#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Tenn. Rep Silenced Again, Wis. Kindergartener Left on Bus, No Charges for Ohio Miscarriage

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

1.11.2024 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Tenn. Rep Silenced Again, Wis. Kindergartener Left on Bus, No Charges for Ohio Miscarriage  Tennessee Republicans are silencing Democratic Representative Justin Jones, one of the lawmakers expelled last year. We'll explain why he says House Speaker Cameron Sexton has too much power.  I was in Knoxville, Tennessee, for the  MLK Leadership Symposium and Awards Luncheon, where I spoke to Representative Gloria Johnson, who did not get expelled. You don't want to miss that conversation.  The black Ohio woman who suffered a miscarriage in her home will not face charges.  A Wisconsin kindergartener gets left on a school bus, and the police do little to help find the child. We'll tell you how the family found the 5-year-old on their own. Download the Black Star Network app at http://www.blackstarnetwork.com! We're on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku, FireTV, XBox and SamsungTV. The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast.

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It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Today is Thursday, January 11th, 2024. Coming up on Roland Martin, on the Black Star Network. Tennessee Republicans continue to silence Democratic State Representative Justin Jones,

one of the lawmakers expelled last year. We'll explain why he says House Speaker Cameron Sexton has too much power. Also, I was in Knoxville, Tennessee, at the University of Tennessee for their MLK Leadership Symposium and Awards Luncheon, where I talked to state representative Gloria Johnson,

who is running for United States Senate against Marsha Blackburn. We'll still have some of that conversation plus I talked to a pastor who is the co founder of that event who was with Doctor King there on April 4th 1968 when he was assassinated. The black Ohio woman who suffered

a miscarriage in her home is not going to face charges. Wisconsin kindergartner gets left on a school bus and the police do little to help to find the child will tell you how the family found their five year old on their own. Seriously. And folks,

MOK Day is on Monday. Is it time we stop with the niceties around MLK Day, especially this day of service? No, how about his day being a day of protest? We'll break that down as well. It's time to bring the funk on Roller Mark Unfiltered, streaming live on the Blackstud Network. Let's go. He's right on time and 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 It's Uncle Roro, y'all It's Rolling Martin Rolling with rolling now He's funky, he's yeah, yeah Rollin' with Rollin' now Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah He's funky, he's fresh, he's real The best you know, he's Rollin' Martell

Now Martell Tennessee Republicans continue to do what they do, and that is screw over the duly elected representatives of black folks. Representative Justin Jones dropped a video on social media saying that he has been removed from the Education Committee, where you have, of course, the governor who is trying to push forward a statewide voucher program. Now, of course, he also was the individual, one of the two black state representatives who was expelled by Republicans. And so they continue to silence them there in the legislature. Watch this. Hey, we're just leaving the House floor for adjourn until next Tuesday.

I just wanted to give you a quick update. As you can see, the speaker's having his press conference right now. He just announced committee changes for this 2024 year and announced that he was stripping me from education administration committee. I was formerly a member of Agriculture Committee, Government Operations and Education Administration Committee. I was formerly a member of Agriculture Committee, Government Operations and Education Administration, but conveniently and coincidentally, the year that the number one issue is going to be their push to privatize education, the speaker has announced that now

I will be stripped from that committee and not being returned as other, my colleagues have been returned to their regular committee. But, you know, this is just another attempt to try and stack the process and silence voices of dissent against their harmful policies here in Tennessee. There was another video that you were posted on yesterday. So let's play that one. Yesterday, I witnessed something that really appalled me that are related to these rules. Myself and the Republican majority leader,

my friend William Lamberth, were trying to get on the elevator and the Speaker of Security put his hand up to Lamberth and said, you can't get on with the Speaker. He pushed our majority Republican leader and said, you cannot get on with the Speaker. And so I wanna make clear that these rules are not about Democrats versus Republicans,

but it's about each of us as members and a speaker who is drunk with power. In these rules, a phrase that keeps occurring. Representative Reagan, you're recognized. Point of order. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Please use your microphone, please. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I asked the clerk to read from Mason's manual about disparaging comments for other members, and I hereby herewith call the gentleman from Davidson County to order. I neglected to mention in my request that Rule 19 be invoked as well in relation to that. That puts us on the board. We are voting. A yes allows the representative to continue speaking.

A no vote calls him to order, and we move to the next person on the list. Mr. Clerk, take the vote. Ayes, 20, 68 nays. We move on to the next person. Folks, you see there, what they did was last year they passed a rule where if they want to shut you down, they could just call what they just did and stop me from talking. And now you have to sit down and be quiet. I keep telling you, these are the people who supposedly love the Second Amendment,

but they love to skip over that little troublesome theme called the First Amendment. And so that's really how these Republicans in Tennessee are operating. But it's not just representative Justin Jones who continues to face these problems. They also are literally targeting people. The voters, the people who sent them there. Representative Justin Pearson, one of the people who sent them there.

Representative Justin Pearson, one of the two who was expelled last year, he posted this on social media, on Twitter. How can our constituents be guests in the people's house? Tennessee House GOP, C-625, these absurd rules have the number of people in the public who come to see the legislature and advocate for our democracy. Why are democratically elected leaders afraid of the people they serve? And so what you see here from him, you see him holding this guest pass. So if you want to come to the legislature

and sit in the gallery, you literally have to go get a guest pass. Why are they doing this? Well, they're angry with the protesters who filled the well last year. They're angry with the people who are fighting for the end of gun violence. They're angry that they showed up last year in massive numbers, chanting and yelling and protesting. They don't like the fact that the public actually had the guts, had the audacity to come there and voice their concern. So not only are they shutting down State Representative Justin Jones,

State Representative Justin Pearson, these same individuals are now trying to shut down the public. These are constituents. These are the people who literally, who literally sent them there. That's what we are now dealing with. So to understand what is at hand is to see how dastardly these people are and how shameful these people are. So we're going to do this here.

We're going to take a break and we're going to come back So we're going to do this here. We're going to take a break and we're going to come back and I'm going to play for you my interview with State Representative Gloria Johnson, who I talked to today at the speech I gave at the University of Tennessee, where she talked about this and also explained how people in Tennessee are fighting back against these fascist Republicans in the state of Tennessee. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. Hatred on the streets, a horrific scene, a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence. On that soil, you will not be replaced. White people are losing their damn minds.

There's an angry pro-Trump mob storm to the US Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white

rage as a backlash. This is the wrath of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. Here's all the Proud Boys, guys. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women. This is white fear. Субтитры подогнал «Симон» What's up y'all, this is Wendell Haskins, a.k.a. Wynn Hogan at the Original Tee Golf Classic. And you know I watch Roland Martin unfiltered. Welcome back to Lamar unfiltered. As I said earlier, I was at the University of Tennessee today in Knoxville speaking at their annual MLK luncheon on the campus there and one of

the folks who they honored was state representative Gloria Johnson. She's one of the Tennessee three. She's also running against Marsha Blackburn for the United States Senate. She's also running against the state of Johnson. She's one of the Tennessee three. She's also running against Marsha Blackburn for the United States Senate.

Here is our conversation. Right, here we go. Three, two, one. All right, you run for U.S. Senate. Let's talk about it. Yeah, absolutely. Thrilled to be doing it. Tennesseans want to see something different.

They want a representative that works for Tennessee working families because that's not what we're seeing. We've got a representative who's owned by the NRA, big pharma insurance company. She's not working for Tennessee and she's working for those who are supporting her campaign. And only 29 percent of her money comes from Tennessee. So, you know, last time, 75% of my money came from Tennessee. Very proud of that. Tennesseans want someone who cares about what they need. Do you think that people, because of what happened with the two Justins and yourself,

and we still see Republicans in the legislature, the Speaker, what they're continuing to do, stopping, stifling debate. Not allowing media on the floor for the first time in years. None of the photographers that have been coming on the floor for as long as they've been around, which one of them told me more than 20 years they've been on the floor, and this is the first year. Photojournalists, they don't even talk to the members. They're not letting them

on the floor. And then I just saw Justin Pearson did a video. They're now requiring guest passes, so the public now has to... Get a ticket from a representative. There's 99 tickets, because each member gets a ticket one ticket so that one ticket that yes one ticket for someone to come up each day to come to the

capital to come to the people's house and be in the gallery wow there's a there's a approximately give or take 120 seats on the right side of the gallery. So that's only 99 seats they're giving out. There's still more seats. They're allowing space for the lobbyists. Lobbyists typically gather downstairs in front of the TV so they can talk to members. So lobbyists who have access all day long from 8 to 5, plus at the little drinking parties in the evening that they all go to with representatives, they have access all day long.

But the people are limited, and they won't let them in the gallery. So, like, for example, so I'm native of Texas. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek.

I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing.

So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated.

I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.

Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Dr Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way.

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to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban.

Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does.

It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. And I can go to the state capitol. I can walk into the building. I can literally walk in, knock on the door,

go see my representative, my representative, my state senator. And I can then, they'll say, hey, you can go sit in the gallery. So I just simply go up. It's not like I need a ticket or anything like that. So this is really. It used to be that way in Tennessee. So this is all about, they don't like the fact that those folks were protesting.

They don't like the fact that people were exercising their First Amendment rights. They love the Second Amendment and honor it to the core, even beyond what it says. But the First Amendment, they're not so concerned about. Maybe how you skip the first, but you want to run to the second. Yeah, it's maybe how you skip the first but you want to run to the second. Yeah. Yeah. But we're also seeing, and I've run numerous times, numerous clips on my show, just the insane things that comes out of Marsha Blackburn's mouth. Yes. And do you believe that because of what happened last year, that people woke up and I quote they

hate the word woke but but the rep that's which is really what that's about people waking up to reality the telling telling those mothers you can't hold those signs up do you think people are going that that solid majority that frankly Republicans get elected to everything in this state that these people said, wait a minute. We've got to take this thing back. This is ours. That's what they don't understand

because I think all they do is go to Republican meetings, the legislature and maybe church. But they're not talking to just the general public. They're not talking to the general public. I mean, I have so many Republicans that have come to my campaign for two reasons. Well, always they name gun violence and abortion.

Next time, the next third thing that they typically name is the meanness and divisiveness of their party. And they are coming in droves. And I don't think that they understand this. They don't believe the polling that's taking place in Tennessee. But the reality is Tennesseans did wake up. They looked at the Capitol and they didn't like what they saw. And they're paying attention. I get so many text messages because now people are watching from home. They know how to do it now. They know how they can watch Session from home and they're watching from home and they're horrified. And I'm talking about, you know, I'll be approached by Republican County Commissioners that say I love what you all did. You were right. You know, we're

talking about people across, it's not a partisan issue. People are sick and tired of this extremism. You know, history has never looked fondly on those who ban books. Right. And now they're saying, they've got legislation, if you don't ban a book, then the person can sue because you didn't. Wow. And a school system will have to fight the legislation. They need to fight a lawsuit.

And that's raising taxpayer dollars. That's more money that's going to, yeah. They can no longer ever claim fiscal conservatism. I'm sorry. Well, they actually call it physical conservatism. But they can no longer claim fiscal conservative in their party. Not only that, I mean, and I've spent time breaking this down, what they did to Nashville, breaking the city.

And again, what kills me is I always hear Republicans talk about local control, local control, big government. Oh, except if we don't run that particular city. And I think they would try to break up Memphis if they could. Oh, they have tried. They've done things to Memphis as well. The whole thing is several years back, they wouldn't let cities and counties name their own parks.

And they didn't want to change the name of Nathan Bedford Forest Park. Memphis wanted to, but the state didn't want them to change it. And one of the reasons we have a huge problem in affordable housing in Tennessee is because of their preemption of locals to do what they need to do to create more affordable housing and build more facilities affordable housing they preempt locals from being able to do what's needed it's remarkable's remarkable. Are you seeing, because this is also being part of the problem,

where you've had national Democrats, and Reverend Barber and I talk about this all the time, they blow off the South. They go, especially, and I'm just going to be very frank, largely white consultants, oh, look, those are uneducated

people, that's the South we can't win. I've always said, first, if you don't run, those are uneducated people. That's a South. We can't win. I've always said, first, if you don't run, you're guaranteed not to win. And part of the problem then, if you don't run, then what you have is you have all of these folks who are running unelected and they're winning because they never got challenged. And so in North Carolina, in so many other places, and what we're now seeing is we're now seeing people who are now running against these Republicans in Tennessee. So the number of people who were running unopposed is dropping big time because people are saying, hey, we have to rebuild this infrastructure. And what people really don't understand that we no longer have a path to a Senate majority because of Manchin. So we've got to flip a state.

Now do you want to flip a state that's massive and cost $200 million to flip, or do you want to flip a state like Tennessee that you can flip with $20 million? I want us to invest in every single state. But there are some places with far fewer media markets that you invest a little bit, it goes a long way and makes a difference. Right. So invest in all the states,

but don't leave out certain states because you think they can't do it. Quite frankly, Phil Bredesen, when he ran against Marshall Blackburn for Senate, only was down 11 points. You know, it's not that far. So you really believe that you can take her out in Tennessee? What I'm seeing on the ground, this coalition that we are building that is not going to be divided,

we can absolutely beat her. It's going to require investment from Democrats at the DSCC and everything else. I hope they see, they should be starting to see in just a month from a very conservative Republican think tank poll, within a month, my numbers went from 24 to 36. So, you know, we're moving in Tennessee, even with a bad poll. So we haven't even started ours yet. But I think that people are going to be surprised, and I think an investment in Tennessee is an investment in a win. All right.

Always good to see you. Good to see you, too. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for being here, being in Knoxville. All right. My panel is Recy Colbert, host of the Recy Colbert Show on Sirius XM Radio. Good to see you. Good to see you too. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for being here, being in Knoxville. All right. My panel is Recy Colbert, host of the Recy Colbert Show on Sirius XM Radio out of DC.

Dr. Greg Carr, Department of Afro-American Studies, Howard University out of DC, host of The Black Table on the Black Star Network. Greg, I'll start with you. Being from Tennessee, Republicans are back to their usual ways, how they are fascist. They want to shut down. They want to stifle debate. They want to shut it down. We see what they're doing to the two justices. We see how also what they're doing to keep the public out of the statehouse. You heard Representative Gloria Johnson say, oh, they got space set aside for the lobbyists.

But but every lawmaker only gets one guest pass to allow constituents to sit in the gallery. Remember, these are also people who last year ordered people to take their—they were holding signs up in committee hearings and declared that to be illegal, and the courts told them, no, it's not. I mean, this shows you how the Republicans are operating on the state level and the federal level. It really does. And it was very interesting to listen to your conversation there with Gloria Johnson, Roland, because when you talk about a silent majority, certainly the hillbilly horde has its voters out there in rural Tennessee.

I grew up in Nashville, the center of the state. Of course, we know Memphis in the west, which is basically Mississippi, and where you are today in Knoxville, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the hill country, of course. But there are a lot of those rural areas in Tennessee where these folk keep returning these white nationalists to office. But she was right about Phil Bredesen, who was in with written striking distance, really, the former mayor of Nashville, who could have become, in fact, a United States senator. But I think, you know, having grown up there, I think where these hillbillies are really risking it all, and they have to risk it all. I know why, because they're white nationalists and they know that their thing is getting ready to fracture. They're risking it all with their impotence. See, one thing about

these white boys in places like Tennessee, the Appalachian South and places like that, they hate being told what they can't do. You remember Tennessee, like much of the South, was solidly Democratic up until the 1980s and 90s. I grew up in an era of places like Ray Blanton and others, the governor of Tennessee. Ray Blanton and them got in trouble when they started stealing money, when they started acting with impudence, when they started basically ignoring the voters and acting that they can do what they want. This is what Cameron and them are going to find out.

If they keep this up, some of these people are going to say, you know what, in my heart, I got some different things about race and gender, but I don't like that y'all trying to keep me out of the legislature. Were you going to Nashville? No, I ain't going to Nashville, but damn it, I don't like that you tryall trying to keep me out of the legislature. Were you going to Nashville? No, I ain't going to Nashville, but damn it, I don't like that you try. They are risking it out. And Gloria Johnson is right. $20 million could flip that state simply on the fact that they'll set race aside when it gets to the point where they think you're thumbing your nose at me.

They may come out and vote them out. The thing that I was really, I think is important that we talked about there, Recy, is that you can't beat anybody if you never run. That's true. And one of the biggest problems historically for the Democratic Party and the reason I specifically said white, white strategists. And we saw this during the midterms where you had this anonymous strategist who told Politico, let's ignore these places where we don't have a lot of college-educated voters, which sounded very similar to what Bernie Sanders supporters were saying in 2016 during the primaries. And this idea that, oh, let's only appeal to the places where we have lots of white college-educated voters who live in the suburbs.

Well, ain't that many places like that in America. And I think what has happened in Tennessee, if Democrats properly mobilize and organize, to Greg's point, it was a lot of people pissed off last year over the issue of a mass shooting and these Republicans, they come back and what they do is

they actually vote on immunity for a gun manufacturer. And then they wanted to silence the people. And when you keep doing that, people say, what the hell is going on? This is the moment where I believe, again, where Democrats have to play long ball and you might lose in the next two, four, six, eight years, but you have to actually build something to actually win one day. No, I agree with you. I think that the difference

between Democrats and Republicans is Democrats want to win every news cycle. They want to win every election. And Republicans play for generations. I mean, we talked about it leading up to the 2020 election, how it's a generational election. And we've said that every election. I know it's getting old by now, but it's really the truth. And so you do have to really build that infrastructure. You have to be relentless with it the same way that Republicans are relentless. We're talking about people who have a supermajority, who they're—Democrats are not even striking distance of even with their protests and Justin Jones saying whatever he wants to say in these committee hearings. It's not going to change the outcome of the vote.

But Republicans are so relentless that they don't even want the conversation to happen if it goes against their political interests. And so I'm not saying that Democrats should be like Republicans, but I think that Democrats should really look at how Republicans leave no stone unturned in their quest for power, to keep power, to gain more. And, you know, they need to start investing more. There's so much money that was put into Florida, which has gotten increasingly red in a number of places. But the reality is you could probably get a pretty good bang for your buck in Tennessee.

And I'm not hearing. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on everybody's business from Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be covering on everybody's business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives.

But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

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

Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.

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

We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does.

It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. A lot about the Senate in 2024. So I don't know if they just written it off like, well, I guess the public is going to get that. And, you know, they just hoping to hold on to the White House. But we have a lot of work to do in 2024.

And I don't think we're in a position to take anything for granted or leave any race uncontested. Well, I think that is what you that is the position um when you hear people talk about uh the very very narrow um path forward for democrats to keep control of the united states senate what you hear with joe manchin retiring or i dare say greg refusing to man up and run against the billionaire governor. They're saying, oh, we're going to lose that seat. So we have to hold on to Sherrod Brown's seat in Ohio, to the seat in Nevada, in order to maintain control of the United States Senate.

They don't bring up Tennessee. And if you don't make the effort, and we saw a lot of those pissed off white women, not just with abortion, but the issue of gun violence. Then, Greg, I got no problem saying it. You put in the Taylor Swift factor. This is I don't care what anybody says. I don't care about the haters or whatever.

This is a young white woman who has used her platform to register people, to mobilize people, and who's made it clear that we need to see changes. They, again, can they beat Blackburn? It's an uphill climb. But the most guaranteed way to

lose is never make the attempt. Absolutely. Absolutely. It. Absolutely. It's funny. Today, Roland, in advance of the Martin Luther King holiday on Monday, we were in a hip-hop class, and I was talking about the context out of which the holiday became a holiday. And we talked about, you know, John Conyers and then Atlanta in 1971 and coming forward. And I linger for a moment on the moment when Jesse Jackson ran for president in 1984. We talked about, you know, John Conyers and then Atlanta in 1971 and coming forward.

And I linger for a moment on the moment when Jesse Jackson ran for president in 1984. And, of course, that really was right in the moment after the big rally in D.C., 20th anniversary of the March on Washington, where Stevie Wonder, you know, kind of led that march. And I was reflecting on the fact that and thinking about it in this context, the South hasn't been blood red, white nationalists very long. I remember when Jackson ran for president in 84, it was a multiracial coalition of organizers. I was a sophomore at Tennessee State, in fact, at the time and going to meetings. And you had white folk, Latinos, black folk primarily, but people who wanted a different kind of vision. And Tennessee was still Democratic. This is around the time of the rise of Lamar Alexander, if you remember. And he, if he were around now running in the same platform

he ran back in the 80s, they might consider him a centrist Democrat, certainly more so than a funky-ass Joe Manchin. I'm saying all that to say this. The Democratic Party, with an investment of resources, and we've seen it in Georgia, we need to see it more in places like Louisiana and Mississippi, and we can see it in Tennessee with this cycle, can certainly go out there,

register voters, energize voters, create the network. And yes, maybe they don't beat Marsha Blackburn this time. Maybe they do. Certainly, Gloria Johnson seems like an ideal candidate to run against her, but they can build that infrastructure. Finally, and you've talked about this extensively, as much time as you spent in the 19th century educating us about Reconstruction and what happened. We've seen this before.

When they created the Jim Crow laws in the late 19th century, they did it at the expense of white voters as well. Through state referenda that allowed them to rewrite those constitutions in the states, in the southern states, they excluded white voters as the price of being able to create their racial power. These white voters in Tennessee are being excluded, except unlike the 19th century, they can see what's happening in real time. And if the Democratic Party could gain some guts, some ovaries, some testicles, they could go in there and say, look, they don't want y'all to participate either. And that kind of populism that delivered an Al Gould Sr., that delivered a man, that

could be revived in a place like Tennessee. This is what William Barber's been saying all along. And let me say this here, and again, this is going to be very bothersome to some of these hardcore blue people. You also are going to have to accept the reality that you might have

some anti-abortion Democrats who run from some of these southern states that you might have some anti-abortion Democrats who run from some of these Southern states, but who might agree with you on eight other issues. And this is one of those things that we see again, that people get locked into their ideological positions. And that is, guess what? You may have some individuals who are not going to be hardcore pro-choice, but it comes down to who do you want in the position? And again,

it's just one of those things that I think that people are not understanding, again, religious values, not understanding upbringing, not understanding family values. And Democrats, I believe, have to understand, and it's hard for some people to understand this here, that you're going to have somebody who's in Arkansas, who's in South Carolina, who's in North Carolina, who's in Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, Florida, who is not going to be like somebody in Ohio, in Rhode Island, in Maine. You're gonna have to accept some of that in order to win, because the goal is to win. I will concede that point, that an abortion would be a non-negotiable for me, but I'm also fortunate enough to be in a blue-ass state, so I can have that litmus test for myself.

I think I've always said, if you can win the primary, then go for it. You know, if an anti-choice Democrat can beat a pro-choice Democrat, then them's the brakes. And the reason I'm saying that, because the guy who got 47% of the vote in Mississippi,

his name is escaping me. Brandon Presley. Yeah. Brandon Presley was anti-abortion. OK. Now, when you looked at him on a bunch of other issues, it lined up again. It's just it's it's understand it's just to me, it's understanding politics and power. And again, that's just one that's just one of the issues.

And for some people, there are issues that are, hey, it does not matter. They are, this is where they stand. I'm not supporting anybody who isn't there. But what I'm saying is that if you look at the map right now, Democrats have not done well because they aren't understanding how to win in the South. and they're not creating a strategy We saw what happened in Georgia the roadmap is there if all of these billionaire Democratic donors, okay would frankly stop throwing their money at useless entertainment shit Hmm and do what a lot of these Republican donors are doing and go, okay, how much is it going to take for us

to organize and mobilize in Louisiana? $30, $40, $50 million? Let's now do that. How much is it going to, and look at the map to go, okay, because if I look at the Southern map right now, Recy, so you take Georgia. Georgia's now competitive. Now, granted,

Republicans have won statewide, but obviously two United States senators, but it's actually competitive. Now you go, okay, Georgia, North Carolina, you get some real infrastructure, and I think Nikki Freed is doing that in Florida. Now you throw in, you say Louisiana and you say Texas. Now you say, now let's create a blueprint to now be able to go after young voters, hit the ground, mobilize, organize, enlighten, educate Latino voters. And now you can start competing. But if you ain't got a strategy and you're not going to fund that strategy, we're going to keep having the same thing, guarantee electoral college votes to the Republicans in all those states. I agree. I think that where Democrats need to focus on is, as you already pointed out very clearly, is infrastructure. But I would also add information. Republicans invest in information. They invest in disinformation. They invest in misinformation. They invest in disinformation. They invest in misinformation. They invest in their networks, in their media, in their influencers, in a number of things. I mean, they have an entire reality that they've been able to shape.

And we've seen how investing in their own information helps drive the mainstream media. Look at what happened with Dr. Claudine Gay. That story about this fake plagiarism started with right-wing media. And then, of course, the mainstream media, white media, they can't resist picking up these right-wing talking points. And so Democrats, I've been yelling it for years, need to start investing in information. Because right now, what a majority of Democratic voters are getting is the relentless disinformation and misinformation.

And that's why people feel so disillusioned. And that's why there is so much room for people's feelings as opposed to the facts of what's actually been delivered and what's at stake in 2024 and beyond. Well, and I think that's because, frankly, liberal and progressive voters in their minds. And I think this is when you're too. This is when I say you're so smart, you're dumb in their minds. Oh, there's we've got New York Times and Washington Post and NPR. And we've got we've got MSNBC and we've got CNN.

We've got all these mainstream media outlets where we think that they're going to do a fair way. And as you said, those places, they get sucked into the game every single time. Christopher Rufo said, oh, we gen this thing up on the Republican side, embarrass them and force them to cover it, and once we knew it got into mainstream, then it was done.

You're absolutely right. And so, I mean, look, you got right now, the Messenger was created last year, launched for $50 million. They hired 300 people. I was like, y'all not going to survive. They're running out of money. The guy who's funding Tucker Carlson's deal is looking at buying them for $60 million. They ain't made money. This show has actually made a profit since March 2020. Okay? And so, and let me be real clear, and this is not, okay, well, I'm begging for somebody to come in,

but you have not had a single progressive donor, rich black person say, hey, wait a minute. How can we help build this thing into 15 shows? See, right. They're not doing that. Where you're absolutely right. Republicans, those billionaires,

you look at what they've done with PragerU. PragerU now has their educational material in these red states now in K-12. Yep. And that started because two Texas billionaires gave them $7 million to start. They raised $22 million in year one.

They raised $25 million in year two. That's $47 million. And then you look at Daily Caller, Daily Wire, Daily Signal. You look at Breitbart. Look at all these. What they understood was if you win the information war,

that's 75% of the war. Because that's hearts and minds. And they only want to give black people four figures. You know, you got to beg and plead to justify four figures, not five, six, seven figures. And so that's why we continue to be behind the ball. It's not going to beg and plead to justify four figures, not five, six, seven figures.

And so that's why we continue to be behind the ball. It's not going to be enough just to swoop in months before the election or once or twice a year and to humor us a little bit. You have to invest in the information until the Democrats figure that out. They're going to keep getting their ass handed to you. They're going to keep seeing these poll numbers where Trump is competitive with people that are not at all remotely ideologically aligned that he offers nothing policy-wise to because they're winning the information war. This isn't just messaging. It goes beyond messaging. Information is the basics that we operate in. And Democrats consistently lose the information war because they're not even fighting it. No, you're absolutely right.

And before I go to break, I'm going to show you all this here. I just pulled this up. When it happened, I say this is the dumbest thing in the world. Here you had a major progressive media outlet called ThinkProgress. They were a part of the Center for American Progress, but they were actually their own group. Well, CAP put them up for sale. Now, they had declining revenue, declining traffic and donations. Okay, they were running a deficit. No buyer was found. This was a major

progressive media outlet that they allowed to die in 2019 so look I want everybody look at that date. They ended publication on September 5th, 2019. That was one year and one day after we launched this show. And so you don't allow our major information vehicle to shut down. No, you figure out how do we keep this thing going because that's what you need. The right has major amplification. They have and they're hitting you Fox News on television, conservative radio, digital operations. And so you're getting it 360 degree and from the progressive side. And we already know from the black side. In fact,

we're going to go to a break, and I'm going to play for you. It was something that Congressman Hakeem Jeffries said during the funeral of Congresswoman Edna Bernice Johnson that captured my attention, and I'm going to play it for you, and it's a perfect example of even why black-owned media, when you don't fund black-owned media, why certain things don't happen. We'll show you that next on

Rollerbutton Unfiltered on the Blackstar Network. Grow your business or career with Grow with Google's wide range of online courses, digital training, and tools. Gain in-demand job skills with flexible online training programs designed to put you on the fast track to jobs in high-growth fields. No experience is necessary.

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Scan the QR code to complete the application. There are 1000 scholarships available. Grow with Google and J-Hood and Associates. Be job ready and qualify for in-demand jobs. On the next Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, we're talking about the difficulty of being able to acquire wealth for Black Americans. My guest, Emily Flitter, is the author of The White Wall, How Big Finance is Bankrupting Black Americans. The bad stuff that you feel when you're dealing with the financial services industry is not your fault.

It's not your fault, And you don't deserve to be treated like this. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Blackstar Network. Hey, yo, what's up? It's Mr. Dalvin right here. What's up? This is KC. Sitting here representing the J-O-D-E-C-I, that's Jodeci, right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered. So y'all have often heard me talk about on this show the last five years about why we have to fund blackowned media, why we have to invest the resources, why we are out here fighting the good fight, trying to get these dollars to be able to do what we do. And during the funeral... A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one.

The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley

comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really,

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

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

John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz

Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Congresswoman Edith Bernice Johnson at Concord Church in Dallas on Tuesday. Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said this during his eulogy of Johnson.

Now in that first term, the chair of the CBC, she's now our great HUD secretary, was Marsha Fudge. She said to Stephen Horsford and I, I want the two of you to preside over the CBC floor speech

that occurs every Monday evening after votes. And so we said yes. We didn't know what we were doing, y'all. But we said yes. The CBC floor speeches an hour, Monday evening, people all across town, not covered on CNN, not covered on MSNBC, not covered on BET. It's covered on C-SPAN. And so Stephen and I, we were never quite sure who exactly was paying attention. But we could always count on three people. Stephen's mother.

My mother. And Edie Bernice Johnson, our congressional mother. We were thankful for her always there for us as she has been for so many people. So let me unpack that, all right? So you heard him say we have this hour where we give all these speeches and mainstream media doesn't cover it, it's not on BET and it's not, it's only on C-SPAN. Now understand what I'm about to lay out to you. That part of his sermon and the entire funeral, we live streamed. Nobody else in black-owned media, damn sure not mainstream media. They didn't live stream the funeral.

We did. So now if you went to the Concord Church website, you could actually see the funeral. We chose to then amplify it. So why am I saying that? That's a perfect example of what happens when you fund your own media. The things that other people don't cover and talk about, then we can. Jahan LeBlanc sent me a text message saying, Roland, love to come back on the show and thank you for putting me on the show.

Because I came on your show you put me on I'm now doing TV shows all across the continent of Africa I want you to I want that to sink in y'all so not only do you cover things that other people don't believe are important, you also are able to put voices on who otherwise would never see the light of day that we know the cable networks are never going to call. And now you're creating new opportunities. And so now what this does is, to the point that Recy was making before we went to the break, when you talk about from a progressive perspective, what you then do is you now are not beholden to what is being said

on a few nationally syndicated black radio shows that are not black-owned. on a few nationally syndicated black radio shows that are not black owned. They're not, very few of them are, okay? Now, Urban One syndicates Russ Parr's show is off the air. Donnie Simpson's Last Day is Tomorrow. Urban One syndicates Ricky Smiley, DL Hughley, Erica Campbell. They're blackiley, D.L. Hughley, Erica Campbell.

They're black-owned. That's it. Breakfast Club, that's iHeartRadio. Steve Harvey Morning Show, that's iHeartRadio. Okay, so those are not black-owned. And so, and I say it. I say it to everybody. I say it, which is, and the impetus, and I need people to understand,

the impetus for launching this show, I said to everybody, I said, which is, and the impetus, and I need people to understand, the impetus for launching this show, I said Tom Jonah retires in December 2019, and black people are going to rue the day when Tom retires. Because you do not have that type of energy and focus on news of the day, of issues of the day, of politics, on any show the way Tom focused it. So when you talk about creating an ecosystem, then you're not worrying about if, well, CNN show up, because guess what?

You got your own cameras. You're doing your own messaging. You're kicking. not worrying about if we'll CNN show up because guess what? You got your own cameras. You do your own messaging. You're kicking. That's what the conservative folks figured out. They said, damn them. We're going to create this whole ecosystem. And we're going to create all the voices,

all the personalities. We're going to all support each other and build this sucker up. And that's why Reesey and Greg, I have been saying, even in the black space to folks, you got black-owned media people. When I started this, I went to every major black-owned media company. Nobody wanted to partner. And I was like, guys, do y'all not see what's going on? Do y'all not see what's going on? Do y'all not see where we're going? And this is a problem because there are, I call, there are news deserts. There are

information deserts. And so not only do you have people who are not getting information, as you said, Recy, they are being force-fed so much BS, misinformation, disinformation, and they're not getting, people are criticizing, Democrats ain't this. No one then says, I'm sorry, what do you mean by that? Please explain that. See, you ain't hearing any of that. You're not hearing some, we did it on yesterday. We showed people, if you a family of four and you make a

60 grand, you're going to not you're going to pay $0 for student loans. How many other places out there are walking people through those things right today? You have seen the explosion of people signing up for the Affordable Care Act breaking records three years in a row. Many of them in red

states as well. Where else are they actually talking about it? We now, America is now producing more oil than we ever have, but the right wing keeps saying, oh no, we ain't producing any oil, because Biden won't let us drill, drill, drill. It's all a lie. You can not let

lies stand. And you can't sit there and go, oh, I hope so-and-so holds, bust that lie, and then you watch it, then you go, oh, I hope so-and-so host bust that lie. And then you watch it and you go, did they just, like, allow them to lie and kept moving? Yes, they did. That is part of this problem recently. Yeah.

And stop expecting black people to do all the labor for free, too. You know what I'm saying? Because the thing about the information ecosystem is those people are getting paid. Okay? That's why Candace owns her. We've done got upgraded. Her agency is straightened out a little bit. She got a nice little house and all these other people that coming up in the world.

And yet we're expected to show up and do things out of the goodness of our heart, which we do because we care about our community and our culture. But hello, invest in Black media, invest in the Black information system because other people are investing. It's just to our detriment. And that's what we have to recognize because this election is do or die. And I just am not seeing the energy. I'm not seeing the urgency or the severity on any side, not on the Democratic elected side, the Democratic machine side, and certainly not on the Democratic electorate side. The thing for me, Greg, and I know you feel the same again, there's nothing worse than grossly uneducated people. Mm-hmm. I mean, there's nothing worse. And I never thought of myself this way until Maya Angelou actually said it to me.

When she says no, she said, oh, I watch you. You're a teacher. You teach. And that's really what is missing. And as we are going into this King Day, I go back to what Dr. King said when he called on when he called on Negro, the Negro press to, as he said, maintain its militancy and and and and and not become what he called conservative organs. I mean, this is in his book, y'all,

What Do We Go From Here, Chaos or Community? And I've said it many times before, and y'all can tell I actually read the book, you see how I got to highlight it. He said there are four institutions, he said, structured, See y'all? Y'all have actually read the Bible. Hold up, I missed that the first time.

This is the key. He says, there are already structured forces. Meaning, they're already in place. They have infrastructure that can serve as the basis for building a powerful united front he mentions four negro church negro press negro fraternities and sororities negro professional associations he says point blank too many negro newspapers have veered away from their traditional role as protest organs agitating for social change and have turned to the sensational and the conservative

in place of the substantive and the militant. Greg, I've had more people hit me and say, Roland, when are you going to weigh in on Cat Williams' interview on Club Shay Shay with Shannon Sharp? And I said, I will not.

Now, here's the deal. I can pull up right now, and I did it earlier. When I was in the car, I was on the plane, I was in the car coming here. I've seen about 10 or 15 other people

give their thoughts and reactions to the Cat Williams interview. And the views range from 200,000 to 1.5 million. Yes, sir. Now. Yes. They're watching. So if I did something, it's probably going to do 2, 3, 4, 500,000 or more views.

You get on YouTube, you're going to increase more money. Yep. But right here, King said, have turned to the sensational and the conservative in place of the substantive and the militant. We have enough gossip blogs. We have enough mess organs. We have enough drama-induced publications. What we don't have enough are real substantive outlets.

And I will not do it just to get those views because I would feel so awful that I would feel like I got to take a shower every hour on the hour because that means you fall into that pit. And that's really where we are. We are in a situation where it's so much bullshit that is being fed to us that we are literally gorging on mess and right across the street right across the way they literally are saying oh y'all keep keep eating that mess keep eating that mess because we gonna sit here and blow your asses up come january 2025 when we put in place Project 2025

and we, you got Elon Musk right now siding with folks blaming black folk for the damn door of the Alaska Airlines plane coming off and blaming that stuff on DEI. And we as black people,

we are eating the mess up. I mean, I'm talking about black people, we are eating the mess up. I mean, I'm talking about black people. And this is not a diss of Shannon. It's not a diss of Kat. But black folk are eating this up like we did them Popeye's chicken sandwiches. No question about it. I mean, Roland, you're going to have to help us all, brother, with this, it seems to me.

When Dr. King was writing, he a lot in watching this viral thing, 43 million and counting views on the initial interview, just after eight days on Shannon Sharpe's Club Shaysha. And everyone responding, eating, so to speak, as the young people say. Everybody eating up this. Everybody responds. Ice Cube responds. Even Ludacris does a rap response.

Everybody. And then, of course, your homie, Willie D, has a subsequent interview that's racked up several million just in the several days it's been posted. And I thought to myself, I wish, you know, you would deconstruct for us how this viral phenomenon works and kind of cascades down. But I want to put it in another context. Our friend and brother, Martin Lamont Hill, who Byron Allen positioned on his Griot network, and I guess April Ryan is sliding in there to do this daily news and weekly commentary. Nobody watching.

On cable, nobody watching on YouTube. Mark taking a page from you, taking a page from those who have had a kind of metronome daily presence in the news kind of commentary vein, but doing it in a way that kind of blends in some of that sensationalist stuff has launched his YouTube channel and the way you stand from listening to you, you know, we're consulting with folks who know what they're doing.

Oh, no, no, no. He didn't take a page. No, what happened was he was in the car with his new wife and she was like, where in the hell is your YouTube page? And he was... No was no no no i'm gonna i he was in the car and he called me on a saturday and he said hey man can you really make money with this stuff and so i read for him the last six months of the revenue that we generated with our youtube channel and i said to him and he had it on speaker and his wife was like, see?

And, because Mark just got married. And so she was like, yo, you out here doing all this sort of stuff, but what are you building? And I've been telling Mark, and he'll tell you five, seven years, Mark, stop chasing them checks.

Build something. Fortify yourself against someone else controlling your voice. Cause he got fired at Fox News, he got fired at CNN because of his position on Asada Shakur as well as the Palestinians. And so we had multiple conversations. He, I said, Mark, start the, I was Mark Lamont Hill's first subscriber

on his YouTube channel. I said, Mark, launch the damn channel. I said, and you have to build it. I said, stop putting stuff on Instagram and Twitter. I said, drive your people over to YouTube. He said, man, my goal by the end of December is to have 25,000 people. He had some great interviews on Al Jazeera.

I said, Mark, trust me, you're going to get the numbers. You're going to be able to enroll in YouTube's ad revenue sharing plan. By the end of December, he had 79,000 subscribers. He wanted to have 25,000. So the whole point was we're now living in a new world. And in fact, I fact i was watching and so and and and and understand i had people john hope brian keeps telling me man you should charge people i said john that ain't what i do i was watching mark's broadcast and i was like yo

change your crawl change this this is too small can't see this here uh and and understanding how you actually do it because the whole point is you have to create the additional platforms as i said to fortify from market forces if i was still waiting for a white network to call me i would be in a hospice right now if I waited. And there are a lot of black people. I know them personally. They are sitting here waiting for others to call. They're not creating the opportunities.

I saw all the mess when people were trying to say, Vivica, why ain't you supporting Taraji? I'm not going to get into all of that, but let me explain to you why Vivica answered the way she did, because Vivica has been producing and directing her own. People like, man, that shit you doing, Vivica, it's going straight to video.

Do y'all know how many movies every year go straight to video? But guess what? It's a check involved. And so this is the problem for so many of our people we and i'm gonna say this right now and this is a fundamental problem many of our people our people we have got to stop being so focused on white validation right oh man, you ain't shit. I mean, all you got is a YouTube channel. There's a little kid who has been making

$10 million a year unwrapping toys on YouTube for the past five years. $10 million a year. Understand, that's the new world. Understand that YouTube has YouTube TV,

mainstream channels that are on another one of their platforms. So we are so caught up, and I'm going to go ahead and go there. Negroes are so caught up in the equivalent of when Armani and Hugo Boss and Louboutin and Chanel and Tiffany and all this purses and shoes and we're broke as hell because we are praying and hoping to be on somebody white's platform where they control the content, own the content, control the staff, hire you and confire you, as opposed to as King was talking about, building and creating. There is

no Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. without Ebony, without Jet, without Chicago Defender, without Atlanta Daily World, without the Pittsburgh Courier, without those black institutions. And that, to me,

and so we're combining two different things. If you're not building black-owned media institutions, if progressives are not building progressive media institutions, then you're at the mercy of somebody else. And then you wonder, man, well, why we can't get the word out? Because you ain't built shit.

Well, Roland, this is where I think we need help to understand how these two pieces connect. Because Black Star Network is an infrastructure. And people say, oh, it's YouTube. No, it's much more than YouTube. You're the one who taught us all,

certainly taught me, the meaning of the acronym OTT. And every time you say, OK, you got to go to Amazon over here, you can look at Facebook, sure, YouTube, sure, the app, all these things, and the network is built. As you mentioned, these white boys getting ready to rain natural fire, not just on the United States, but on the world with this 2025 business that they're planning. Oh, let me... Okay, see... Let me just... Let me just go ahead and... Sorry to interrupt you there, Greg,

because I... I... I... Okay, I need everybody watching right now. Matter of fact, I'm going to do this here. I'm going to go to a break. And I'm going to need all y'all to buckle up.

Because when I come back, we're going to discuss T-U-B-I. Tubi. Tubi. And I'm going to share some stuff about Tooby that's going to blow a whole bunch of y'all out of your living room. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin.

And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time,

have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.

I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated And it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

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

Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding

of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. out of your dorm rooms. Let me go to the break. I'll be right back. When you talk about blackness and what happens in black culture, we're about covering these things that matter to us, speaking to our issues and concerns.

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

Invest in Black-owned media. Your dollars matter. We don't have to keep asking them to cover our stuff. So please support us in what we do, folks. We want to hit 2,000 people with $50 this month. Wait until $100,000. We're behind $100,000, so we want to hit that. Your money makes

this possible. Checks and money orders go to P.O. Box 57196, Washington D.C. 20037-0196. The Cash App is $RM Unfiltered. PayPal is 20037-0196. The Cash App is Dollar Sign, R.M. Unfiltered. PayPal is R. Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is R.M. Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com.

I'm Dee Barnes, and next on The Frequency, we're talking about the rise in great Black literature and the authors who are writing it. Joining me will be professor and author Donna Hill, discuss her writing journey and becoming a best-selling author. I always was writing, but I never saw anybody that looked like me in the books that I was reading. Plus, her work with the Center for Black Literature and next year's National Black Writers Conference. That's right here on The Frequency on the Black Star Network.

Next, on The Black Table with me, Dr. Greg Carr, author Dr. Maribel Morey, on her astounding and enlightening new book, White Philanthropy, a history we're betting you've never heard before. Don't miss an eye-opening episode of The Black Table, only on Black Star Network. On the next A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie, just who do you think you are? And maybe more importantly, who is it that you think you're trying to please?

The answer to that second question is really wrapped up in the first. Think about that, being the true, authentic really wrapped up in the first. Think about that. Being the true, authentic you, no matter the circumstance. But we learn the art of forgiveness, not only of forgiving one another, but forgiving ourselves. And we also learn how to love ourselves so that we can love each other. That's next on A Balanced Life here on Black Star Network. This is Reggie Rock-Byker with you watching Rose Martin, unfiltered, uncut, unplugged,

and undamned believable. You hear me? All right, so y'all made me have to stand up for this one. I was trying to sit down. And I was going to do this in a couple of weeks, but Greg said something there that I just said, I got to do this right now. How many of y'all remember In Living Color? How many of y'all remember Rock?

How many of y'all remember South Central? Guess who owned that network? Come on. come on. Rupert Murdoch. So let me explain to y'all how we got Fox News. Okay? They launched Fox Broadcasting. They put on black content.

We run to Fox. Live in color. Do y'all know why there is a Pepsi and now Apple music halftime show at a Super Bowl? Because one year In Living Color put on their own Super Bowl halftime show, and all these eyeballs left the Super Bowl, and they went over to the In Living Color halftime show. And the NFL said, oh, hell no. That's when you got the big halftime performances.

And they turned into major extravaganzas because of In Living Color. Why did Kenan Ivory Wayans quit and his family leave? Because what Fox started doing was putting in living color reruns on Fox stations, driving down the syndication value of in living color, and they let Winger produce any more shows because y'all cheating us out of our money. What did Fox then do with the money made from black people building up Fox? They landed the NFL.

NFL. NFL used to be on NBC and CBS. Monday Night Football was on ABC. Fox offered a billion dollars plus for the NFL rights, and that's when it went from CBS over to Fox. But guess what happened after they got the NFL. Bye-bye in living color. Bye-bye rock. Bye-bye South Central. Bye-bye all of the black programming. Now some of y'all watching me right now, some of y'all saying,

okay, Roland, that's all that history. I mean, you just bringing up old stuff. Why are you sitting here? Why are you sitting here bringing up old stuff. Why are you sitting here? Why are you sitting here bringing up old stuff? What has been all the rage for the last year? What have you heard Greg and Reese say? Did y'all see that movie on Tubi? You need to get on Tubi. You need to get on Tubi. You need to get on Tubi.

You need to get on Tubi. You need to get on Tubi. You need to get on Tubi. You need to get you a move on Tubi. You need to get on Tubi. You need to get on Tubi. Go to my iPad. Tubi sees impressive growth with over 74 million monthly active users. Keep it right there. Send it right there. Send it right here. Do y'all know who owns

Tubi? Pull a picture up. Who owns Tubi? He does. Wow. What is Fox doing? Black people, listen to me. Good Lord.

Listen to me, black people. You built Fox Broadcasting, which gave them the financial wherewithal to get the NFL. They get the NFL, build up the financial wherewithal to launch Fox News. Now we're living in a digital world.

And what is Tooby doing? Black content. Black content. Black content. Black content. They dropping black. I see all the Instagram posts, the Twitter posts, my movie on Tubi, my movie on Tubi, movie on Tubi. And guess what? fast channels, which is basically a digital channel. They're doing it with black content. Look at it right there.

Look at all these. Y'all look at this. This is how they are competing against Netflix and the rest of them. Black, black, black, black, black, black. Do y'all understand that Fox sold its entertainment division to Disney a few years ago for 70 plus billion dollars? Fox Studios? Fox Entertainment? All of their Fox Entertainment, all of their Fox Entertainment assets sold to Disney.

They retain Fox News, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and those assets. So Fox right now, Fox right now is building a digital brand on the backs of black people. And you know what we're doing? We're going, I'm on Tubi. I'm on Tubi. Oh, I'm on Tubi.

I'm on Tubi. Now, I understand the desire to have our content being places. What did Greg's brother say in the promo video? Bring your eyeballs home. been telling y'all where black eyeballs go, that's where the advertising money goes. When you send black eyeballs

to gossip, to mess, to entertainment, they gonna sit here and make it rain. Yes, sir. Tubi is trying to lock up several hundred million dollars

in ad money and there's a declining number of dollars from broadcast networks coming to digital. And Tubi said, y'all know how we can sit here and grow fast as possible? Let's sit here and go after all them Negro eyeballs with ratchet shows, with a bunch of bad movies. And I can't tell y'all how many group chats I've been in. Tubi, tubi, tubi, tubi. Why am I unpacking this in the way I am?

Because I've been trying to explain to y'all how media works. If we are so powerful with these and we can generate billionaires in all these other places, what in the hell can we actually do if we choose to say, you know what,

I'm going to lock my eyeballs on the Negro Leagues, and the Negro Leagues is really going to be the major leagues. But you know what we do? We go, they letting us be in the major leagues. Yes, sir. And guess what happened? The major leagues took black talent, but did not bring in black owners. Right. Tooby is saying, black talent.

I got you. And we're like, yes. Feeding the beast. Oh, but man, they paying good money for movies. Why do you think they paying good money for movies? Because the black eyeballs are there. There are black platforms that are out there. Do we support them?

And that, and that. And so now y'all, if you causing Tubi to explode, all you doing is making Fox News more powerful. Right. That is what I'm trying to get us to understand. And it's hard for our people

to step back and understand the media game that's at play. What y'all have been hearing Reese say and Greg say, you need to understand the media game that's at play. What y'all have been hearing Reese say and Greg say, you need to understand the infrastructure. See, we just turning on the radio. We just turning on TV. Ain't nobody saying, hold up. Who on this? Who on this? Just like many

black folks who are public workers, y'all sitting here saying, y'all like, man, look at my 401k. But you're not asking who controls the pension fund and who is the investment firm that controls your pension fund. Because what you will understand is one of the biggest Republican donors in America is Steve Schwartzman, who is the CEO of BlackRock. And they control trillions of dollars of capital in this country. So when you excited that BlackRock is investing your money, what you are actually doing is funding the man who's funding the Republican Party. Y'all had better understand how this game is working. Greg, go ahead. No, no, no. Here's the piece that I'm

grappling with. I think we all are. The disconnect. On the question of reliability, there is no debate. We see you, me, Reese, Lauren, Scott, you name it, everyone who appears here seven days a week. All of the shows, we all encounter this. Everywhere we go

in the U.S., in the world, outside this country, I can testify to that. There is a reliability people associate with this program specifically. Reliability in information, reliability and stories. As you say, things you're not going to see anywhere. I sat and watched Eddie Brees Johnson's funeral because it was streaming here. So on the question of news, not the empty content, not the foolishness, there is a standard here. When I

listen to at least the shows that black folk have on Sirius, I'm talking about news and commentary shows, Reese's Show, Clay Kane, Joe Madison, Karen Hunter, there's a form of reliability there. When folks, and Karen says this sometimes, she says, in many ways, journalism is dead. Why? Because now you've got, and again, it's no shade at Shannon Sharp. There's no shade. Everybody on YouTube. You got people commenting on news who aren't researchers, who aren't journalists, who are not don't have a background.

And the eyeballs are being attracted because it's mixed in with this foolishness. is, while these fascists, while these white nationalists, while these folks like the Heritage Foundation, funded by billionaires, and subsidized by very people that we're subsidizing with our dollars, are lining up because they have the money to carpet bomb our sensibility. Christopher Ruppo is a joke to take out

the president of Harvard, and he got a degree from Harvard Extension, and is down there messing around trying to create a whole new version of a school that was a legitimate university until DeSantis got a hold of it, that new school in Florida. While that's happening on our side, we can watch by the millions, Cat Williams is standing sharp, we can watch by the millions Gilbert Arenas and whoever else, we can watch by the millions Kwame Brown and whoever else is the flash-to-panel moment, but when it comes to news, Roland, this is what I'm trying to understand. Where is the disconnect when it comes to

us bringing our eyeballs not only home, but home to a specific type of content? When a burnout has poured millions into a channel that nobody watches, when BET eliminated any even gesture toward news, where is the disconnect with our eyeballs for the things that will help us when you have been with this network and this specific show traveling in terms of dealing with voting rights, traveling in terms of activism? A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek.

I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, I'm Max Chafkin. inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission.

This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1 Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott.

And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.

Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

Marine Cor vet. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Organizing, traveling in terms of the injustices our people face and how we are solving the problems of combating them. Where's the appetite for bringing our eyeballs to that specific vein of content that's why i'm losing it is it is because because we again have black people who are in the black space who want to operate in silos

i'm gonna go to to Reese in a second. I'm going to say this. I was on a phone call and I told Byron when Black News Channel offered me a show. And it was a joke. I mean, y'all, like, it was so laughable. I literally said, I'm going to do y'all a favor and not even respond. That's how bad it was.

Okay, y'all. So Byron asked me what it would cost. And I told him. Now, here's the deal. I ain't got a problem saying it because it's true. When Byron bought Black News Channel Assets, Byron could have licensed this show. Yes. Now here's the deal.

I got no problem launching your own shows. But who's watching them? Listen, TV One celebrates its 20th anniversary on mok day on monday i was the face of the network yes i traveled this nation getting local local um cable people to carry tv1 i know i got an audience and i can bring eyeballs so you want to launch something and nobody watch or do you want to actually work with an existing partner don't think for don't think for a second when tyler was talking about about buying b and t when don't do not think for a second when tyler was trying to buy bt that me and tyler did not have a conversation.

Why am I saying all of this? I'm saying all of this is because we as black people need to understand that the storm that is headed our way is a cat five. You see, I don't think people understand. I'm going to say this again. We are sitting here watching all kinds of other stuff, and we ain't watching this news channel, and there's a cat five that's brewing in the ocean, that's gonna make landfall. And see if you over here laughing and giggling

and not watching that news channel, you can't prepare for the Cat5. And then when the Cat5 hits you're like, oh my God, what happened happened because your ass wasn't watching the news channel trying to tell you the cat five is coming you got elon musk right now for mint who is apartheid elon musk yes sir who is using twitter to drive racist messaging, who now is championing the notion that DEI and black pilots having low IQs is the reason the door came off the American Airlines door. Now you got, I need y'all to pay attention.

That thing circulated on Twitter. Laura Ingraham had a pound discussion on Fox News. Matt Walsh, Daily Wire, is talking about it, same thing. So now they're saying, oh, oh, oh, oh, DEI is now the reason. You got Matt Walsh predicting that there are going to be airplane fatalities because of DEI. Frank Luntz posted, hadn't been a fatality in an airplane crash in America since 2009. Yo, they literally are attacking every institution. That's right.

And don't think for a second they're not coming after HBCUs. Just because the affirmative action rule against affirmative action affected PWIs, oh no, don't understand. And again, Reesey, that's a catfire brewing that's going to make landfall.

And we over here going, man, damn that shit. I ain't voting. I don't see enough of Kamala. She ain't really black. Damn joke, because he too old, or forget this whole stuff, it's a cat five. Project 2025 is a cat seven.

This thing is coming, and that scene from Scandal, of Joe Morton and Kerry Washington, you running your ass around in a field of daisies and like the field of daisies and bombs are going on all around you. The media apparatus is how they are driving the messaging, Recy. Right. Absolutely. And I do have to say there are black people that have multifaceted interests and you could watch Roland on six to eight and go watch the Cat Williams interview. They're not mutually exclusive. However, I want to address Dr. Carr's point about the disconnect. And I want to say that the disconnect is very much manufactured. We don't have a democratic media or even social media apparatus.

Everything is algorithm to the point to where these algorithms and formulas, which, by the way, have bias already built in them, have figured out or they've convinced themselves, which then drives what you see, what people want to see. And that is just a self-fulfilling prophecy because what gets the clicks, what gets the attention is what people continue to see, not necessarily what all your interests are. If you go look at my Instagram Explorer page, you would think that 99% of my interests are hair videos and makeup videos. And I'm not good at makeup and my hair is just very basic. And so these social media and the way that we get our news is very much manufactured, manipulated, and it's getting increasingly siloed. And that's why you don't see the information breaking through.

That's why we need to invest in the information that people receive. That's why we have to interact with the information that we want to see if we want to keep seeing it. So that's really where the disconnect is, it's a, it's something that is driven to us because we are signaling to it that that's what we want to see. And unfortunately we bless too much mess. And I will be the first one to say, if I'm on video saying motherfucking that video is going to go more viral than if I'm sitting here buttoned up. Now, is that why I do it? No. I mean, I get, I turn on the camera, what happens happens. But I recognize that the reason

why this is getting reposted on the blogs, and this is the reason why this has a million views is because I'm giving the people what the algorithms say that the people want to see in the way that they want to see it. And so the only way to combat that, there's no organic way of combating things that are manipulated. There has to be an investment. And until we figure that out, that we either need to make the investment or we need to fight back with our eyeballs and we need to fight back with interacting with the things that we want to see there will continue to be this disconnect and this imbalance and let me be real clear i need people to understand i know shannon ain't this and shannon ain't this and cat no but what i'm trying to get

our people to understand is i know how the advertising mind works I've been looking for this interview and I'm going to find it. When OWN launched, OWN launched, and they were the first two weeks, the numbers were through the roof.

You know why? Because black women kept coming. But they were like, well, where's stuff for us? the numbers were through the roof. You know why? Because black women kept coming. But they were like, well, where's stuff for us? After the first two weeks, OWN's numbers crated. Because they were seeing the Judds, they were seeing Jenny McCarthy, they were like, where them black people? I'm just trying to tell y'all, and I'm telling you,

Eric Logan, who was the president of OWN, so what I'm telling y'all is true. And I need y'all people watching, listening. I tell you, all I do is media since I was 14 years old. This is what my dedication, this is my ministry. I watched it. They spent $381 million their first year. They were losing money like crazy.

Oprah talked about being depressed There was one show that did four hundred and sixty six thousand views About 70% of those people were black it's called sweetie pie Everybody keeps saying oh man Tyler's save on that was on 2.0 Everybody keeps saying, oh man, Tyler saved Om. That was on 2.0. No, that was on 3.0. On 2.0 it was Sweetie Pie.

Sweetie Pie. They were shocked with the black numbers. So you know what happened? Well, let's try one more show. Beverly Johnson. That's when Oprah passed up her relationship with Iyanla. Brought Iyanla back. Latoya Jackson had a show.

Flex and Sharnease had a show. Dion had a show. That was a show that I actually liked. It was the three white women. They were sisters. These old white women, they were hilarious. These old white women, they were hilarious. That was the last show on OWN that featured white leads. Ever since that show, and it started with Sweetie Pie,

everything on OWN's been black. Everything on OWN's been black. Everything on OWN has been black. I'm about to mess y'all up. Oprah, it was 50-50. Oprah sold her stake back to Discovery. What do you see on OWN now? Lot of reality shows. What happened to all that premium prestige content that was on OWN?

I'm trying to get you to understand TV. When they launched, Sheila Johnson did an interview. And Sheila Johnson said they need more black content for them to survive. This is what Sheila Johnson said. She said, but people need to understand it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because the advertisers say, no, don't show that stuff. Put on some games. Put on some comedies and put on some stuff,

some award shows and all that stuff they sprinkle in, and we'll fund that. Wow. We ain't going to fund that. So what happens is you put that on, algorithm, Reese was talking about. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Guess what?

They want more of that. Boom! Cable news is called a tent pole. A tent pole means successful show and you build other shows around the tent pole. Housewives became a tent pole.

You got Housewives became a tent pole. You got housewives, Atlanta, New Jersey, New York, Beverly Hills. You got about 30 housewives on tent pole, ready to love. Tent pole, what is it? Love and Huntsville? What the hell

is that thing called? Love and Marriage Huntsville. I do watch that. No, no, no. But remember, before Huntsville? What the hell is that thing called? Love and Marriage Huntsville. I do watch that. No, no, no, no, no. But remember, before Huntsville, it was Charlotte. See? It was tentpole. It was tentpole. See? How many of those shows have you now had? Tentpoles. They're all the same.

Guess who's talking? And guess what? Black women, y'all the target. We. Lifetime lifetime they all understand that advertisers are like put that on put that on that's what they're willing to fund understand i'm gonna put this out here because i ain't got a problem doing it because they ain't sent us no money at all and they just they just got rid of Kurt McDonald who was the CEO of Group M. He was black, but they never gave us any money. Do y'all realize,

do y'all really want to understand why I launched all the Black Star Network shows in February of 2020, was it 21 or 22? It was 2022. It's because we had a meeting with Group M

and Group M said, well, let's see your slate. Group M controls about $60 billion in advertising money. Okay, 320, 340, 50 billion every year is being spent. So we showed them the slate of shows. They didn't want to see the projected shows.

They wanted to actually see the content. So I said, go ahead now. Against my better judgment, let's go ahead and launch the shows. So we did launch Farage's show, Deborah Owens show, Jackie's show, Greg Carr show brought in Stephanie, Stephanie Humphrey show. Yeah. We were having those conversations with group M in October, November 2021. Nelson Pinero, I think that's who we were talking with, and we had a great call. Ty Brown and I had a great, he's a huge fan. That was late 2021. This is January 2024. Group M has not invested a single dollar in any show on this network and they were the ones who said you need to launch them before we put any money in. So we launched them. It's understanding the media app and the media game.

So I sit here and go, okay, group. Then it's like, well, hold up. Well, what are y'all doing? Hold on. What do you mean? You can't give me the brand safe stuff because we've done stuff with Coca-Cola.

McDonald's. Procter & Gamble. General Motors. Those are four of the biggest brands in the world. Because you've got individuals with these ad agencies and inside of these companies.

And let me be real clear, we've talked to OMD, MediaCom, we've talked to Horizon, all of these different people. And it's the oh, brand safe. But guess what ads we see on Tubi? We've done a content analysis.

They've had some raunchy stuff air on Tubi. And guess what? You see many of those ads running in between those shows. So I need the audience to now understand. When we are talking about this ad agency that represents these brands refuse to spend money with us,

our response has to be like Dr. King said on April 3rd, 1968, we're not going to spend money with them. But as long as black people are so oh my God, we've been entertained. As long as we keep watching, they're going to keep feeding us. And as long as we keep clicking that button and the algorithm is like, oh, they want more of that, they're going to keep feeding it. And then people then go, well, man, I don't understand why we can't build no black wealth if you have if you haven't built something that can attract the dollars that then allow you to grow it in scale to be able to get bigger the offices that we are in was an

architecture company y'all they moved out of the office here and here. If we were getting, listen to me clearly, y'all. If we were getting our fair share of dollars right now, Black Star Network should be doing bare minimum $10 million in revenue a year. Yes, sir. If we were doing $10 million

revenue a year, I would have that office and that office. You would have at least 30 to 40 people working for us. More shows, more content, doing the things that we actually say. Y'all, that's what's going

on here. And what I'm trying to get our people to understand is if you're not getting support and we ain't got no billionaires, millionaires cutting us is if you're not getting support and trouble, we ain't got no billionaires, millionaires cutting us checks. And they know we exist.

Of course. They know we're here. Of course. Then people then go, well I don't understand now why we don't have, why we can't get more stuff. Y'all, this is the system how it's operating. I showed y'all the story when BET, see if y'all can find it, New York Times story when BET got sold. I think it was 22 years ago.

There was an analyst in the article who said black-owned media was getting 1% of the advertising dollars. 20-plus years later, it's still 1% or even less. So the reason I'm showing y'all the Tubies of the world, the reason I'm showing you that is because when we move our eyeballs to Tubie, we're making Fox more money. The same Fox that's killing us on Fox News. So as black people are making Fox richer with Tubi, we're funding our own demise because they are just sitting here. Float with Fox News.

And that's why they can absorb a seven hundred and eighty seven from Dominion, because they like, it's all good. We're going to make that money back off them black folks watching Tubing. Greg Denrice. Roland, again, thinking about this, I saw that, I guess, whatever, and you could walk us through the configuration between iHeartMedia and Breakfast Club, whatever. I saw Tiffany, Cross Angel, Ryan Andrew Gillum just launched a podcast or something. And they showed it on Tamron Hall. Now they launched their podcast. And I think about the quality, again, the question of quality here. Real news, hard news, and really bringing people, putting people into the platform space who need to be heard, everyone, all the stuff going on around the country.

And I think about this in terms of quality. And, again, this isn't any shade at Lenore McKelvey, but he's not a journalist. You sit him in the seat at Comedy Central, and then Roy Wood Jr. is there, who's a comedian, but who's clearly a cut of bump beyond any of them. I'm saying all this as a backdrop to this question I have for you, I guess, which is, you know, is some of this, and I appreciate the fact you were recently walking us through this algorithm

and how it works as well, but are some of these decisions on whether or not to invest advertising dollars based on something other than revenue projections and oh no no it's it's it's very let me be very clear it's it's it a lot of it's whiteness so let me explain so okay and and i get it charlamagne has a podcasting network partnership he owns a 50 with iheart 50 and that's called utilizing their scale that's no different than what jay-z when jay-z

talked about when he launched his champagne brand, he said, I could have launched it myself, but I partnered with one of the largest, you know, they have the expertise champagne companies. Now, what you're doing is you're leveraging scale. You're leveraging, so by launching the podcast network, Charlemagne's whole deal is, I'm going to leverage iHeartRadio's scale. They i'm a leverage i heart radio scale they have they

own all these radio stations they own these other podcasts they have all these sales people they already have the relationships with advertisers and so therefore it's a scale issue so i get it totally understand it that that that makes that's business that makes sense The reason I'm talking about scale on the black side the reason I went to black owned media Companies when we launched this because I said, okay y'all already have scale Y'all already have Infrastructure y'all already have sales teams so versus me having to come in here, build it from scratch, trying to sit here and claw our way, why don't we

partner what I was trying to do with Urban One, Black Enterprise, Blavity, Essence, and all of them and is the exact same, I'll throw in Byron Allen, was the exact same thing that Charlemagne did at iHeart.

I simply said, why don't we, partner, make this a black thing, and then you already have these assets. I will come in, do the digital programming, and what I'm doing, you're not even doing anywhere. And now let's utilize your scale. And so when your people go out to the same agencies they can say we have these assets now we're adding roland martin's digital show adding the black star network so now there's a revenue share and so now it becomes, oh, now we can actually grow and now get some dollars we ordinarily would not be able to get. Now, why is iHeart also doing this?

Because we busted our butt to create this black-owned media collective to force these companies to target black-owned media. So what do you do? If you create a partnership with an African-American black-owned company, you now can go after those black-owned dollars. Which is the same. So when we were going after the Biden administration to spend more money with black-owned media

or federal government dollars, when that letter came from HHS talking about the percentage of the money, of COVID money spent with black-owned media, they listed the black-owned media people in the black agency under black-owned media was owned. I replied to them, own is no longer a black-owned. It's no longer 50-50.

Discovery owns 95% of it. So what we have to be mindful of when you have white media companies who want to create partnerships to go after black-owned media dollars, but we in black-owned media who are 100% black-owned, we get frozen out. So therefore, so essentially, they are able to grow so what happens is and i'll say it when the body campaign spent six million dollars of the 281 million dollars in 2020 they announced this as the historic spend the most ever well that wasn't saying much because what much spent beforehand when you read the press release most of the digital money was going to iHeart and Complex. Complex had the largest black

digital reach. Who owned Complex? BuzzFeed. So that's why when people use the phrase black media, I go no, there's black media, there's black targeted media, and black owned media.

Yes. So we get caught up in the black targeted media and black owned media yes so we get caught up in the black targeted media so black targeted gets 90 95 percent of the money black owned media gets screwed up what i do was so when i'm arguing for black-owned media, I'm not saying screw Charlemagne's podcast. No, he owns 50% of it. Fund them and us. Fund them and us and Essence and Blavity and see, that's how I operate. It's almost $400 billion. Because here's the deal. Here's why I'm saying fund all of us.

Disney can't eat all of it. So guess what they do? Disney, here's y'all cut. Comcast, here's y'all cut. Hearst, here's y'all cut. Scripps, Discovery, Warner. They all share in it. The upfronts are coming up right now in May.

That's where 80% of the money is spent. Guess who doesn't even get to go to the upfronts? Us. Our money comes in the scatter market. For everybody listening, let me explain to you how the game works. 80% of the money gets spent in the up-fronts. About 19% of the money gets spent in September in the second window. Then they have what's called the scatter market.

The scatter market is the last quarter of the year. So in the last October, November, December, they didn't go, shit, how much we got left over? Damn, we got about $120,000. All right, let's give it to them black people over here. Our money comes in the scatter market. Our money don't come in the up fronts. That's the system. And so the reason we can't grow is because if I can't get more ad money, I can't do marketing. I guarantee you right now, we can blow up our numbers if I can run ads and run promos

and do street teams and marketing, but I can't because my money is so tight. No, I got to watch every dollar. They don't. In this political year, every major media company right now is going, we're going to see a 40% increase in revenue. Every Sinclair, Liberty, all of them. And you know why they're saying that? That's what's going to pay for them next year. And that's going to tide them over in 2025 because then they're waiting for the midterms in 2026. And then they're going to make more money in the midterms.

It's going to tide them over in 2027 and they're waiting on the presidential in 2028. Those of us in black on media are completely frozen out in the presidential year. So therefore, we ain't got nothing left for 25. And then we holding on. I'm just going to let y'all know.

We did well in 2020. I need y'all to understand what we made and did in 2020 paid for a lot of our stuff in 2021. Yes, sir. I'm just trying to...

So we are not... So, Black people, we are on... Come on, this end. A lot of times, the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways.

Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters,

and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

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

I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two of the war on drugs. We are back in a big way, in a very big way, real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star studded a little bit, man.

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

We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things.

Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. This is where we are. Turn the camera.

This is where we are. We're here. This is black people right here. This is black people. We got the remote. We are not in the offices. This is us right here. We are the eyeballs.

We're not the ones who are deciding what you actually see. So why is Taraji Henson complaining about her salary? Because we ain't the ones who are funding the movies. Yes, sir. What did Tyler Perry say? Tyler Perry said he paid Cicely Tyson a million dollars for one day of work because when she did Sounder, she got $8,000.

Was it $8,000 or $3,000? She got like $8,000. Cicely Tyson, in her last 10 to 15 years of life, Tyler Perry paid her what she had never gotten in her career. Tyler Perry said he's paid other female actresses a lot more money for one day or two days work because what they never got paid. Taraji said that her scale was set when Tyler paid her what she was actually worth. Ain't that interesting that it was somebody black who was the decision maker who paid Taraji her worth.

Y'all, we gotta understand, we gotta understand the economics of this. And everything y'all have heard us discuss in the last hour and 15 minutes, that literally is Dr. King's sermon on April 3rd, 1968. He literally was talking about the money. And he literally named the companies that black people should not spend with. He literally said to black people, invest and put your money in black banks and black insurance companies.

He literally said in his sermon that black people are individually poor, but collectively we represent one of the largest economies in the world. What I'm trying to say to black people and to conscious non-black people who are watching, we, Reesey said it out, we are driving the algorithm. So if we can drive 43 million views of

Cat and Shannon talking, and I'm not hating, can we drive 20 million on this? Alphas and AKs and Deltas and Kappas and Iotas and Sigmas and Zetas.

Hope I mentioned everybody. What happens? Divine Nine renting out movie theaters. Listen to me, y'all. The Divine Nine renting out movie theaters to help the color purple earn almost $25 million on Christmas Day. Mm-hmm. That money is going to Warner Brothers. Color Purple earned almost $25 million on Christmas day. Mm-hmm. That money is going to Warner Brothers,

which is Discovery. Yes, sir. Can the Divine Nine decide as a collective that they are going to pick four books to put on the New York Times bestseller list every single month? Same scale, same institutions. Can you imagine Divine Nine and the Lynx and the Prince Hall Masons and an Eastern Star

say we're going to take our collective members and we're going to say these are the four books that we're buying in January. These are the four books that we're buying in February. These are the four books that we're buying in March. Folks, it's the money. But we have to be willing to use our collective power. And this is all Dr. King was trying to tell us before he was assassinated in 1968.

Final comments, Rishi, then Greg. The reality is that black people are always a sure bet when you want a return on our investment and so we just have to stop being a bargain and we have to continue to drive the the culture drive what's validated but we have to be the validators validating ourself roland mentioned the new york times bestseller we shouldn't wait until something is a a New York Times bestseller to then say, we're going to buy. Oh, now it's a New York Times bestseller. We can drive the conversation. We can drive things forward as we have always been doing to our benefit. And that's what we need to start doing. We have to harness that collective power because individually, we don't have the power to change it on our own, but we recognize our

collective power can make the difference to our benefit it's not charity it's a return on investments for ourselves in a way that we all benefit and we're better off for it and to that point there and y'all i've told y'all this that control room was built by a black engineering company these lights were installed by a black engineering company. These lights were installed by a black lighting company. That green screen was purchased from a black drape company. That news desk was built by a black set design company. So when you invest in black owned media, we're investing in black companies.

Those people have employees and families. That's how it works. So when we talk about why you have to buy black or support black owned media, then, because guess what? When the money is going to Discovery, and Comcast, and Viacom, and Disney, that's going to the shareholders.

That's right. And we already know only the top 10% folk in this country, the top 10% of the country owns 93% of stocks. Yes, sir. So, and again, I'm not saying, oh, don't support the color purple. Don't support Black Panther. I'm saying support Black movies. But what I'm also saying, while we are saying support Black movies,

we also have got to be saying, where are the Black executives on these movie sets? Where's the Black catering companies? Taraji talked about them. They were trying to get them to drive themselves or put themselves in the van. I'm sorry, who has the transportation contract? Let's stop being enamored with the black face in front of the screen.

Or, oh, we got a black director we need to have a 360 degree economic view that goes beyond us and this is where we've got to stop Greg just being so excited to see a black face. And again, I'm not dissing Jackie Robinson, but we were so elated with Jackie Robinson going to the major leagues and we said, man, we're going to show these white folk we're just as good. We were already great. Dizzy Dean said the best talent was in the Negro Leagues. Right.

But we were so fixated on going to the Major Leagues that it literally killed the Negro Leagues. That's right. And you know what they did? They said, y'all come on. Bring us all your talent and bring

your eyeballs because y'all gonna buy tickets and y'all gonna buy jerseys. And guess what? They did not say let's bring one of these team owners no sir abe saperstein his goal abe saperstein's goal he went black but abe saperstein's goal was for the harlem globetrotters to be an NBA team. And do you know what they did? They drafted a Harlem Globetrotter player. That's right. And there never was a black team and there wasn't a black owner in the NBA until Bob Johnson, who sold the team to Michael Jordan, who has now since sold the team.

That's right. We got to stop giving folks our labor and not getting our reward back. Greg, go ahead. Yes, sir. No, Roland, it reminds me. This time, just a little bit last month, this time in 2022, you covered the Celebration Bowl. It's a beautiful moment.

And I went down. I was there. And I was there this last year. I went to the Battle of the Bands, old HBCU marching band alum, myself, Tennessee State Band. Very few people there. But it bothered me because the Battle of the Bands, Jackson State and North Carolina A&T, Virginia State, Florida Memorial, branded by these white companies that when they are beginning to understand they can just harvest our cultural capital and profit. And, of course, Celebration Bowl was, you know, it was 40-some thousand people there, Florida A&M and Howard.

Willie Simmons, the champion, Florida A&M champion coach, now the running back's coach at Duke because his dream is to be the coach of a Power Five football conference football team. White validation. I got it against Willie Simmons. But in the Florida A&M, alumni trying to raise money to keep him raised $107,000 very quickly. That ain't no money in the era of Nick Saban and all the rest of these plantation sports complex. You're not going to beat them with the dollar, but this is where I'm

going with this. We are watching now. Everybody watching. Some people don't have fixed income. Some people don't have the capacity. You have made a firm commitment to create a network that is accessible and free to anybody who wants to bring their eyeballs to it, regardless of how they bring it in this over-the-top platform, whether they've got a fire

stick at Amazon, whether they are watching on YouTube or Facebook, whether they have downloaded the app, whether they're going through all these, but you've made it there. Those of us who have the ability to invest in that vision, if everybody does a little, nobody has to do a lot. You can't raise enough money to keep a football coach whose dream is to coach in the white league at the HBCU. But you can certainly make enough of a contribution to keep the clean glass of water standard of black news media available to all of us, particularly when these folks who are our open enemies will not invest in it, not only because they want to keep the money for themselves, but because they know what will happen as our imaginations are fed and our information is fed by a standard of news that will, in fact, do the kind of things the black press used to do. This is why everyone

who is able must invest in this space, if not for yourself, for the people who would but don't have it, who don't know yet that they need it. And we've got to, especially as we're going into 2024, when this may be for all the marbles, we better be very serious

about that now. So that's all I wanted to say, brother. And thank you for continuing to keep that faith. I'm going to close this out this way because I just need, I just think sometimes y'all need to have a visual understanding of how you invest

and how there's a return on that. So we started the show off and we played for you an interview that I had with Tennessee Representative Gloria Johnson. This is the interview right here. I just want y'all, everybody watching, just understand. So that was next to the green room in the student center where I spoke. It was just me.

I don't travel with the people. But I want you to understand. I just need y'all to understand how that happens. So we're sitting in there. So this is a DJI Action selfie stick. OK. That's what this is. So we're sitting there.

And I'm like, I didn't know she was going to be there. I said, hey, let's sit down and do a quick interview. So fine. I said, I need about five minutes. We did a nine minute interview. So all I simply did was sit there and take this $49.99 selfie stick this here with this $399 DJI action camera and then put this here on here and then take this

$329 DJI action wireless camera, excuse me wireless microphone DJI action wireless camera, excuse me, wireless microphone connected to this particular camera that was already good lighting in there and sat there and did the interview. And so some of y'all sitting here going, damn, hold up. You mean to tell me? Yep, that's right. I sat there, set it up myself, put this whole thing together, and then did that. Another interview I did was with Reverend Middlebrook,

who was one of the co-founders of the event. He was there in Memphis with Dr. King on April 4, 1968. I'm going to share that interview with y'all later. Plug that up, put these two microphones on me and Gloria. That's how we did the interview. This whole setup right here, y'all, you helped pay for, is $800. It would

have cost me $800 to hire a camera person to come out and do all that work, but I pulled this out of my backpack. Why am I saying all of this here? We don't have CNN money. We can't afford to say, oh, we're

going to have a camera op and a producer travel with you and go around doing interviews. This is how we make this happen. This is how we make it happen. We get it done. This is a DJI Action 4 camera. I asked them, are y'all live streaming my speech? They said yes.

Keenan is sitting here. The stream wasn't up. Keenan said, man, I don't see the feed. Not a problem. Sat this bad boy here on the podium, recorded my speech. When I get home, I'm going to upload it to Keenan. We going to live stream the speech later. This camera is $399. home i'm gonna upload it to kenan we're gonna live stream the speech later this camera's 399

i'm saying all of this because we are gonna do what black people do we gonna make it work yes sir we gonna make it work we gonna get the content we're gonna make it work yes sir but i Yes, sir. But I need our people to understand we will never be able to achieve scale and have 20, 30, 50, 100 people have crews in multiple states, have us going into the election season. We should have folks who are who are go to people in North Carolina, in Florida, in Wisconsin, in Philadelphia, in Michigan. We don't have that. Nobody else has it. I played you the Hakeem Jeffries comment. When a congressional black caucus comes out of their weekly meetings on Wednesday,

there's not a single black press person out there waiting on them. Because we can't afford to pay a congressional correspondent $100,000 just to cover Congress. I told the CBC, if we were able to get just $2 million of the $1 billion the federal government spends every year on advertising, I will hire three correspondents and three videographers in 90 days. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding.

But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives.

But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission.

This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.

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

of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things.

Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to

Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I told him that. But I need the Congressional Black Caucus to be putting pressure on these agents to say, who y'all spending money with? Department of Defense spending $600 million a year. Who you spending money with?

I met with OMD, who controls the U.S. Army budget. They ain't got back with me. Do y'all understand what I'm saying here? This is what I'm trying to get our people to understand. It is not that we cannot do it. It is not that it's not going to be quality. Because y'all see this show. I was in Jamaica, and I pulled up the show.

I was like, and I never get this B on that. I said, damn, the show look good. And there were some things I didn't like what I saw. Change this, change this. Okay, I want you to tweak this here. But the bottom line is I'll put this up against the other networks. Oh, no question. But we are never going to be able to cover more of what we need to cover as long as we are scrambling for dollars every single month.

And so this year, let me be clear. I'm putting pressure on the political people. I'm going to tell y'all right now, I've made it perfectly clear to a lot of these groups out here, environmental group, pro-choice groups, progressive groups, campaigns, the number is 10 million. $10 million in advertising on this platform between now and November. That's my number. Because you know who else has a number? Sinclair. Come on.

NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox. They all have numbers. I made a clip. My number is 10 million for advertising. The 10 million for advertising is going to allow me to go on the road and do four to six town hall broadcasts every single month. It's going to allow me

to go spend a week hitting five cities in North Carolina, taking the show on the road. Do y'all understand when Fox News has a town hall, how that gets paid for? The town halls that you see

on CNN and Fox News cost between $500,000 to $750,000. One town hall. But you can spend $750,000 on a town hall when you're getting $1.2 billion. Yes, sir.

This is what I want us to understand. So when a lot of y'all sit in and say, oh man, you sitting here trying to beg them for advertising, Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, you see today, Sinclair, Liberty, all of these media groups, all of these media companies right now are calculating how much money they gonna get. So those of us in black owned media shouldn't be doing the exact same thing.

Every black person who whines and complains when I talk about this stuff, how in the hell do you think they are able to do what they do? And guess what? When we get our fair share, then we can say, yeah, we're going to do a $50 million movie. And yeah, Taraji, here's your million dollars. Yes, so and so, here's your two million dollars every time you hear a story of a black movie a black network a black production having to do stuff and try to pull

and put it's because the money was not there. Y'all, it's there. They just don't want to spend it with us until we put that pressure on them to say, oh, that's going to be return on investment. I'm going to say it right now. General Motors, y'all didn't spend no money with us

last year. I'm expecting an allocation in 2024. Toyota, it's a bunch of black people buy Toyotas. Where are y'all at? Ford, where are you at? Chrysler, where are you? Wagoneer, where are you? Hyundai, you got a black CEO. A lot of black folks buy Hyundais. Are you spending your fair share with black-owned media? That's just in the automotive sector. Pharmaceuticals, oh, we know y'all love

depending on black people. Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, all these pharmaceuticals, where is the money? Black folks, when we get our fair share there, you're going to see more shows, food shows. You're going to see more specials. You're going to see more show hosts. You're going to see, guess what, a morning news show. You're going to see weekend programming.

The exact same way CNN and Fox and all were built, we can do the exact same thing. But as Dr. King said, we have to operate in the collective in order to make it happen. Reese and Greg, I appreciate y'all being on today's show. Thank you so very much. Folks, I hope you have a much better understanding of the media landscape. We started this thing off trying to explain to you how media drives narrative politically. We then segued into why progressives and liberals should be funding more of their own media so they're not sitting here saying, why is our messaging so bad?

Then we segued into trying to explain to you the infrastructure on how we as black folks, how we drive the revenue of largely white media companies, Tubi, Disney, Comcast, and all of these different companies. And then we segued into Black-owned media. This is not hard, y'all. We have the knowledge and the expertise and the know-how. We, as we gear up for Dr. King's birthday, should be doing the exact same thing he told us to do

on April 3rd, 1968, and that is to use our power and make it clear if you are not doing right by us, we are not going to do right by you. If you want to join our Bring the Funk fan club, our goal every year is this, folks. Our goal every year is to get 20,000 people of our fans to contribute on average 50 bucks. Now, if 15,000 people contribute 100 bucks, well, we achieve our goal.

But the point is this. For our fan bases able to contribute a million dollars, that really helps us out tremendously as we're fighting the battles to get the additional advertising dollars. And so you can see your check and money order at appeal box 57196, Washington, D.C. 20037-0196. Cash app, dollar sign RM unfiltered. PayPal or Martin unfiltered. Venmo is RM unfiltered. Zelle, Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. Folks, we do not have 100,000 downloads of our Blackstar Network app. Let's hit that number.

Download the Blackstar Network app right now. We're on all platforms. Apple, Android, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. Download on all of those platforms. You're going to watch our channel also on Plex TV. We're on Amazon News. Just go to Amazon Fire. Check us out there.

Amazon Freebie and on Amazon Prime Video. Folks, that's it. I will see you guys tomorrow right here on Roland Martin Uninfiltrated University of Tennessee, Tennessee, Knoxville. Thank you so very much to the MLK Commission. Thank you so very much. I'm going to be in Islip, New Jersey,

on Saturday for the MLK event. I'll be in Charlotte on Sunday. Actually, I will have a graphic for you, and then I'll be in Indianapolis at the Madam C.J. Walker Legacy Center on Sunday. Actually, I will have a graphic for you. And then I'll be in Indianapolis at the Madam C.J. Walker Legacy Center on Monday. So I'm on the road Saturday, Sunday, Monday, back in studio on Tuesday. All right, folks, see you tomorrow.

Halt! Black Star Network is here. Oh, no punches! A real revolution right now. Thank you for being the voice of Black America. All the 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 scared. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives

in small ways. Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. Small but important ways. From tech billionaires to the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it.

I'm Max Chastain. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer

is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

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

Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast.