#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Senate Fails Voting Rights, Biden: A Year Later, Cedric Lofton, DST Pres. Dies, HBCU Scholarship

Episode Date: January 21, 2022

1.20.2022 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Senate Fails Voting Rights, Biden: A Year Later, Cedric Lofton, DST Pres. Dies, HBCU Scholarship The Senate failed to pass sweeping new voting protections again last night. Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema defended the filibuster keeping the voting legislation from passing. Mitch McConnell said voting concerns are misplaced - you have to hear it to believe it. Cliff Albright, the Co-Founder of Black Voters Matter, will help me break all of this down.A Georgia district attorney wants a grand jury to decide former president Donald trump interfered in the 2020 election.  It's been a year since Biden took office, and he has not delivered on its promises to Black voters, but he says he's continuing to work on two of his biggest campaign promises working on police reform and voting rights. Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson from the Movement for Black Lives will shed some light on the possibility of Biden fulfilling those promises that got him elected.A Kansas teen's death was ruled homicide, yet no one will be charged in his death. The District Attorney cited the state's "stand your ground law" to justify Cedric Lofton's killing. The Lofton family attorney two Kansas community activists will join us to talk about the much-needed reforms needed in the juvenile just e system.I have an announcement for HBCU rising juniors and seniors. I have about 15-thousand reasons why you want to hear what I have to say.And some sad news to report, the newly elected president of Delta Sigma Theta has died.#RolandMartinUnfiltered partner: Nissan | Check out the ALL NEW 2022 Nissan Frontier! As Efficient As It Is Powerful! 👉🏾 https://bit.ly/3FqR7bPSupport #RolandMartinUnfiltered and #BlackStarNetwork via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛ https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfilteredDownload 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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. I'm real revolutionary right now. Black media, he makes sure that our stories are told. Thank you for being the voice of Black America, Roller. 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? Kanskje vi kan ta en kvartal? ДИНАМИЧНАЯ МУЗЫКА Субтитры подогнал «Симон» Hey folks, today is Thursday, January 20th, 2022. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. Senate Democrats don't do their job, mainly because Arizona Senator Kristen Sinema and Joe Manchin choose not to end the filibuster in order to protect voting rights. Also, we'll talk with Cliff Albright with Black Voters Matter about what is next. Also, Joe Madison, a Sirius XM radio host, has ended his hunger strike,

which was focused on, again, waiting for the moment to sign this particular bill. Also on today's show, sad news from Delta Sigma Theta, the national president passed away today. We'll give you those details also on today's show. Sad news from Delta Sigma Theta. The national president passed away today. We'll give you those details also on today's show. We'll talk about a case out of Philadelphia where some cops have been charged in the death of an eight-year-old girl.

Plus, you'll get the first public look at the cover of my book, White Fear, that is dropping this year. Folks, it is time to bring the funk on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Let's go. He's got it. Whatever the piss, he's on it.

Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine. And when it breaks, he's right on time. And it's rolling. Best belief he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics. With entertainment just for kicks, he's rolling, best believe he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics. With entertainment just for kicks. He's rolling. Yeah, yeah.

It's Uncle Roro, yo. Yeah, yeah. It's Rolling Martin. Yeah, yeah. Rolling with Roland now. Yeah, yeah. He's broke, he's fresh, he's real, the best you know, he's rolling, Martin. Martin. Well, folks, after the vote last night, there is no passage of the For the People Act or the John Lewis Act

because Senate Democrats could not get 50 votes in order to end the filibuster. Just so you understand why the vote was 52 to 48, it's because it allows for, by Senator Chuck Schumer, first of all, Arizona Senator Kristen Sinema and Joe Manchin, though they say they support the bills but chose not to end the filibuster, which meant 50 votes, 48 votes. Senator Chuck Schumer has to vote as well in order for him to bring the bill back up. And so that's why you see 52-48, so you understand why the vote count is what it was. So there were just a number of speeches that were given on the floor of the United States Senate that were powerful, that were strong from some folks like Maggie Hassan.

We wouldn't even expect to give that kind of speech. But, of course, one of the strongest was from a brother who truly understands this, one of three African Americans in the United States Senate. He represents Georgia as a pastor. That is Senator Raphael Warnock. Here's some of his 28-minute speech, some of what he had to say last night before the vote was taken. January 6th happened, but here's the thing. January 5th also happened.

Georgia, a state in the old Confederacy, sent a black man and a Jewish man to the Senate in one fell swoop. Our nation has always had a complicated history, and I submit to you that here's where we are. We're swinging from a moral dilemma. We are caught somewhere between January 5th and January 6th. Between our hopes and our fears. Between bigotry and beloved community. And in each moment, we the people have to decide which way are we going to go and what are we willing to sacrifice in order to get there. The question today is, are we going to give in to a violent attack whose aim is now being pursued through partisan voter suppression laws and state legislatures.

And sadly, Georgia, the same Georgia that sent me and my brother Ossoff to the Senate, not the people of Georgia, partisan state politicians, have decided to punish their own citizens for having the audacity to show up. And it isn't just about the restrictions around water and food distribution. The more fundamental question is why the last so long in the first place and why is that the case in certain communities i know that some americans listening to me right now don't know what we mean because that's not your experience but it is the experience of so many of your fellow Americans. We need empathy, compassion, care for one another.

Why local election officials working in Lincoln County, Georgia, to close all but one polling location for a county that's bigger than 250 square miles? Why is the second most powerful legislator in the Georgia State Senate working right now to pass legislation to eliminate all ballot drop boxes in Georgia in the middle of a pandemic? Why are state leaders in Georgia right now working to take over the local elections board in Fulton County where Ebenezer Baptist Church sits. There's a woman in Cobb County named Irish. She says she's tried repeatedly over the past 10 years to vote but could not because of long lines and changing polling locations. People playing games. She said that she has often had to decide if she will work or vote. Another woman, Verana from Cobb County, says that she waited in line for eight hours in the rain at her local library. Eight hours to vote. I run into constituents all the time who tell me

that they waited for hours to vote for me. I'm honored that they voted for me, but I'm sad that they should have to wait for eight hours? A student in Atlanta named Isabella says that she and many of her friends who could not vote in the November 2020 election because they did not want to skip class to stand in line. Why are state leaders in Georgia behaving as if giving voters these awful choices is normal, or that voters like these Georgians don't exist? Those are the facts of the laws that are being passed in Georgia and across our nation. And so here's the question tonight. America, are we January 5th or are we January 6th? Are we going to give in to the forces that seek to divide us by gerrymandering us, suppressing us, and subverting the voices of some of us in pursuit of power at any cost?

Or are we going to live up to that grand American covenant? E pluribus unum. Out of many. One. I choose what Dr. King called beloved community. I choose America. I choose a nation that embraces all of us. We've been summoned here. We cannot turn away. And in just a few moments, all 100 of us, blessed with a

sacred trust, will let the American people know where we stand on the question of whether the Senate will protect their voices, the voices of the very people who sent us here, or if we will simply surrender to the anti-democratic fervor and polarizing disunity spreading across our nation. Joining us right now is the co-founder of Black Voters Matter, Cliff Albright. Cliff, glad to have you back on the show. It was certainly a difficult night for folks like yourself and others who have been fighting for voting rights, who have been in the streets, getting arrested,

who have been traveling around this country, risking getting COVID, you know, all these different things, going into, you know, the backwoods, the country parts, delivering collard greens and water, just trying to get people to understand the power of the vote. And with all the work done to elect that man and John Ossoff, which gave Democrats, frankly, control of the United States Senate, to see two white U.S. senators, one from Arizona, one from West Virginia, completely just ignore the reality what Republicans are doing across the country has to be frustrating. Yeah, good evening, Roland. Yeah, I mean, there's no sugarcoating it. Last night was a frustrating

night. You know, even though we knew what those senators were saying going into it, you know, you always hold out hope that, you know, maybe they'll hear something that'll change their thinking. Maybe they'll get some extra facts that'll change their thinking. Maybe they'll be inspired by my senator, and I'm so proud to call him my senator, Senator Warnock, and even John Ossoff, who I thought also gave a good speech. And more importantly, when Senator Susan Collins tried to clap back, she wasn't ready for his response to her in regards to the Voting Rights Act. We can talk about that in a second. But, yeah, we're just thinking that maybe they'll hear something that would change their votes.

But, you know, as we learned by the end of the night, there wasn't anything that could have been said. There was no facts. There was no history about the filibuster or about Senate procedures. There was no information about the realities of voter suppression that some of their own colleagues were telling them about their own states. There was nothing that they could have heard to change their minds. But with that said, last night, and this isn't just a silver lining thing or a moral victory thing, you know, last night was important. The fact that we even had that debate is something that was produced by movement, by what you were just talking about, by folks who have been in the streets and getting

arrested and sending messages and texts and all of that. Movement made that debate even happen, because had we not been pushing for months, then, you know, the senators, including Senator Schumer, may have just said, well, I tried to bring it up for a vote, and they wouldn't let us debate it. But movement made that debate happen and made them go on the record with their votes, made them have a debate and a discussion and to expose themselves. And at the end of the day, we think that that's something that's significant. And we're going to use this energy moving forward because it ain't over. You know, game on, as we were saying, and we're about to launch a whole nother campaign. And as you may have seen, folks were still out there protesting at the Capitol today, including Congressman Jamal Bowman, who got arrested today. Now the sixth, I think, CBC member to get arrested in this battle for voting rights. So it was a frustrating night. And, you know, we need to acknowledge that and feel that. But we need to move on from that, because at the end of the day, you know, as I've

been reminding people today, the Cheney, Goodwin and Schwerner were murdered in June of 64. You know, Bloody Sunday happened in March of 65, and it took a whole other five months after Bloody Sunday and the Selma to Montgomery March before the Voting Rights Act was passed. People think that there was a march across the bridge, and then the next day or the next week we had a Voting Rights Act. That's not the way it worked. And so, you know, I still believe it. Actually, I think we ought to take it back even further.

And what you just said, it is important for people to understand, to understand the continuum, if you will. You had the 15th Amendment that was passed, one of the Reconstruction Amendments. And then, of course, you had the election of 1876, the Great Compromise of 1877, which then ushered in Jim Crow. You had rights taken. You had, of course, the black members of the House of Representatives who were thrown out, the last one who was from North Carolina, who gave that particular speech on the floor. You

had black folks' rights taken in the Mississippi Constitutional Convention in 1890, where you had that one brother, Isaiah T. Montgomery, who voted along with the white folks to take the vote. That's why I call senator Tim Scott a modern-day Isaiah T. Montgomery because of his vote

last night. Then, of course, you go through the battle in the 20th century, but you go to the 1957 Civil Rights Act that was gutted. And then, of course, Kennedy runs for president in 1960, makes promises. And then you have this massive comprehensive bill. Everybody forgets that the Civil Rights Act of 64, the Voting Rights Act of 65, and the

Fair Housing Act of 68 were actually all in one bill. And so nothing happened for two years. Kennedy gets killed. LBJ says, we're going to move this forward. But he tells King, we got to break this thing up. And so then you have Civil Rights Act that comes first, public accommodations. Then you had voting rights in 65. Then you had fair housing in 68. And so the Black Freedom Movement, if you say, starts with, of course, Montgomery, 1955, December 1st. And then you go through the Fair Housing Act being passed nine days after King,

9 days after King was assassinated. That's 13 years. Now, none of us today want to wait 13 years, but those folks put it on the line every single day during that period. And so folks need to understand ain't no microwave social activism. That's right. That's right. Now, I'm so glad you went into that history for a couple of reasons. One, because we got to understand now it's urgent, right? We got

to have a fierce urgency of now, but we also got to understand the ebbs and flow of history and where we are in this moment. And just because we didn't get what we wanted last night doesn't mean that the battle is over. And so understanding that history is important. The other reason I'm really glad you went into that history is because what you just described regarding the public accommodations and voting rights and fair housing and the way that they broke that into pieces, ultimately that may be what has to happen with this voting

rights bill and the different pieces of it. Because we got the gerrymandering. We got the dark money. And you heard the Republicans really focusing on the dark money and the campaign finance reform pieces of the bill. But you got those pieces. Of course, you've got the restoration of the Voting Rights Act piece, which Susan Collins was pretending like she supports, even though she didn't vote for it when it was up a couple of months ago. And so you've got these pieces. And one of the things, one of the strategies that we may wind up pursuing is breaking down different parts of it, much the way you just described

the way that those civil rights bills, including voting rights, was broken down in the 60s. The other thing is that, and I've been saying this to folks as well because I think people also need to be fully aware and understand how these things are interlocked. So you take what happened last night, this right here. If you're not seeing my computer, folks, okay, let me see if I can get this up. Because I need people to understand why these elections matter, why who we put in office matters. This was, and I'm trying to pull it up right now,

and so we're going to try to get it going. But last night, Sherry Beasley posted this statement right here on her Twitter feed. And for folks who don't know who that is, she's a former Supreme Court justice of North Carolina. And then she posted this. Guys, come on, go to it. Thank you. Today, Washington has failed us. In this moment, the failure to stand up for our fundamental constitutional right to vote

turns back the tide while our democracy is under attack. And so she lays all these things. But this is what she says in the end. If I were in the Senate today, I would vote for the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to ensure we don't pass this fight on to future generations.

She's running for United States Senator. Richard Burr, of course, who's been, frankly, abusing his office with his stock trades, he's retiring. She is running for the United States Senate. She lost in 2020 by 400 votes in North Carolina. Folks, do the math. Sinema Manchin last night was 50-48 because one of those senators, Republican, Burr, voted with Republicans. If Sherri Beasley is the United States Senator

next year, if she wins and is sworn in, then all of a sudden now you're looking at 50-49. Mandela is one of the folks who's running, who's the Lieutenant Governor in Wisconsin. He's running for the Democratic nomination to face Senator Ron Johnson, who is wildly unpopular. If Ron Johnson gets taken down, now all of a sudden, it's flipped. You don't need Sinema and Manchin. Then, of course, you have Pennsylvania. Toomey is retiring. And so we don't know who Malcolm Kenyatta is running, Lieutenant Governor, who's running. You know who wins that. You win that, but even with even with Manchin and Sinema, you're now over the line. Val Demings is a congressman. Val Demings is running there in Florida. Charles Booker is running there in Kentucky. Then, of course, you have the open seat in Ohio. Democrats hold the line in Nevada and Georgia in those seats. They literally could

have 53, 54 votes. And so people need to be then recalibrating. So black folks are watching right now pissed off. You should be donating to Sherry Beasley. If you're in North Carolina, you should be saying, how am I going to be getting my folks to go out there and vote? Because again, it's understanding the dynamics of politics and how this thing could be totally different in January or February based upon who controls the Senate. Yeah, no, you're exactly right, Roland. I'll even throw in there, this is perhaps a more longer-term issue, but if D.C. had statehood, then we'd have another two senators

that we wouldn't have to mess around with Manchin and Sinema, right? And so shout out for D.C. statehood. But you're exactly right. There's a number of key battles going on. Most of those states that you named are states that we're active in or we've at least got some partners in. And, yes, we need to be—you know, I don't ever want to give, and especially as the battle for the voting rights bills was still going on, I didn't want to give credence to this notion of, oh, well, we're just going to go out and register some more folks, right, and, you know, vote blue no matter who and work your butt no matter what and all that.

You know, but we do have to start having those conversations. And that's why, you know, we're about to launch some campaigns that are rooted in acknowledging that we got to still walk into Uganda. We got to continue to fight this battle for the voting rights legislation, but we also got to go out there and win some extra seats so that we don't have to deal with Manchin and Sinema. And then when they come up, you best believe that we're going to be out there in Arizona and West Virginia to deal with our good friends in those two states. And must hold the line in Georgia. Warnock is on the ballot. Ossoff got one a six-year term.

Warnock filled the expired term of Johnny Isakson, a Republican who passed away, and so got to hold the line in Georgia. That's right. And that's one of the things I've been saying whenever people ask about the enthusiasm gap, which is real, to be clear. Like, you know, black folks aren't going to be happy if if we don't get some stuff delivered, some more stuff delivered for us, whether it's voting rights or criminal justice reform.

It was quite a thing to watch Tim Scott and Cory Booker going after each other after Tim Scott wasted everybody's time for a year pretending like they were going to pass some George Floyd act or some police reform. You know what? I'm glad you said that. I want to interrupt you there because I told folks. So Michael Harriot, when he was with The Root, wrote a particular piece last year in, not last year, in 2000, in 2020, where he talked to Tim Scott's deputy chief of staff, who actually said that part of the bill they were advancing would withhold or take funds from police in the places where they did not pass laws to deal with police brutality. Now, here's what's interesting. When Tim Scott went on Face the Nation to Margaret Brennan

talking about, oh, Democrats want to defund the police, and that was just a bridge too far, I then text messaged him and said, can you explain me the difference between what you proposed last year and what you're accusing Democrats of? That was on October 27th. I sent him the text again last night. Now, mind you, he was responding to my other text messages about read the bill, read the bill. But when I brought up his own bill that showed he was a hypocrite, no response. I e-mailed his staff again yesterday saying why haven't

y'all answered me in two and a half months when your own deputy chief of staff said the exact same thing that Scott is now accusing Democrats of. Complete, total silence. when your own deputy chief of staff said the exact same thing that Scott is now accusing Democrats of, complete, total silence. That shows you how fraudulent they are and how fraudulent he was, wasting the times of all those families who were there fighting for rights. He never intended for the George Floyd Justice Act to go forward.

It was all a charade. And that's why I call Senator Tim Scott a modern day Isaiah T. Montgomery. And he's up this year, right? And so, you know, people aren't expecting to put as much attention into South Carolina as some of the other states that we went to, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia. Go ahead. So, yeah, but he's up. And so, you know, we're going to be doing a lot of work in South Carolina because we believe that, you know, anytime you got the kind of population

that you got in a state like South Carolina, you know, we got the ability to make some stuff happen. We always got to go out and get that magical percentage of white folks that are willing to come along with us. But, hell, if they can pass medical marijuana in Mississippi, I'm believing we can do anything in South Carolina. So he's up. So there's a number of races that we need to be targeting. And when we talk about the enthusiasm gap, although it's a real thing, the key thing to

think about is it's not a national enthusiasm gap, right? It's kind of like what we say about Congress, like Congress has historically low approval ratings, and yet you still see that 95% of incumbents still win re-election. Why is that? Because even when people are frustrated or unhappy with Congress, they don't attach that necessarily to their person, right? And so what we may wind up seeing, and Georgia is a perfect example, even black folks that are upset with Biden or Democrats in the Senate, we're not upset with Warnock, right? We know that he was out there fighting. And so you might not see the same lack of enthusiasm someplace like Georgia as you might in some other states,

like say a Delaware, where I don't know if there were senators up for, you know, Carper and Coons, but they didn't fight like Warnock, and so there would be a bigger enthusiasm gap there than you would see in some place like Georgia. This is video we're showing right now of congressman Jamal Bowen getting arrested today. You referenced that earlier, so I wanted to definitely show that.

It is, you know, You've made the point consistently, Cliff, that you cannot out-organize voter suppression. Yesterday, guys, if y'all have that clip of President Joe Biden, let me know if y'all have the clip where he admitted that, frankly, he has not communicated enough to African-Americans. And the thing here is this White House, the Democratic Party, their messaging, look, Frank, has been terrible. I don't understand how in the hell you pass a $2 trillion bill and you don't know how to explain to people what the hell is in it. I mean, that just makes no sense to me whatsoever. But the point that you made is they're going to have to deliver. One of the things that President Biden said after Scott

scuttled the George Floyd Justice Act, where they're going to be moving forward with executive orders. I'm sitting there going, what the hell happened? They should have done that literally the next week after he did that. You don't sit here and wait three, four months. No, you jump on it immediately. That's the sort of action that there has been far more sense of urgency from this party and it can't come in August and September. It needs to happen now. Yeah, it needs to happen now. It needs to happen yesterday. Truth be told, that could have happened. He didn't even have to wait for the George Floyd act to fall apart. He could have done that on January 21st, January 22nd of 2021 when he came in. He could have done the executive orders now on that. So you're exactly right. It's past time

for some of those executive orders, whether that's on policing or student loan debt, which, to be clear, is a racial justice issue. Dealing with student loan debt, which to be clear, is a racial justice issue. You know, dealing with student loan debt and debt cancellation can have an immediate impact on the racial wealth gap. And so, you know, there are some actions that he can take that might help deal with whether or not there's going to be a lack of enthusiasm amongst black voters. You know, but at the end of the day, regardless of what we're going to do, they're going to have to get something passed because, you know, we've still got to deal with the attacks on drop boxes. Now you've got this fool,

Perdue, talking about, and not just him, he's just piggybacking on DeSantis, talking about election police, you know, which he doesn't even have the constitutional authority to do in Georgia, but they're still going to, right? But they're still going to talk about it and they're still going to try it. You got DeSantis putting out his own maps. You got a governor in Florida putting out redistricting maps. That ain't your job. Stay in your lane, right? But again, this is all a part of the voter suppression that we're seeing. And so we're going to do what we need to do to talk to our folks and focus on our issues and mobilize folks. But we've got to – I'm still saying it. We still got to get them – they can't move on to this so-called Electoral Count Act.

You may have heard some of that discussion, right, that they're just trying to act like that's a substitute for voting rights. That's not a substitute. That would be like, and I shared this the other day on Martin Luther King Day, that would be like LBJ telling Dr. King or Congress telling Dr. King, you know what, Dr. King, we can't pass this Voting Rights Act right now that you want to get passed. But let me tell you what we're going to do for you. We're going to pass an act that says after they finish keeping you from registering, after they finish giving you literacy tests, after they finish making you count the jelly beans, after they finish closing your polling places, after all is said and done and they send us the election results, we're going to make sure that those results get confirmed and certified as it was sent to us by the state. That would have been

insulting to Dr. King, and that's insulting to us today. The Electoral Count Act is not voting rights. Repeat, the Electoral Count Act is not voting rights. It is not a replacement for restoring the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It's not a replacement for guaranteeing days of early voting and vote by mail and making Election Day a national holiday. So they still need to fight. And we're still going to fight and do what we need to do to get those things passed, even if it's in pieces, as you described earlier. But we need that to go along with the mobilization that we're going to be doing as we try to

target some of these states up and down the ticket from Senate on down to local races, because at the end of the day, we need these school board seats just as much as we need these Senate seats, because we all know what's going on at the school board level. Indeed. Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. You know we're always there with you, and so let's get it on in 2022. All right. Game on. Yes, indeed. Game over. I appreciate it. Thanks, sir. All right, folks, let's go to my panel right now. Greg Carr, Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University, Reesey Colbert, Black Women's Views, also Faraji Muhammad,

host of upcoming show on the, of course, Black Star Network. Greg as well. Greg will be doing the Black Table. I saw the first cut today. It looks great. And Faraj is for the culture with Faraj Muhammad. And so, again, that'll be upcoming. I want to show you all this here. This has been making the rounds on social media. So Mitch McConnell was asked this question, and this is how he responded.

What's your message for voters of color who are concerned that without the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, they're not going to be able to vote in the midterm? Well, the concern is misplaced because if you look at the statistics, African-American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans. A recent survey, 94 percent of Americans thought it was easy to vote. This is not a problem. Turnout is up. Biggest turnout since 1900. It's simply they're being sold a bill of goods to support a democratic effort to federalize elections. Senator. of goods to support a democratic effort to federalize elections as senator black roll that top again

i don't know who is voting rights actor not going to be able to vote in the midterm well the concern is misplaced because if you look at the statistics, African-American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans. A recent survey. Did something happen, Recy? Are you an American? That's how technical it is. Farage, I'm just saying, are you an American? We're here. Okay, Greg, I'm just saying, are you an American? We're here.

Okay, Greg, I don't know about you. Well, don't ask Greg. Don't ask Dr. Carr. Dr. Carr. No, don't ask me. But see, and the thing there, Reese, we've won all the BS because I love it when, oh, no, no, no, they're voting at the same rates. No, that's not true. And, again, they love to cite, oh, this poll and that poll, yeah, but whatever the poll, 94% of Americans, yeah, show me that poll.

Oh, I'm sorry, maybe that was a poll of 94% of white folks. Well, you know, he's revealing what we all know, that when white people talk about people, they're talking about white people. Right. And everybody else has to have the hyphenate in front of it. And it's interesting that he didn't say African Americans. He just said African American voters and then Americans.

So he just basically said, well, we all know that we're other to this country, even though we literally built this country. But at the end of the day, the fact that we vote and the numbers that we do is not evidence that the system is working. It's evidence that we are going to go through hell or high water to vote. And the reality is, and I know this is not going to be the most popular thing to say, but they're suppressing just as many, if not more, white voters than they are black voters just to stop some black folks from voting in places like Detroit and Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and in Georgia,

because as Vice President Kamala Harris has been saying, the voter suppression bills that they've put in place are going to impact 55 million Americans. And before it is a million of us. So obviously it's gonna hit a whole lot more people than just black folks. And so they're willing to sacrifice the conveniences of some white folks

because they feel like they can make up for it by ginning them up with all of these racial dog whistles or bullhorns about CRT and caravans and radical Islam with this and defund the police or whatever kind of bullshit they're going to spring up for 2022. And they know that on the flip side, they're going to make it structurally impossible for so many Black, Latino, Native American, and even disabled student communities to vote. And so that's what this is all about. But the white supremacy is really the root of all of these initiatives. It's the root of the obstruction. And it doesn't matter if it's Mitch McConnell saying it or versus Chris Nassim or Joe Manchin. They all claim for the same white nationalist team

and for the same white minority rule. Because this isn't just about 2020, 2022. This is about the next generation of wanting to enshrine white minority rule when the demographics shift against them. I get a kick out of, oh, no, everybody's voting, but, Viraj, okay, fine. Y'all had to wait six hours.

Okay, fine, you had to wait eight hours. So it's sort of like saying, look, why y'all tripping? Y'all still got to eat, even though you had to go to the kitchen. Right. I mean, just because you didn't sit down at the counter, I mean, you still got the food out the back window, but you ate.

And that's the problem right there. And I think, Brother Roland, we got to keep something in mind that how serious of a situation what happened last night really is to constitutional democracy. Here's a 230-year country that is built on the idea of representation from the people through the voting process. And so what we just saw last night was a major blow to that foundation. And, you know, there are people across this country that are looking and are wondering, are we teetering or are we right there at the brink of civil war? Dr. Gerald Horne, who is the professor of history and African studies out of the University of Houston, he made the point that we are at that point at this point. He said that when you look at it, he said it's going to be very difficult to change

the tide against getting these voting bills passed. He said, you have scholars who are talking about the United States on the verge of civil war. He said, in some ways, the situation in the United States is either spinning out of control or has spun out of control. So we're looking at a situation like this. Recy talked about those voter suppression bills laws. The Brennan Center for Justice, which is a public policy institute

out of New York, NYU, they say 400 laws have been introduced in 49 states restricting voter access. What is going to happen when people go to the polls and they can't go to the polls, or they're restricted, or the ballot boxes aren aren't there or there's some sort of limitation, the United States government, the government leaders are playing games with our lives. Because why? If voting is supposed to be the most easiest way to participate in this democracy, and you can't say that at this point in time that people aren't already dissatisfied,

you are going to essentially destroy, and I will go as far as to say to cultivate domestic terrorists against the United States government. Well, what you're dealing- Because people aren't gonna be feeling like they're gonna be seen or heard, or that their will is going to be fulfilled. Well, again, what you're dealing with here is that the old way was to simply fire bomb churches,

blow up houses and intimidate black people, threaten to lose their jobs. What they're doing here, Greg, is they're doing as a federal court rule, surgical precision in terms of how they're able to attack. They're studying, going to change this and change this. That's what they're doing. And so the Republicans in Congress are saying, hey, everything is fine. Hey, we see what they're doing on the state level. Y'all keep going. Hey, we don't see what the whole deal is,

which says also to our folks, we'll be talking with Black Lives Matter leader coming up next, it says to our folks why we can't just focus on what's happening here in the nation's capital. You know, we're just two blocks from the Capitol. Black Lives Matter leader coming up next. It says to our folks why we can't just focus on what's happening here in the nation's capital. You know, we're just two blocks from the White House, a few blocks from the Capitol. You better be focused on what's happening in your state

capital because that's where they have been really creating the most havoc. That's exactly right. And by the way, Roland, I love the fact that you're repping Tennessee State Tigers, man. I know that's one of the many things that is shown. When I'm wearing the hoodie, I'll explain a little bit later because we, in honor of Alpha Phi Alpha,

its 115th anniversary, I partnered with McDonald's to create seven scholarships worth $15,000 each for HBCU juniors and seniors. I'll explain more about that later, but go ahead. Okay. Yeah. Well, you've been saying you're going to do that, man. Y'all pay attention. This is why you support the Black Star Network. Roland is as good as his word. He's been saying that for years. Yeah. I mean, I love Mitch McConnell. He's an unreconstructed white nationalist clan adjacent. And my response to him would be the end of this month, I think the 25th of January is the filing deadline. Charles Booker, 2022, break Rand Paul's whole spine. That's the response.

You don't, you know, Stevie Wonder said it best in his song, Superstition, when you believe in things you don't understand, you suffer. So to me, asking anyone whether they're American or not is a trick question. There's no such thing as an American. I'm an American citizen. I have a passport. I can vote. And so that's the issue. And I think as you walked, Cliff, through that history, it's very important to understand. The federal Constitution of the United States of America was set up to prevent majority rule. At the time, people of African descent were not included. This mess started to fall apart as you began to walk through those Civil War amendments

with the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment. When you included people of African descent in something we were never supposed to be included in, it began to upset the balance. For a brief moment, there was an off-balance moment when they glimpsed the possibility of maybe something like, what did Senator Winnick say? A nation that embraces all of us. Because he said, I choose America, and then he said, I choose a nation that embraces all of us.

And I understand why he had to say it, because he got to win reelection so that you don't have a brain-damaged bulldog join Coach Tuberville from neighboring Alabama and become the literal dumbest senator in the damn United States Senate. I understand why Warnock had to say that, but them two different things, bro. You say you choose America, what is that? Then you say I choose a nation that embraces all of us. That thing has never existed. But from 1865 to 1875, as you walk clip through, there was a glimpse of possibility.

And then the North made a deal with the South. In exchange for giving them home rule in the South, they told them, just don't leave the Union. And they didn't. So we had to fight a second reconstruction, as you've always walked us through. And from 1955 to 1965, we performed radical surgery on the United States. And as you always walk us through, when Martin King's last book, Where Do We Go From Here, Chaos of Community, when he laid down the blueprint for what to do, well, their response since then has been a long period of what Dylan Rodriguez and others call white reconstruction. So now the patient is terminal because after all that time, the population has been shifting. So this is where I end. We have to now go to war. Stop talking this craziness.

I understand why Warnock said what he said, but Cory Booker's still up here with this foolishness like we, we, we, there ain't no we, bruh. You know what you need to do in Kentucky? The president of Kentucky State University, the University of Kentucky, we got all them black ballplayers. You make election. You close your school. When Raphael Warner says skipping class, they didn't want to skip class to have to make them that awful choice. Bruh, don't you remember the students from Spelman and Clark and Morehouse and Morris Brown and the ITC who had only skipped school, left school altogether, and went down, got their ass beat, and fought back in them lunch counters.

You've got to go to war now. That means that you have a sleep-in at all these community centers and churches the night before the election. Then you go out there and feed everybody five miles from the place, and you get prepared to stay out there for two or three days. These are your open-ass enemies. Stop acting like standing in line for six to twelve hours is a damn sacrifice. And call these people who they are.

Break their damn backs. Y'all gotta stop talking different. You're talking a language they don't understand. It's time to have some bass in your voice now. I may, in the next hour, I may have to play that commentary I did in the first year of Trump.

This means war for people to understand where we are. I got to go to a break. We come back. We're going to bring in one of the leaders of Black Lives Matter movement into this conversation. We're going to also talk about Biden's news conference yesterday, his first year, all of that. That's next right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered

on the Blackstar Network. ТРЕВОЧНАЯ МУЗЫКА I'm Angie Stone. Hi, I'm Teresa Griffin. Oh, Roland. Hey, Roland, I am so disappointed. Welcome back to Roland Martin Unfiltered. Not sure what happened there, but we'll get that whole thing sorted out. Folks, yesterday, President Joe Biden held a news conference where it was his, of course, one-year anniversary of his first year. And longest news conference in presidential history, about 90 minutes. Actually, it was pretty interesting because, you know, so many people love to ask the question. She's going to be there. question, saying, why is he taking so long and what's going on? And he has no stamina.

Well, hell, he took all those questions. All right. This question was asked yesterday. Listen to this. Voting rights and the struggles you've had to unify your own party around voting rights. Unity was one of your key campaign promises. In fact, in your inaugural address, you said your whole soul was in bringing America together, uniting our people. People heard the speech that you gave on voting rights in Georgia recently, in which you described those who are opposed to you to George Wallace and Jefferson Davis, and some people took exception to that. What do you say to those who were offended by your speech?

And is this country more unified than it was when you first took office? The President- Number one, anybody who listened to the speech, I did not say that there were going to be a George Wallace or a Bull Connor. I said we're going to have a decision in history that is going to be marked just like it was then. You either voted on the side that didn't make you George Wallace or didn't make you Bull Connor. But if you did not vote for the Voting Rights Act back then, you were voting

with those who agreed with Connor, those who agreed with, and so, and I think Mitch did a real good job of making it sound like I was attacking them. If you notice, I haven't attacked anybody publicly, any senator, any congressman publicly. And my disagreements with them have been made to them, communicate to them privately or in person with them. My desire still is, look, I underestimated one very important thing. I never thought that the Republicans, like, for example, I said they got very upset. I said there are 16 members of the present United States Senate who voted to extend the Voting Rights Act. Now, they got very offended by that.

That wasn't an accusation. It was stating a fact. What has changed? What happened, what happened. All right. Ashley Woodward Henderson is with the Movement for Black Lives from D.C. She joins us right now. There were others if I can play. I'm going to play a little bit later. But the thing I thought of was interesting yesterday,

and we always say this all the time, listen to black people. Biden remarked that he underestimated the obstruction of Republicans. And I'm like, you don't remember eight years when you were vice president with Obama? You don't? Like, black people tried to tell you this. They had no intention on moving forward with any policy whatsoever. And during the campaign, he kept talking as if, oh, no, you know, stuff is going to change. Not Trump. We were like, no, player. No, it's not.

No, no. And I mean, you in particular know more than most that not only did we tell him that when he was vice president, people have been telling that since he got into Congress. The confusion isn't that voting rights somehow is divisive in a U.S. context. In fact, the thing that is divisive in a U.S. context is making voting rights a partisan issue in the first place, right? White supremacy is divisive. He can't even have the gumption to say unequivocally that voting against voting rights is actually a racist endeavor and stick to it. Just shows us that we've got a lot of work to do before we see this battle won around voting rights, among other things.

It was also interesting, first of all, I'm sick of all these punk-ass media people. You know, they were like, oh, my God, it was too long. Or, oh, my God, you know, he sounded like Reagan, you know, at the end of his term. I mean, like, okay, don't sit here and complain about not having a news conference and your bitch thing is too long. Oh, because when he had it, okay? It was an opportunity to actually ask questions and hear from him on a variety of issues. One of the things that he did criticize Obama when he said, hey, he went to Obama and they

did not take a victory lap when it came to some of the major bills that they actually passed. Well, they're actually doing the exact same thing. Again, I hear people, when I see these polls, people say, oh my God, the economy, I saw Gianna Caldwell, it's like an idiot on Fox News saying, the economy today is worse than it was in 2008. You mean we were losing 500,000 jobs a month? Dude, just stop it. But they do have to actually explain what the hell you passed, who it helps, as opposed to allowing the process story to reign supreme in D.C. That's true. I mean, and also don't count us out, right?

We're not stupid. People remember getting stimulus checks. People remember child tax credits. People remember those things. But what we're also not confused by, Unc, is that those are platinum band-aids on the gaping wounds that people are facing at the convergence of the multiple crisis that we're seeing in grassroots communities all across this country, particularly in the South. And y'all know, you know particularly, I'm a Southern supremacist. I believe that as goes the South, so goes the nation. Isn't just an opinion. It's a fact, right? What we know is that down here in places like Georgia and Florida, Tennessee, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, that we're seeing all of these states, their governors, their legislative branches attack

voter rights. We are seeing it over and over again. And what we're hearing from Biden is that we should just settle for the platinum band-aids that he's given us through executive orders, or the idea that just because he generally supports voting rights, that we should just settle for the platinum band-aids that he's given us through executive orders, or the idea that just because he generally supports voting rights that we should calm down, right? I hear Nina Simone singing, too slow to me, right? That we're asking for too much too quickly, when actually what we've demanded is actual transformation of the systems that we've inherited.

We've got his very minimal response and a lot of work. It's not that we're confused about the nuance of the words he's using. We are aware what we want is actually what we demanded. We didn't demand justice in policing. We demanded the People's Response Act. We demanded the Breathe Act, the Build Back Better Act. We are demanding the John Lewis Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. We are very clear about what we want. And we've been clear with Biden and we've been clear with the folks in Congress. It's time for them to put up considering we risked our lives to usher them in to these positions of power. I want to bring the panel in here. Recy, I'll go to you. Your thoughts on Biden's first year and weigh in on this conversation. Well, first of all, shout out to Vice President Kamala Harris. I don't know if I don't say it, nobody else is going to say it. So shout out to Vice President Kamala Harris

on a successful first year, a historic first year. I do think actually people have a very short memory. And I think that right now people, you know, they have these different, you know, silos that people are mostly concerned about. Some of them are manufactured based on social media, like hashtag cancel student debt. I don't have any measure that

we describe success at that's objective. I mean, unemployment is down to 3.9 percent. Wages are up and also inflation is up, but that's a result of the pandemic. We also have seen five million people gain health care. We saw six million, I believe six million jobs added just in 2021. So, I mean, there are a lot of just objectively good things that have happened. And that's not even talking about the way that child poverty was cut in half, particularly for black children, as a result of the child tax credit, the kind of work that Vice President Kamala Harris did around black maternal mortality, as well as emphasizing blood removal, which is something that disproportionately impacts us. And so I can go on talking about the judges,

the record number of black judges that Biden appointed. He recently appointed two black people to are nominated to the Federal Reserve, which is the first black woman in history ever nominated for that. And only the fourth black man nominated, that was Dr. Cole or Dr. Clark and Dr. Jefferson, out of over 100 nominees. And so we see that the institution, the executive branch, is being transformed in a way that we haven't seen in a very quick fashion. But the problem is that people want more yesterday. Instead of realizing that this is a four-year term, we have a divided Congress that is relentless in its obstruction in terms of the Republicans.

And then you have two wishy-washy Democrats who are not up for a vote for several more years. So there really isn't any kind of electoral leverage that you have over them. And Majority Leader Chuck Schumer hasn't cracked the code on how to deal with them. So as far as complaints about Biden's performance, you know, people have to have a news story. They have to pounce on whatever little gotcha moments that they have. But I'm looking at the substance of what has been accomplished, and I'm looking beyond the games and the punditry and the opinions, and I'm just looking at what's

on paper. And I understand that doesn't line up with people's feelings and their opinions, and I'm just looking at what's on paper. And I understand that doesn't line up with people's feelings and their perceptions, but you have to have something that you're using to base a measurement on. And he's getting held to a different standard than even Donald Trump was. So I'm sorry, go ahead. Ashley, so what do you wanna see in this second year? Cause here's what we're dealing with.

A president, an incumbent president, typically loses seats in a midterm election. Republicans are literally gerrymandering themselves into a majority. The Senate is 50-50. So this point next year, this point next year, this point next year, Republicans could very well control the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate. That means that this may be Biden, this might be his last shot at driving policy.

What do you want to see this president focus on in this year, in 2022? Yeah, I think you made the point, brother. What we need is voting rights. And the idea that this is something that we expect in a short order, that it's asking for too much, it's a fake fight about whether or not Biden did or did not do anything in the first term or in the first year of his first term. We know that he has. That's not the question. The question is, we've been in a centuries-old fight around our participation in the democratic process. And what we've been sold is that being able to participate in voting is actually critical because it helps decide who governs, right? And if we can't actually unequivocally participate in the voting process, then how are we going to be able to decide that more than just the GOP have a say about what the policy interventions in this country will be?

That is not something new, and it's not like a particularly revolutionary demand, right? This is actually just asking to participate in a neoliberal experiment around democracy. And I think that that is actually really, really critical to get over the hump of. What is also real is that movements, social movements and grassroots communities all across this country have said that we don't want to pick off important issues that are impacting people's intersectional lives, things around policing, things around immigration, around the economy, around infrastructure, around climate and other things. But what is real is that if we do not get something around voting rights, even as Cliff said, even if we have to break the bill down and get it passed in smaller ways, if we don't do that, then our ability to be able to move

progressive policy and get elected people who are actually from and of our communities that see a progressive movement forward and electoral justice bending the moral arc of the universe towards justice. I think we're in for a world of hurt by the midterms in the next presidential. Greg, your assessment, first year, what do you want second year? Well, I agree. I agree with Ashley. I think you really laid it out, sis. My assumption in the first year is pretty much like that 59 percent of folk who were polled by NBC. And by the way, shout out to Kristen Welker for I know she's got a job she has go to. So yeah, you're going to talk about unifying, but then for her to ask him a question like that's a real question, you're not going to unify something that has never been together.

It's not fractured. It was never together. Joe Biden lives in a delusional world, so I understand why she had to ask that delusional question, but I expect in that NBC poll, 59% of those folks said that the presidency is going as expected. And yes. Why? As he just laid it out. We can count.

Everybody know that that cosplay coal miner out of West Virginia is a wholly owned subsidiary of his owners. And everybody knows that that Toonie Loon in Arizona is a wholly owned subsidiary of her donors. We can count. We knew there wasn't going to be no legislation passed. So what I expect for the next coming year now, and it reminds me, we are back now in terms of our attitude. We need to take the attitude of the 1940s and 50s. Remember the first SNCC, not Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, but the Southern Negro Youth Conference, which met in South Carolina at Benedict College, and W.E.B. Du Bois gave a famous speech called Behold the Land. And Astley, you just hit it again. It says,

Du Bois told those young people in the first SNCC, the future of the Negro is in the South. It's time to get everybody registered to vote. It's time to bust them out from the inside. And then you've got to overwhelm them. But you've got to stop acting like you live in a country where these people have an agreement. There's only one side fighting right now. And you're right, Roland. This is ignorance. Recy, you said it, now I'll end with this. Recy is laying out the facts. But as you said, Ashley, it ain't about the facts. These people don't give a damn.

Tim Scott will lie to his face. Mitch McConnell's an unreconstrated white supremacist. They don't give a damn about the facts. All they care about is P-O-W-E-R. So stop trying to talk to them and break their backs. That's it. Baraji, weigh in. I think that the first year of the president has been, you know, it has its highs and its lows. I mean, one of the big things that I think we need to look at

is something that we've talked about here on this show, Brother Roland and family, the fact that the president has gotten 41 federal circuit and district court judges confirmed by the Senate. That's just one. You know, I think that's certainly a big part of it. And a whole lot of black women. And a whole lot of black women.

We've talked about that extensively. So we can't overlook that. But, you know, when we also look at the economy, you know, you have a lot of people that have gone back to work. 6.4 million people have found jobs in, you know, over this first year of the president's term. When you're talking about, you know, like Recy said, the economy is moving forward in terms of the country moving forward. But here's the thing. None of that is being felt by the American people, and most importantly, Black folks in this country. None of that is being felt. Because why? President Biden stood on the grounds of the Capitol on January 20th,

2021, and said that he was going to move this country in a different direction. Now, I think that as much as we're having this conversation about what he has done, we have to ask the question, well, what are we doing to make a new reality for this country? We cannot have this unrealistic expectation that this one man with a few people in his administration with a black woman by his side is going to change the tide of the destiny of this country in one year. That's not going to happen. I mean, let's keep that real. So this is also the time that I think we need to stop sitting on our damn hands and get up and do something for ourselves, our families, and

our communities, whether you're black or white. It doesn't matter. The point is, is that we have to get more engaged. And one of the things you asked Brother Roland about, you know, what do I want to see? I want to see black folks. I want to see policy dedicated for black folks actually getting passed for black folks. I mean, I— No, no, hold on.

Hold on. Like what? No, no, no. No, no. Wait, wait, wait. Like what? Like what? George Floyd Police Act. Can we get something with that? We talked about voting rights. We still haven't talked. We dealt with that. So we still got to deal with the George Floyd Policing Act. I don't know when that's going to happen. Let's talk about... Again, again, again, again. Here's the issue that you face. And everything you're talking about, I understand. But this is the issue that we still have to deal with, Ashley. Unless they craft something that picks up 10 Republican votes,

they are not going to end the filibuster. It is abundantly clear. Manchin made it perfectly clear yesterday. Cinema made it perfectly clear. So this is now where we are. Where we are now is, and I agree on George Floyd, I agree on voting, but if you cannot get 10 votes in the conversation, so now what do we do? Yeah, I mean, one is that we would hope that there'd be more organizing, right? The people have to recognize that actually just lobbying in a Congress that is in this stalemate isn't the only tactic in our tactical toolbox, right? And Roland, you call us to do these things all the time, not only just to show up on the Hill to lobby and advocate for ourselves, but to organize in baseball, to use the direct action. You know, it's interesting to hear people call for the demand of creating policy buy-in for Black people. The

Movement for Black Lives did that. We developed the Vision for Black Lives policy platform. We had state, local, and federal demands. The People's Response Act from Cori Bush is literally an offshoot of the BREATHE Act that was written by Black people who were listening to the 25 million people that were in the streets in 2020 that were demanding the reinvestment of our tax dollars into building healthy, sustainable, and equitable communities. Folks have been in million people that were in the streets in 2020 that were demanding the reinvestment of our tax dollars into building healthy, sustainable, and equitable communities. Folks have been in the streets around the Thrive Agenda. Folks have been fighting for a red, black, and green new deal. That is not, like, to say that the fix is for regular, smegular people who are living at the

nexus of the converging crises of COVID, an economic crisis, understanding that white supremacist violence is very, very real in the places that many of us live, and that we are still showing up and showing out, including fighting for voting, right? Black Lives Matter, the Black Voters Matter crew, the New Georgia Project, the Florida New Majority, all of these organizations have been out doing incredible work. And to say that the burden to shift the texture of what's happening in relationship to the Congress and the presidency is on the backs of grassroots communities

and not the folks that we have voted in to actually see that legislation through feels frustrating to me. What I feel certain of is that if the Democrats continue to prioritize bipartisanship over actually executing the power that they have been given, that people literally risked their lives over the last few centuries

and over the last few years to give them, then they will likely not be in a position to do that again. And it's going to be up to us to utilize those other tactics to be able to meet the needs, the material needs of our people. So what I need everybody watching and listening to understand, and part of the thing that we do on this show is what I call schoolhouse rock 2.0. This is civics 101. It is one thing to be pissed off.

It is one thing to be angry. It's one thing to be upset. It's one thing to say, damn it, what is Biden doing? Damn it. Why is it Harris getting this stuff done? It's real easy to do all of that. But I also know how to count. And if the system is set up right now that you ain't going to get a simple majority because two Democrats don't want to stop the filibuster, then the reality is, as what Cliff said, as what Congressman Jim Clyburn said on Friday, okay, that whole electoral count act or whatever, he was like, all right, since y'all say that's the thing, let's put some stuff in that. See, again, let me walk y'all through 64, 65, 68. The bills were broken up. We don't want the bills to be broken up, but they were broken up. And if you got to

get a piece of something versus right now you got nothing. Then you do that. But then like King, like Hype, like Young, like Wilkins, like Marshall, like Snick, like Court. They then said, all right, we're going to take this piece of chicken. But we want the rest of that damn chicken and the sides and the dessert and the drink. We'll take that one piece right now, but we've got to have people who are listening and watching. You have got to make a decision today. What are you going to do? You got to decide whether you're going to sit your ass at home, watch us talk about this, or you're going to say, I'm a volunteer to call somebody. I'm going to send $5 to the Movement for Black Lives. I'm a send some money to Sherri Beasley's campaign in North Carolina and Val Demings in Florida and Kenyatta in Pennsylvania and Mandela in Wisconsin.

You got a sister who's running in Ohio, okay? You gotta make a decision. Okay, what role am I going to play in this? Because guess what? They are planning. That's right. They are plotting. Whole bunch of y'all, especially some of y'all yakkers on YouTube,

all y'all trash, this show, what we doing. But all y'all doing is talking about me. You ain't talking about how to organize and mobilize. Steve Bannon is. That's right. That's what they're doing. At some point, we're going to need this generation

to say, I got to put some skin in the game, but I also realize everybody who said they'd march with King lied. You pretty sure? Everybody didn't march with King. The one piece of the chicken. We need all of the rest of the promise,

and I think that's the point, right? It's like, we've gotten this piecemeal reform before, right? We had a Voting Rights Act that then they literally just gutted until it's nearly meaningless and conceded those of us that are under right-wing control on the state level just have to, you know, say a prayer and do the best organizing we can do to try to live to fight another day. And so I think you're right.

I think, you know, the BREATHE Act is a perfect example of that. And you'll remember, Roland, that we proposed an omnibus bill that included everything in the kitchen sink around policing. And then what we were told... But you had a lot of people saying, ain't no black agenda.

There's no black agenda. Nobody wrote a black agenda. 40-page document of policy demands that led to the origin of the Breathe Act. Not to mention a lot of the work that my comrades here on this very night talking on your show have worked on for decades. But we had an omnibus bill called

the Breathe Act. We've seen what it looks like to then say, actually, let's start to piecemeal that with the People's Response Act, again, that Cori Bush is pushing. So again, it's not that there's a lack of policy demands. The issue is, is if we only get one piece of the chicken, but we still have a two-party system that continues to fail us because one angle of it is using all means, whether it's legal or not, to consolidate their wealth and power on the GOP side, and then a Democratic Party that is stuck in a stalemate around bipartisanship on the other side, the people actually have to do more then. And I get that. But what is also real is that we need the folks that we're risking our lives to get in some of those elected seats on the Democratic

Party side to have the actual gumption to follow through on the things that they know their constituents really, really, really, really need and have been demanding. And not just demanding over the last few years since the movement for black lives has existed, but for as long as like COFO and all of the other organizations that have been fighting on the policy arena have been demanding for as long as black people have been in this country. Ashley, Woodward Henderson, look, look, Woodward Henderson, look, we ain't stopping. We're going to still keep swinging because you know what? The folk who came before us who are now ancestors, they didn't stop. That's it. They didn't stop. Well, appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Love you much. Thanks a bunch. You take care. All right, folks, got to go to break. When we come back, we will have more Roller Mountain Unfiltered. We got lots more to cover, y'all, including a couple of memoriams. One of them, the passing of the recently installed president of Delta Sigma Theta,

Sirard Incorporated, who passed away this morning. We also, of course, have our black and missing that we always do. We also will tell you about several cases of police officers acting a fool, being held accountable for their actions. And a couple of things, I'm going to give you the information, listen up, HBCU students, all HBCU students, if you are a junior or a senior, you can apply for this new scholarship.

There are seven of them. They're $15,000 each. It's in partnership with McDonald's, and also it's honoring Alpha Phi Alpha. I'm going to explain to you that. The deadline is next month. Y'all, this is real. It's 15 grand. I'm explaining to you all the details

and y'all are going to get the first public look of the cover of my book, White Fear. I'm going to show it to y'all right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Don't forget support us, y'all. Again, ain't nobody else doing this.

I'm just letting y'all know right now. Ain't nobody else doing this, okay? And I know you got a black now. Ain't nobody else doing this, okay? And I know you got a black news channel. They ain't doing this, okay? But this is black-owned. And so we love black people. Black people make everybody else stuff hot. We make Clubhouse hot, man.

We were downloading the Clubhouse app. Well, guess what? Let's see us have the same energy for the Blackstar Network app. So go to Apple phone, Android phone, Apple TV, Roku TV, Amazon Fire, Xbox One, Samsung. Download the app. You can also support us, our Brena Funk fan club by joining. Our goal is to get $50 each from each one of our fans,

averaging $4.19 a month, 13 cents a day. There are people who have given less. Those who have given more, we appreciate it. Cash out, dollar sign RM Unfiltered. PayPal, RM Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Sale is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com.

Alright, y'all. I'll be back in a moment. ДИНАМИЖНАЯ МУЗЫКА I'm just about hurting black folk. Right. We've got to deal with it. It's injustice. It's wrong. I do feel like in this generation, we've got to do more around being intentional

and resolving conflict. You and I have always agreed. Yeah. But we agree on the big piece. Yeah. Our conflict is not about destruction. Conflict's going to happen. Aretha and I met as a result of a friend of mine named Ben Vereen.

She was standing in the mirror in front of, you know, the lights go around the star mirror, and dressed in white and getting ready to perform and she was standing up and she saw my reflection in the mirror and she gave a little, ah, and I gave a little, ah. The mutual admiration. Oh yeah, for sure, for sure.

She expressed at that time that she wanted to, she had moved to California, and she wanted to take lessons in acting. She wanted to do some acting. And I was, like I said, I teach. Right. I've been teaching for 12 years. You know?

And so I said, well, I teach acting. And if you want, come down to my classes. One evening, class was very disruptive. They were all at the window. You know, get back here. You know, come on, we got to class. What are you doing? A limousine just pulled up.

You know, a lady got out in a fur coat. She walked into the class. And my first reaction was, you're late. You told the queen she was late. She was. You wouldn't let her know I'm the teacher. And I'm serious. And I think that's what she came to find out.

Was I serious? And I was. And so we became serious. It's serious enough when you got married. That's as serious as it gets. Hey, everybody. It's your girl, Lanell. So what's up? This is your boy, Irv Quake.

Hi, I'm Chaley Rose, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. All right, let's go back to the story that I was talking about before we lost power, and that is a story out of Wichita, Kansas, where police officers and detention staff will not face charges after a teen dies in custody near Wichita, Kansas. In September, Cedric Lofton died at a hospital two days after the altercation at the Sedgwick County Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center. A December autopsy report contradicted an earlier preliminary finding

that the teenager hadn't suffered life-threatening injuries. The autopsy ruled the death a homicide. Bennett says the state's stand-your-ground law prevents him from bringing any charges. Joining me now to discuss this is this decision by Sedgwick County D.A. Mark Bennett. It's Andrew Stroth, the Lofton Family Attorney and Managing Partner of Action Injury Law Firm. Marketta Atkins, the executive director for Progeny, an organization working to transform the juvenile justice system in Kansas, and also community activist Pastor Maurice Moe Evans,

a powerful community church in Wichita, Kansas. Glad to have all three of you here. I need to understand here, and this is one of the issues we have, Andrew, with Staying Your Ground. So the DA is saying he can't bring charges because of Stand Your Ground? Yeah, I will tell you it's a stunning decision by a district attorney who has failed over the years to charge any law enforcement. And again, the theory of stand your ground does not fit this scenario. Cedric Lofton, 17-year-old teenager, 135 pounds, was unarmed, did not present a threat,

and is put in the prone position and basically suffocated. They took his breath away and they killed him. And the district attorney is saying, stand your ground. It doesn't make any sense, is not based on the theory. It doesn't support the facts. And the family and Pastor Maurice Evans and others are asking for an independent special prosecutor to re-examine the objective evidence in this case. Pastor, what is that process to get a special prosecutor? Must the DA recuse himself? Does it come from the governor? How does that work? We're looking at every option. Apparently, the state of Kansas does not have the ability to, by means of law, or so that we've been told, that there's no provision within the law to allow him to be replaced. But there's nothing that stops him from assigning one,

from volunteering. Mark Bennett has said that it would make him look bad and that he would not necessarily be seen as competent or that he would be seen as incompetent if he were to assign a special prosecutor. We're not concerned with that. His efforts so far have not been adequate. And so we're looking at other options for possibly, hopefully, Department of Justice or some other way that we can get a special prosecutor assigned to this case, have it reopened and charges filed rather than saying no one's accountable? This is the kind of thing that we have seen, Marquetta, in so many other states that just makes no sense whatsoever. It is as if people have the absolute right to shoot to kill

and they have no consequences. Absolutely. I think society in this country is teaching us our kids are expendable, and they're not. Cedric was a child. He was in a mental health crisis, and he deserved to get the help that he needed. He did not deserve to go to GIAC. He did not deserve to come out of there dead. And so we have to stop this trend of making this nation think that our kids are expendable because they are not. So I'm trying to understand how the Stand Your Ground law applies. Where did this actually take place? Was it inside the facility? It happened inside the facility, yeah.

Yeah, it was earlier interaction with the Wichita Police Department, but he was actually suffocated and crushed inside the juvenile intake center. And you can see on the video the stress and pressure that was put on Cedric. And let's be clear, they put Cedric in the prone position, face down. And that is a dangerous position and against policy and it was for approximately 20 minutes okay so how does okay so i'm just trying to under okay and this is what i'm trying to understand here um okay so these are the individuals who did this were they work for the facility. Correct. Okay. Which means that they have procedures.

That's right. So he is in, so he's face down. Yes. Are they saying that he was striking them, he was fighting them, he was beating them, he was biting them? What are they saying? You know, Pastor Mo, why don't you respond to that? Because the DA's report, Mark Bennett's report is so disturbing that you got a young man not posing a threat that they basically killed. So stand your ground makes no sense. And they interviewed the individuals at GIAC and

even their own interviews don't indicate a threat. But Pastor Mo, I defer to you. Pastor, are you there? I am, sir. Actually, we lost him. Okay, Pastor, you're back? Go ahead. Yeah, the whole thing has been sophistry from the beginning.

The reason why people are concerned in saying, you know, this doesn't make any sense is because there have been lies and miscommunications from the beginning. What we know is that he was actually held down. He was handcuffed. He was shackled. There were people at there was a person at his feet. There was a person sitting on his back. There's a person holding each arm. And so what we know is that this happened for at least 45 minutes before they realized that he was unresponsive and unconscious. So none of this makes sense. There is I don't understand how four people have someone shackled, handcuffed, and they feel their life is in danger.

That's to stand your ground, right? That your life is in danger and it's an imminent threat. Where does that come from? That means that my life is in danger, that somebody has done something to put my life in danger. And so, what I don't understand is how you can be in a facility a person can't get out of. You have complete control of

that person's movements. Four people are holding him down and it's staying your ground? They're holding a young person responsible for his murder. They're holding a 17-year-old child in a mental health crisis responsible for his own murder.

And Glenna Martins, that runs the facility, in a press conference yesterday, said that the staff did procedure. And if that is a procedure, they grossly need to change that procedure. And it that is a procedure, they grossly need to change that procedure and it does not fit standard ground. Um, question that is, um, all right. Uh, is there any, is there any call for the department of justice come in someone, I mean the state authorities to look into this, anything?

So far, the only thing that the city has done is issued a task force to take a look at the policies from beginning to end that led to Cedric's murder. And I'm going to keep on using the word murder instead of death. But to me, that is not good enough. Somebody needs to be held accountable, specifically Mark Bennett, because he has the power to make this right. And the message that he's sending out is so critical, especially for young people who are already going through it, who are in mental health crisis. What is the message we're sending to these kids and their parents when they need help? Because who wants to call for help and risk their child being murdered and taken to the wrong facility instead of getting the help that they need because an officer feels threatened or because a staff that is supposed

to be equipped to handle situations like this feels threatened. What is the message that we're sending to our young people? And that's right. And Roland, this happened back in September. So initially they didn't release any of the footage. They did let the family finally come in and see the footage. They didn't, at the initial press conference, as Pastor Mo knows, the district attorney and the sheriff talked about a kid on drugs, on K2, with a background. Well, thank God there was a medical examiner that gave an objective report that showed that these officials killed, suffocated, and took Cedric's breath away. So this doesn't stop here. The family is going to pursue all legal remedies while the community and our team are going to work together to try to get a special prosecutor. I mean, you just have to look at the independent evidence. And Mark Bennett has a track record of not holding people accountable.

His 45-page report is nonsense. And we're going to move forward because the objective evidence supports that this kid was unjustified. He killed Cedric Lofton, should be here today. And he's not because of the actions of those actors at that juvenile detention facility. That is absolutely a shame. They need to be held accountable. Absolutely. Please keep us abreast of how this case moves forward.

Yeah, we need an external audit and I wanna put that out there. We need somebody outside of Wichita to come in and view what's happening here, because there is no way, there is no way that this child should be murdered and his legacy be left in vain. And on top of that, we have to realize that these systems, these juvenile justice systems are not working. We need to be proactive in how we're dealing with our young people.

And we need to do preventative measures to keep our kids from being incarcerated and going in jail. These systems are not working. Absolutely. And the county task force is not adequate because those are all people who were a part of Mark Bennett's secret letter that he sent. Those were all people who have been a part of supposedly protecting our young people and thus far have not been able to do so. So we definitely need, as Markita said, we need independent third-party oversight, and there has to be accountability. We can't say nobody's responsible for this child's death. As a community, we're not going to stand for that. All right, folks, I certainly appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. Folks, let's go to Pennsylvania, where three Pennsylvania officers are charged with the fatal shooting of an eight-year-old girl at a football game. You might remember this story. Fanta Ability was shot in the crossfire of the officers and some teens. The bullets injured several others, including Fanta's sister. Officer Devon Smith, Sean Dolan, and Brian Devaney are charged with one count of voluntary manslaughter, one count of involuntary manslaughter, and ten counts of reckless endangerment. The teenagers were charged with murder, but those charges were dropped when it was discovered that the bullet that killed Fanta came from an officer's weapon.

Let's go back to our panel, Recy, Dr. Greg Carr, and Farajah Muhammad. Farajah, I want to start. Okay, don't have Farajah. Let me know when he's back. I'm going to go to you, Recy. I remember when this happened, and this sounds very similar to the story out of Los Angeles where the cops were going into the Burlington Coat Factory. A young girl was in the dressing room, and they fire at the guy, and then she's in the dressing room and ends up getting hit. You know, this is where officers have to use proper discretion when they're firing their weapons when there are other people who are around.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I understand that there was a gunfight. If I understand correctly, there was a gunfight that initiated the officers coming to the scene. However, it's not like you're just in the guns of Navarone here having a shootout like you're in the Magnificent Seven. You are in an actual community that has children around and other people. And so they have a duty to protect the, you know, the entire community and not just necessarily engage with the people who are firing off these

rounds. So it's incredibly tragic. I'm glad to see that there's some accountability, but there just needs to be a sense of humanity and the people who are serving these communities and a duty of care that just isn't there. And we saw the same thing with the prior story, too, about Cedric and just the lack of duty of care for a person who was going through a mental episode. I mean, the people weren't responding to a crime, they're responding to a situation where a teenager had an episode

and he ends up, you know, not just dead, but in my opinion, brutally murdered. I mean, the length of time that he was in a position was longer than even what we saw with George Floyd. And so there's, I mean, it's hard to say reform systems when we know that's not necessarily happening. And we also know that it's the lack of humanity, as Dr. Carr says, you know, the statement, no humans involved, is what's really animating a lot of these folks in these cases. This is, again, beyond sad, Greg, but this is also why. Look, I get it when you're in those situations, but officers must take care

and simply just can't be firing away innocent bystanders. And here's the deal. Remember, they charge the teenagers for it. So clearly you have laws to their errant gunfire kills this young girl. Now we know it's the cops. They should be charged. They should. And as always, Roland, you are taking the moral position.

And we are talking about a situation where there is no morality. Recy just said it. I mean, NHI, no humans involved. And that is a phrase that Sylvia Winter used and talks about, the scholar Sylvia Winter, but she took it literally from the LAPD who used that phrase, NHI, to talk about when they would get calls in black and brown communities in Los Angeles. Oh, what? Oh, NHI, no humans involved.

And in both those cases, there were no human beings involved. That child, it was heartbreaking to see her there with that little crown and then the young man in the back and see these children. And then you realize that these killers, and that's what they are, they're killers, they're pat-a-rollers, they're hunters. Their first

move, like they're in an episode of Chicago PD or Law and Order, is to empty their clip. There are no repercussions. And in the case, as Risi just said, of Kansas with Mark Bennett, that white nationalist who was just recently reelected, I think 2020 he was reelected, there are no repercussions. You can kill who you want. Now, the one thing that ties those two cases together is the defense lawyer for Smith,

Dolan and Devaney is arguing that, well, this had to do with violent criminals. They can't put it on an 18-year-old who they gave 32 to 64 months for his actions. They can't put it on the juvenile guy. Yeah, they shouldn't have been shooting. Of course they shouldn't have been shooting, But when there are no humans involved, the script is to try to find one of these non-humans to blame. And it worked in Kansas so far because they say that he continued to struggle and he resisted. So therefore, we're within the law to show restraint. The bottom line is this. They're going to keep killing us until we stop them.

And the price has to be a life for a life. It does no good to march and say Black Lives Matter. You need to crucify the two United States senators from Kansas, Roger Marshall and Jerry Moran. They should be excoriated on the floor of the United States Senate. No matter what they're debating, someone should come in and say, you represent a lawless state where nobody's life matters. And until we start putting the kind

of pressure on these white people in terms of a language they understand, they're going to kill us with impunity. How about this story here? The Missouri man who spent 43 years in prison for a crime he did not commit is filing a lawsuit. Kevin Strickland is a lawyer saying the company said his state contracts for prisons denied him proper medical care, outside referrals, or treatments to his various ailments while incarcerated. The lack of medical treatment is why Strickland is confined to a wheelchair. He is requesting

a jury trial and damages for his suffering. There needs to be more of these type of suits because what we find, Farage, in some of these states, when someone has been wrongfully convicted, they don't even have the ability to actually get paid from the state. No, not at all. Not at all. And I think that that's the other part about this whole conversation.

When we're looking at what just happened with little sister Fanta and just keep talking about all of these cases. I mean, like it was just reported about a little less than an hour ago, Brother Roland, that those three officers in Sharon Hill were all fired from the department. But it still doesn't bring the type of justice that the family is seeking and that the community needs right now. When we look at these cases, you know, people try to just dehumanize the fact that you lost a human being to something very senseless, to something that really could have been prevented. And I think that's one of the worst ways to transition from this space, from this world, is that you lost your life over something very senseless, especially when it comes to a child. So money is not enough. You know, I mean, even if you say,

okay, we're gonna lock up the officers, but there's still some level of protection around them. You know, it's not enough now. And we gotta, I think we gotta raise our voices to say, it's not enough to just fire the officers. Well, it's not enough, it's not enough, look, it's not enough to fire officers, but also it's not enough to simply say to a brother

who's here four to three years in prison, hey, sorry. Again, the bottom line is, yes, money cannot bring back 43 years. Money cannot bring back a life. But the reality is this is a capitalist society. Everything is based upon money. Some folks do need to pay up when these sort of things happen. Folks, let's go to Georgia, where one of the men convicted of chasing and murdering Ahmaud Arbery wants a new trial. Travis McMichael is serving life in prison without parole. He believes he deserves a new trial because the state did not have enough evidence for the jury

to reach a verdict beyond a reasonable doubt. Yes, they did. This is the standard retrial motion. It must be submitted within 30 days of a verdict. His punk ass ain't going nowhere, y'all. So he's going to be sitting in prison. So I guarantee to say, oh, y'all have enough evidence. Yeah, trust me, we did. We had your dumb ass testifying, and we had video. Oh, by the way, he ain't steal nothing. Guess what?

Sit your white racist ass in prison for the rest of your life and certainly hope Jamal and Pookie don't pay you a visit. All right, y'all. Pay him a visit. Look, bottom line, that's the deal. We now know the cause of death of legendary actor Sidney Poitier. The 94-year-old died on January 6th at his home in Beverly Hills. Poitier's death certificate says he died of heart failure.

Also listed as underlying causes were Alzheimer's, dementia, and prostate cancer. Of course, he was the first black man to win the Best Actor Oscar for his lead role in 1963's Louise of the Field. Man, a sad story out of Georgia. A Talbot County probate magistrate judge, just 45 years old, was found dead in her home. Judge Cheryl Terry was found dead by her father on Wednesday in the home they shared. She was elected, folks, just in 2020 and following the footsteps of her father and predecessor, former Judge John Terry. She was the first female prob just in 2020 and following the footsteps of her father and predecessor, former Judge John Terry.

She was the first female probate judge in Talbot County. The cause of death hasn't been determined. Authorities say there was no foul play evident. Again, she was 45 years old and was very much a prominent member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated. And speaking of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated, sad news for their members all across the world. They're recently installed. 27th National President Cheryl Hickman passed away this morning. Again, folks, she was just, she assumed the position in November of this year.

She had served the organization in a variety of capacities, including serving as National Vice President, National Secretary, Eastern Regional Director, South Atlantic Regional Representative. The sorority posted this statement on their Facebook page and sent it out to all of their members. President, National Secretary, Eastern Regional Director, South Atlantic Region Representative, the sorority posted this statement on their Facebook page and sent it out to all of their members. It is with great sorrow that Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated shares the passing of our beloved National President and Chair of the National Board of Directors, Cheryl A. Hickman. President Hickman transitioned peacefully on January 20, 2022 after recent illness. President Hickman was a devoted

member of Delta Sigma Theta since 1982 and served in various capacities at the chapter, regional, and national levels before being elected national president. She's remembered not only for her role as a leader, but for being a colleague, friend, and most of all, sister. The entire sisterhood of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated mourns the loss of President Hickman. During this difficult time, we ask that you respect her family's privacy and keep them in your prayers. All right, folks, got to go to break. We come back. I want to share with you some information about a scholarship that I have announcing with McDonald's honoring Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated. And you're going to get the first look, the first look of my book, White Fear, that is dropping in September of this year.

We'll do that next right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. ДИНАМИЧНАЯ МУЗЫКА Norske Klinik Субтитры сделал DimaTorzok All right, folks. So y'all see that I'm rocking the Tennessee State University shirt. You see, of course, this is our HBCU segment. And so here's the deal. Look, I was Texas A&M University. I'm a graduate. My brother is. He was my sister. But we understand the importance of HBCUs.

And so there are many African-Americans who support HBCUs who didn't even go to them. And so we did the, remember the project that we did in, we aired in December, we shot it in November in Houston with McDonald's tied to the gospel tour. So we were in Houston. If you want to see those interviews, go to the Black Star Network app or our YouTube channel, all the interviews are on there. There was some amazing interviews. And so I was talking to the folks at McDonald's. And we were discussing, they were talking about support of HBCUs. And they said, hey, we want to do something with you, Roland. I said, OK, great.

And they said, this is the 115th anniversary of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated, founded December 4, 1906. And they said, we want wanna do something to honor them. And I said, why don't we do this here? So why don't we do something unique? Let's honor our seven jewels, the seven finals of Alpha Phi Alpha,

and let's give away scholarships. So they wanted to give away robust scholarships. So I said, hey, let's do seven. And they said that, I said, but I don't wanna make it just for alphas. I said, because, and here's why. Because I wanted us to be able to get aphas. I said, because here's why. Because I wanted us to be able to get a sense of, again, what the need is. And let me explain that.

One of the biggest issues, and Greg can attest to this very much so, one of the greatest issues for college students, but especially HBCU students, is not them going to college, is them being able to stay there. Being able, because typically most universities, especially HBCUs, there's a dramatic drop off from when students are freshmen and sophomores and when they become juniors and seniors, because they don't have the money to stay. So here's what we did by partnering by, again,

working with Alpha Phi Alpha, where I'm a life member, in honor of Alpha Phi Alpha, McDonald's is gonna do seven $15,000 scholarships specifically for HBCU juniors and seniors. Anytime we talk about scholarship money, typically it's for somebody coming out of high school. I specifically said to McDonald's, no, let's do this for the people who are already in college, but to keep them in college. I remember when Julia Malvo was president of Bennett College and she reached out to me. They were trying to raise like $30,000 to keep several of the young women in school who were graduating seniors. And it happened several times and I've gotten other calls as well. So I said,

hey, let's do this. And so partnering with the Thurgood Marshall Fund, you have this program. Again, any student who is a junior or a senior who is attending an HBCU is eligible for this program. Now, the deadline, listen clearly, the deadline is February 28th. Okay? February 28th. Again, junior or senior. Now, that means that if you are going to be a junior in the fall, you can apply for the scholarship. If you're going to be a senior in the fall, you can apply for a scholarship. If you are a senior now and you ain't graduating and

you're coming back next year, you can apply as well. So again, so what you do is you go to tmcf.org, tmcf.org. That's the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. They're handling everything. They're doing all this sort of stuff along those lines. And also, here's the other thing. And again, y'all know how I feel about this here. The recipients also is going to be able to engage with McDonald's executives about career opportunities in their field of study, things along those lines. And so I just want us to understand a lot of people, and bring the panel up right now, a lot of people simply don't have the resources to stay. And that's important. And so that's why we did it this way. And so again,

I know there are some alphas who probably like, come on, bro, why don't you just make it for the alphas? No, because here's the piece. If all of a sudden we discover that we get 800 or 1,000 applications, then we now know what the need is. And so now we can go back to McDonald's and say, okay, we did seven this year. We did seven this year. Hey, now let's do 20, 30, 40, 50, 100, because now you know what the need is. And so that was the rationale behind it. And so that's what we're doing there. I'm going to go to Greg. Greg, I'm telling you, people don't understand it. And look, you get it when those students, you know, they're there. They don't come back because they don't have the money to come back.

That's the truth, Roland. I mean, I can speak from personal experience. The tuition was a lot lower when I started at Tennessee State in 1983, but I worked my way through college. And I busted my ass those first couple of years to get the kind of grades to begin to piece together scholarships. And then when I got involved in student government, I got a student leadership scholarship.

With my academic scholarship, it was enough, so I left with no debt. I went on to law school with no debt. I had full scholarship to law school. That means everything. It's almost 50-50, public, private HBCUs in the United States, and 70% of the students who are at HBCUs are Pell Grant eligible, $15,000, and that price point, brother, is a stroke of genius. That's enough. At a private school like Spelman or Howard, that's enough to put a dent in it and get you close,

particularly if you're a junior or senior. And at a public school, I mean, the average tuition and fees, we're talking about what? We're talking about maybe $14,000 for out-of-state and maybe around $7,000 for in-state tuition and fees. At a place like Norfolk State, it's going to cost you about $9,600 for a year tuition and fees, $15,000 when you're a junior and senior. You know what that does finally? It reduces the four, five, six year graduation rate. You're absolutely right. Students aren't finishing and it isn't because of their grades, it's because they don't have the money. And it's somebody who worked their way through school, working at fast food, Arby's and Wendy's and places like that. McDonald's can afford to do 700 or 7,000 and $15,000 could be the

difference between a college degree and continuing to move and say, damn, if I just had a little bit more, that's the perfect price point, brother, in my opinion. This is also why, Recy, over the years, I've talked about this a lot when we talk about scholarships. And most scholarships that they give typically are for high school students to go to four-year institutions. I have been encouraging people to change the criteria for scholarships to also qualify for two-year institutions, community colleges. Because, again, if someone, that's still college. And I get the focus on four-year institutions, but it typically leaves out a lot of people who can't afford to go to a four-year school, but they would love to be able to have a scholarship to go to a community college.

And so, again, it's just thinking about how we provide scholarships in a different way. So I appreciate McDonald's agreeing with that because again, we could have easily said, hey, graduating high school senior, but it does nothing for that kid who's already in college but can't stay. That's right. Yeah. Also, we have to think about, you know, the amount of support that black students in particular have going to college. You have a lot of parents, you know, middle class parents who might be able to get you through the first year, maybe even the second year. But by the time you hit 22, 23, that help has run out. Maybe people have had a kid or gotten pregnant or, you know, had other things in life that might have, you know, set them a little bit off the path to where $15,000 could really make a huge transformative impact in their ability to continue their education. So this is something that really does meet a gap in the need by focusing on a population that typically you don't start to get eligibility at that point.

You have to really get in. Maybe if you're a freshman, you get a four-year scholarship or a two-year scholarship, but not a lot of people are meeting that need. So I think it's a wonderful move that you push for and that McDonald's is providing. And it doesn't mean, Faraji, that we don't encourage corporations that get a lot of our money as consumers not to support those folks who graduated from high school, but it's also thinking differently. And again, what I really hope, I hope a bunch of our students apply. And again, that was one of the data points. That was one of the data points that I said to the alphas. I said, look, brothers, I know y'all may want to only go to alphas. I said, but no, we need to have the data.

If all of a sudden we have 700 students who apply for these seven scholarships, now we're able to understand terms moving forward. Now all of a sudden, it may not just be, okay, sure, can McDonald's fund all 700? Sure. But what if we also now have that data to be able to say, all right, let's go to nine other corporations and say, all right, each one of you do 10 each, or each one of you do 50 each to be able to provide these sort of resources. I'm telling people all the time, if you don't have the data, all you're doing is just guessing. No, you're absolutely right, Brother Roland. And I think that that's the data. And that's what Dr. Carl and we see are talking about.

I mean, we all know it. I'm a product of community college. You know, when I decided, it took me five years after I left high school to decide to go back to school. And then my first step was toward Baltimore City Community College. Then from there, I went to a four-year university to complete that part of my education. But it's necessary. You know, I'm always telling students, you know, make sure that you don't, you know, you exhaust every option.

Community college is not something you should be ashamed of. Getting, going to an HBCU is not something you should be ashamed of. But more importantly, look, these companies that you're working with, and I'm glad McDonald's is on board with this initiative, they should be on board, like a lot of other companies, because why? You're cultivating your next generation of innovators and thinkers. You know, every time you work at McDonald's, you know, I always tell people this, you might say, oh, working at McDonald's is so terrible. But McDonald's has a very rigid management program. They have a very rigid franchise ownership program. I mean, all of those things. And so

when we're talking about investing, these companies should invest in Black students. They should invest into the future of Black students each and every day. And look, what we hope is that once we get this first batch of students involved in this, getting those scholarships, let's just work. We'll come right back to it and get another batch of students. This thing has to keep going, but it's a real blessing because why? You're behind it. And by you being behind it, you know that it's going to be an authentic program. It's not going to just, the money is not going to just sit somewhere. It's going to be given to somebody. And I just can't wait to see the students or hear about the students that are going to be the recipients of this. But this is more than any $15,000 shit,

man. I wish I had that when I was, I'm telling you, I'll be all good. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, every little bit helps. And you know what? Maybe this will start the process real quick. Maybe this will start the conversation that college is absolutely like terribly high. Oh, it's crazy. It becomes a crazy debt when you're paying $50,000 and $60,000 a year for college. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. Can I say one more thing, Roland? I just want to say, you know, sometimes people hear the number and they say, well, seven, I don't have a chance of getting that. Apply anyway, because as Roland is saying, your applying might open the door for the

next round of people. And so it's important that regardless of whatever calculation you're doing in your mind about your GPA or whatever the materials are, that is going to be the rubric for deciding who gets it, still apply because it's important to open up the doors for more than just yourself. And you might get it. Yep, absolutely. You might get it. Absolutely. So, as I say, the easiest way not to get any of the money is if you don't apply.

Just like we say, hell, if you don't vote, guess what? You got no say-so in democracy. All right, I'm going to go to a break. We're going to play for you our promo about Glenn Turman interview. We're going to live stream the interview after we finish today's show. We debuted it last night, Rolling with Roland. Let me tell you something. It is an unbelievable interview with Glenn Turman.

Look, he has been acting for more than 50 years. He is a legend. He is an icon. The stories are amazing. And one of the reasons that we're doing these one-on-one interviews with folks like Glenn Turman is because, you know what, we don't want to just hear about them when we're doing an in memoriam.

We want to hear from them while they're here, telling their story, listening to them in their own words. And so we kicked this thing off with Johnny Gill. Of course, the second one was Richard Lawson. We have Glenn Turman. Man, the interviews coming up next, Bill Duke, Jack A., Jeffrey Osborne, Michael Collier, Mario Van Peebles, Sally Richardson-Whitfield, Dondre Whitfield, Maddie Rich. Man, we've got some unbelievable interviews that we have done.

And trust me, Glenn Turman said some amazing stuff. And so we're going to show you the promo. We're going to stream it after that. And we come back from this break. It's two minutes. I'm going to show you the book cover. You're the first ones to see it. I have not put it on social media. I have not placed it anywhere. You're going to get the first look of this book cover, and I'll tell you exactly what the book is. The half title is called White Fear,

but you're going to see that next on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Aretha and I met as a result of a friend of mine named Ben Vereen. She was standing in the mirror in front of, you know, the lights go around the star mirror, dressed in white and getting ready to perform. And she was standing up, and she saw my reflection in the mirror and she gave a little, ah!

And I said, I gave a little, ah! The mutual admiration. Oh, yeah. For sure, for sure. I gave a little, ah! The mutual admiration. Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. She expressed at that time that she wanted to, she had moved to California, and she wanted to take lessons in acting. She wanted to do some acting. And I was, like I said, I teach.

Right. I've been teaching for 12 years. And so I said, well, I teach acting. And if you want, come down to my classes. One evening, class was very disruptive. They were all at the window. You know, I get back here, you know, come on, we got a class, what are you doing?

A limousine just pulled up, you know, a lady got out in a fur coat. She walked into the class. And my first reaction was, you're late. Ha ha ha! You told the queen she was late. She was. You wouldn't let her know I'm a teacher.

And I'm serious. And I think that's what she came to find out. Was I serious? And, uh, I was. And so we became serious. Serious enough where you got married. That's as serious as it gets. 007 007 All right, here we go, folks. Time for the big reveal. Y'all have heard me talk a lot over the years about white fear, what we are seeing in America right now. And it's not all

white Americans. But what we have to understand that what is happening in America right now, this shifting of the demographics and this shifting of really this notion of what America is. Greg Hart talks about it all the time in terms of this settler. What's the phrase you use, Greg? Settler colony. Yeah, settler colony turned into a settler state. And folks don't quite understand, don't really sort of look at that. The reality is that America has been defined through a white prism.

If you actually read history, white male prism, it was not supposed to be for Recy to be able to vote. Not because she black, also because she's a woman. That was not supposed to be for Recy to be able to vote, not because she's black, also because she's a woman. That was not. It was intended for folks who only owned land. That was how this was set up. in terms of these battles that we're having now is because we're seeing a redefining of what it means to be an American. And that's what's struggling with folks. And so we talked about Colin Kaepernick

when he took a knee, okay? All the people like, man, that's not American. Actually, it is. The First Amendment is called the first for a reason. Guns were second, but the ability to be able to protest was first. So it wasn't him protesting. It was the fact that Colin Kaepernick simply did not grow up

and completely suck in the notion that America is all about apple pie. It's all about a blonde, blue-eyed, buxom white woman as being the center of beauty in America. It wasn't about everything that is white is right, everything that black is bad, it wasn't what it was about. And so what you're seeing now is this struggle because now black people and Latinos slash Hispanics and Asians, Native Americans now get to actually

have a say, not just a say, now have power. And so this is not even directed at white conservatives. It's even directed at white liberals, because many of them struggle with black folks having a seat at the table. Hollywood has a serious problem with that issue as well. And so all of this culminates, and this started y'all with in 2009, there was a study that was done

that asked the question, are you optimistic about the future of America for your children? And every group, blacks, Latinos, Asians, every group, a majority said yes. Only one group, less than a majority said no. White Americans. In September 2016, the question was asked, are you optimistic about the future of America economically for the next 10 years? That was in 2016. Every group, blacks, Hispanics asians majority says absolutely even though black people lowest wealth in the country had the highest optimism wow he knows second lowest wealth highest optimism

white americans greatest wealth in america lowest optimism so you gotta hold up, how y'all got more money than everybody else, but you got less optimism than everybody else? Because they will have to share. Their children will now have to compete. Can't everything is just not, I'm born, I'm white, I get the job. No, you got to present some credentials now, because you know what? The person who's deciding may not look like your daddy.

That is the basis of the book that I have been speaking on, that has been cultivating here for the last 13 years. And this you get to see for the first time is the cover of this book called White Fear. White Fear, how the browning of America is making white folks lose their minds. Now, if you look at the image, there were a lot of images that we chose.

We purposely chose an image of the January 6th insurrection. And if you see, now you see that the guy in the foreground, you see how he has his hands wide open? The reason I chose that photo, because one, he symbolizes the notion of all of this is ours. Woo! That's why we chose that. And so Leah Lakins is a writer. It's funny.

We were on the call and, you know, because Leah normally is done. She's ghostwritten many other books. And I was like, no, you ain't got to be no ghostwriter with me. I ain't scared to put your name on a book. And so she and I have been working on this for the past two and a half years. Ben Bella Books is an independent publisher out of Dallas. That's who we are publishing this book with. And so it is going to drop September of this year.

We're going through the editing process right now. And it's not a book, not just, the book is not just speaking to white Americans. It's speaking to everyone because many of us, Recy, don't fully comprehend and understand. And keep in mind, folks, the other reason why this photo is chosen, remember, Donald Trump specifically targeted Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee as the basis of his big lie that the election was rigged and stolen. And those are four black cities. Recy.

Well, first, let me say congratulations. And I think the cover is magnificent. I mean, what a brilliant encapsulation of really what white fear is. And not just white fear, but whitelash, the backlash to what is inevitable that they will have to share. They're going to make it more difficult, and they're putting up a valiant fight to prevent that from happening, perhaps even this generation. But the demographics are not going to lie. It's not going to be something they can hold off forever. And so I think it's a really important piece of work. And I think we have to understand what we're up against because I think

a lot of people still feel like you can reason with them. You can appeal to some sort of shared humanity and shared sense of morals and character, and you can't. So the best thing that we can do is arm ourselves with the information. How do we maneuver around it? And I think that we're all mostly trained in that because you have to do that to survive. And to really understand how we're going to come up with our game plan, how we're going to respond to this in a way that we can harness our power quicker despite all of the roadblocks that they're going to put up.

So congratulations again, Roland. I love it, love it, love it. You know, Faraji, first of all, Arisa, I appreciate that, Faraji. You know, we spend a lot of time on this trying to walk people through this so they understand the dynamics here. And when we've been talking about these policy changes, making sure that they put on those young, white, right-wing conservatives on the Supreme Court. Do understand, Amy Coney Barrett is 49. Neil Gorsuch is 53. Kavanaugh is 55.

Ginsburg was 87 when she died. Breyer is 82. So if you just say that, look, they serve 35 more years. Think about that. That means that Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett will be there 35 more years. Damn. 2057. Damn. 20-57.

Damn. See, and people have to understand, that's why Mitch McConnell was hell-bent on keeping those seats and getting them in, because they understand when you control the Supreme Court, they are the final arbiter of our laws. No, that's a big point. I'm so glad, Brother Roland, that you brought it up.

First and foremost, of course, congratulations. I mean, I'm absolutely in love with the cover. I'm in love with everything, like the title, the subtitle, and everything. It brings back to mind so many different books that I've come across, such as Death of the West, when you're talking about even White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. There's a number of books out there, and I'm so happy that you're putting this out there as a Black man to talk about this, because a lot of those books are really to white people. Even though you said this is for everybody, I think

it's absolutely important that we understand as black people, the dynamics and the thinking, which is really important. A couple of questions for you, Brother Roland, because folks have been asking on the YouTube chat. First, will we be able to pre-order the book? Yeah, the book will be pre-ordered. It's not available right now. They literally just sent me the email today of the cover,

and they said I could go ahead and post it. And so as soon as we do preorder, we want to make that possible. And, again, look, my goal, when I look at all these books that are on the New York Times, bestseller lists and everything, I want us to go hard and hit 50,000 pre-orders. I think when the 1619 Project, I think when they debuted number one on the New York Times bestseller list, I think it was like 87,000 books that were sold that first week. And so, you know, with our fan base, you know, we want to go hard on Amazon's list, on New York Times bestsellers list.

Because, you know, let's be real clear. It's going to be a whole bunch of mainstream media folk not trying to put me on their shows. You know Fox News ain't going to be calling. No. And we know CNN not going to be calling. And so. MSNBC. Yeah, well, you know, MSNBC.

Well, look, Ally Vail, she will call me. I'll be on Tiffany Cross' show next week. But again, it seems like the only time I appear on MSNBC is only on weekend shows. Ally Velshi, Tiffany Cross, Alex Witt, no other shows have invited me. I've never been on Joanne Reed's show. I've never been on Chris Hay's show.

I've never been on Rachel Maddow's show. Did Lawrence's show one time. And so I used to do the daytime shows, Morning Joe, K.D. Turr, all those shows a lot. They don't call at all anymore, so I guess I'm only relegated to the weekend. But... So, can I ask you this, though, brother Roland?

And this is another question that popped up. You know, I mean, because books of this caliber, of this caliber, of this nature, of this content is such hotly contested because we're in a time of critical race theory and everything else, you know, what's your take on, you know, presenting this book into certain parts of the country,

your home state like Texas? Are you having like a plan of action? Oh, oh, oh, we're going to- Boycott you and all that? No, no, no, no. I ain't worried about that. I ain't worried about that. I ain't worried about that at all.

I mean, I had to ask the question. No, no, I ain't worried about that at all. Trust me. I plan on going back to my alma mater, the conservative Texas A&M University, and discussing this book. I plan on being on college campuses. Trust me, the robo-mobile is going to be on the road. We're going to be hitting places. Remember, we're also going to be involved in. Trust me, the robo-mobile is going to be on the road. We're going to be hitting

places. Remember, we're also going to be involved in going to places during the election. So we're going to be on the road anyway hitting these states. We're going to be doing that. But absolutely.

And the thing that's crazy, been crazy about this process, Greg, is that this thing has been, like, I've been amping to do it because every time something happened, white fear kept showing. And even the publisher was like, OK, it's another event. And I'm like, and it was a trip because when back in literally 2018, 1920, I kept saying, y'all, the book is playing out before our very eyes.

Now, mind you, it's a whole bunch of publishing houses that passed on the book because they didn't see it. I'm like, Ben Bella out of Dallas, they saw it. They believed in it. And we've already signed a deal with Audible as well. And the thing that people don't understand is, I mean, it was literally happening in real time. And I kept saying, see, every time something happened, I was like, see, they're like, damn, we got to get the book out. And it was still like a new thing. And so when January 6th hit, we had to completely recalibrate the book because after that happened. And so everything that we talked about on this show,

on TV One, when I was on Tom Joyner, all these things are playing out and the book lays this thing out and establishes that continuum from going back to, of course, slavery, Civil War, and how at every point, black success was always being followed by white backlash. Greg?

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And, you know, everything happens in divine order. You, I remember in 2010, was it 2010 when you published the first with Third World Press? Yes. Yeah, 2010, the first President Barack Obama's role to the White House. Yep. And I think something that this book will share with The First is

that it is being reported out by somebody who is in deep, immersive conversation, contact with, organizing with the people. And with all due respect to the New York Times bestseller list, we know that the books that are published by the Fox crew, Brian Kilmeade and them, that's propped up by billionaires and

these, you know, the same kind of people that'll be trying to put money in McMichael's account in Georgia, which is why I'm glad the Georgia prosecutor filed that addition to sentencing saying, so y'all can't profit off your stuff. So we know where those numbers come from. And in the case of the 1619 Project and my friend Ibram Kendi's books and Robin DiAngelo and all those, we know that a lot of that sales is driven by, you know, white guilt and white folks who may use the books as furniture, to quote Dr. Ben Yosef Ben Yonah.

In fact, during the reckoning summer, so many black bookstores shipped books or had books, white people bought books at the black bookstores, and the books literally sat in the bookstores, meaning they never even picked up the books. So we know that those numbers are driven. But your numbers will be driven by black people who are going to read and black people you've been talking to. And, of course, Leah Lakin is a proven entity. She has a track record and a good, and a sister, black woman.

And in partnership, you creating this is organic. Meaning, you know, we have a saying in the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations, building for eternity. This is a slow build and we're all gonna push it. You know, the thing I do with Karen Hunter on narrative and on the weekends in class, we're gonna hold that book up to the screen

and black people are gonna read and other people are in class, we're going to hold that book up to the screen and black people are going to read and other people are going to read. They're going to read the book. And then that slow build continues to build momentum. And then I'll just end with the cover and add my congratulations to, to, to Reesey and to Faraji. That cover is perfect.

And one of the things that strikes me is the, the, the distribution of the flags. Cause what you didn't do is show the flag. There's an American flag on the Capitol. The guy's got his hands open. On the right, there are flags. It's like one of them is upside down in distress. On the left, there are flags.

And dead center is one with the 13 colonies. Meaning, they think they're having a revolution. They are taking their country back. And guess what? There are plenty of people in that building they're looking at who are in absolute agreement with them because it's the same damn flag. That is a brilliant cover, brother. So we're looking forward to roll out

White Fear. These numbers are going to escalate and explode because they are real numbers, not inflated, invented numbers. And we're certainly going to break that thing down as well. And so, again, I will let y'all know when it's time to preorder the book. But I wanted y'all to see first that cover. I haven't put it on social media. I'll do it after the show. I'll go ahead and post it. But I wanted the Roland Martin Unfiltered Black Star Network family to see it first.

And, again, when I say how this thing is just continuing, it is continuing. I didn't read this story earlier, but the black DA in Atlanta, she wants a special grand jury to investigate former President Donald Trump's alleged election interference. According to the letter sent to the chief judge of Fulton County Superior Court, DA Fannie Willis says her office has information of possible criminal disruption in the state's 2020 election. She wants a grand jury to examine the evidence and compel witnesses to testify. Several witnesses have refused to cooperate without a subpoena. She opened her investigation about a year ago after a recording revealed Donald Trump demanded Georgia Secretary of State find enough votes to flip the state in his favor.

And so I'm telling you, the thing is happening right before our very eyes. OK, last last before we go, I'll be remiss if we did not extend our condolences to Greg and his brother, Reverend Jeff, and the whole family on the passing of his 93-year-old mother, Catherine Hayes Carr. Of course, you know, they wouldn't be who they are without Mama Carr doing what she did. And she passed away. And so we wanted to certainly, this is the family photo that Jeff posted, the photo there with her and the whole crew. And so we wanted to definitely just extend our thoughts and prayers to you, Greg, and the family. Appreciate you, Baba. You know, 93 is a good run. And you're absolutely right. No her, no us. She's with her husband now, back with her mother and father. She continues to rise. This little date we have that we mistake for all of life

is just a little pass through from eternity to eternity. There'll be some tears. There'll be some sorrow, but that's pretty much residue because every time I feel like I want to tear up, I see her and I hear her saying, come on now, I raised you better than that. I ain't going nowhere. In fact, she's louder

in my ear now than she was when she was in the transition. It's a celebration, brother. And I just want to thank you for being who you are and Reesey and Faraji and everyone, Erica, everybody involved in Black Star and everybody out there. It's just a powerful reminder that we're only here for a second. And if we believe what we say we believe, then we know that two people came together and created every one of us. So when you hear my voice, you're really hearing my mother's

voice. When you hear Roland's voice, you're really hearing his mother and father's voice. When you hear Reese, when you hear Faraji, you're hearing two other people. And now Reese got a little girl, Faraji got his children, me and Roland got our nieces and nephews, and you see a bunch of them there. That's how it continues.

But all of our people, except that little handful of us in this little reality right here, all our people are in eternity. So we can call on them anytime now. So thank you, brother. I love you, man. Thank you so much for raising her name. Hey, Dr. Carr, can I ask you a quick question? Did your mother see you on the show?

Man, you know what's so funny? You asked Faraji. My sister, Gussie, and brother-in-law, Randy, who took points. She was in Houston, as you know, these last couple of years. Nashville. And that picture was taken Thanksgiving. We were all at home in Nashville. My sister would play us for her.

So she was on Thursday. So one of the last things she heard on this side before she took it back over was these conversations. So just know that my mom was listening to y'all every week. Well, I tell you, it's a whole bunch of black mamas and daddies out there who are doing the same. I get the emails when I'm traveling, I run into them. Mustafa hit me up, and he was like, he's like, hey, man, matter of fact, I'm just going, we're going to leave on this

one because y'all are going to crack up when I tell you this here. Mustafa sent me, I got to give him a shout out. He said, where is it? Where is it? He said, Miss Carrie at the Lowe's in Clinton, Maryland, says hi, and she watches all the time, and this is what happened.

He texted me. This was on Sunday. Mustafa said, just got moved to the front of the line at Lowe's because, as the lady said, I love that Roland Martin show. So just so y'all know, and Rashad Robinson used to tell me, he was like, man, I don't know what is it about the black people at the grocery store. He said, but when I'm in Harlem shopping, I get stopped all the time. Folks are like, man, ain't you that boy who on Roland's show?

And so y'all, don't get it twisted. Don't get it twisted. Y'all, all these blue check marks on Twitter, they might be retweeting something that Don Lemon or Joy or Chris Cuomo used to say, Jake Tapper and all them other folks. But trust me, we know what the bros and sisters are watching, and they make it clear when they walk up to me, y'all, and this happened multiple times where they put cash in my hand. They said, look, I ain't trying to mail it in. They put cash in my

hand. I know some of y'all been emailing me. We're getting a P.O. box for y'all to be able to start sending your checks and money orders, because y'all keep telling me, look, I don't trust no cash app, PayPal. I got you. So we'll have the P.O. box soon. That's why I haven't been giving the address. And so folks like, I know some of y'all old school with money orders and checks. We appreciate that. And so, again, we're going to have that real soon. So we appreciate it.

Again, condolences to the Carr family. And we certainly appreciate it. Reesey, Faraji, Greg, thank you so very much. Folks, that's it for us. Sorry about the power outage. It broke the show up. But, look, we still here. And, again, why do we need your support?

Y'all think I'm joking? I sent the e-mails when we were in that break to the engineers to get a backup source so we don't get knocked off line again like that. Your dollars make it possible for us to be able to do that. Yes, yes, we're working on closing a deal with McDonald's to be a sponsor. You see the Verizon ads, but trust me, your resources, when you send that money to Cash App, when you send that money to PayPal, that's what's paying for producers and equipment and audio is paying for producers and equipment and audio, is paying for video, is paying for a new video playback machine, a new computer, new monitors, all that sort of stuff.

And so we appreciate it. Cash App is dollar sign RM Unfiltered. PayPal is RMartin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com, Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. And of course,, please tell everybody, download the Black Star Network app.

We've crossed 25,000 downloads. We want to hit 50,000, 100,000, a quarter of a million. And so please do so. We're on all platforms, Apple phone, Android phone, Android TV, Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire, Xbox and Samsung Smart TV as well. Shout out to Dr. Glenda Glover, President of Tennessee State University, also International President of Alpha Kappa Alpha

Sorority Incorporated. And so I'm rocking this shirt today. Don't forget, HBCU students, the deadline is February 28th. Go to tmcf.org and apply for one of those seven $15 thousand dollar scholarships. McDonald's is partnering with me and Alpha Phi Alpha to provide to keep junior seniors in college. We'll remind you that every single day. Y'all take care. I will see y'all tomorrow. Oh, this is an I heart podcast.