you know, the ousting of the Sandinistas, what we did in El Salvador and some of the atrocities that we allowed to happen.

Certainly, we know climate change has also been a more recent devastating factor in that part of the world that's caused a lot of migration. One of the things that I will give this administration some credit for is that they say they're looking for root causes. Now, I think one of the things that the United States government could certainly do when they're looking for root causes is lift up a mirror, and they'll probably see a lot of the root causes right, staring right back at them. I think we certainly need to partner with Central American nations and, of course, with Mexico and help to bring some of the stability that we actually created, the instability in those areas. It's a little more complicated because when you destabilize an area, you bring in corruption. That's literally that's what happens. You destabilize an area, you bring in corruption. That's literally, that's what happens. You destabilize an area, corrupt leaders come in,

and now you're left in this position of trying to negotiate and help people in an area where the leadership is corrupt. So that's part of the issue in Central America right now, that this State Department has to find a way around. But still, what we have at our border, when people are coming and looking for asylum, and you talked a little bit earlier, Robert, about the people from Eastern Europe, I don't think there's a place on the country, or excuse me, on the planet that's less politically stable than haiti but yet for some reason we we seem to say uh you know we should they were the

biden administration was flying people back in droves saying you don't qualify for political asylum well you know i think we have to keep an eye on this situation going forward uh of course we're going to be updating everyone when those oral articles come in february but uh we have to keep an eye on this situation going forward. Of course, we're going to be updating everyone when those oral arguments come in February. But we have to pressure this administration to make this a priority. If you can pass a $1.7 trillion bill last week, you can pass some kind of immigration reform to fix this problem. So we're going to keep this conversation going. We'll be back after the break. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered streaming live on the Blackstone Network.

We'll be right back. 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 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 thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug thing. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. 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. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it.

I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. When you talk about blackness and what happens in black culture, we're about covering these things that matter to us, speaking to our issues and concerns. This is a genuine people-powered movement. A lot of stuff that we're not getting, you get it. And you spread the word.

We wish to plead our own cause to long have others spoken for us. We cannot tell our own story if we can't pay for it. This is about covering us. Invest in black-owned media. Your dollars matter. We don't have to keep asking them to cover our stuff. So please support us in what we do, folks. We want to hit 2,000 people, $50 this month, raise $100,000. We're behind $100,000, so we want to hit that. Your money makes this possible. Checks and money orders go to P.O. Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196.

The Cash app is $RM Unfiltered. PayPal is RMartin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Next, on The Black Table, with me, Greg Carr. We welcome the Black Star Network's very own Roland Martin,

who joins us to talk about his new book, White Fear, how the browning of America is making white folks lose their minds. The book explains so much about what we're going through in this country right now and how, as white people head toward becoming a racial minority, it's going to get, well, let's just say even more interesting. We are going to see more violence. We're going to see more vitriol because as each day passes, it is a nail in that coffin. The one and only Roland Martin on the next Black Table, right here on the

Black Star Network. Hi, I'm Israel Houghton with Israel and New Breed. What's up, what's up? I'm Dr. Ricky Dillard, the choir master. Hey, yo, peace world. What's going on? It's the love king of R&B, Raheem Devon, and you're watching Roland Martin, Unfiltered. Tampa Bay, Florida, or Tampa, Florida police officers out of a job after a body

cam video was released showing him dragging a woman from his car into the jail. Officer Gregory Damon was arrested a woman on November 17th for trespassing. The suspect refused to leave Damon's vehicle and told the officer, I want you to drag me. Damon obliged and drugged the woman on the ground while still handcuffed. And now the Tampa Bay Police Department has launched an internal investigation and determined

Damon violated multiple policies, including a 2013 department policy forbidding officers from dragging uncooperative suspects on the ground. Of course, this comes as a result of several years of protests by activists nationwide to limit the use of excessive force by police officers. And of course, this is a sign of progress, because I think for years, police officers have engaged in this type of activity with absolutely no repercussions. I want to bring the panel back in. We're also joined by former prosecutor attorney Christina Sears on this subject. So, Christina, you know, you've worked with officers at the prosecutor's office before. What does it mean when you have a department that is actually responding to the calls of activists,

putting in new policies? Again, there's a 2013 policy here, and actually following through with the determination of an individual for its self-defense. I think it's a change in a positive direction, the right direction. It's what should happen. I think people are tired of hearing departments say they're conducting an investigation and the investigation goes on for months and months and then there's no productive outcome from the investigation that changes policy.

I think this action on the part of Tampa is what's needed in more police departments across the country. And Joe, on this point, you know, I think you and I have seen these cases for years, litigated these cases of excessive force against police officers. What does it mean when a police department is actually finally using proactive steps to fire these officers instead of, you know, the normal, we put him on administrative leave, he's going to be on death's duty for a while. We've looked into the situation, we've determined that he was well within the parameters of his employment, and then nothing ends up happening. Do you think this is a change that we're going to see spreading

throughout the nation, or do you think this is maybe an isolated incident just because this was on body cam? Well, I'm from California, but right now I'll invoke being from Missouri and say, show me. All right. We're going to have to see if this continues to be a thing. Now, you know, the camera was good. It was clear. It's a little harder to hide, you know, et cetera. You know, maybe we just caught them because it's Christmas time. They decided to give us a gift or whatever else.

But I think it's really important when police or any agency, when I'm suing an employer, when I'm suing police brutality, I look for the rules and the policies of their own, which they wrote, which they broke. Okay. And so what happens is a lot of times, you know, they will draw the one alpha clock, you know, they'll, they'll, you know, hope that outrage will go away and dissipate over time. They'll sit tight. They'll do the desk duty thing, you know, all of those types of things, and hopefully have it go away or allow it to play some gray area. Just because this woman said, I want you to drag me, doesn't mean that he should have done it. Protecting and serving, often these departments will say they're protecting and serve. Sometimes

that actually means protecting a citizen from themselves. If you are police, you know, then police have to do their job when things don't go well, when people have maybe mental illness, you know, which we should have less of directly, or when people are rambunctious or they are, you know, not following orders or whatever else. You still have to go above and beyond. It would not have been a bad thing or a hard thing for this person, this officer, to call and get some help, just like he did once they got to the door. He just said, okay, you've dared me to do something. I'm going to do it. I'm going to let you know. But again, there's something in the back of his mind.

If he really thought he was going to be fired, if he really thought about the fact that there was a camera watching him, he didn't think he was going to get fired despite the camera. He didn't think he was going to get fired despite the policy. Most people show up to work and want to keep their jobs, even though they don't do what they're supposed to in the meantime. So I'm glad that this happened. Is it a trend? Is it something that we can go in a positive direction on and become, you know, you're department to department, right? And so you can't say that just because this happened here that it's going to happen everywhere, but you can

say we see a path for police officers being held accountable, and that's good news. Professor Nichols, you know, I'm going to play devil's advocate for a second because I was reading the comment section on this video. And of course, the maggots are out saying, well, she said, drag me. What was the officer supposed to do? He was just trying to execute his job and she was obstructing. If you just comply, these things won't happen to you. What is the response to those people who genuinely believe that it's the officer's prerogative, that if somebody's being uncooperative, that you can use whatever means necessary to get them into custody? So I guess she could have said, uncuff me, And he would have uncuffed her, but he's following her orders, you know, or let me go,

or, you know, all of that. I didn't know that police officers were in the business of listening and always following the directions of people that they have detained. And if they are, you know, it's interesting that they're going to do that rather than department policy. So I don't think that that's a very strong argument. I think listening to someone who's detained, and I think your other guest, I think it's Joe, made a really good point. And that is sometimes you have to, in serving and protecting, you have to protect people from themselves. You don't know if someone's having a mental health crisis. Does that mean if someone is detained or is in a facility under police custody or in police custody, that if they try to hang themselves, that you're not going to intervene?

Because you're going to be like, well, they said they wanted to die, so I'm just going to allow that to happen. So I think it's a really weak argument. I think there are many, many ways he could have handled that. Of course, it didn't look like, you know, he was in some sort of a big rush. So why not wait, call for help? There was something that always, I always remember as a student of the civil rights movement, one of the things that made it very difficult for civil rights leaders who depended upon, dare I say, stupid cops like that, was for them to make these kinds of stupid decisions. But the leader, the chief in Albany, Georgia, ordered stretchers so that you couldn't get them

on camera dragging Black people. So the smart thing would have been, I don't know, first of all, that this is going to make some sort of huge nationwide institutional change, because if that were the case, there would have been institutional change in 1992, when we first got video of a Black man being beaten on the highway by police.

That didn't make institutional change. All of the other videos that. That didn't make institutional change. All of the other videos that we have didn't make institutional change. So I'm skeptical about that. But there were many ways he could have handled that. And the fact that, you know, she asked him to drag her is a pretty absurd kind of an argument. Moving on to our next story, similarly associated, two D.C. police officers who were suspended after the death of a 20-year-old back in the year 2020 have indeed been convicted. Two suspended Metropolitan Police Department officers, one being Terrence Sutton, was convicted of second-degree murder, a conspiracy to obstruct an obstruction of justice, and the death of K-Ron Hilton Brown. Also suspended, Lieutenant Andrew Zabowski was found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an obstruction of justice in the death of Karon Hilton Brown, also suspended Lieutenant Andrew Zabowski, was found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an obstruction of justice. Karon was killed in October 2020. He was driving a rebel scooter on the sidewalk without a helmet,

prompting the officers to turn on their emergency lights. And at the time, they accelerated through traffic lights for more than 10 blocks. This resulted in the death of Mr. Hilton Brown, who suffered severe head trauma and died two days later from his injuries. So, Christina, you've seen cases like this, the prosecution of cops. Can you talk a little bit about how difficult it is to convict cops, particularly when they come in in full uniform? The jury has a bias towards them. How rare is it for officers to be convicted in a case like this? Well, typically when officers are following department policy, it's hard to even get an indictment. And officers come in with the societal view that officers are going to tell the truth and that they are upstanding and that they're here to serve the public and they're here to protect the public.

But it's quite a different story when an officer is a potential defendant or a defendant in a case where their actions and behavior should be questioned. It's hard for a potential juror or a juror to look past what it is they already know and believe and understand about police officers and really to commit to listening to the evidence and hearing from the witnesses about what happened and to set aside what they believe about officers already. It's hard for anyone in any situation to become a juror on a case and to leave their common sense at the door. We always ask jurors not to do that. It's also something that we want them to bring with them. We want them to bring their experiences and their understanding of life. And a lot of

people have the understanding and the experience and good experiences with officers. So it's very difficult to get a conviction in cases involving officers. The difference makers have become video evidence that supports what eyewitnesses in the past have been able to testify to. But now the video brings something additional to the table that jurors can consider. And so I think with the introduction of more video that we're going to see more officers being convicted. I think it's going to be a slow turn in that direction, but it is going to occur. And Joe, on that point, we've seen jurisdictions around the country pay out multi-million dollar settlements to families as a result of wrongful death at the hands of police officers. I think the city of Chicago is up over a billion dollars in settlements paid out, and that has not resulted

in changing the conduct to police or police departments. Do you think now that we're starting to actually convict officers of some of these charges, second-degree murder, obstruction of justice, et cetera, that that will have more of an effect than the civil judgments that we've seen previously? Perhaps so, because when you take money, if you're not taking money out of their pocket, if you're not jeopardizing their pensions or anything like that, well, on some level, that just becomes the cost of doing business. You still send the message.

There are plenty of cases that we think out here would never get convictions, but probably could get enough mileage on the civil side where it's going to exact some certain settlement. We understand that. But once you start taking folk freedom, once you say you got to sit here and think about this for 15, 20 years or five or 10, it's very, very easy to spend the public's money getting in trouble. It's a little bit harder when we're talking about your freedom. And so perhaps that is a turning point. I agree with the point that was just made. The video evidence is very, very good evidence. Often it's better than even eyewitness testimony because you can confuse an eyewitness.

Sometimes folks, because of their biases, thought they saw something they didn't, or that testimony changes over time. But the video is the video. The video is hot, baby. It is what it is. And there it is. Right. And so that's going to be very important. And that's the reason why, you know, you see a lot of experts. You saw this happen on the Dean case in Fort Worth where they tried to use an expert to say, well, you didn't really see what you thought you saw on the body cam. No, actually, we we did see that. And so therefore, perhaps with the proliferation, for lack of a better term, of video evidence, that's why George Floyd caused the attention that it did. How many times did that happen without us knowing? And, you know, we make progress. There's still no guarantee, right? We saw what happened with Rodney King, and he was still found not guilty. The folks that did it were still found not guilty. The folks that did it were still found not guilty. But that is a turning point and can be

something that can be relied on to potentially get better results because people that are worried about their own freedom, particularly police, where they have always gotten deference, always gotten the benefit of the doubt, to the point where folks would undermine eyewitness testimony and everything else, if their freedom is potentially taken away, then maybe they're thinking twice before some of these things happen. Absolutely. And, Jason, I had this idea a few years ago that we need to create like a line of drones that pairs to your phone that we can just give

every young black boy in the country that just follows you around filming you 24 hours a day just in case you have a police encounter because it seems that that's the only thing people will believe. They want to believe the words of witnesses. They want to believe the words of the victim. But if you have a drone following you around 24-7, that's something that we can believe in. What do we need to do to turn this from being a crapshoot, whether or not there's video of the police abusing you, to an actual practice and policy in this nation of actually believing victims and being able to have these types of outcomes without having 1080p 4K video of the cops killing somebody? So I think one of the things, and I'm going to

kind of differ. I know that my co-panelists here are attorneys and they've been through these trials and I'm just an academic, but I am going to talk about kind of the academic side of this. And it differs slightly from what they're saying. I agree with most of what they're saying, but one of the things that, you know, the academic research, when they're looking at these kinds of things kind of reflects is it's not necessarily the video evidence that gets convictions. When you look at, of course, we can all mention things like Alton Sterling or Eric Garner or many others that we saw, pretty much all the full context. But there are a couple of things. Number one, the video may not have context. We've seen a lot of departments have body cams that you can turn on and off. Others, you can turn the sound off so you don't hear

what's going on. So you don't necessarily get the full context. The other thing that I would say is when we're looking at video, it's not necessarily the determining factor. One of the things that research has shown is that when police officers actually can testify against other police officers, that's really what turns the tide. And as a matter of fact, since George Floyd was mentioned, yes, the video played a role, but I think it was the medical examiner and it was the other police officers coming out and saying, this is not department policy. This is not how you were trained. When they came out, that's what I think really set the tone for the trial.

And we've seen that several times, even in the shooting. I believe it's Jordan Edwards. I think it was in Texas, 15-year-old honor student who was shot in the back by a police officer. The police officer said that they thought the car was going to run them over. And it was his partner that said, no, we were never in danger. And when that happened, that's how you got the conviction there. So I think part of this is breaking through the blue wall of silence and making sure that police officers are accountable and that police officers will testify against other rogue police officers when they do not actually adhere to department policy.

Absolutely. And I want for the young people out there who are marching in 2020, who have been active since the killing of Trayvon, going forward for the last decade. Don't let anybody tell you that protesting doesn't matter. Don't let anybody tell you that activism doesn't matter. These convictions that we're talking about and the officer being fired in the previous case, they would have happened 15 years ago. It took an entire decade of activism and action for the change policies and to start shifting this tide nationwide. So keep on the fight. Keep going forward. We're going to keep this up. We'll be back with more Roland Martin unfiltered after the break.

Streaming live on the Blackstone Network. Don't forget to like the video. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. 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. 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 Glott. 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. 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. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like, he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives.

Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. Subscribe and share. We gotta get a thousand likes on this video. We'll be back after the break. Hatred on the streets.

A horrific scene. A white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence. You will not be like that. White people are losing their damn lives. 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 Emory 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. There's all the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this.

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 right. On the next A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie, it's time to tie up those loose ends, setting yourself up for balance, success, and even prosperity in the new year. Financial expert Pamela Sams joins our panel. She will give us a checklist of things that we need to do before the calendar turns. We develop our money mindset by the age of six.

And so we have our sometimes six-year-old self still operating in the background of our money scripts. That's next on A Balanced Life on Blackstar Network. Y'all know who Roland Martin is. He got the ascot on. He do the news. It's fancy news. Keep it rolling. Right here.

Rolling. Roland Martin. Right now. You are watching Roland Martin, unfiltered. I mean, could it be any other way? Really, it's Roland Martin. Today on Black and Missing, we are talking about Patricia Weeks. Patricia Weeks was last seen on Christmas Eve in Norfolk, Virginia. The 17-year-old is 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighs about 125 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes.

Patricia has a tattoo sleeve on her arm with a clock on it, and her nose is pierced. She was last seen wearing a white jacket with a black car on the front, gray Goya pants and black turban on her head. Patricia requires medication and may need medical attention. Anyone with information about Patricia Weeks should call the Norfolk, Virginia Police Department at 757-664-7000. Again, that's the Norfolk Police Department, 757-664-7000.

Of course, we want to make sure we bring all of our black and missing home and bring the proper attention to these cases to help protect our communities. It's a great thing that Rowling does, highlighting these cases to hopefully bring more young people home. I wanted to move on to a story out of California where an In-N-Out burger has been accused by two people of racial harassment on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve, come on, folks. Arneen Kim and her friend filmed themselves trying menu items at In-N-Out in San Remo. The pair were approached by a white man who asked if they were filming themselves eating and proceeded to use racist and homophobic language. San Ramon police chief is investigating the incident. They released an image of the man's vehicle and asked anyone, they knew the man to contact the police department.

I think it's interesting that even with the proliferation of camera phones and social media, with the surveillance state that we're currently in, with cairns blowing up left and right all over the country, that people are still doing things like that. I think we have a video of the incident that was recorded by the young women. I want to bring the panel in on this also. Just the fact that we have so many of these incidents of people going crazy when they see Black folks minding their business, sitting down, eating, taking their time, et cetera.

The fact that you still get people to go off like this is really insane to me. Professor Nichols, what do you think it is the fact that you still get people to go off like this is really insane to me. Professor Nichols, what do you think it is that really possesses these people? I think we have the video, if we can throw that. What do you think it is with these people where they continuously see what happens when you go off on folks in public, we become a public Karen. What possesses them to still do it going forward? Well, I think one of the things is that a lot of the, a lot of, you know, when you see that,

it's oftentimes not a person's first outburst or racist outburst. They've done this before. They've gotten away with it. And when you get away with things, sometimes you're like, hey, I can do it again. I'm angry. So I'm within my rights to sit here and berate somebody. So you see a lot of these, you know, Karen-y figures and you figure, oh, they just had one bad day, but that's not true. A lot of times this is a pattern and we just happen to catch them on that day when they've started to go down this path. And this is why, you know, this kind of show and the things that you and I do are really important. So we can call these people out and make it known that,

you know, we're not gonna sit here and tolerate that kind of behavior. All right, I think we do have a video we're gonna throw that I think is a couple minutes long, just showing this tirade and we'll go back to the panel for a response. Wait, have you had a light will fry before what is a light well fry okay you guys filming yourself eating yeah

why me man why me i just want to eat my flying dutchman and geese girl i feel like this is a fever game is it it still the 24th? Is it still Christmas Eve? It's because I'm ethnic. Honestly, for eating with flying Dutchmen, I kind of feel like I deserve to be hate-crowned. Well, that actually happened. That really did actually just happen. Japanese or Korean?

Oh, I'm Korean. Yeah, you're Korean. Kim Jong-un's boyfriend, huh? You're Kim Jong-un's boyfriend? Yeah, we have been acquainted. You had gay sex with him. Ooh, would not go that far. We're only on second base.

He hasn't taken me out to dinner yet. Ooh! Can I take you out to dinner? Come on, stop, stop, stop. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You said what? I didn't say anything. You didn't say anything? No, sir. I'm like. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You say what? I didn't say anything. You didn't say anything.

No, sir. I'm like, I can spit in your face and it's a Filipino machine. It's a Filipino machine. Don't react. Don't react. Why were you acting in my eye? Dude, we could get assaulted.

Oh my god. Only in center of the moment. I thought we were having like. No, you weren't. Anyway, you can try the- Slade Master fucking right? Anyways, you can try the frog. See you outside in a minute.

See you outside when I get to bed. Hmm. Hey, you good? I'm chillin', don't worry. This is not in the name of a holiday cheer. Yeah, somebody was not included in all the Ranger games. You should have not said anything. Sorry, I can't-

He's not in the name of a holiday cheer. Yeah, somebody was not included in all the Ranger games. You should have not said anything. Sorry, I can't- He's not in the name of a holiday cheer. Yeah. Somebody was not included in all the reindeer games. You should have not said anything. He's staring at us right now. Anyways, do you want to go try? I would love one.

He's very smut. At least I'll try the root beer float. Hmm. That is a root beer float. I think he's going to pull a gun on us. My midterms are almost being released. I'm just saying. Honestly, 10 out of 10 would get it again.

Oh my god, I can't even do this. I'm done, I'm done, I'm done. So I'm going to try the whole grilled onion to see if it's working i'm so nervous i'm gonna well yeah because he's like i'm gonna wait for you outside i was eating the paper wow also flying duckman is no more no more I can't speak. I can't speak. I can't speak. You bitch. Rare laughs. Dude, that genuinely never happened to me in Florida. Well, all I can say is those kids are better than me. I'm just going to put that out there that people need to know who they're talking to.

Joe, what is the proper response for people when they have these types of racist confrontations? You know, you're not supposed to get up and fight people. You're not supposed to, you know, try to escalate the event because you don't know how mentally stable people are. But just what do you think someone's response should be? These young people kind of laughed it off and tried to move on. But, you know, what would you advise people to do if this happens to them? It's really a hard thing, right? Because what you advise people to do if this happens to them? It's really a hard thing, right? Because what you're trying to do is keep from getting in trouble. You know, we're not 18, 19 years old anymore.

And some of us come from the old school where, okay, you know, you got it like that. Okay, go on and do what you need to do. And knock me down, you just make sure that I don't get up. Because if I do, I'm putting something on you, the soap won't wash off. There's part of you that wants to be like that way, but you've got families, you've got jobs, you've got licensures and things like that. What I would do perhaps is draw as much attention

to the situation as possible because there's a certain safety in numbers. I would like to think that people around would not have allowed this person to harm them this way. And I'm pretty certain that other people probably at the very least were watching out of the corner of their eyes. So one of the things that you could do is draw attention. In their case, they waited till the restaurant was closed and had someone walk them to their car just to make sure nothing got started. And, you know, here's the other part, you know, ad being, you know, and these people, you know, this guy is fearful. He's scared.

He's looking at them saying, you know, you look a certain way. You're the reason my kid didn't get into UCLA, assuming that his people went to college. Or, you know, you're the reason that I can't get a job or whatever else. They've got these preconceived notions about who they are. And so the question is how you survive the contact. We even talk about this in the context of police and young black people and things like this. You know, how do you deal with that? No, he's not the police. And so you don't have to respect him the same way. But at the same time, you don't want to create a problem for yourself or your family either. So striking a balance,

maybe you draw attention to the problem and make sure that you're able to eject without any issues. Or, you know, if it's really like that and I had a real long bad day, you know, you get thugged and it comes out how it comes out. But the problem is you don't want to bring a knife to a gunfight. People aren't thinking straight. This whole entitlement thing has got people. I mean, he knew that they had a camera on. He didn't get in front of it, but he knew that they had a camera on and he didn't care. And part of what he wanted to do was to frustrate them and to scare them and to continue to exert the authority that he knows he's losing because he's getting ready to be outnumbered.

So you've got to strike a balance the best way that you can. And even the Bible says, be angry and said not, right? You can be angry. You can let him know that it's just not going to go the way that he says it's going to go. And you don't have to start it, but the best thing that you can do is survive the contact, and the way to do that is to move forward and to get past it and probably draw as much attention to it as you can. And Christina, just quickly, I think

often people, these racists, they try to find people they think are vulnerable, people that won't do things to them they think they can abuse. And I'll tell people all the time, don't let the smooth taste fool you. I am still ghetto, and things will go down. So please, that should be known information. But you being a more evolved and better person than I, further along in your journey with Christ,

how do you think these young people will handle this? I think they handled this magnificently. They kept calm. They kept recording. They didn't lose focus on what it was that they came there to do, which was enjoy themselves. It's unfortunate that they had this encounter with this person, but I'm glad that they kept recording on their device, even though they didn't get video evidence of the person who confronted them in the clip that we saw,

I would have liked to have seen them turn the camera around on the person so that we could have seen who the person was that approached them and felt so entitled, like Joe said, to commit an offense against them that was unprovoked in a public space such as this. I think we're all aware these days that cameras are rolling all over the place. So two people sitting in a booth at a restaurant recording themselves shouldn't draw the ire or interest of another customer or a bystander. I applaud these young people for maintaining their cool and minimally engaging the person and continuing on. Absolutely. We're hoping there's surveillant footage

from the inside of the In-N-Out Burger and what's that is released. We, of course, will provide that to the audience. So we hopefully can bring this person to justice somehow because there's a couple forms of justice. And as somebody who has been in a fight in many Waffle House parking lots at two o'clock in the morning, I can let you know that this person got off light. We'll be back after the break.

You're watching Rolling Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. I love direct. 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 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 One, 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 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 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 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. I always had to be so good, no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper.

The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at taylorpapersilling.org, brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. It's a different kind of piece. I do believe that the 30 years I was acting was to prepare me for what I'm supposed to be doing and that what I'm really am good at. But when you were acting,

were you even thinking about directing? Nope. Were you, so what the hell happened? If you had asked me 15 years ago, I probably would have said, no, I don't know. I was doing Ava's, Ava DuVernay's first film, I Will Follow. Mm-hmm.

And during that process, I think, cause it was her first film, maybe I- Did she self-taught? Absolutely. I probably gave too many suggestions. And at some point, Ava said to me, I think you're a director and what happens in black culture. We're about covering these things that matter to us, speaking to our issues and concerns.

This is a genuine people-powered movement. There's a lot of stuff that we're not getting. You get it. And you spread the word. We wish to plead our own cause to long have others spoken for us. We cannot tell our own story if we can't pay for it. This is about covering us. Invest in black-owned media.

Your dollars matter. We don't have to keep asking them to cover our stuff. So please support us in what we do, folks. We want to hit 2,000 people. $50 this month. Waits $100,000. We're behind $100,000. So we want to hit that. Y'all money makes this possible. Checks and money orders go to P.O. Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. The Cash app is DollarRM Unfiltered. PayPal is RMartin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Hey, I'm Antonique Smith.

Hello, everyone. It's Kiara Sheard. Hey, I'm Taj. I'm Coco. And I'm Lili. And we're at SWV. What's up, y'all? It's Rhyan Destiny.

And you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. -♪ -♪ -♪ -♪ Singer and rapper Tory Lanez, real name Daystar Peterson, is about a month away of learning his sentence after being found guilty of the shooting

of Meg DeStalgan, real name Megan Ruth Peet. After a nine-day trial, the California jury convicted the Canadian musician of a 2020 incident. Lange, who was convicted of assault with a semi-automatic firearm, carrying a loaded, unregistered handgun in a vehicle, and discharge of a firearm with gross negligence. Lange will be sentenced on January 27, 2023. The conviction carries up to 22 years and eight months in prison. Joining us to discuss this is a friend, a celebrity blogger,

Fredio from Fredio.com. Fred, how are you doing this evening? I'm doing good, Rob. How are you? I'm doing great. So as you know, because I've known you 20 years, I have no idea who any of these people are. I have no idea what's going on in this case. I've never heard of any of these things. I'm trying to figure out why, if your name, your birth name is Daystar, which is a great rap name, why you change that to Tory. That is what I'm trying to figure out. If my name was Daystar, Daystar would be my rap name. I wouldn't change it to Tory. But explain to people like me what the hell's going on in this case.

Well, basically, Rob, first off, I have to say, Tory probably is an easier name. So, of course, you're going to go with what's easier. So, this case had a lot of people shook all over the Internet. We really thought that, basically, Meg had made everything up.

And, you know, we thought, well, a few of us thought that it was all a lie, which it really wasn't. And we soon, I guess at the end of this trial, we found out that Meg wasn't lying at all. And, in fact, she not only did she tell the truth, but, you know, we found out more. Well, I'll say Meg really messed up in the beginning, but we found out more. I'll say Meg really messed up in the beginning, Rob, basically

because she lied in the beginning, which kind of threw everybody off. And we thought that these lies, well, we really in our minds thought that Meg was lying, because she wasn't. Just for the people

who are unfamiliar, so Meg Thee Stallion, so Megan Ruth Peet, I'm probably going to call her Ms. Peet, was with Tory Lanez, Mr. Peterson. Well, we don't know that. We know that they were having relations. Okay. So they were in some sort

of relationship with each other of varying standards. And that these two individuals, there was a confrontation involving other people. Can you kind of talk about what the kind of initiating incident was that led to this? Well, the issue was liquor. You know, when you're having a lot of liquor and a lot of libation and you're at a pool party hosted by Kylie Jenner, things get kind of shaky.

And I was told that the two had over like three, maybe six whole bottles of liquor. Now, I think anybody who drinks an entire bottle of liquor is going to be a little off. And so I'm quite sure that's why when she originally testified, she couldn't really tell the truth. You know, I will say that was the reason. But from what I'm hearing, Lange, Mr. Lange, basically did a lot of trying to pay people off, which is why we got so

many different lies. We didn't really know what the truth was, but the court system found that out. And so you mentioned, so when the case was initially reported, there were various stories as to what happened. Of course, there's the video of Ms. Pete, and you can see her foot bleeding. There were some reports that she had stepped on glass, some reports that she had been shot in the foot. With so many different stories circulating, what do you think it was that convinced a jury to convict Mr. Lange on all charges? I'll tell you what it was. It was, first off, they had three police officers who gave completely incorrect statements. And not only were those statements like not able to, because they looked up the gun, they didn't have the correct gun information.

They tried to put people who said that they saw a woman with a gun, but they They didn't have the correct gun information. They tried to put people who said that they saw a woman with a gun, but they really didn't see a woman with a gun, you know. And that was because from what we're being told, somebody had somebody allegedly paid off. Now, we don't, nobody can really, you know, we're not going to find out the truth. But a lot of the loss came from, Meg had a best friend who we found out was originally sleeping with Tori, but Meg went behind her best friend's back and started trying to sleep with her. I guess that's why Meg really didn't want the facts to hit the internet. But once it did, you know, it got really messy.

Now, with that, why do you think the Internet was so quick to claim that Miss Pete Meg Theist-Dalgan was lying? It really set off almost a culture war on the Internet with the one side saying, well, believe women. And then, of course, you have the hoteps of the Internet kind of carrying the flag of Tory Lanez claiming this was proof of women lying on men and making accusations. Why do you think that descended so quickly into a culture war? I think a lot of the issues that we're having right now is more so a man-woman thing, because I have to say I was kind of guilty of it. I automatically say, oh, she's lying. But, you know, in actuality, she wasn't lying. She told us what it was from the

beginning. A lot of people refuse to believe that. And again, it kind of reflects on us, you know, the man-woman society. Like, if you ask a woman over a man, majority of the time, we're going to go with the man. So to me, I think that's partly why. Plus the fact that people accuse Meg of lying a lot. Like it's not something that, you know, she said she wasn't dating him. And then we find out that she was dating him. She said she wasn't, you know, having sex with him. But then we find out that they were in fact actually having sex. So when you consistently lie to people and tell us different things, who knows what to believe? So I feel like that really played a big part. But in the end,

her friend Kelsey and her having to retract all these statements, because in the beginning, when the police first checked everything out, if you see in that video where Meg is stumbling across the street after being shot four times, Rob, she got shot four times with four bullet fragments went into her foot. That girl on the ground does look like she's kind of twerking. That's that's Kelsey. And basically, Chelsea gave the police a statement in the beginning. And not only did she say everything that Meg later testified and said, but when she got on the stand,

Kelsey got up there lying, which really messed up Tory Lanez by her lying. And then allegedly they saying Tory gave her a little check for that. So... Well, going forward, I think that this sets a precedent where hopefully we can start believing women from the beginning.

But why what do you think needs to happen? This kind of a broader overall policy policy question so that we can actually start believing women from the beginning. with R. Kelly, similar things with Bill Cosby, that often women just simply aren't believed when they make a complaint, particularly against, as you said, a wealthy or powerful or well-connected man who has the ability to, quote, unquote, pay people off for their testimony. How can we start bringing more justice to women who are abused? You know what? I would want to say in my mind, you know, there is an answer, but I really think it's depending upon how you're raised. It's more of a value of the way you're raised. If you're raised by a woman, you're probably more liable, you know, to listen to a woman,

but depending on, you know, your masculine traits, because I think that's really what it kind of plays. I hate to say it like that, but that's really what is playing down to me. Yeah, I think we definitely saw a strong dose of toxic masculinity on the internet when it came to this question. And the parents of Tory Lanez are still blaming everybody except for their son for what happened. But at the end of the day, even if you don't get a conviction or if you disagree on the question of the aggravated assault,

he still had a semi-automatic weapon in a car in California, which is already a felony. So you're going to be convicted of something. The only question is a question of extent. Thank you so much, Fred Anderson. Fredio.com for all your celebrity blogging and gossip needs. Thank you so much for joining us. We're going to go to a quick break.

You're still watching Rolling Mart and Unfiltered streaming live so much for joining us. We're gonna go to a quick break here. We're still watching Rolling Martin Unfiltered streaming live on the Black Star Network. I'm Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, and my new show, Get Wealthy, focuses on the things that your financial advisor and bank isn't telling you, but you absolutely need to know. So watch Get Wealthy on the Black Star Network.

On the next A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie, it's time to tie up those loose ends. Setting yourself up for balance, success, and even prosperity in the new year. Financial expert Pamela Sams joins our panel. She will give us a checklist of things that we need to do before the calendar turns. We develop our money mindset by the age of six. And so we have our sometimes six-year- old self still operating in the background of our money scripts that's next on a balanced life on black star network.

Next on the black table with me great call. We welcome the black star networks very own role in more joins us to talk about his new book white feet. How the browning of America is making white folks lose their minds. The book explains so much about what we're going through in this country right now and how, as white people head toward becoming a racial minority, it's going to get, well, let's just say even more interesting. We are going to see more violence. We're going to see more vitriol. Because as each day passes, it is a nail in that coffin.

The one and only Roland Martin on the next Black Table, right here on the Black Star Network. I'm Angie Stone. Hi, I'm Teresa Griffin. Oh, Roland. Hey, Roland. I am so disappointed that you are not here, first of all. Where's our dance? It's like we get a dance in every time I see you.

And so now you're not here for me to dance with, sir. You and your ascot. I need it. I need that in my life right now. Okay. I love you, Roland. What's up? I'm Lance Gross and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. We're going to continue this conversation

on the verdict of the Tory Lanez shooting the McDestallion case. But first, make sure you hit that like button on Facebook and YouTube. Look, this is almost like Noah telling people it's going to rain. And we need you to hit the like and subscribe button. We got to bring y'all to the water.

This is also why Noah became a drunk afterwards. I'm trying to tell y'all this every day. Hit the like button. It helps with the analytics. It helps to grow the show. It helps to spread the message and bring more people in and the algorithm that the computer uses. So I'm a drag all across just like just like Moses or Noah getting people on the boat. Going back to the panel, Christina, you are a former prosecutor.

Can you talk a little bit about this case from the prosecutor's perspective and how they were able to secure a conviction, given the various testimony, the various conflicting eyewitness accounts of what happened? So the prosecutor's goal in this case was to bring forth all of the evidence and then to draw a line for the jury between each witness testifying, each piece of forensic evidence, each piece of expert testimony directly towards a guilty verdict. It seems as though the defense in this case mounted what we call a sogdy or sogdy defense. Some other guy or girl did it. But they never successfully named another person to point the finger at. In fact, they refuted potential other suspects or defendants who could have committed this offense against Meg Thee Stallion. But the prosecutor's job in this

case was to show that despite the defense attempting to muddy the water, so to speak, that there was a clear line of continuous evidence that matched up between Meg Thee Stallion, from Kelsey, from eyewitnesses who were standing nearby, to witnesses who saw the three of them interact prior to this incident occurring, and also to explain how it is that Meg Thee Stallion provided different testimony, but why that was consistent with what ultimately was the verdict in this case. So just drawing that line for the jurors and showing them how to achieve the guilty verdict, despite the conflicts, was the prosecutor's goal in this case. Now, if you were approaching this case from the other side of the bench as the prosecutor, how do you get over the conflicting testimony, the previous inconsistent statements?

The, you know, some people say she stepped on glass. Some people say she was shot in the foot. One person said they had a gun. Someone else said there was no gun. How do you present that to a jury in such a way that they get those straight lines that lead to a singular verdict? You explain it in a way that the jury can understand.

So, for instance, when Meg Thee Stallion testified, reporters informed us, those of us who were tuning in at home to the daily updates, that the reason why she gave inconsistent testimony to the police is because she was afraid. And I believe that was consistent with her behavior on the stands. I believe that those listening, including the jurors, could understand that if you've just been shot by someone that you are familiar with, it might be challenging to you to give coherent information to police officers. And we have to realize that at the time that

this occurred, we were in the midst of one of the biggest police brutality cases that this country has ever seen the likes of with the George Floyd matter. I believe that her testimony also included her saying that she was afraid of the police at this point in time. She didn't know who to trust or if, since she had survived this one interaction, if she was subjecting herself to another interaction that was going to cause her harm by speaking to the police. Plus, she's in an industry and of a community that actually requires people to keep quiet and not talk to the police and not come forward. So I believe that this situation was very conflicting for Ms. Pete. And once that information was explained to the jury, it was easy for them to digest. Even her inconsistencies were much more palatable,

and they made sense. Now, when you attempt to explain away inconsistencies and the reasoning doesn't make sense to the listener, whether it's a person at home or a juror, then you would get a different verdict than the one that was reached in this case. And so what happens next in this case? Of course, sentencing comes up in January. What are the post-conviction rights that Mr. Lange has to potentially challenge this, either with a new trial or appeal down the line? So I think what we have coming up next is the sentencing hearing, and both the prosecution and the defense will sort of put on a mini trial and explain to the judge why the outcome that they are suggesting to the court should be the outcome sentencing-wise. Of course, as you've

already stated, Mr. Peterson faces up to 22 years in custody. That's the maximum sentence. The judge could take into consideration prior criminal history, whether or not he was on probation or parole at the time that this offense occurs, whether he's been convicted of similar offenses in the past. All of that may factor into the sentence that the judge ultimately imposes in this case. As far as post-conviction appellate rights are concerned, Mr. Peterson is going to have a team of lawyers, I'm certain, comb over the evidence and mount every legal challenge available to him or even ones that may not be available to him in order to get the conviction

overturned and to secure a new trial. That, however, is more of a long-term goal rather than a short-term goal. At the sentencing hearing, I think we can expect that his attorney will ask for the minimum sentence available for all of the crimes that he's been convicted of, and even ask, sometimes they ask the judge to go outside the required sentencing guidelines because the defense will likely state that they feel as though this case warrants it. But I don't see that based on these facts. I see a gun crime against a woman that was likely fueled by alcohol, as you previously stated. And I see very little mitigation for Mr. Peterson to secure a light sentence

or something that is outside of guidelines. So I want to bring Joe into this conversation, Attorney Richardson. So, Joe, I want you to put your defense attorney hat on in this case. If you were defense counsel for Mr. Lanes and your client has been convicted, you're facing sentencing, what will be the next steps you would take and what will be some of the defenses you would raise when you're trying to petition either for a new trial or appealing to a higher tribunal? I certainly don't disagree with what's been said. I mean, you know, battle line number one is trying to minimize this sentence. And so therefore, now you're putting on evidence

that demonstrates that in fact, you know, you know, okay, you guys convicted him, but he shouldn't be punished for this reason, that reason, or another reason. Sometimes when you have violent offenders and things like that, you're talking about what they went through in their childhood. You're talking about things that they have dealt with that should give some context to the mistakes that they made. So anything that they believe that they could use that would potentially help him and make him look better and speak to the, speak to the purveyors of mercy and the judge, you know, they're going to put that on. Now, as it pertains to the appeal, you know, I would imagine they're going to probably argue some of the things that they think that they should have been able to put

on from an evidence standpoint. If there are certain things that didn't come in that they wanted to come in, things that they thought would have made a difference. So it can't just be that there was some kind of error, right, that they think. But it's a reversible error. It's something that actually made a difference here. But here's what's funny. You know, they really don't have a whole lot to complain about for the judge because the prosecution wanted to add a couple more charges. They wanted to add the charge related to him offering a million dollars to Megan to not say anything. So he could have had more put on him than he ended up having put on him. And so really in that regard, unlike what his parents say, contrary to what his parents say,

that there's all of this injustice, a lot of times we had this and we had this happen in every community, but not the least of which is our community. You know, a lot of times we had this, and we had this happen in every community, but not the least of which is our community. You know, you've got people that like to provide context and say, you know, this is unjust or whatever else. No, don't bring a gun, you know, to a situation like this and have somebody dance and, you know, shoot. And if there is an issue related to testimony,

of course you have a right not to incriminate yourself. But maybe he should have gotten on the stand and laid this out. If he could have identified that reasonable doubt to break up the chain that was just talked about so that Megan could not be believed. And even if you liked Megan, you said, well, I'm just not sure. Maybe he could have done that. Clearly, he wouldn't have been any worse off unless he came off as flippant because he ended up getting convicted. You know what I mean? So he didn't get a bad shake here so much so I think he's going to have a hard time. You'd have a hard time anyway, you know, on appeals if there's not something clearly that should have happened that didn't or that should have happened that did.

You know, shouldn't have happened that did. Absolutely. Professor Nichols, we got about a minute or so left. What do you think needs to happen to stop these culture wars from breaking out every time there's any interaction between Black men and Black women? What can we do to get people to just better believe women the first time instead of, you know, trying to paint all of them as harlots and liars and money grubbers, et cetera, as we've seen in this case online?

Well, I think there generally needs to be a cultural shift. I think, you know, I understand about taking allegations seriously and not necessarily blanket believing people, but certainly take them seriously. And there seems to be this knee-jerk reaction to automatically discount people like Megan Thee Stallion, which I didn't understand how there was any doubt in what she was saying. And the fact that she may have said, oh, we didn't sleep together. Look, if you're a dude out there, there's probably four women denying that they ever slept with you because, you know, you're not worth bragging about. So I didn't see how that was relevant at all. I don't think Tory Lanez could have saved himself at all.

But there is like this misogyny that we have. And it's in the larger culture, too, because in my class, I actually referenced him shooting Meg Thee Stallion. And I had a bunch of women, white and black, who were saying they thought Megan Thee Stallion was a liar. And I was like, I didn't understand it. We have to get, we have to address misogyny at large and particularly in our community where we need the unity between black men and black women. And I just want to say one last point, and that is I don't believe Joe when he says he would have had Tory Lanez take the stand. I've watched enough, you know, L.A. Law or all that.

You don't put those guys on the stand because they're going to get destroyed. So I think he's fibbing there. Well, look, I think that we have to watch these things going forward. Of course, there will be an appellant process thereafter that will keep people updated on. But, Jason, I think that might just be you there giving them bad reports out on.

You might want to check on that. See, when I do my thing, they build a trophy and a statue to me outside. It's like the Staples Center. I didn't say they lied about me. I'm just saying you're telling on yourself. I'm like Luke out're telling on yourself. I'm like Luke out here putting up 60, 20, and 10 in the game. Triple-double's never been done before.

All right, we'll be back after the break. You're watching Rolling Martyr Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. We'll be right back. Hatred on the streets. A horrific scene. A white nationalist rally that 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 One, 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 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-studugs 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 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 2 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. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,

and the Ad Council. Send it into deadly violence. White people are losing their damn lives. 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 Emory 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 fear. We're all impacted by the culture, whether we know it or not. From politics to music and entertainment, it's a huge part of our lives.

And we're going to talk about it every day, right here on The Culture with me, Faraji Muhammad, only on the Black Star Network. Hey, I'm Amber Stephens-West. I'm Avery Sunshine. So this is Rajabow. I got a message for Roland Mascot. Oh, I'm sorry, Ascot Martin.

Buddy, you're supposed to be hooking me up with some of these mascots. I'm sorry, ascots that you claim to wear. Where's mine, buddy? Where's mine? That's all I got to say to you, OK? Mascot, goodbye. Hi, this is Essence Atkins,

and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. filter. Another Hall of Fame NFL player is going to an HBCU to help educate and train the next generation. Former Baltimore Ravens safety and Super Bowl champion Ed Reed will be the new head coach at Bethune-Cookman University. He's following in the footsteps of other NFL greats like Eddie George at Tennessee State University, of course, Deion Sanders at Jackson State University. We've also seen more and more former NFL coaches and coordinators go the HBCU route. I want to bring the panel in on this discussion really quick. I'll start with you, Jason. What do you think it means we're starting to see this top flight talent now going to HBCUs about building these programs to bring more attention to the institutions? before. We've seen NFL players like Doug Williams when he was at Grambling State University. We've seen this before, but I think Deion Sanders brought such attention and this as a viable route

to get into head coaching and not have to be an assistant for a lot of former NFL players that you're going to get someone the quality of Ed Reed, who is unquestionably the greatest safety to ever play the game. Don't at me. There's no question about it that this is the greatest safety. Tom Brady said the only player he's ever feared was Ed Reed. So, you know, I think this is also going to bring a lot of attention to Bethune-Cookman. If you're a defensive player,

I don't know who you'd want to be coached by other than Ed Reed. So I think that this is something where Deion Sanders got the ball rolling and you're seeing a lot of guys who want to help young men, particularly young black men like themselves, and get a head coaching gig. And HBCU seemed to be a viable avenue for that. So I think it's great. I think it's going to be amazing. I think it's going to bring even more attention to HBCU sports. You know, Christina, there was a lot of criticism of Deion in the last couple weeks,

you know, leaving for Colorado from Jackson State. But at the same time, he showed the former NFL players that you can come coach at HBCU for one or two years and then be making $5 million a couple of years later. Do you think there should be as much credit given to Ed Reed for taking this position that there was criticism, criticism with Deion Sanders for leaving? Absolutely. I think that the example that Deion said is just like you said, HBCUs create opportunities for the people who attend them. So if Deion Sanders had not coached at Jackson State, that $5 million opportunity may or may not have been available to him.

And so we should seek out opportunities at HBCUs and allow those opportunities to take us where they lead. There's no shame in elevating yourself to a $5 million salary. Although your start may be meager, he did a lot, Dion meaning, did a lot for Jackson State. And so the attention he brought both on the field and to the athletic program, to the city of Jackson, Mississippi, while they were going through a water crisis, from a perspective of a coach and put the spotlight on student athletes, Ed Reed can go and do the same thing at Bethune-Cookman. I think there is, everywhere there is an HBCU in this country, there's an opportunity

for a former NFL star to go and shed a light on opportunity, opportunities for improvement, and the talent that exists at HBCUs. We can and should be

willing to criticize and elevate. And Joe, you know, this seems to be a win-win for everybody. The institution, when these Hall of Fame players come, they get more attention, they get more sponsorship, they get more money, they get better recruiting classes, they're getting five-star recruits going to HBCUs now. All the coaches, on the other hand, instead of having to be an intern for a head coach and getting coffee and sleeping in the office, you get the opportunity to dive right into head coaching these students. They're open opportunities for you down the road. What do you think it means to these students to have somebody like Ed Reed be your head coach and kind of what that provides to them, giving that sort of mentorship that you really can't get anywhere else.

I think that every sports coach has an obligation, not only to help their athletes be better athletes, but to be better people. I think that that is magnified in the black community, where you have to instruct and remind on things, including how to deal with beliefs, the importance of you finishing school, you know, those types of things. And so I would think that hopefully this coach, Coach Reed, and others will take it on themselves to be that much more comprehensive, and not only in helping these folks be good men, but actually helping their colleges do well economically. Like Gwen Guthrie

said, she said, ain't nothing going on but the rent. But my favorite part of the song was, there's no rent lands without finance. If Bethune-Cookman doesn't build buildings, if it doesn't add resources, if it doesn't add endowment, then ultimately the only people that will benefit will be college people, will be the college football players.

Another thing that can happen, by the way, which doesn't necessarily have to take a whole lot of money, is that, and some schools are already doing this, that they have someone designated to help folks deal with NIL, to help them deal with taking advantage of economic opportunities that could make a huge difference. There are kids that are making thousands of dollars and hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, on social media. That's something that you can do, particularly when you're connected to the culture. You know what's hot. You know what's going on. You know what folks like. You can really help them be business people, help them to understand how to maximize this thing

economically, even as they do schooling. And so what we're hoping is that this allows them to be comprehensive and that there is a renewed discussion, and Roland talks about this all the time, about people that went to Bethune-Cookman. How many people are going to give to Bethune-Cookman that went there that haven't given since however much period of time because they just added Ed Reed? Okay, I don't want them to be in condemnation, but I want them to give and remember that Bethune-Cookman was the school that they went to, and there were always kids there during that whole time that they didn't give that needed their support. And so what we have to do is use it as an opportunity

to teach a culture of fundraising from the very, very beginning of the college years, just like we should be teaching money at the dinner table in our communities. We should be teaching fundraising so that our HBCUs can survive and thrive. Of course, football gives you an opportunity to create a lot of money

that helps to support the other sports. So it's absolutely important, but it draws attention. It can create academic partnerships. Even what's going on with the Big Ten is not only beneficial financially on the sports side, but it's beneficial because of the collaborations that will take place academically. So we need to think that way and be comprehensive

so that these places can not only survive, but actually thrive. Absolutely. And I think it's important that we give back to our HBCUs and our institutions. I'm just saying, I want Michael Vick to come coach Clark Atlanta University. That's all that I ask you. Vick, come back home, come coach the Panthers. And also, let's not forget the one thing that's most important during these football games is the marching band. Halftime is game time. Stick around for the fifth quarter. Let's not take our eyes off the prize of what we're really here for.

It's the band. All right, we'll be back after the break. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered Broadcasting Live on the Black Star Network. We'll be right back. We talk about blackness and what happens in black culture. We're about covering these things that matter to us, speaking to our issues and concerns. This is a genuine people power. 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 tasaser 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.

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 Cor 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 one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, 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. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care.

Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. There's a lot of stuff that we're not getting. You get it. And you spread the word. We wish to plead our own cause to long have others spoken for us. We cannot tell our own story if we can't pay for it. This is about covering us. Invest in Black-owned media.

Your dollars matter. We don't have to keep asking them to cover our stuff. So please support us in what we do, folks. We wanna hit 2,000 people, $50 this month, raise $100,000, we're behind 100,000, so we wanna hit that. Your money makes this possible. Checks and money orders go to P.O. Box 57196,

Washington, D.C. 20037-0196. The Cash app is Dollar Sign RM Unfiltered. PayPal is R. Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. I love directing. It's a different kind of piece. I do believe that the 30 years I was acting was to prepare me for what I'm supposed to be doing and that what I really am good at. But when you were acting, were you even thinking about directing? Nope. So what the hell happened?

If you had asked me 15 years ago, I probably would have said, no, I don't know. I was doing Ava DuVernay's first film, I Will Follow. And during that process, I think because it was her first film, maybe I... Did she self-taught? Absolutely. I probably gave too many suggestions, and at some point, Ava said to me,

I think you're a director, and you don't know it. Hey, I'm Cupid, the maker of the Cupid Shuffle and the Wham Dance. What's going on? This is Tobias Trevelyan. And if you're ready, you are listening to and you are watching Roland Martin, Unfiltered. In today's Tech Talk, some of you suck at gardening. Part of the reason is not being able to identify many of the invasive species in your yard that are choking the life out of your tomatoes, your flowers, your grass, etc. Well, one high school senior is changing all that. Jones May, a senior at Houston's Carnegie Vanguard High School,

has created the Ivy app. This app allows you to quickly upload photos, cross-reference, and identify many of these invasive species in your yard and gives you the opportunity to kill them before they can kill your plants. Joining us now is the Apple Swift Student Challenge winner, Mr. Jones May II, to discuss this fantastic app. Jones, how are you doing? I'm doing great.

So tell us a little bit about this app. What got you interested in gardening and botany as a high school senior? Yeah, so Ivy is really a platform that allows the user to detect invasive plants by either uploading an image or by taking an image within the app. And it was really inspired by my grandfather. So in Tunica, Mississippi, me and my grandfather had a community garden where we grew everything under the sun.

And unfortunately, we had to deal with this very invasive vine named the kudzu vine. If you're from the South, you will know what this vine is. It's highly invasive, and it's almost impossible to get rid of. And with this app, you're able to quickly identify it. So being from Tunica, I mean, being from Tunica, Mississippi and understanding how invasive plants work, I really want to create an app that honors, honored his legacy because unfortunately during the pandemic, um, he sadly passed away. But with this app, I was able to honor his legacy and find an issue that we really both had to deal with. And so talk a little bit about how the mechanics, how the app works. So you, have you seen something growing? You don't know what it is,

because often, as you said, kudzu, I grew up in Georgia, kudzu leaves can look a lot like cucumber leaves if you're not well acquainted with it. Or if you're growing melons in your backyard, the leaves look like poison ivy sometimes. How exactly does it work with helping people identify and does it give advice on how to deal with them? Yeah, so the app really works by allowing users to take an image. And with that, it uses machine learning in order to kind of differentiate between which vine it may be. So if it's a cucumber, it will tell you that it's non-invasive, or if it's a kudzu vine, it'll tell you if it's a kudzu vine. And right now it does over 20 invasive plants, but however, me and a group of friends are trying to expand that to hundreds in the future. So it

really does this by using machine learning. Talk a little bit about that machine learning process, because you have things like Google Lens, Apple has a product where they cross-reference many of these things. How were you able to create this program, this algorithm, where you can simply take a picture, cross-reference it with the database online, and then identify what it is? Yeah, so this app was really created using Apple's CreateML platform. And essentially, this is a platform where you're able to collect images and build a machine learning model that's able to detect pretty much anything you would like. So systematically, through the 10 invasive plants that it detects currently, I was able to get over a thousand

images from Google and other platforms such as that. And I was able to train my model in order to recognize that when you take a picture. So it will tell you whether or not it's invasive or not by you doing that model. And so just real quick, for people who have young folks in their family, like my 16-year-old niece who I told to watch this segment, how did you get into app development? Like what age did you get started to the point where you could be launching your own app? You're senior year of high school. Yeah. So I started fairly late, but I encourage everyone and especially the parents listening to drop your kids off at a coding with platform or a use code.org because I because starting early is very crucial. And when you start early, you can teach these kids that coding's not just science and doing math.

It's really a platform for kids to show their creativity whether through app design or mobile development. Coding is a language and a platform that allows kids to do pretty much whatever they want. And it's not just math or science. It's everything. Oh, you have given my niece Mackenzie so much work that she's going to have to do. I thank you for that so much. We're going to bring our panel in. Professor Nichols, you have a question for our guest. So first of all, this app seems like it's amazing.

And I'm hoping that I'm understanding it. But I don't know of you, you're probably too young, but there was a movie a long time ago, I think it was called Into the Wild, where a guy actually ate a, he was, you know, kind of camping out in the woods and he ate a flower that was poison and it actually ended up killing him. Now, would this app not only identify that flower, but tell you if it was edible? Yeah. So with this app, it tells you whether or not the plant is invasive. And if the plant is invasive, it tells you how to best handle it, whether or not it's poisonous, whether or not you need to wear gloves and things of that nature. And as we, me and a group of friends are expanding the app, we're going to include plant care. So it would cover things like whether or not you're able to eat this plant and how long

it would take for it to grow. Wow. So thank you very much. That is absolutely amazing. Joe, did you have a question for our guest Jones May? Yeah, Brother May, this is awfully impressive what you're doing. I'm thrilled for you. You know, when you get techie and everything, you kind of talk over my head a little bit. But that's okay because you guys have got this going on generationally. I wonder what your plans are, if you've made them, related to your career path and what it actually is. We all know you can do anything you want to because you're already doing it but um is it going to be connected to technology is it going to be connected to plants and horticulture if we still use that word that was a class i had in

junior high school back when you were a good idea but you know is it going to be connected to that business is it going to be connected what do you think it's going to be connected to or would it put it all together yeah so um you know I'm in the thick of college applications, and I'm really trying to pursue a degree in computer science because ultimately I really love mobile app development. So my end goal is to, you know, get a job in software development and ultimately become a software engineer. Wow.

Well, listen, I got no doubt it's going to happen, man. This is really good, and we're proud of you, man. It's good stuff. Wow. Well, listen, I got no doubt it's going to happen, man. This is really good and we're proud of it, man. It's good stuff. Absolutely. Christina, do you have a question for Jones? I think you might be on mute, Christina. How do users download your app to use it in their own gardens at home? Yeah, so definitely. Ivy is available on the App Store. We are also going to be available on Android in a few months. Bear with us.

We are having some technical difficulties as we start to add more and more plant species. But ultimately, in the next couple of months, we'll be able to detect over 100 plants and really suit the user's needs. And so I had a follow-up question. Have you worked or reached out to any major corporations to potentially help you with developing this or to move this idea along? I'm certain that companies like Home Depot and Lowe's

or John Deere, any agricultural company, will be more than happy to sponsor a team like yours that are putting together an app of this nature. Have you had any contact with groups of that nature? Yes, so definitely that is a great idea. And me and my co-founders are definitely going to be considering that. But I know that we have been given so many wonderful resources from the people at Apple, especially when I was able to visit Apple's campus. And we were able to get so much feedback on how app development works.

And especially through some of their programs that they have going on now, we're able to take classes and really get feedback on our applications. Absolutely. And so, Akeem, talk a bit about how you want to grow this going forward. Is this something you're going to continue

while you're in college, or is this kind of a stepping stone for the next area of your life? Yeah, so definitely we're going to continue to grow this, especially the freeze that we just had. It made me realize that plant care and delivery is really a thing that should be expanded upon because unfortunately my pineapple plant died because of the freeze. And I really wish I would have had a platform that would give me a reminder saying, take in my pineapple plant before the freeze comes. In addition to that, there also should be a platform where you can order a pineapple plant if unfortunately you weren't able to take it in. So me and my friends are really trying to go into plant delivery and care in the next few months.

Absolutely. And just as we wrap up here, what are some of the colleges you're looking at and applying to that you want to pursue this at? Yeah, so definitely Howard, because my grandfather went to Howard. Looking at Stanford and those type of colleges, yeah. Okay, well, look, we're going to help grease those kids.

Look, everybody, if you can get someone through some nepotism and some connections, by all means do so. So email me after the show. We want to make sure we connect you with the right people. How can people download the app and where can they find more information on the team that you put together developing this? Yeah, so definitely on the App Store. It's called Ivy Plant Identifier. And my team will be listed in the coming weeks as we continue to grow and expand and look forward to the coming updates about plant delivery and care. Well, we really support you. We really thank you for everything you're working on, your inspiration.

We like to highlight young people who are doing the right thing, not just the people doing the wrong thing. We really appreciate the thing you're doing. Just remember to reach out to me. I'm going to work on connecting with some people in the agricultural industry that might be interested in this. Jones May, the Ivy app, you can get an Ivy identifier in the Apple App Store. It will be coming to the Android Store going forward. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. Thanks. Look, that wraps up another episode of Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. You still have time to like, subscribe, share. We're trying to get 1,000 likes on each of these videos. When Roland gets back, we can show it to him and just let him know we keep this train rolling.

Even if he's not here, it is still in good hands. Got to thank our guests today for everything they've done. Got to thank our panel, Joe Richardson, Jason Nichols, Christina Sears, who are pinch-hitting and hopping in at the last minute. Gotta thank Fred Anderson, freddio.com, as well as Dr. Nola Hayes. I gotta thank the control room for staying in my ear and keeping this train rolling down the line.

And as I say to end every show, in the words of Gail Scott Herron, no matter the consequences or fears, you grip your senses. You gotta hold on to your dreams. Hold on to your dreams, America. Holla! Thank you. I always had to be so good, no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive.

But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes, rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at TaylorPaperSealing.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. I know a lot of cops.

They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two

of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts

that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to it. It makes it real. It really does.

It makes it real. Listen to 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. This is an iHeart Podcast.