#RolandMartinUnfiltered - "The Great Resegregation", Pastor Jamal Bryant Target fast, MSNBC cancels Joy Reid's show

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

2.24.2025 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: "The Great Resegregation", Pastor Jamal Bryant Target fast, MSNBC cancels Joy Reid's show Every day, we witness hard-fought civil rights being stripped away. Atlantic reporter Adam Serwer wrote an article titled "The Great Resegregation: The Trump Administration's Attacks on DEI."He'll explain how the attacks on DEI specifically aim to reverse the civil rights movement.  Georgia Pastor Jamal Bryant will join us to discuss the upcoming Target fast and share his thoughts on the Black individuals who attended the White House Black History celebration, calling for FBI Director Kash Patel to take action against him. MSNBC cancels Joy Reid's show.  Former Vice President Kamala Harris took center stage at the 56th NAACP Image Awards, where she received a prestigious honor. We will show you her acceptance speech, in which she warned about the current MAGA administration and offered guidance on navigating these challenging times. The music world mourns the loss of two giants tonight: Roberta Flack and Jerry Butler. #BlackStarNetwork partner: Fanbasehttps://www.startengine.com/offering/fanbase This Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC.  This investment is speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment. You should read the Offering Circular (https://bit.ly/3VDPKjD) and Risks (https://bit.ly/3ZQzHl0) related to this offering before investing. Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox  http://www.blackstarnetwork.com 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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2025 coming up on Roland Martin, unfiltered streaming live on the Black Star Network. Every day we witness hard-fought civil rights being stripped away. The Atlantic reporter Adam Surer will talk to us about the great resegregation by Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Georgia pastor Jamal Bryant will join us to talk about the upcoming target fast and also his thoughts on the black Maga Republicans who held up a picture of his face at the White House celebration. MSNBC is canceled.

Joanne Reeds show tonight is her last show. Got a couple of things to say about that. Plus, former Vice President Kamala Harris took center stage at the 56th annual NAACP Image Awards this weekend, where she received the Chairman's Award. I'll show you her acceptance speech. Plus, we lost two great musical giants, Roberta Flack and Jerry Butler.

Folks, it's time to bring the funk. I'm Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Blackstar Network. Let's go. He's got it. Whatever the piss, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoopstone Network. Let's go. He's got whatever the piss he's on it Whatever it is he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine And when it breaks he's right on time And it's rollin', best believe he's knowin'

Puttin' it down from sports to news to politics With entertainment just for kicks He's rollin', yeah It's Uncle Roro, y'all. Yeah, yeah. It's Roland Martin. Yeah, yeah. Rolling with Roland now.

Yeah, yeah. He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best. You know he's rolling, Martel. Martel. A couple of weeks ago, I did a breakdown saying MAGA is trying to defund black America. And when you look at their attacks on black folks and people of color, it's abundantly clear what they are trying to do. Make America Great Again, it really means make America great again for white folks.

Adam Serr, who is a writer for The Atlantic, wrote an amazing piece called The Great Resegregation. The Trump administration's attacks on DEI are aimed at reversing the civil rights movement. Adam joins us right now. Adam, look, I totally agree with it. As I said, when I broke that thing down, talking about their goal is to completely destroy the civil rights and the economic rights infrastructure that really has created the opportunities for African Americans.

It is not like it's been great and perfect, but the gains that we have have been as a result of those movements. Right. I think if you look at a lot of their early moves, they have been to undermine anti-discrimination efforts and to ban or remove information that could teach people about why racial inequality continues to exist in the United States. And I think another thing they have done really is, they have talked a lot about being meritorious and colorblind, but by their standards, you never, by their standards, you know, the assumption is that a white person is always competent, and a person of color has to prove that they're competent. Joint Chiefs of Staff, only to have him replaced by a lower-ranking white general who happens to

have the most important qualification for any position in the Trump administration, which is that he is supposedly extremely loyal to Trump. And that has nothing to do with merit at all. That has to do with Trump wanting people who are going to follow his orders without being worried about what the law says. Well, first of all, let's even go before that. First, you have the conservative attack when it comes to affirmative action in colleges. Then you have Republicans who say, oh, because of that Supreme Court ruling, that that somehow applies to everything. And so you had racist Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas who's seen letters to law firms saying, oh, your law programs that are about encouraging diversity, those are illegal. Then you had the Republican attorneys general doing the exact same thing.

And then you had the attack in companies. So companies began to repeal their DEI programs. And what I keep saying to folks is my argument for DEI programs are not for some largely white woman or white man who's in the DEI job. It's actually for the contracts, the supply diversity, all the other things that fall under the DEI window. That's what I'm looking at. Well, I think it's important to distinguish between DEI as a set of practices and DEI as they're using it. I think DEI for them is an umbrella term that just means any effort whatsoever to rectify historical racial inequalities. They think those inequalities are the result of natural differences in ability between people,

not public policy, and therefore it would be immoral to try to rectify those racial inequalities. And it's not just a question of employment or education, as he pointed out, but I think it really begins with an attack on voting rights. If you go back to essentially the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County case, you know, Chief Justice John Roberts, you know, he'd already weakened, watered down Brown, the Board of Education, and nonexistence by saying, you know, efforts to integrate were themselves racially discriminatory. And then he took the Voting Rights Act, the law that

essentially made America a multiracial democracy, a true multiracial democracy for the first time, and weakened its protections to the degree that, you know, you could continue to you could discriminate on the basis of race in voting laws. And we've seen a number of voting laws that happen to do that. And since then, the Roberts Court has continued to weaken the Voting Rights Act. They haven't sided against it in every single case. There was a notable case involving Black congressional districts in Alabama where they decided not to side with the conservatives in that case. But this attack is multipronged. It's occurring in education. It's occurring in voting rights. It's occurring in entertainment. When you ever see these backlashes against Black creators, you know, whether they're in the writer's room, whether they're on screen,

you know, this is part of an effort to say, you know, we want Black people out, whatever, you know, this slight integration of elite spaces of American life, we want black people out of it. And this backlash is, has now, you know, reached the heights of American power where the people who feel like civil rights have gone too far are now in charge of making public policy. And, you know, Adam, one of the things that, again, we're trying to unpack this and explain to people so they can understand the depths of this. You know, we're talking about on the federal level last year, some $10 billion in contracts went to black owned businesses, a record amount. Now, it wasn't even 2%, but it was the highest amount ever.

Then when you look at the $17 billion that went to HBCUs. So Trump comes in, cuts the 1890 Landgrid College scholarships, then begins to make, we know what's going to happen, how they're going to rebundle contracts. And so over the next four years, stripping DEI out of everything, you know, suspending people who went to DEI conferences. Then you have the Office of Civil Rights and the Department of Education telling colleges and universities any affinity program, black, Latino, Asian, women, must all in.

It's what people need to understand. When you talk about corporate America, you have these affinity groups which provide an opportunity for African Americans and Latinos and others to be able to join like-minded people and then begin to have support. Then we talk about fellowship programs, internship programs, apprentice programs, medical schools, law schools, engineering schools, all of these different things that have played a crucial role. They want to get rid of all those things. Then you go to the Department of Justice. They want to shift away from investigating white domestic terrorism and now go after Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

And so people need to really understand that Project 2025 laid all these things out, and some black folks acted as if, well, that's really no big deal, but they don't realize it is a full on assault on everything that speaks to the interest of black people being able to rise and prosper in this country. This is not a game. This is not fiction. It is literally happening. That's right. And I think the thing to think about is they believe, you know, as you just described, they believe that any effort to provide opportunities to people who have historically been denied those opportunities

is itself racist against white people who have a right to be on top forever. That's an ideology that is fundamentally discriminatory, and yet they've inverted it to say that if you try to help out people who have historically not had opportunities, that's the real racism. And it's extraordinary that this is, you know, essentially the ideology that is, you know, behind the federal government, has control of the federal government right now. Well, and not only that,

when you look at even just the statements being made, you know, when Elon Musk is talking about birth rates, that's about whiteness. He is bringing an apartheid perspective to the country. When Donald Trump says, oh, let me attack South Africa because they're stealing land when they're not actually doing that, then we're going to withhold aid. That's really Elon Musk being pissed because USAID played a role in bringing down apartheid. When you see these actions, and for the people who yell, well, that's right, we shouldn't

be spending money overseas, they don't really even understand that a lot of this stuff was also, frankly, repayment for America, colonizing countries and trying to fix the wrongdoing they were involved in. And so this thing is broader and deeper. And really what Trump and Elon Musk and Republicans are trying to do is completely decimate this system, this infrastructure, so it is nearly impossible to reestablish it if Democrats ever get back in charge.

I think, you know, especially with Musk, if you've been on X recently, you've probably encountered the absolute avalanche of scientific racism that is present on the site. That kind of content seems to have been promoted since Musk took over. In fact, he often highlights it himself. And when I talk about scientific racism, I mean, you know, the ideology, and it is a pseudoscientific ideology because race is not a biological reality. It is a pseudoscientific ideology that holds that race determines,

you know, your intellectual, creative, human potential. And so if you subscribe to that ideology, then it makes sense to discriminate on the basis of race because you have a sort of almost caste system-like belief about who is capable and who is not, who is capable of discharging certain responsibilities or performing certain kinds of jobs. And unfortunately, you know, that kind of perception is—it seems to be very popular among the people who, you know, are, have a lot of power in this administration. I mean, Musk himself, as I said, has promoted scientific racism on numerous occasions. And that, you know, when you have that kind of worldview, then you just assume that, you

know, as conservatives seem to have done recently with any, you know, catastrophic issue, that if something goes wrong, then it must be the responsibility of a person of color who did not really earn their position. Yeah, aren't you getting the kick out of it was DEI that caused the plane crash,

and then we found out the pilots were white? Oh, it's as if that thing just disappeared. Well, I mean, they're just staying on message, right? They're saying if your workplace is diverse, it's because the people who are not white who are there didn't earn it. And they say that sometimes explicitly. And what's useful about the term DEI for them

is that they say DEI and and allows them not to say what they really mean. Which is the N-word. And sometimes, yeah, they say, sometimes they're saying DEI with a hard R, correct. But, you know, they're not just talking about black people. Sometimes they're talking about women. Sometimes they're talking about LGBT. Hold on, hold on, white women. I mean, the administration. White women. Yeah. You know, sometimes, you know, they're obviously not interested in protecting LGBT people from discrimination either. You know, so this is really about reordering society into the sort of traditional hierarchies of race and gender that they feel are appropriate and using government power to do that. Here's what I have been saying to people. In fact, I was saying it in real time.

This is what we saw. First of all, in May would be the fifth anniversary of the death of George Floyd. And here's the death of George Floyd and the reaction to it is what I think truly scared white America. And this is why I say that. Because, first of all, this was the first black movement that in the history of America where a majority of Americans agreed with it, the Black Lives Matter movement. And I think there are forces in white America say, especially on the right, oh, hell no. And let me be real clear to people who are watching. This is not just Republicans. Some white Democrats as well.

That was, I mean, literally that was the basis of what I laid out in my book, White Fear. And so what did we then have? They saw young white people, young Latino people. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

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and they increased the percentage of new hires with people of color. So what happened in 2021? Attack Black Lives Matter. What happened in 2022? Attack critical race theory. What happened in 2023? Attack woke. 2024, DEI. All of those things were all a response to the national response to George Floyd.

So they were pissed off that the database was created for corrupt cops or cops that have killed people. They were angry that companies were creating DEI programs and were prioritizing diversity, people of color, when it came to jobs, when it came to investment, when it came to supporting things. And so the Christopher Rufo's of the world, the folk on the right, they said what we cannot do is we cannot have a generation of white kids learning the real history of America. So they attacked books, banned them, attacked education.

People need to understand this did not just happen. This was a clear, organized, well-funded effort to decimate everything in the aftermath of George Floyd's death. I think that's right.

And I think, you know, but part of the reason I think it worked is that there was so little that was done substantively in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder in the sense that, you know, you had Democrats sort of, you know, doing all these symbolic acts. But there was never any police reform legislation. There were no new laws that were passed that specifically addressed the issues that brought people into the streets. And so when Republicans started saying, oh, liberals and Democrats, they're insincere about this, they're cynical, They're just using this movement to control what you say and what you think. You know, I think that resonated with some people,

in fact, because they did feel like the Democrats were insincere in their commitments to Black equality, that they were cynical, that they didn't mean them, and that as a result of that, you know, it was, you that, it might have been easier to convince people to stay home in 2024 or convince people that these issues were not going to be as much of a priority for the Trump administration in terms of attacking the foundations of anti-discrimination law, that that wouldn't be one of their primary goals. And unfortunately, now we're learning, you know, just how important it is to them. So, Adam, what do you see moving forward? I mean, the reality is we're just entering the

second month. This is four years. Republicans are going to be controlling the House and the Senate at least for the next two years. I get asked this all the time. I got asked this a lot at the Image Awards this weekend. I get asked this. I got asked NBA All-Star Game. Man, what do we do? What's that? Like, what do we do? Where do we go? What do you say to people who ask that question? Look, you know, I'm a journalist. I don't know how to tell people how to respond to this. Okay, so what do you tell journalists how we need to be covering this? Well, I will say this. You know, right now, most of the things that Trump is doing are unconstitutional.

He is trying to do by executive order, you know, things that require Congress. And so the question is, how much of this are the courts going to stop? And how much is Donald Trump going to listen to the courts? But ultimately, enforcing the Constitution is going to be up to the people. People have to respond to what this administration is doing and let them know that they are unhappy with this stuff. People are going to have to get involved and assert their priorities in order to counter this if it's something that they want to stop. They're going to have to be active. They are not going to be able to

rely on the right-wingers on the Supreme Court or the conservatives, the Trumpist conservatives in the judiciary to protect their rights. They're going to have to do that. And I don't have a roadmap for how they should do that because I'm not a political strategist. But I do think that ultimately it's going to be up to the people to protect their rights because the institutions in American life are surrendering one by one to Donald Trump. All right, Adam, sir, with the Atlantic folks, be sure to pull the article up. Check out his piece, The Great Resegregation with the Atlantic. Adam, thanks a lot. Thank you.

Folks, going to go to break. We're going to talk about my panel next about this topic. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. This week on the other side of change. Abolition focus. Should we aim for reform or abolishing the entire system? Kamone Felix lets us know how much possibility lies in abolition.

That is such a radical image because it offers the suggestion, a suggestion that we already know to be true, which is that we have what it takes to take care of each other and to take care of ourselves. Watch us on the Black Star Network, so tune in to the other side of change. On the next Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach. Have you ever had that million dollar idea and wondered how you could make it a reality?

On the next Get Wealthy, you're going to meet Liska Askalise, the inventress, someone who made her own idea a reality and now is showing others how they can do it too. Positive, focusing in on the thing that you want to do, writing it down and not speaking to naysayers or anybody about your product until you've taken some steps to at least execute. Lease got Ask a Lease on the next Get Wealthy right here, only on Blackstar Network.

Hey, this is Motown recording artist Kim. You are watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Boy, he always unfiltered, though. I ain't never known him to be filtered. Is there another way to experience Roland Martin than to be unfiltered? Of course he's unfiltered. Would you expect anything less? Watch what happens next.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. saying less, watch what happens next. All right, folks, my panel, John Quill Neal, attorney for the John Quill Neal Law Firm out of Atlanta. Derek Jackson, state representative out of Georgia, District 68, joins us out of Atlanta. Dr. Julianne Malveaux, economist, author of Surviving and Thriving, 365 Facts in Black Economic History, and the president emerita of Bennett College,

joining us from D.C. Glad to have all three of you here. Derek, this is very simple. I'm going to start with you, and that is, again, this is all about how do you attack the economic and the civil rights, and the people think that that's not what's going on. They clearly are not paying attention. It is very clear. Hey, Roland, not only they're not paying attention,

they don't understand history. This is not the first time individuals tried to resegregate us. If you go back to the times of Reconstruction, when Frederick Douglass and those started passing the 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment, folks were upset. When Woodrow Wilson became president, Grand Dragon himself did not like what was going on. Then they formed the KKK. And so if folks don't understand what's going on, they're sleeping at the wheel.

Here's the bottom line, Roland. If I may evoke the spirit of Joe Madison, the Black Eagle, we know what's going on. The real question is, what are we going to do about it? We got to do more than just stay silent. We got to show up and show out. We got to boycott. We got to protest. We got to let our voice be heard because our ancestors prayed too hard and prayed too long and suffered greatly for us to just stay silent. And so that's the real question. What are we going to do about it? And here, starting in Georgia, we've been doing a lot. We've been making our voice

heard. We've been protesting. We've been boycotting Target and others. We just cannot stay idle because the future, Roland, is going to look back at this time and ask, what did we do in 2025? Not with Thurgood Marshall, not what Dr. King did. What did we do? And the question will be asked, and depending on what we do today, we'll determine that answer. Julian, one of the reasons why we have to do what we do, because we have to walk folks through what all this stuff means, and it literally is a civil rights, a legal, an economic, an educational assault. It is in all areas.

It is happening on the federal level, the state level, and the local level, and too many of our people are asleep at the wheel focusing on other things, not realizing what is really going on. And if they don't wake up, it is literally going to be too late. You know, Roland, one of the things that interests me is the way that this person, the president,

has thrown everything, including the baby and the bath water, in the mix. So on one hand, he's talking about getting rid of straws. On the other hand, he's, you know, let's look at the bottom line, and the bottom line is the economic issue. He said he was running because he wanted to fix the economy. He has done very little about the economy. So that's number one. Number two, you're right. A whole bunch of our people have lost their, you know what, minds, not paying attention. And you have to pay attention to what this man is saying that he's going to do. But if we paid attention, people would have read Project 2025, because he laid it all out there, this is what we're going to do.

Number three, I commend all the folks who are talking about boycotts, but let's be clear. Montgomery bus boycott was 381 days. 381 days. I love brother Jamal. I know he's coming on. 30 days ain't going to get it.

40 days ain't going to get it. Lynn ain't going to get it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Julianne, I gotta stop you. Matter of fact, let me see. I gotta stop you, Julianne. I know you real smart. But I gotta stop you.

Here's why. Always do, brother. No, no, I gotta stop you. Nope, here's why. Here's why. This is the book, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started,

The Memoir of Joanne Gibson Robinson. All right, here's the reality. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was not originally 382 days. The Montgomery Bus Boycott originally was one day. After they did one day, they said,

let's do it for the rest of the week. After the fifth day, then they said, let's continue it. So the reality is, and this is the reason I say this, but that's a mistake that we often make. We look at the Montgomery bus boycott

and we keep saying 382 days, but that was never the original intention. They added and then they said, let's keep going. The reason I'm saying that is because what Jamal Bryant is doing, and I know because I talked to him about it before he launched it, the plan

is to do a 40 day fast. It is to go from the beginning of Lent to Easter. And then after they hit Easter, there's a second phase. The reality is we cannot get people to think about a year boycott if they can't do six months. And we can't do six months if we can't do a month. So the reason I support the way he's doing it is because they are trying to do this thing in stages. Nina Turner and her organization launched their boycott February 1st. That was the first wave. We've seen the stock price of Target. Give me one second.

Target stock. Okay, so give me, I'm gonna do one month. Okay, give me one second. $163. Give me one, just give me one second. Now I need to show folk. So I need folk watching. This here, this here is, okay, it's coming up. This is the stock price

of Target. It's had some ups and downs, but the reality is when Target announced that they were going to get rid of their DEI programs that following Monday, the stock price was $142.50. Since then, the stock price has gone down almost $17. So I want us to do this properly in terms of how we lay it out. So these are the facts, how it actually started. Joanne has it in her book. It was one day. Then it was five days.

Then it kept going, and after the Supreme Court decision, it hit its 382 one day. Then it was five days. Then it kept going, and after the Supreme Court decision, it hit its 382nd day. Yeah, I will yield to your greater wisdom, Roland. I will certainly do that, because, actually, it was a situation where it started with one day and kept going. But the piece that I want to raise up always is the fact that this was a long-distance boycott. It started one day, five days, one month,

but it was a long-distance boycott. And so a lot of people are like, okay, I'm not going to Target today. No, keep yourself out of Target indefinitely. And it's not only Target. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I absolutely agree with that. out of target indefinitely. And it's not only target. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I absolutely, I agree with that.

But the problem, someone in the chat room said this, and I'm absolutely right. If your target goal is to lose 40 pounds, if you don't lose five, you can't get to 40. And I just think that oftentimes, I just think that oftentimes what we do is

we don't approach it with a day by day strategy. I think we try to approach it long term and I'm simply saying I can't start something long term if I can't get you to commit to short term. So I think we got to get our people to commit to

short term and then build from there. No, you're absolutely right that, you know, yard by... My mom used to say, yard by yard, life is hard. Inch by inch is a change. And inch by inch is, you know, not going to Target today or tomorrow and figuring it all out. What the power of an economic boycott

is very, very important. We've seen their impacts, but they have to be sustained. Yes. And we have to start thinking about ways. See, here's one of the biggest challenges. In rural areas, there isn't any place else but Target.

But, but, but, but, but, okay, okay, all right. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. See, here's, again, I understand the point, but here's the reality. We don't worry about rural parts of the country. Here's the, the reality is... No, no, no. First of all, Target has had, for the reality is, no, no, no. First of all, Target has had for the past decade a urban strategy.

That's been their target, no pun intended. Okay. Target has not had a rural strategy. That's Walmart's strategy. So it's not like, so the reality is Target has been thriving because they have been opening Targets in major cities. So to hurt Target, you focus, to be honest, you focus on the 30 largest urban markets where black people are. You hit Target in those 30 cities, that stock price is going to go below $100. You're going to knock off $15, $20, $30, $50 billion or more in valuation.

So I'm not worried right now. I'm actually not worried about rural America. I'm focused if you hit target in the 30 top cities, you are going to decimate their stock price and their market valuation. So we know if you live in rural parts of America, that's the only store, hey, do what you got to do, but really, the focus is really in those top places.

Let me go to John Quell, because John Quell, the legal strategy has to be a part of this as well. The lawsuits, the class action lawsuits, we're seeing that. We're seeing how the various groups are suing the federal government. But we've got to have our legal folks suing these companies as well. If you've got the white conservatives like Ed Blum using the 1866 Civil Rights Act against black people,

we gotta have a legal strategy going after them. I mean, that is an interesting dynamic, um, and point, um, Roland. Um, we've certainly heard about the lawsuit. Um, the big, the first major one, which was with the federal district court in Maryland that has blocked Trump's, some of his DEI orders. But as it relates to certain facets of it, not in totality, but there are injunctions where he cannot move forward with certain portions of eradicating DEI.

As it relates to your standpoint at the state level, with attorneys mobilizing locally to sue these companies, that's an interesting construct and one that I think would need to be fleshed out. And it's something, you know, this is what I will say. Where everyone is in America at this point, everyone is terrified. They're scared. They're anxious. They're avoiding the news. They're avoiding the issues.

They are not confronting these issues. And frankly, this is, I mean, that's an idea or a construct that would have to be mobilized in order for that to even see what that framework or what that would even look like, whether that's at the state level or the federal level. So that's an interesting construct as it relates to attorneys mobilizing in that manner, suing over, suing these specific companies. That's interesting. So that's something that we would have to mobilize. And I'll tell you, right, I'm a millennial and I'm on this panel. You know, I was not, my generation, we were not alive during the civil rights movement. Okay.

And, and frankly, you know, I would say that a lot of us need help with mobilizing, as we did not have to. We didn't come up during that era. That's not something that... Hold up, now. Hold up. I'm just telling you, we learned about... Hold up, hold up, hold up. But the civil rights, arguably the civil rights movement ended with the death of Dr. King in 1968.

But in the early 1980s, you had the apartheid movement. In the 1990s, you had the Gen of Six. You had Trayvon Martin. Right, but we were kids. No, no, no, no, no. Okay, hold up.

Hold up. Let me just see. Hold up. See, I mean, I feel you, y'all. I'm telling you. 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 call 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 hear y'all, but hold up.

I was born in the 80s. Okay, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm at the top. No, no, no, see, that's nice. See, hold up. You said you were born when? In 85. I was born in 85.

I'm at the top end of the... No, no, boo. You were 21 when the Gen of Six happened. This is what I'm saying. No, I'm not done. I'm not done. I'm not done, John Quayle. Continue on.

I'm not done. Continue on. When the Gen of Six happened in Louisiana, some 30,000 and 40,000 people mobilized in Louisiana. You were 21. Trayvon happened in 2012. You were 27. So the reality is... Wait, wait, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Then, then, Michael Brown. Then, um, um, um, while escaping me, Eric Garner. All... So the reality is there have been movements, there have been actions where people have mobilized when you have been in your 20s and 30s. So the civil rights movement is one thing, but we've had events that have happened in the 70s,

in the 80s, in the 90s, in the 90s, in the 2000s, in the 2010s, now the 2020s. So nobody has an excuse where they can't get involved in something because shit has gone down in every generation. So that's not what my point was. Okay. What's your point? I'm aware, and we're aware of those things that are happening. But what is going on now is, in my humble opinion, you know, is fairly radical. It is something that we have not seen before. And just talking amongst, you know, people in my age group, they want to be involved, but they're not sure. And a lot of people are taking an avoidance standpoint because their anxiety is so high. So what I'm merely stating is that with mobilizing in the different efforts and I'm aware of the target effort that's coming down on March 5th. But I'm just saying as a whole,

I definitely, humbly speaking, is saying that I think that, you know, this is somewhat uncharted territory. It may not be. Maybe I'm wrong. No, no, no. No, listen, I did something last week. And it's just, to me, it's the real deal. I think too many people who are millennials and Gen Z

are making excuses. I got the whole deal about it's a lot going on, and the folk are, I forgot the word that you used. It's, no, no, no, no, not that one. It's how they're feeling about what's going on. But the reality is, folk who are millennials, they were here when George Floyd happened.

They were here when Eric Garner happened. They were here when Michael Brown happened. They were here during the Black Lives Matter movement. The problem is, the problem is, folk today, to Julianne's point, ain't put their marathon shoes on.

They had their sprint shoes on. The problem is, folk figured, oh, Obama's elected, we good. No. When Doug Wilder was elected the first black governor of Virginia, we were not good. When Thurgood Marshall

became the first black on the Supreme Court, it wasn't like, yo, we good with racism in the criminal justice system. And so what has to happen is we got to have folk stop checking out. I said last week that my issue with folk who are 18 to 50,

my issue with people who are 18 to 50, my issue with people who are 18 to 50 is that they have been making withdrawals from the bank of black social, from the bank of black justice and they ain't made no deposits. That the generation that was going to the council meeting, was going to the school board meeting, was going to the county commissioners meeting, was going to the state capitals, was coming to Congress, the folk who were mobilizing and organizing, the folk who were working the polls, the folk who were precinct captains, the folk who were going door to door, knocking on doors, trying to get people to vote, the people who were forming civic clubs and community clubs who were neighborhood watchers, those folks, like my parents, are now in their late 70s.

And some of them are becoming ancestors. Some of them are retiring. And so this is the moment when I need baby boomers, excuse me, I need Gen X and millennials and Gen Z to step their ass up. And if somebody says, well, you know, I don't know where to go. I said, what it lays out in Nehemiah, you start right in front of you. If you are a millennial or Gen Z in Atlanta or Houston or Charlotte or New Orleans or anywhere, your deal should be, okay, what do I care about?

Is it education? Is it black entrepreneurship? Is it voting rights? What do I care about? Now, once I decide, hey, this is what I care about, I now need to find me an organization that's doing that very work. I don't need to start my own nonprofit. I don't need to sit here and create something new. Whatever you want to involve yourself in, there is something that exists right now to actually do it. Then I need them to

show up. I need them to join. You know as well as I do. It's a whole bunch. It's a bunch of us walking around because you want to be correct. You're a Delta, right? Yes. You're a Delta. Derek's an Alpha. Julian's a Delta. Right now, all four of us, we know

some Deltas and some Alphas walking around wearing their letters but ain't involved in shit. We know some folks wearing their letters. And even if you don't even want to go to meetings, well damn it, at least be financial. At least join the service project. We know this. So the problem is we got to be willing to challenge some folks saying, what did the late Joe Madison always say?

What are you going to do about it? And the struggle that we have right now is that that generation that took us from the black freedom movement, known as the civil rights movement, and they took us through the 70s, and took us through the 80s, and took us through the 90s, and brought us to 2000, and 2010, and then 2020, those folks, they truly are tired. And when I think of the brothers and sisters that made Atlanta, every Negro in Atlanta who is talking of calling today the Mecca, that's because it was some folk that elected Maynard, that elected Andrew

Young, that reelected Maynard, and elected Bill Campbell, and elected Shirley Franklin and elected Kasim Reed and elected black mayor at the black mayor, but it's been closed the last two or three times. Atlanta almost came closed not having a black mayor. So I just need folk to step up and stop stepping out. Now y'all can respond, John Quayle, then I'm going to go to Derek, then Julianne. Well, we are getting to my point, right? So my point was, is that I think people are unsure about how with the state of things and where they're at, how they can get involved.

And you why you wait. I don't understand why they're unsure. Well, I don't understand what that means. I really don't. What do they care about and have they joined anybody? Well, that's a fair question. That's the problem. I mean, that's a fair question. I'm telling you right now, in every major city in America, I can guarantee you there are multiple organizations, Derek,

that exist for folk to join. But here's the most important thing, Derek. Why does it matter? Why does it happen? Because it's called accountability. Because, see, Derek, it's easy to talk shit about what not happened and what needs to happen when your ass don't join nothing. Right, right.

Not only they don't join anything, Roland, they're comfortable, right? I mean, listen, Roland, man, I'm so with you on this one, brother, because when you think about everybody has been talking about, well, the Dems don't have a message or Kamala Harris did this and this and this wrong. No, no, nobody in the history of this country ran 107 days for president and came up two million short. She got 75 million. The convicted felon got 77 million. But, Roland, 89 million people registered voters. What was it that they didn't see or hear? Because we talked about Project 2025. We talked about you may lose your job.

And now there's 89 million who did not participate like the other 152 million, Roland. They calling my office up saying I just lost my job at CDC. I just lost my job at FAA. I just lost my job at TSA. And thought, and listen,

Roland, I'm going to be honest with you. They do not look like any of us on this panel that's calling my office right now. They voted for him. And so people just got too comfortable. And so I always say, you got spectators and participators. Spectators, you're going to have to live with the participators do. And so those 89 million registered voters, and then I like to bring it to Georgia because I love what you said, Roland. We almost missed Atlanta having a black mayor. 740,000 black and brown folks in Georgia did not vote. 740,000. There's 2.7 million of us in Georgia.

And so we can control our own destiny. We can have the number of governors, lieutenant governors, the attorney generals in Georgia. And so that's 740,000. I challenge them all. Join NAACP. Join the Urban League. And if you are a member of the Divine Nine, as you stated, Roland, be financial.

Because there's a lot of work to do. Because it's too late when you lose your job to make a protest and boycott. Let's get on the front end. You know, Julian, there was uh, there was, uh, Nakima Levy Pounds. Um, uh, this happened in Minneapolis. Uh, they were very frustrated with the NAACP there. Sure enough, these young folks did.

They became members. And then they ran for office. And because they brought in more people, they won. They took over the chapter. I remember when I was in Chicago and black folks used to call in to WVON radio, my show on WVON, and they would complain about the NAACP. And I said, take it over.

What do you mean? I said, well, you as one person need to go in and join. It was $30. And then when you get there, you need to go in and join with $30 And then when you get there say when last time we had election and then when you find out how people voted I said, so let's say the person got elected with a hundred votes I said well then go out and recruit 124 your friends and y'all come back and join Don't tell nobody what y'all doing and when when it's election time, run everybody for every position and take the whole thing over.

Well, you know, I said, hold up, I don't understand. Why you giving me excuses? I said, either you take it over or shut the hell up. And it was like,

I don't know. I'm like, right. Because that's going to require some work. It's going to require some work. The youth membership was five hours. So we got, the old man who was the president was

interesting. So we got folks five hours. I stole some money. I reappropriated some money from my mama's pocketbook to get some of my friends to join, and we took it over. And that's what—I am frustrated with my sorority. I love her dearly. I'm so happy to be on this panel with her. But I'm frustrated by the young folks saying we don't know what to do. The playbook is out there. You do know what to do, and we must do it. I'm lining up with my brother, who's talked about what's happened in Atlanta. It's happening all over the country. Our younger people are sitting back like they don't know

anything. But hell, they came up under us. They've got to know something. They've got to know something. And here's the bottom line here. What we see is a conspiracy of silence. I'm so glad you have the brother on from the Atlantic to talk about the resegregation, because it's really important what's happening. What we're seeing is a lot of people, they're not in it. I just had one of my white neighbors telling me, I don't even know why she talks to me, telling me, though, that her niece got laid off

from a health lab somewhere in the middle of Philadelphia. She's like, well, what can we do? You know, I tried to keep my language clean, but I'm thinking, if you had not voted for that man, we would not be in this situation. So the fact is that some people do not believe that fat meat is greasy. They do not believe that Project 2025 was a playbook. And now we're all feeling it. And I don't think there's anybody on this panel or anywhere else who would say government could be streamlined.

But streamlining government and wholesale layoffs, 5,400 here, 3,000 there, USAID workers stranded abroad, that's not what they voted for, but that's what they got. Got it. And so we move ahead into 2026 midterms. Stay home, sister. Well, actually, you can't get to 2026 until you deal with 2025 local election. Let me let John Quayle respond, and then I got to go to a quick break

and then go to my next guest. Go. I'm going to say this real quick. I think everybody is missing my point. My point is it's not to state that I'm unaware of how to be active. I think everybody is missing my point. My point is, it's not to state that I'm unaware of how to be active. I'm extraordinarily active in the community. What I was stating is, is that my generation specifically did not grow up under the conditions during the civil rights movement with having to deal with racism to that magnitude to the day to day. And as a result of the hard work that our ancestors and, frankly, my parents and other people have had to put in through their tenure so that we could have the life that we have

had in America, it has developed into a level of it being stagnant or being uninvolved as a result of that. And what I'm stating is, is that the state of the country at this juncture is beginning to outwardly appear that it is really going back to that way, although there have been significant incidents after that. But my point was, is that it is coming out that it is affecting people's day-to-day in that kind of capacity. And that's what I meant by relating that back to the civil rights movement to where I think more people are wanting to be involved and are more anxious and they are scared to the degree that those back then during those times were where some of these other instances over time may not have affected them to that level of intensity.

I got that point. I got your point. And I'll say this here before I go to break. I think the problem for, and I often refer to myself as a post civil rights movement baby, the problem for post civil rights movement babies, and that's Gen X, that's millennials, that's Gen Z, and now Gen Alpha, is that, as I said,

we are still living off of the hard work of baby boomers in the previous generation. Correct. And a lot of us fell for the okey-doke. We actually believed that we would not have to fight racism. We actually fell for the okey-doke. We actually believed that we would not have to fight racism. We actually

fell for the okey-doke. And I was on CNN telling people, don't believe that BS, that we live in a post-racial America. Many of us... 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.

We're shielded by parents from the harsh realities of redlining, of segregation in homes, and the things that we encounter. So we actually believe that we lived in this, that scene from Scandal, when a man says, you're running around as bombs are going off and you're mistaking it for a field of daisies. And so what we have to recognize is

now that Gen X and millennial and Gen Z and Generation Alpha is now faced with the reality of what they're doing, the question now is, are they going to wake the hell up? The question now is, are they going to get their asses off the sidelines and get away from the brunches and get away from taking eight, ten trips a year and doing all... And listen, we all have done fun things,

but are they going to get in the game? Are they actually going to be able to do something? Are they going to sit here and step up? Are they going to join organizations? Are they going to recommit themselves to the advancement of black America? Because if they're not going to recommit, if they're going to stay on the sidelines, they're not going to get involved. Then they are going to get exactly what the opposition is going to do, and that is they're going to run a rough shot over this system while too many are sitting idly by,

as I said, engaging in bullshit conversations about a housewives show or if LeBron and Michael Jordan is the GOAT or some other stuff. I don't give a shit what Meredith to medicine is talking about. I don't give a damn about

no Hollywood. No, I don't Zeus network. I don't give a damn who Jocelyn is fighting. I don't give a damn about any of that stuff. But what we cannot have is another generation of black folks who are ill-informed, who don't watch news, who don't listen to

the news, but would rather say, I don't want to hear all of that stuff because it's just too much. But then when that stuff comes to their front door, they then go, I wish somebody would have told me. Well, you had the opportunity to access the information, but you opted not to for some other stuff. And that's really what we're being faced with. I'm going to go to a break when I come back.

Pastor Jamal Bryant attacked at the White House. He's got some words to say about that. Also, launching targetfast.org. We'll talk about that as well right here on Rolling Mark. I'm Phil Jones of the Black Star Network. Support the work that we do. You see me rocking my shirt, Black-Owned Media Matters. But here's the whole deal.

We can't just talk about Black-Owned Media. We can't talk about, oh, I wish they would cover this stuff. We can't just sit here and be mad that MSNBC has canceled Joanne Reed's primetime show. We can't be mad about these things if we don't actually financially contribute to the building and the sustaining of Black-Owned Media. So if you want to support this show and this network, give to us via Focasshap. Use the Stripe QR code. It's right there. If you're listening, go to BlackstarNetwork.com to access it. You can also see in your check and money order

PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C. 20037-0196. PayPal is R. Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is Rmunfiltered. Zale, Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. We'll be right back. This week on the other side of change. Abolition focus.

Should we aim for reform or abolishing the entire system? Kamone Felix lets us know how much possibility lies in abolition. That is such a radical image because it offers the suggestion, a suggestion that we already know to be true, which is that we have what it takes to take care of each other and to take care of ourselves. Watch us on the Black Star Network, so tune in to the other side of change.

What's up, y'all? This is Wendell Haskins, a.k.a. Wynn Hogan at the Original Chief Golf Classic, and you know I watch Roland Martin unfiltered. All right, folks, we've had conversations talking about the focus on Target. Earlier you saw me with the show The Target Stock Price. That effort was launched by Nina Turner's organization. That commenced on February 1st. Ever since then, you've seen the actions take place all across the country. You've even seen some folks going to Target,

filling their baskets up with groceries, and then going to the counter and literally saying, oh, no, I'm sorry, I'm not going to buy these items because y'all are not supporting DEI. And we talk about DEI, it's not just, folks, it's not just, you know, again, as some people rightfully say, oh, these DEI positions largely held by somebody white. It's really about the infrastructure, supply, diversity, contracts, things along those lines. And so Pastor Jamal Bryant announced earlier this month an initiative called Target Fast.

And he's going to explain what this is. But a lot of people are always talking about, well, what are the demands? Well, they're very clear. If you go to TargetFast.org, this is what you'll see. The four demands of Target. Honor the $2 billion pledge to the black business community through products, services, and black media buys. Deposit $250 million amongst any of our 23 black banks, completely restoring the franchise commitment to DEI, and create a pipeline community center at 10 HBCUs to teach retail business

at every level. Pastor Jamal Bryant of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta joins us right now. Pastor Bryant, glad to have you here. And to Scott Bolden, you're watching. I told you, I allow Kappas on the show every now and then. I think, Jamal, you're on mute. I think you're on mute. I can't hear

you laughing. There you go. Let's see. You take it off of mute. See, Alpha got to still teach take it off of mute. See, Alpha gotta still teach. You still on mute. Can you hear me? You can hear me, I can't hear you. Control room, what's going on?

Is he on mute? He's not on mute. All right, so here's what we're gonna do. That's fine, that's fine. All y'all gonna do, just drop your signal, reconnect'all going to do is just drop a signal, reconnect. Just all you got to do is drop a signal, reconnect. We'll have it fixed. So let me walk you through this here.

So again, when Target announced that they were doing, this was a few years ago, when we and the Black-owned media alliance, we began to challenge them. Target announced they were going to spend, by December 2025, $2 billion annually with black-owned businesses. Then they also were rolling out a program

to really add black-owned products to their stores. So if you actually go to, I'm going to show you in a second, if you go to Target.com, they may still have it up because they had it doing, they had a button on their site for Black History Month. We got Jamal Bryant back. So, Jamal, can you now hear me? I can hear you, sir. Okay, there we go. There we go.

See, Alpha's always teaching, always teaching. This right here is Target's website. So this is their Black History Month section. So you see down here where they have all of this. They have a button down here called Shop All Black-Owned or Founded Brands. So when you click that, there are 1,135 results. Now, last month, there were more than that. You've had some black-owned brands that have actually pulled their products from Target stores. Jamal, you had a brother

at your church a couple weeks ago who was in more than a thousand Target stores. It's a clothing brand, and he pulled his product to honor this boycott effort, correct? That's correct. Black men smile. And so

the goal is to get 100,000 people to sign up for Target FAS. That begins, is it March 5th? Yes, sir. Next Wednesday, we're up now rolling to 70,000. So 70,000 people signed up. Your goal is to get 100,000 by next Wednesday, March 5th. So you got 30,000 to go. That's correct. Walk folk through the thought process of how you decided to not call it a boycott, but to call it a target fast. Explain.

Because my call, Roland, was directly to the black church. I wanted the Black church to have sin in the game. In the emergence of Black Lives Matter, this is the very first civil rights movement where the Black church is not on the front line and a faith leader is not the drum major. And so I'm mindful that other boycotts are moving forward, but I wanted the Black church to say that our head is not in the sand, but I wanted the black church to say that our head is not in the sand, but that we are aware and we're lifting our prophetic voice. Lent is the holy season for Christians that goes from Ash Wednesday to Easter, so that while we're

withdrawing our funds from Target, we're also focused in prayer to take the spirit of the Montgomery bus boycott, who every night for over a year went back to the church at night to get their spiritual grounded. But I was to explain this earlier, and I showed this book here, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started, the memoir of Joanne Gibson Robinson. She was the one who crafted this, who crafted the boycott. And as I said, it was a one day boycott. After that first day, they extended it five more days,

and then they said, we're gonna continue it in perpetuity until we get what we want. And so you were very specific in saying, we're gonna do this from Lent to Easter. Yes. Explain that as well. Yes, because Target is publicly traded, we're able to use 40 days to see what is the spending impact. Somewhere in the orbit, I learned right on the Roland Martin unfiltered show, black people spend around $12 million a day. So if we're able to

track over those 40 days to see where it has already gone down, the stock has dropped by $11 a share. They're losing millions of dollars. And those of you who missed it, stockholders are now suing Target. So we're able to take tangible data and say, with these 100,000 people whose emails we can point to and show them where's the price point, take it to the stockholders of Target and the board and say, now let's talk, now let's negotiate because we're operating from a position of strike. And if you go through that piece and then after Easter, there's a second phase if you decide to continue that, correct? Yes. So 40 days is our initial rollout. It is not the end of the journey. It is really for us to have a benchmark to see where we are and how we proceed. The stockholders meeting is on June the 8th in Minneapolis,

June the 5th, excuse me, in Minneapolis. And so we're prepared that we'll go there if it extends that long. But the way all the reports are coming back, that target is underperforming. I don't think they'll be able to sustain until that board meeting. And the thing that, and you know this, because I'm always saying this in our chats and everything else, is that we have to study Operation Breadbasket and how they did it and what they did and understand that it must be properly organized and mobilized.

People call for boycotts, but if it ain't organized and mobilized, it's absolutely going to fail. So by having a very specific organization and mobilization, and again, as I said, Nina Turner and her group started on February 1st. This is another piece of it, not tied directly to it, here we are, and then we come back here, and let's say at the end of the, after Easter, and if we come back, and all of a sudden, I'm able to click this one month right here, and all of a sudden, I see that Target stock goes from today $125.77 and it goes month, it's right here. Target stock is down 8.79% or $12.12 in the past month. That's critically important. If that thing drops to $120, $115 115, 110, they are losing market cap. They're losing

billions of dollars. And that's what people have to understand. But if it's not organized and mobilized, it will absolutely fail. Yeah, this is the information age and knowledge is power. When we're able to roll out tangibly, what is the data, men lie, women lie, numbers never lie. And so when we're able to roll that out, I think that we're able to have a greater impact and it changes our position. We're not asking Target to do us a favor. We're asking Target to be a partner because we're longstanding in the community. We always banter about that we have $2 trillion worth of spending power. Now let's lean on it and show where our real strength is, not just as consumers,

but conscientious consumers. Before I go to the next topic, I want to go to each one of my panelists for questions specifically about this. So let me start with Julian. Julian, what's your question for Jamal Bryant? Hey, Jamal, good to see you. Appreciate you. And I know your parents are very proud of you. I hope so. You have laid this out with Target. What's next? Is it going to be continuing with Target or finding another predatory capitalist that we also need to boycott. Yeah, I think that target is the first, as our other dear panelists shared,

about the shift of mindsets of generations. Don't forget that a large bulk of this generation was born under Obama. And so I think it's very important that we just shoot at, no pun intended, one target at a time. As I keep saying, target is the first, it is not the last, and it will not be the only. But this generation needs to see a win. And so I think if we hone in on target and then from there, whether we go to Walmart or Amazon, but I want the generation to be able to find its wings and its legs and say, we did it here,

now let's move on to the next one. But I want to do it one at a time. And I think the other reason why you do it one at a time is because you have to learn best practices. Two, you don't have to always hit ten. You can hit one and the other nine are going to see and say,

I am not trying to have that smoke come my way. Yeah, that's what McDonald's is feeling from the pullback of the Latino community, even in this moment. And so all of them are huddling, trying to figure out how do we resist the wind so it doesn't turn into a whirlwind. The old quote is, we're not outnumbered, we're out-organized. And so I think if we organize in this era, then this administration and these corporate factions

will be mindful that these black people aren't just coming up with hashtags, but they're really mobilizing to make an impact. Derek? Dr. Bryant, always good seeing you, sir. My question is around mobilization and organization. And you certainly don't have to share your strategy on here, but it just seems like the more that we do in terms of mobilizing and through that organization, through black churches, through the Divine Nine, through NAACP, Urban League.

Are you also having conversation with those organizations as well? I am, particularly around the black denominations. Again, I really wanted the church to take the lead in the forefront. A super bad sister whose name now escapes me from Harvard University said that the revolution is a 3% win. You don't need everybody to do it, but if 3% of the population are getting made up mind, they'll change policy, they'll change culture, and they'll changed society. Let's not forget in our fantasy island memory of Dr. King that the reality is most of Black America wasn't supporting Dr. King at the time of his assassination. The Baptist Convention split. So we don't need everybody to do it. We need really just a small faction who will stand steadfast in order to make the impact. John Quayle? I know that previously—and greetings, Dr. Bryant, Pastor Dr. Bryant. Greetings to you.

I know that one of the Black businesses was able to pull their business or their distribution at Target. Do we know anything about any of the other Black businesses that may solely be distributed by Target or anything in relation to them and kind of where they stand on these issues? Thank you so very much. What I neglected to share is we've partnered with the Black famous commerce. So when people register at TargetFast.org, within the hour, I email them a Black business directory of 300,000 Black businesses around the country. We send an invitation to all of the vendors who are in Target to know that if they

come and be a part of this, they'll be prominently placed on the page. We don't in any way want to hamper or damage these Black businesses or Black families, but we believe that they can make that same level of impact if they do it digitally and do it online. So we've sent out that invitation. I'll have to ask Brother Ron Busby where we are on those numbers, but I do know that we've set up a platform so that they'll be able to thrive if they're prepared to make the cycle. Let's move on to the next thing. Last week, Trump threw a joke of a Black History Month reception at the White House, even though the other federal agencies can't do any commemorations.

And as a result, some of these, some of his black MAGA minions had a video. I mean, they had a sign held up with your face on it. You see some of these folk here. And they roll that video that one of those minions posted where they were waving the sign with your face on it. The White House. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And hey, hey, everybody here, Cash Patel has been confirmed as an FBI director! Who's ready for some heads to roll? Let's go!

Cash, I know you got the receipts. Hold them mother suckers accountable! Show ultimately. Yeah! Yeah, that's right. Jamal, yeah, that's right. Jamal. Yeah, that's right. So they did that and you responded very clearly yesterday from the pulpit. Y'all been praying for me all week. You've been nervous all week.

But I ain't afraid of the spooks that sat at the door. These runaway slaves hiding in the White House gonna throw my picture up thinking that I'm gonna be afraid. If you got real courage, don't show my picture. Show the picture of the one that fired the black joint chief of staff from the military. If you gonna show a picture, show a picture of the CEO of Target, Walmart, McDonald's, and Amazon that does not recognize black dollars or black business. If you gonna put up a picture, put up a picture of the state legislators in Florida that abandoned black books. If you gonna put up a picture, put up the picture of the one who is stealing classified information from the IRS and Social Security. If you're going to put up a picture, put up a picture of those that don't want your mama to pay $35 for insulin and your child to pay $35 for inhaler. If you're going to put up a picture, put up a picture of those that are jailing children and separating families. I ain't ever

scared. In case you forgot, I'm from the west side of Baltimore. If you got a problem, pull up on me. Thank you. Stokely Carmichael said, Our fathers had to run, run, run, but my generation is out of breath. We ain't running no more. Yea, though I walk. And after being on the run for 26 years from Saul and Philistines, David said, My running days are over. We don't have to run anymore. You only run when you're scared. But when you walk, when you got

confidence, that greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world, would you look at your neighbor and tell him I ain't running nowhere. Be like a tree. Be you steadfast. Unmovable. Always abounding. Knowing that your labor is not in vain. I'm not going to run when nobody is chasing me. But I'm going to walk like a smooth operator. I got to walk because I understand

that no weapon formed against me shall be able to prosper. All these other churches might not say nothing but at 6400 Woodrow, we right outside of Decatur, where it's greater. You got to understand that there is more for us than there are against us. Look at your neighbor and say, as long as we stick together, we ain't got to run. Hey, you tough men said whenever I tried to make our people be free,

there were a few Negroes that tried to go backwards and tried to risk our freedom. I feel bad for them coons in the White House who are in there tap dancing for Massa, wearing bow ties, shitting and grinding, laughing like nothing is funny. Get out of there, Negro, and stand with your people so that you understand that God is on our side. And, of course, like clockwork, Fox News came out with a story regarding comments you made about Minister Louis Farrakhan asking you, have you condemned his attacks on Jews? That's what happened. Yeah, it's the same playbook over and over again, is that they didn't speak to any of the issues from the sermon on yesterday, but immediately it is to discredit. So it's easy to talk about me

speaking at the Legion Man March than to talk about Elon Musk raising up the high Hitler sign. So I get it. But it is important that we remember Nelson Mandela's words. You don't let your oppressor pick your friends. So I think that we've got to keep focused on what is the main thing. So, absolutely. And, you know, for me, I made perfectly clear, you know, those are minions, those are folks. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

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

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Who don't mean nothing. They ain't in no policy meetings. They ain't making no decisions.

They just happy to get an invitation. And I thought it was interesting what Tiger Woods now embraces being black, huh? Hey, listen, listen. It never rains in Southern California. I don't know. I mean, he decided to show up to a Black History Month reception. I'm like, hmm, ain't that something? All right.

Again, Pastor Brian, let folk know when the Target Fast starts. We start next Wednesday with 30,000 from our goal. La-di-da-di, everybody, please go to TargetFast.org. I need you to register. I'll send you a digital directory of 300,000 businesses. And today is our first day towards making a difference and impact. Roland, thank you so very much.

I appreciate it. And I see some of y'all in the chat. Y'all were saying, man, Pastor Brian sounds muffled. I know why he sounds muffled. Y'all don't worry about it. I've already sent him some links to some items to get to correct that. So just go ahead and check your text message. And as always,

you know, when it comes to... When it comes to technology, I don't play. I'm glad to be here. Thank you. Appreciate it, Doc. Thanks a lot. Love you, sir. You know, folk, again, let's be real clear. When you are doing the work, when you You know, folk, again, let's be real clear.

When you are doing the work, when you are doing the work, folk are going to get mad. And so all you got to do is just challenge folk who ain't doing the work. That's what you got to do. All right? So we're going to go to a break. We come back. We're going to talk about MSNBC, them canceling Joy Ann Reid's show.

She's on live right now. It's 744, 16 minutes left in her show. She's also going to be announcing on her show what she plans to do next. But I got some thoughts about what has gone down. You're watching Rolling Mark Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Support the work that we do. Join our Bring the Funk fan club. Now, some of y'all in the chat have been asking, how do we contribute via Cash App? Show it right now.

This is the QR code. Cash App canceled all of our accounts because they changed their rules on the type of company you have to have. So in order for you to give to us via Cash App, you can do so through the Stripe app. This is the QR code right here that you can just point your camera to and it'll take

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You can get the audio version that I read on Audible. Thanks a bunch. We'll be right back. This week on the other side of change. Abolition focus. Should we aim for reform or abolishing the entire system? Kamone Felix lets us know how much possibility lies in abolition. That is such a radical image because it offers the suggestion, a suggestion that we already know to be true, which is that we have what it takes to take care

of each other and to other side of change. On the next Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, have you ever had that million-dollar idea and wondered how you could make it a reality? On the next Get Wealthy, you're going to meet Liska Askalise, the inventress, someone who made her own idea a reality and now is showing others how they can do it too. Positive, focusing in on the thing that you want to do,

writing it down and not speaking to naysayers or anybody about your product until you've taken some steps to at least execute. Lease got Ask a Lease on the next Get Wealthy right here only on Blackstar Network. Hatred on the streets, a horrific scene a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence white people are losing their damn lives there's an angry pro-trump mob storm to the u.s capital 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. 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.

What are you doing? My name is Mark Carey, and you're watching Roland Martin, unfiltered, deep into it, like pasteurized milk. Without the 2%, we getting deep. You want to turn that shit off? We're doing an interview, motherfucker. All right, folks. Over the weekend, a lot of people were angry when the word came out that Joanne Reed,

her primetime show on MSNBC, had been canceled. The I found out on Saturday, and then MSNBC would not confirm that, but then Variety and the New York Times dropped some stories that night that confirmed what was going on. She's hosted that particular show for five years. And prior to that, she had a weekend show on MSNBC. As well before that, a daytime daily show. And before that, a weekend show. So this was actually the fourth show that Joanne Reed has had at MSNBC.

And so there have been a number of people who have been expressing lots of outrage as a result of this decision. Last night, there were a number of people at one point that about 10,000. This was a win with black women and the win with black men Zoom. At one point, they had about 10,000 people who were on the Zoom and about 13,000, 14,000 people who were live on YouTube. And so what MSNBC has apparently decided, they're going to move the weekend show that features Michael Steele, Simone Sanders and Alicia Menendez. They're going to move that show to the 7 p.m. slot that Joy currently occupies. She's doing her last show right now, announcing what she's going to be doing next. And so that's happening as we speak. So that's with that decision.

Also, the New York Post reported that they were ending several other shows. But they wrote, like, for instance, Jonathan Capehart, as well as a couple of others, but they're going to be moving them to other shows. So there's a whole realignment with their programming strategy. Rebecca Cutler, I worked with her at CNN

several years ago. That's a whole other story. She became the president of MSNBC when Rashida Jones announced that she was stepping down. And so Cutler has been remaking the network, you know, in her own image. Now, also understand, there's also upheaval happening at MSNBC because Comcast announced that they were creating a separately publicly traded company called SpinCo. And what SpinCo is, is Comcast is moving these various networks into a separate business. Let me pull that press release up.

And this also is the heart of this. So under this, MSNBC and NBC were under the Comcast umbrella when they purchased NBCUniversal. But now, go to my iPad, Henry. So Comcast announced on November 20th they were creating this separate business. And so what they were doing, they're putting, excuse me, they're putting USA Network, CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen, the E-Network, SyFy, and the Golf Channel, along with their other digital assets such as Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, Golf Now, and Sports Engine through a separate publicly

traded company called Spinco. Mark Lazarus was gonna be the CEO of that company. They're gonna keep NBC under Comcast. And so now you're having these separate companies. You've had Elon Musk float the idea that when they become public, he may buy that company. So all these things are being thrown out. So keep in mind, when you talk about changes over the years, you've had other folks who've had shows. You've had other black women who've had shows on MSNBC. Shows got canceled. Tiffany Cross had a weekend show that was

canceled in December 2023. Karen Finney had a weekend show. Melissa Harris Perry had a falling out with the network where she did not want to cover Trump rallies. She said she wanted her show back. They said, no, you have to cover it. She ends up leaving the network. And then when that happened, Joanne Reed, who had a weekday show, then took over her weekend slot before she took over, got the primetime show. And so all these things are going on. And you see the decisions of how these mainstream networks operate. Now, you also have these networks who are getting rid of folk because they've been highly critical of Donald Trump. You look at Jim Acosta over at CNN. They chose to

replace him at 10 a.m. and offer him a midnight show, which he obviously declined. So he has since left the company and he has his own show on Substack. Again, Joy is announcing right on her show what she's going to be doing next. And so I don't know if it's a podcast, if it's a daily show, if it's something on Patreon, Substack. No idea about that. But you have a lot of her supporters who are very upset with this decision because they say it is the silencing of strong black voices, the silencing of strong female voices. And so what is being happening is her supporters. Give me one second. I'm going to show you this here. They actually were encouraging people.

They were encouraging people to support her show tonight so it can end with very high numbers. Now, this here is a graphic that they've been distributing. It says, turn the TV off and turn on black media. We won't let media conglomerates determine who tells our stories. We need 15 million people to tune in for Joy's final show, then turn the TV off. And then they had this other graphic. We need Joy. MSNBC is silencing black voices.

We're not letting this go. Call MSNBC at 212-664-4444 and demand they stop erasing black voices from political media. So that is happening. And the thing that we have to understand is that the reality is when you talk about these shows, when you talk about on these networks, the African-Americans who have these shows, they don't own the shows. The network does. And the reality is the network decides who they want on for a variety of reasons.

And so it's understanding what is going on. It's understanding how the world is changing. It's understanding how these folks are making decisions. And the reality is this, and y'all have heard me say this for a very, very long time. If you do not own it, you only have what we call leverage and influence. Owners have power.

You've heard me tell this story before. When Michael Jordan played in the NBA, Michael Jordan, folks talked about how he was the most powerful basketball player in the NBA. And they were actually wrong. Michael Jordan had the most leverage. Michael Jordan had the most influence because Michael Jordan could put seats, could put butts in the seats. So Michael Jordan, when he decided to become president of basketball operations for the Washington Wizards, he was still flexing his power and influence.

Then Michael decided to come back and play for two seasons. And here's what happened. After Michael played his second season, Michael then chose to retire. And when Michael retired, Michael went to meet with Abe Pollard, the owner, with Ted Leonis, one of the minority owners, to get his job back.

And while sitting with Ted Leonis, Ted Leonis said, well, Michael, we're going to go in a different direction. And see, Ted Leonis, privately, secretly, silently was bothered by some things that Michael Jordan had done, how he had treated some staff there. Okay? So Pollan says,

Michael, here's a $10 million check. Thank you for your services. Michael was stunned. Michael looked at Ted Leone and was like, what the hell is going on? Ted Leone had no idea either. A. Pollan fired Michael Jordan. See, Michael Jordan didn't have power because he didn't own it. He had leverage and influence.

And Michael stormed out of the meeting, $10 million check sitting on the table, got in his Jaguar and drove off. So when you see that photo of Michael Jordan behind the wheel of his Jaguar, top down, he was leaving the parking lot. Later, Michael Jordan tried to buy the Milwaukee Bucks. He was rebuffed. He later ended up buying the Charlotte Hornets from Bob Johnson. When Michael Jordan did that, he was the majority owner.

Then Michael had power. What am I saying? What I'm saying is when we talk about these shows, whether they are on CNN or MSNBC, whether they are on any of these networks. In fact, whether somebody has a show on my network, the reality is they may have leverage, they may have influence, but they actually don't have power because they don't own it. When you own it, you decide who's on and who's not. You decide how much they get paid, you decide what they do. And so we are here where we are

because Frederick Douglass owned the North Star, because Robert Abbott owned the Chicago Defender, because the owners of the Pittsburgh Courier, the owners of Ebony, Jet, was John H. Johnson, Earl Graves' own Black Enterprise, Ed Lewis and others' own Essence magazine. I can go on and on and on. What we have to recognize is that it's important to have black voices in mainstream media.

But the fact of the matter is, mainstream media, mainstream white media, largely led by white executives, are going to make decisions that they want to make. And so what we can never do, while I absolutely support brothers and sisters and have fought for them to get mainstream jobs, what we can never do is allow black-owned media to die and perish. Because if that happens, then there is no place for us to have the unadulterated, the unfiltered truth when it comes to our issues. You must recognize that when we talk about black-owned media, it also means hiring people behind the scenes, hiring people who are editors and directors and videographers and video playback and associate producers and production assistants and on and on and on.

This should be a wake-up call to every brother and sister that those jobs are temporary. They're short-term. And it happens at Black-owned Media. We're sitting here because TV One, Alfred Liggins, the owner, the CEO of Urban One, decided to cancel News One Now. And when Alfred Liggins sat me in his office in December, I think it was December 2nd, 2017, or December 9th, I can't remember, to tell me the show was being canceled, did I flinch?

Nope. Did I cry? Nope. Was there a punch to the gut? Nope. Literally, as Alfred Liggins was telling me the reasons why he was canceling News 1 Now after four years. And before that, I had Washington watch for four years. As he was talking, I was planning.

As he was talking, I was plotting. We walked out of that meeting. I was sitting, DeAngela Proctor, went to high school with her. She was a senior executive at TV One. She was sitting next to me, and we went to to her office and she was like, I'm stunned. Now, remember, I was looking at her wall and she was sitting around. She's like, how are you feeling? I said, oh, I'm fine. I'm planning. Because see, the day I walked in the TV One, I knew there was an expiration date. The day I sat in the lobby at CNN in 2007

and said, God, if this is for me, let your will be done, I knew there was an expiration date. So I want all of us to understand that we should be rightfully upset when one of our favorite voices is no longer on one of those mainstream platforms. But we must remember that that day could

come for any one of the folks. Lester Holt announced today that he was stepping down as the anchor of the NBC Evening News. He's going to commit himself to just doing Dateline. Other shows hosts have left. And I had people tell me, they said,

and I'll never forget, I had a group me, I had people tell me, they said, and I'll never forget, I had a group I was working with, all black, they said, well, we're no longer going to work with you because, this is a true story,

I got the letter, because your media profile is diminished. Now first of all, I had already decided to fire them because they were not productive. And I said,

I'm sorry, diminished? See, what happened was they felt my media profile was diminished because I was no longer at CNN when in April 2013 I left after they did not sign me to a new contract. And I said, diminished? We had just announced I was going to get a syndicated radio show, a daily morning show on TV One. And I signed a new deal with Tom's Journal show, a daily morning show on TV One.

And I set up a new deal with Tom's on a morning show. But my media presence was diminished. Here's what they were really saying. You're no longer on white media like CNN. So we don't want to represent you. These were black people. But see, I'd already fired them because they had not done what they should have done. And see, the interesting thing is that too many of us operate by white validation. Too many of us believe that white-owned media is better than black-owned media.

And the problem always comes up where we think that is better. We think it's a bigger check, it's a better vehicle. And let me be real clear, I'm not specifically talking about anybody in particular. I'm telling you a state of mind that exists among black people. And so the funny thing is, the folk who said that my media presence was being diminished because I wasn't on CNN didn't realize that I've been gone for 12 years. I actually make more today than I was making from CNN. We actually have done more.

See, what we should never do is believe that their ice is colder. We should never believe that our being is tied up in having that company at the end of our name. 2013, when I accepted the NABJ, Journalists of the Year Award in Orlando, this is exactly what I said to everybody in that ballroom. I said, too many of you are enamored with the largeness of the letters on your business card. I said, you work for big media companies, but you have small opportunities. I said, you see, when I sat at the table

in front of the President of the United States, I was sitting there because I was an anchor at TV One. But there were black folks who were at NBC and CBS and ABC who had big jobs, but because they were not main anchors, they were not invited to the meeting at the White House. And I said to that audience, I would rather have a big opportunity at a smaller company than have a small opportunity at a big company. Do y'all realize that when we launched News 1 Now in November of 2013, I could not get an associate producer or a line producer at a major network to apply for my executive producer job at TV One because they said that was a lesser network.

Here were folk who weren't even the executive producer, but they were so enamored with those call letters, NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, MSNBC, CNN. They were enamored with those call letters. What I'm trying to get us to understand here is that folks should be upset that Joanne Reed's voice will not be seen every night on MSNBC. They should be upset that they're not going to be able to see the different voices that she brought onto her show. They should be, but let me be perfectly clear. Joanne Reed's name does not have to have MSNBC host at the end for her to be effective. Joanne Reed does not have to have a primetime host on MSNBC to be relevant.

What we have to understand is that we still can do amazing work away from those mainstream outlets. We can actually build up our own and create sustaining organizations and not bow down to corporate overlords. Because here's the reality, folks, and I get asked this all the time. I remember I was going after one particular company and there was somebody with that particular company. They hit an agency that I work with and they said, you know, we think he is just going too hard against us. Who can we call? And the brother said, what are you talking about? There's nobody you can call because Roland doesn't have a boss. There's nobody over him who you can call. He owns his show and his company 100%. I had to explain to them that if you're upset with my commentary, that's your problem.

Because on the corporate hierarchy here at the Black Star Network, the only person above me is God. And the only person who can cancel me is God. Not Rebecca Cutler, not Mark Lazarus, not MSNBC. And so that's what I would say to Joanne Reed, to Tiffany Cross, to anybody else. When we become owners, when we control our voice and control our destiny, and we do what Freedom's Journal says,

and we have it on our wall, what they wrote on March 16th, 1827, the nation it on our wall. Well, they wrote on March 16, 1827, the nation's first black newspaper. They wrote, we wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us. That has been the mantra of the black press since March 16, 1827. And so the message to Joanne Reed

and to every black person who's been laid off and let go from a mainstream media organization, let me be abundantly. 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 one tas, 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. Be clear. Your life is not over.

Your voice is not silenced. You can have an impact and you can affect and effect this world. And you can infect folk with the truth. And you don't have to answer to a Rebecca or a Mark. All you have to do is have faith in yourself and rise above that moment and understand that that job is now in your rearview mirror. And there is an open road ahead and you can choose to do whatever you want to do on that open road and truly say what you always wanted to say because no longer do they get to tell you what you can and cannot discuss i'm gonna go to my panel julianne you first oh roland thank you for that encouragement for our people who are being laid off joy and reed we miss her we We will miss her.

But like you said, she has a voice. She has a brand, just like you did when you stepped out and did the Black Star Network. She has a voice. She has a brand. And she needs to leverage it. I was on the call last evening. There were tens of thousands of us on the call, then what we're really talking about is taking stuff back. This 47 moment of this person who pretends to be the president of the United States, because Democrats don't play as dirty as other people do, so we accept the results, even though we believe they're flawed. Four million people basically voted suppressed. Have they been able to vote? What would have happened?

But let's just say, this is a moment for two things. One, for black people to start working together. Too many of us have failed to. So, now it's a coming-together time. The other thing, the other time it is, is a time for us to look at the strength of our organizations, the strength of what we have. I'm looking at Woodrow Wilson. I'm looking at Ronald Reagan. I'm looking at evil devils who have been presidents before. And I'm saying we survived it. We will survive.

Derek. Yeah, I appreciate your words of encouragement as well, Roland. You're spot on. But I just want to be abundantly clear because all day today, a lot of us was on that same call that you referenced. We were one of the 10,000. And people were telling me, well, because her Nielsen ratings and she didn't get the awards. And I keep telling folks, no. You go to the Nielsen ratings and you see her brand alone. Every time she went from one day or time slot, Joanne Reid delivered. Her Nielsen ratings speak

for itself. She gets so many awards. She just got an award, an image award. And so I tell folks stop pushing somebody else's narrative. This was strictly about power and control and rolling your spot on. We don't need somebody else to validate us. Absolutely. John Quill. To my soror of Joy Ann Reed, this particular season in your life is meant for you to use your God-given gifts, which is to be a voice, right? A voice that speaks up for our communities, for our peoples,

a voice that speaks up against injustices that calls out people in many of the same ways as Roland Martin does. But the difference is, is that now you have the opportunity to use your platform and your ability to impact millions of people by the means of ownership and frankly, by any way that you want to. And so, you know, I'll leave with this is that, you know, when you're able to use your God-given gifts and you have the opportunity and the ability and the means to make a broader impact on your own terms, that is the way to go. And Roland Martin is 100% correct in ownership. That is the best thing that you can do with what you have and your gifts that you have.

Whatever opportunities that you choose next, I know that they will be fantastic. And just know that we are all here supporting you and to keep fighting the good fight because we need you. Folks, I want to play this because I think some folk need to be reminded of what happens when you step out on faith and when you don't worry about what other folk have to say. And this was 2019, Tyler Perry getting his BET Award. Listen to this, please. Sit down, sit down. I couldn't help but think about my mother.

I remember being a kid about five years old. She would take me into the projects with her when she played cards on Friday nights with a bunch of women. Now, these women didn't have more than a 12th grade education, but they were smart black women. They were powerful black women. They had great stories to tell. And I was a five-year-old

kid sitting there on the floor playing with my matchbox cars, listening to them talk about their men, their relationships and their pains. And when one of them would get really sad, another woman would come in and make a joke and they'd all start laughing. I didn't know I was in a master class for my life. I would get home and my father would be beating my mother and doing all kinds of things and saying all kinds of stuff to her and he would leave the room and I'd walk in and I'd imitate

one of those women and she would start laughing. There was a power in that that I didn't really get until I got older. I remember being about 11, 12 years old on my way to my new school, and I got to this intersection. I had to walk past pimps, prostitutes, walk through — literally walk through a graveyard, get to this intersection, six-lane intersection, and there was a man standing there saying, will someone help me cross? will someone help me cross? Will someone help me cross?

And there were all these people that kept passing by him and passing by him. I said, I'll help you cross. So he told me he was going to my school, and he was going to sell candy there. That's how he made his living. So I helped him cross the street to get there. We became good friends. His name was Mr. Butler. That moment reminded me of my mother, bringing her out of

pain into laughter to help her cross. My first 10 movies were all about her subconsciously, wanting her to know that she was worthy, wanting black women to know you're worthy, you're special, you're powerful, you're amazing. All of that was about helping her cross. When I started hiring people like Taraji and Viola Davis and Idris Elba, they couldn't get jobs in this town, but God blessed me to be in a position to be able to hire them. I was trying to help somebody cross. When I built my studio, I built it in a neighborhood that is one of the poorest black neighborhoods in Atlanta so that young black kids can see that a black man did that

and they can do it too. I was trying to help somebody cross. That studio was once a Confederate army base, and I want you to hear this, which meant that there was Confederate soldiers on that base plotting and planning on how to keep 3.9 million Negroes enslaved. Now that land is owned by one Negro.

It's all about trying to help somebody cross. While everybody was fighting for a seat at the table, talking about Oscar so white, Oscar so white, I said, y'all go ahead and do that. But while was fighting for a seat at the table, talking about Oscar so white, Oscar so white, I said, y'all go ahead and do that. But while you're fighting for a seat at the table, I'll be down in Atlanta building my own. Because what I know for sure is that if I could just build this table, God would prepare it for me in the presence of my enemies.

Rather than being an icon, I want to be an inspiration. So, thank you, BET, my new family. Thank you, everybody. I want you to hear this. Every dreamer in this room, there are people whose lives are tied into your dream. Own your stuff. Own your business. Own your way.

God bless you. Thank you, BET. Thank you, Scott. I love you guys. Thank you. That was important to play because I think sometimes folk have to be reminded that you don't have to seek permission. Tyler and I had a conversation after that. One of the things that he told me, he said,

"'Roland, if you think about every major black person "'in Hollywood,' he said, Roland, if you think about every major black person in Hollywood, he said, I have offered to them to come to be able to sit down and I'll lay out what I've done, how I built this. He said the only person who took him on his offer was Kevin Hart. Since the conversation, Nate Parker Parker did 50 Cent did but the reality is they weren't interested I need people to understand who's watching

it's not just applied to media it applies to our earlier conversation it applies to politics it applies to economics This applies to our earlier conversation. It applies to politics. It applies to economics. It applies to entrepreneurship. It applies to social justice. It applies to how do we transform our communities. There are a lot of people in our community who have conversations about what we need to do to change. There are a lot of people who are excellent at talking. They are excellent at identifying the problem. They are excellent at saying, man, we should be doing this.

Man, we should be doing that. Man, we should be doing this. Man, we should be doing that. Man, we should be doing this. Man, we should be doing... They are excellent at all of that. Rarely do we ever ask, so why haven't you done it? I need folk to understand that when we started this show, black folk told me that shit ain't going to work. Black folk told me.

Man, what you doing? You can't do that. I remember YouTube. We went, YouTube people, they were actually funding products. Literally said black news can't work. When we launched this show, we launched with 157,000 subscribers on September 4th, 2018.

That's what we launched with. How many of y'all remember this social media post when we hit 500,000? How many of y'all remember that particular post? How many of y'all remember when we posted this? How many of y'all remember when we posted this? How many of y'all remember when we posted this? How many of y'all remembered when we posted this? How many of y'all remembered when we posted the next number

and we kept going and we kept climbing and we posted this? How many of y'all remember that? How many of y'all remember when the folk who said, man, y'all ain't doing nothing, it ain't going to involve nothing, and we said, okay, cool, we good. We good. Y'all folks said you this and you that

and you boule and you bouge and you this and I'm like okay cool. What we did was what Nehemiah said just keep one hand on your weapon and the other hand build it. We didn't worry about the haters. We didn't care what the haters had to say. We didn't care about nothing they had to say because all they

did was just talk. We kept building. Y'all remember this one right here, huh? We hit that earlier this year. But just so you understand, right now, we've got 1,658,869 subscribers on our YouTube channel. In the last 28 days, we've had 32.5 million views. This is just on YouTube.

In the last 28 days, 85,000 new subscribers. In the last 28 days, the watch time, 6.7 million hours of watch time. But six years and four months ago, folks said, that ain't gonna work. Launched it with one advertiser, asked me,

and $350,000 of my own money. I'm saying that because the message to anybody out there in media, Tom Joyner and I talked about this beforehand as well. If you take care of the community, the community is going to take care

of you. That's right. 34,000 people have donated to this show and I've had people come to me I've had people they ask me to stream stuff they ask me to cover stuff

hey man can you come out and they talk about brother I'm praying for you I mean I'm praying for your health I'm praying for you I'm praying for that and man we gotta support black on media man we really need that we gotta got to keep that thing going. Then I called my man Keenan, who hands out digital operations.

I said, Keenan, can you check the roll to see if a name is mentioned? Can you, Keenan, can you check the roll to see if they donated? And 99.9% of the time, Kenan will hit me and be like, mm-mm, mm-mm, I don't see their name. Mm-mm. Folk who will stand there and talk about, oh, man, we got to have this. It's amazing. We never see their name because they never gave. Now, again, they want me to cover their stuff.

They want me to show up. They want us to do this, but they ain't contributed nothing. They ain't done nothing. They ain't done any of that. And remember when I told y'all Remember when I told y'all When I told y'all why we need modern day Nehemiahs and when I told y'all why we need modern day Nehemiahs and when I told y'all that history

will always remember the folk who stood with you. Not the folk like in Nehemiah who was on the outside of the gate saying y'all can't do it. They gonna remember the builders. And if y'all think I'm lying all you gotta do is when you go to Nehemiah chapter 3,

it says it right here. This gate was rebuilt by the sons of Hasaniah. They laid its beams and put its doors and boats and bars in place. Then it says, Miramoth, son of Uriah, repair the next section. And this is what you need to repair for the next section. And it says the next section. And it says the Deshana gate was repaired by, boom. They laid its beams and put its doors with their bolts and bars in place.

You read Nehemiah 3 and 4, it's going to tell you they name all of the people who helped rebuild the wall. So I hope y'all now understand why every Friday we run the names of the people. Control room, get it ready. We run the names of the people who gave 10,000, 5,000, 1,000, 500, 250, 200, 100,

50, 40, 30, 20, 10, 5, 1. They are the people who can take credit for helping build the Black Star Network. And when we as black people take full accountability and are willing to put our money where our mouth is,

if we are willing to actually engage in the action, there's nothing that we cannot build. And I can tell you right now, we can build a network as big as CNN, bigger than MSNBC, bigger than what's out here. We've got to first have the faith in God to do it. Second, the faith in ourselves. And thirdly, we've got to be willing to do the work to build. So let me thank John Quayle. Let me thank Derek.

Let me thank Julianne for being here. I appreciate it. I appreciate the folks who are on our panel every single night who make this possible. But I also want the folk watching to understand we can do it. Joy can do it. Joy can do it. Tiffany can do it. Angela Rye can do it.

We can all do it. And what also has to happen is folk also work together in concert to actually make it happen. Your support is critical to our success. So if you want to allow us to do what we do, contribute to our Bring the Funk fan club. We make it real simple. The target goal is to get 20,000 people contributing on average $50 each a year. It's $4.19

a month, $0.13 a day. You can do that by utilizing the Stripe QR code. Cash App, cancel our accounts because we are an ink, but you have to be an LLC. So if you want to contribute via Cash App, use the Stripe QR code. It's right there. Click the the LLC so you want to contribute via cash app use the stripe QR code it's right there click the cash app button to continue to

contribute you can see your check and money order peel box five seven one nine six Washington DC two zero zero three seven dash zero one nine six PayPal our Martin unfiltered is PayPal dot me for slash our Martin unfiltered put that in your signature in your subject line, signature line in Google. Venmo is venmo.com forward slash rmunfiltered. Zale, Roland at RolandSMartin.com, Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. If you want to get my book, White Fear, How the Browning of America is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds, when you buy that book, that money is vested back into the show.

Bookstores, you can get it or also get the audio version on Audible. When you get our merchandise, the money for merchandise goes back into the show. And so go to rolandmartin.creator-spring.com for the actual merchandise as well. And download our Blackstar Network app, Apple Phone, Android Phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. Tell your friends and family to subscribe to our channel. We want to hit 2 million subscribers. So just go to YouTube.com forward slash Realness Martin. Click subscribe.

That's all they got to do. And so that's because we launched a new show with Jameer Burley and Bria Baker. I want to watch three other shows this year. And this is what it's all about. Not having to ask somebody for permission to talk about what our concerns are. So that's what we're actually trying to do. All y'all YouTube folks,

it's 8,000 of y'all. Hit that like button. When you hit the like button, y'all, that impacts the algorithm. So right now, we got 3,600 likes. How do we have 8,000 people watching live right now and we don't have 8,000 likes? I know some haters in there. We should easily have 6,000 or 7,000 likes.

So y'all should be hitting that like button before I sign off. Now, I put this commercial together because here's the deal. I don't know what Joy's next thing is. I don't know if she's launching a daily show. I don't know. I'll get that update. But here's the deal. We put this together for the folk who,

we put that together for the folk who, if you watch her show every night, guess what? Want to turn MSNBC off. And you know what? We here every single night. Roll it. We begin tonight with the people who are really running the country right now. Trump is often wrong and misleading

about a lot of things, but especially about history. Donald Trump falling in line with President Elon Musk. In the wake of the unsettling news that MSNBC has canceled Joy Ann Reeve's primetime show, The Readout, Roland Martin and the Black Star Network would like to extend an invitation

to all of the fans of Joy and Reeve MSNBC show to join us every night to watch Roland Martin Unfiltered streaming on the Black Star Network for news, discussion of the issues that matter to you and the latest updates on the twice. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

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

Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Impeach criminally convicted felon-in-chief Donald Trump free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. folks who understand the power of black voices in media. We must come together and never forget that information is power. Be sure to watch Roland Martin Unfiltered weeknights, 6 p.m. Eastern

at youtube.com forward slash Roland S. Martin or download the Black Star Network app. Folks, this is all about us building, building, building. After we roll all of our donors, we're going to restream the program that we streamed earlier with Isaac Hayes and Fanbase. If you want to download Fanbase, this is a perfect example. Why are we still sitting here on Clubhouse when we've got audio rooms on Fanbase?

We can be posting images on fan base. They're working on a microblogging site called Spark that replaces Twitter. Bottom line, y'all, we should be supporting, building up, and investing in a Black-owned app as opposed to us just being consumers. So download the app, fan base, or if you want to invest, go to startengine.com forward slash fan base for more information. Folks, y'all see, I'm rocking Black on Media Matters. Hashtag Black on Media Matters. Use that, post that, because what we're building

allows us to tell our story, and we got to ask nobody for permission. I'm going to see y'all tomorrow. Halt! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. More time Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We are officially live. And we're going to give everybody just a second here to funnel into the room. And quickly, I'll just introduce myself. I'm Josh Amster. I'm the Senior Vice President of Fundraising here at StartEngine. And we've got two very special guests with us today. I'm sure many of you will recognize the famous Kevin O'Leary, Mr. Wonderful. Kevin, thanks for joining us this morning.

Great to be here. Thank you. And then we have Isaac Hayes III. Isaac is the founder and CEO of Fanbase, who is the company that we are going to be focusing on for today's conversation. So Isaac, thank you for joining us as well. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. So great. So today's conversation, we're going to go into a few different topics related to Fanbase and the social media industry as a whole. We are going to take some questions as well. So if you're in the audience, please feel free to submit questions to our team. We'll make sure to get to as many, and then we can go from there.

Yeah, well, Fanbase is a next-gen social media platform that allows any person to monetize from day one. It has six content verticals, which are just posting stories live, long form content, audio chat rooms and short form content like what you would think reels and TikTok videos are. And it's monetized for every single person on the planet. I wanted to remove the barriers that creators have to monetize content. And I wanted to create something that did not suppress the visibility and reach of people that use social media just based on the fact that sometimes advertising gets in the way and limits the reach of creators online. I saw a creator go viral. I felt like we needed something that allowed any person on the planet to become

a content creator, either by intention or by just using the platform and discovering that ability so we started with in-app purchase peer-to-peer subscription so fanbase was the first app that actually allowed another human being to subscribe to another human being using in-app purchase capability not a credit card but in-app purchase so before then you know you would have to use a credit card you could only subscribe subscribe to platforms like Spotify, you know, Netflix, but I wanted that the ability to turn everybody basically into their own on-demand stream services. So that's what Fanbase is about. Great. And so Fanbase right now has a reggae offering that is live on the platform on StartEngine. And as I mentioned,

the company's raised just over $9.5 million in the current reggae offering, but a lot more in crowdfunding previously. I know, I think more than $8 million in prior regulation CF offering. So in total, between everything, you know, over $17 million in crowdfunding. So Isaac, what is it about crowdfunding that has, you know, attracted you to it? And why have you been so successful within it? Well, a couple things. It was a necessity at the time because we were kind of in COVID. We weren't able to move. But I also think that having a product already built, like we already had an MVP, I'd already paid for the platform to exist and spent money building an MVP. And so I feel like when you're raising capital, when people have something that's

tangible and they can use and assess for themselves to decide if they want to invest their money in it, it's good. And I always say nothing speaks better for Fanbase than the product itself. It's not me. It's the amazing people that built the platform that continue to do that. And I know people invest in founders, but I also think that Fanbase speaks for itself when you actually use the platform. And it also builds in a community of people that want to help support and build something. Typically, offerings like this in early stage tech companies

are available to accredited investors, angels, high net worth individuals. And so allowing people to have a shot to invest in a tech startup, which can scale pretty large, I think is enticing for people because a lot of people never get a shot at this type of situation.

And so I think it's extremely advantageous that people really take a look at Fanbase and understand the opportunity that's in front of them. Because then you have advocates, you have people that actually support content creators that can actually own equity in a platform that they use. And a lot of people, there are quite a few people that have invested in fan base and already made back money that they've invested in fan base by using the app. And that's remarkable because it's doing the job it's supposed to do. Very interesting. Now, I know TikTok has been in and around the news

a lot recently. And Kevin, you've been very involved in that discussion in the news cycle. Just a fun stat, since the TikTok ban that was in place, that helped fan base dramatically. I think almost $4 million was raised by the company since that ban was put into effect and then obviously delayed. But Kevin, what is it that got you just interested in this space and looking at a TikTok purchase? What is it about the social media space as a whole that, from an investor standpoint, people should be looking at? Well, I would go back up to 30,000 feet and go back maybe three years ago, just pre-pandemic. I have over 54 private company investments in all 11 sectors of the economy.

And we know pretty well, these are private, so what matters is revenue and free cash flow in each case. So we have a pretty good idea of where the pain points are in each business, no matter if it's insecticide or commercial kitchens for airlines or wireless charging. They have two challenges always. How do they acquire new customers? They call that CAC these days, customer acquisition cost. And how do they best spend their advertising dollars, ROAS, return on ad spend. Those are two metrics that have become within the nomenclature of every sector of the economy. Now, I don't care if you're Nike,

you care about that. And social media in the last three years is the fastest growing spend for acquiring customers and maintaining communities. And so what's very difficult to do, and I think Fanbase has achieved that, is to get some kind of critical mass to actually form a community that advertises to itself effectively. It says, look, this platform, I'm a creator on this platform, and I monetize on it. And it's worth my time when I get up in the morning and spend my 18 hours a day doing whatever I do, because this is a giant digital community that has choices. It can go to any social media site, TikTok included, or Instagram

or Facebook or LinkedIn even, or X, whatever, and monetize their business, grow their business, form a community, and figure out a way to live off it. It's actually turning into the fastest growing part of the economy in job creation. And even Congress has started to notice it because the market caps of these companies are over a trillion dollars. So you have to try and find, from the investment perspective of this deal, if you can catch the wave early enough and it continues to get scale because it's almost like a supernova. It creates its own energy. At some point, there's the critical mass tipping point. And I think that's kind of the story here. And whether or not TikTok makes a difference, it may. It may go dark on April 5th.

We don't know. But this is achieving success while TikTok's still around. So every social media platform, if TikTok gets shut down, it'll be jump ball for users. So you want to have some level of critical mass the day that occurs, if it occurs. And nobody knows for sure what's going to happen here. But it does show you the importance of building a community where people trust the platform regarding their personal information and their ability to monetize it. Because that's what got TikTok in trouble in the first place. And I think that's something that fan base has obviously taken to another level by turning their users into investors through the equity crowdfunding solution.

Isaac, talk to us a little bit about the brands that is fan base and how big that community is and just, you know, how strong that community is given everything that you've done in your guys' past? Yeah, so we have over 1.4 million users on the platform. A lot of those came in January just because of that brief ban, and it's brought our MAU up to over 600,000 in January. And so it's really brought a lot of attention to the platform and introduced people to options. I think another thing that really is attractive for Fanbase is the ability to migrate your content. We built something called a content migrator.

So that's the ability to take all of your content up to 1,000 posts from either Instagram or TikTok and import them over to Fanbase. So it takes your profile picture, your information, your links, everything, and up to a thousand posts and brings them into Fanbase. So you're not starting from scratch. And another thing that's really attractive about that is Fanbase has a functionality called tipping, which is giving love, right? And so you can like something on Fanbase, which is absolutely free, but if you want,

you can purchase this digital currency called love and tip people. From that perspective, you've instantly put all of your content in a position for it to be monetized, and people can do that. I think what people will realize is that humans are transactional. We're generous. We will show support, and we will spend money on content that we do appreciate. And I think even a penny at a time, which a fan base user receives 50% of that revenue can add up because again, a penny doesn't seem like much until a million people give you one, right? And then it adds up.

And that's just even where we are right now on the platform as we continue to scale, just posting content, just regular posts, allow people to tip you, allow people to support you. And support is an important part of becoming a content creator. And so the brand of Fanbase is super inclusive. I built this platform to actually be a successor to the legacy platforms that exist because I feel that no, I feel like no social media platform is immortal in the sense of relevance because kids are always going

to want to be on platforms that their parents are not on. And so as soon as my mom got on Facebook, I left Facebook and went to Instagram. And I have a 19-year-old brother who is nowhere on Instagram because younger people are going to migrate away from older audiences. And so what happens is platforms capture that audience, like TikTok, young kids, and then it starts to trickle up into the older generations. And then that becomes too saturated, and then the audiences start to look for somewhere else to go. So fan base is a great alternative in a way that I think I see the vision of what social media is going to be, especially with content. This is something that I said even, you know, the last couple of days. I feel like that people are consuming content through large social networks

rather than traditional television, right? And I feel like in the future, the way that people are consuming content through large social networks rather than traditional television, right? And I feel like in the future, the way that people consume content is going to be through platforms like YouTube, like Instagram, like TikTok. And whoever owns the infrastructure of those platforms that distribute that content have the ability to be trillion-dollar companies. Now, that remains to be seen whether or not that is for fan base. But as Kevin mentioned, you have platforms like Meta, which are like, you know, $1.7 trillion, right? And so, it's really a great opportunity to try to build something disruptive, inclusive, and for every single person. We have questions from the crowd already rolling in here, and Kevin, there's one specific for you here that I think is somewhat

relevant to what we were just talking about. And you talked about some of these key terms previously when you were speaking, but what are three things that you look for when you're investing in social media companies? I'm looking, number one, for scale. I mean, have they proven their reason to exist? Have they found their niche and they're growing it? So, you know, there's a lot of social media startup ideas out there. There's probably 30, 40 decks floating around. 99% are going to fail. And sometimes it's just serendipitous luck that gets one off the ground. But I don't want to invest in an idea for social media because the probability of success is too low. I'd rather catch the wave after the platform has established its community and it's proven that it has a right to exist, so to speak. Because then the only challenge is, does the CEO have the executional skills along with their team

to pour gasoline on the fire? Because once you understand why people come to you, your job is to get more of them. That's it. So you don't have to worry about, do I have to prove this idea out, as has been tried so many times. This idea works, and we have over a million followers using the platform. Now we want to get to 100 million. How do we do that? And if you believe that the executional skills exist, then as an investor, all you're doing is saying, go execute. It doesn't mean they'll do it properly or they won't have to pivot, but it's a whole lot more attractive than rolling the dice saying, does this idea even have a chance

of existing? And that's why it's way better to pour gas on the fire and social media than it is to try and start from scratch. And Isaac, it sounds obviously based on what Kevin just said and the community that you've already built up that you've conquered that initial challenge. Yeah. I bootstrapped the original MVP of Fanbase

with my own money, spent about $200,000 to build the original MVP. And I felt that that alone would leave some questions, actually give some people an opportunity not to say no, because it's a lot harder to prove a concept on a bunch of PDFs or a deck rather than something that you can download, use, see the functionality, see that it actually works and prove the model. And that, and we actually spent, um, uh, a good amount of time making sure that do, will people pay for content using in-app purchase capability? We did that. And once we knew that people would, and we started seeing that younger people absolutely do, then that got me excited because now I have a community of people that can join Fanbase like I might have been on MySpace 25 years ago or 20 years ago and have those users for 20 years until we become the old guy at the social media club.

And then some other platform comes along and it will evolve as a company. But I think it's absolutely advantageous for us to be able to scale as we have a proven model, we have a community, and we have the opportunity for longevity in social media because young people and especially Black culture absolutely drive the narrative and the conversation of social media. So now you have a really long lifespan, a long runway to execute. Isaac, what kind of partnerships is fan-based leveraging right now? Well, one of the things that we're really looking into is creative ways to actually do advertising.

Advertising is a huge part of social media. And one of the things that I talk about not actually interfering with the user experience is partnering with brands. So brands are able to create partnerships with fan base to market and promote their concepts, even through audio with something we call brand audio on the web. And so we took our audio rooms, right? And we put them on the web and that accomplishes a really good task. Number one, it allows a lot more people to listen to the conversation online because it's available on your laptop, it's available on your phone without even having to download Fanbase. But then it also creates the opportunity to advertise, create call to action buttons, create opportunities for people to engage and create events and moments. So we've been partnering with brands to be able to create that type of opportunity. So for instance, the ability for a brand to come on board and talk about a release and give people

early access to things that they would not get. It creates this kind of FOMO about audio because you missed the conversation that happened on Fanbase where people were talking about something that you really wanted to be a part of or talk to the creator or the producer of a film. We've had a couple films, a couple documentaries actually do things on Fanbase in audio. So our brand partnerships is really what we focus on for that. And then we have HBCU partnerships. We partnered with Apples Propel for HBCU students right here in Atlanta, Georgia. And I think that's also critical because it gives an opportunity for young people to get a look inside of a tech company,

to actually touch and be a part of something and understand what's going on under the hood and inspire them to build great things and great products and great software as well. I think we need to get Mr. Wonderful a fan base who, so he can do his guitar jam sessions for, for the public and get some tips flowing in his direction. I think, you know, Kevin, you probably would like that. Wouldn't you? Yeah. I wanted to ask Isaac, by the way, I said this earlier before we went live, I'm a huge fan of Isaac Hayes, the album from way back. I think it was in the late sixties.

I heard it's what you're talking about. Yeah. It, I mean, I still have it on vinyl and I, I just, the reason it's crazy. I just played it a couple of nights ago for my kids. They went nuts. They loved it. And so it just shows you everything old comes back again. So here it is. But I wanted to make sure that you, maybe if you can, I don't know about the quiet period, talk about how Fanbase makes money for Fanbase.

Yeah, so how Fanbase makes money is we receive 20% of all revenue of in-app purchases, right, that come through. So every person, and that adds up per user, that gives us an opportunity. Users receive 50% of the revenue fan base gets 20 but also there's the ability to also do these transactions online on the web right and when you're on the web that increases our our rev share to 50 of of what comes through the door of any creator so we have this online ability for creative creators to monetize that when fan base receives 50 of revenue. And then on platforms like

Google Play and the App Store, we receive 20% of that revenue. But again, when you're thinking of scaling this to tens of millions, to hundreds of millions of users, that's a lot of opportunity for revenue as well. And then the in-app purchase part of... 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 really bad listen to new episodes of absolute season one taser incorporated on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts binge episodes one two and three on may 21st and episodes

four five and six on june 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Even purchasing those loves, that digital currency, that way to tip, that's also. And then, again, once we find and really build creative ways to make advertising possible without interrupting the user experience, that adds another layer of monetization. And then there's some other things that are built underneath that we haven't talked about for in the future for other ways for the company to really make a large amount of money, revenue, just based on the way that we pay creators and how creators get paid creative ways to do that as well. Kevin, as an investor, what excites you about the expanding social economy? And what kind of opportunities do you see within this space right now? It's growing faster than traditional

media, in some cases, significantly faster. You always want to go as an investor to where the advertising dollars go. I mean, you've got to look at it this way. You've got over 300 million consumers domestically. They're awake maybe 14 hours a day. How many minutes of their eyeball time do you get and where do they go? Because that's where the advertising dollars go to acquire them as customers and we look at this data every tuesday we use every single possible form of media to advertise from traditional you know linear television to streaming services to every single

social media platform that can prove to us a low CAC and a high ROAS. And so we're constantly looking. And so I just look at each Tuesday, what percentage of the spend of the aggregate companies across all 11 sectors is going where? And there's no question about it. I don't care who you are, if you're an S&P 500 company or you're just a startup selling insecticide. Digital spend, which used to be maybe 20% seven years ago, is 50% now. And maybe going higher. When companies spend more than $50,000 a month, they tend to use remnant streaming and television for a portion of it.

If they're under $50,000 a month, it's practically all digital. So Facebook, Google, Fanbase, TikTok, and whatever is working for them, whichever has the lowest cash, you can watch this like an ocean of capital moving around. And it's huge dollars. It's huge dollars. And so if you're just a traditional investor and you want exposure to this portion of the economy, you have to find companies like Fanbase and put them in your portfolio, along with other ideas too. But as I said earlier, you want it slightly de-risked. Did they prove they can get a million people engaged on the platform? It doesn't mean they monetize all

million, but the fact that they have a million means there's no reason they can't have 100 million unless they screw it up. That's how it works. That's how traditionally it works. Whatever got the first million should be able to get the next 99. That's how traditionally it works. Whatever got the first million should be able to get the next 99. You just need executional skills. And on that point, Isaac, one of the questions coming in from the audience is, how is fan base going to achieve that velocity, that growth velocity that Kevin's mentioned? What are the plans? Well, one of the things that we're focusing enormously on is retention. Retention is really, you know, the key to scaling a community.

Once you find that perfect recipe of what holds people on a platform longer, like what Kevin was speaking about earlier, is like how long do people stay on these platforms? This is a battle for people's attention and eyeballs like the average person spends about um between 30 to 36 minutes a day on fan base right and it's and that's and the amazing part about that is that's up there with platforms like youtube um up there with platforms like instagram and tiktok i think audio is a real big um addition to that that holds people because people are sitting on the platform all day

having these audio conversations. And so we're looking for that sweet spot of retention. So those are things that the functionality that people want, the functionality that people are used to, and then also being innovative, like really creating great product. But once you nail retention and got it, now you can market

because you know that no matter who comes in your platform, you're going to keep a percentage of those people regardless because you've got that retention recipe that just you rinse and repeat. You keep doing over and over and over again, and that allows you to scale. So right now, especially these next two quarters, as we close this raise, we're going to continue to focus so much and just really making retention super, super hot. Amazing. And I guess, Kevin, I mean, Isaac, first with you, I mean, where do you see your industry going in the next couple of years? I know there's a lot that's going to be going on in the next couple of months. But just in the next two, three years, where do you see your industry developing?

I think that people are wanting to consume content in a nontraditional manner, right? I think people just sitting in front of a screen and watching content is not how we consume content now. Now we want to have a little bit more immersive experiences. We want to be able to chat while we're watching the program. We want to be able to send this with our friends. We want to be able to take while we're watching the program. We want to be able to send this with our friends. We want to be able to take it with us where we go. And so I think that a lot of media companies are really going to focus their attention on social media platforms to distribute their content. Because a lot of these platforms, legacy platforms, are struggling to retain the attention of people. Like when you get to younger users, right? Between the ages of like, let's say 13 to 24 years old, right? The younger generation, they're spending about 7% of their time watching traditional television. When you get up to like 35 and up, it's like 45%. So younger

people are moving away from traditional television and they're spending their time watching content, shorter versions of content. I always say that like the TV guide of today is your DMs, right? You no longer have to surf the internet anymore or surf online with what you want to watch. Your friends send you the things that you like. And so I think this community-based sharing of content and consuming content is how we're going to,

you know, watch and use content in the future. So that's what I love about Fan base, because once you build the community, the functionality, depending on whatever media is there, and there's, there's other media out there to get, there's podcasting, there's other things that can be incorporated into a community. And once we have that, again, there's the sky's the limit on what we can pull in and actually build the way that we distribute content.

Again, whoever owns the platforms that distribute the content, right? So whoever owns a piece of the YouTube, a piece of the Instagrams, a piece of the TikToks, right? You're putting yourself in a position to have an opportunity to own part of a platform that can scale because I don't see any other way that people are going to consume content other than through large social networks with their friends. Kevin, how about you? Anything that maybe Isaac didn't mention there that you also see on the horizon over the next couple of years within this space? I see a continuation of ad dollars going to social platforms. I don't see that trend stopping. It's one of the greatest challenges for linear television right now. I mean, everything's driven by ad dollars. Everything's driven by, can you attract capital that people want to invest in your platform to sell their

product or service? And it's the whole deal. That's what made television what it was for over 100 years. And the fact that those ad dollars are pursuing other platforms at an ever-increasing rate, not because they're experimenting, they're looking at it from the perspective of returns. So when you invest the $50,000 a week or whatever it is you're doing, and you're getting a three and a half ROAS, that's pretty hard to get on television. So you continue to do it until you burn it out. And there's a lot of movement and flushing around

and people try to change their messages. And I think Isaac mentioned this earlier, you don't know what goes viral. It's impossible to do that. But there's so much technology now we haven't even touched on AI that is now being applied to creating content that may be more viral as a result of just being more interesting to watch and certainly our companies are doing that they're all

investing in that matter of fact this tomorrow night I fly down to Miami just to deal on this topic to try and forecast ad spend by platform for the rest of this calendar year. And it's a lot of money. And we're not emotional about it. We're just using analytical tools that we pay for, dashboards that we pay for, that scan for results. We were watching this during the election, what platforms were working and kind of tagging along with those digital spins. So this is a really, really big space. And it's not a small, you know, idea anymore. It's a huge idea. And I kind of agree with Isaac that my kids don't watch TV, period.

Like, zero. So they get their content many different ways and move around until they find a community that they want to be part of. And they're fickle. And so you have to keep your chops up. You've got to keep serving up what works. And there's lots of competition. But getting the first million, that's impossible. Once you have that, the rest is execution.

I've said it three times. Yeah. And Fanbase has it. They already have the first million, that's impossible. Once you have that, the rest is execution. I've said it three times. Yeah. And Fanbase has it. They already have the first million. So that's a major milestone to clear. Well, guys, I just want to thank both of you for your time and thoughts today. I think it's been a really interesting discussion. It took us 29 minutes to mention AI, by the way.

That was probably the first. I'm glad somebody did it. But I'm sure, Isaac, you have a whole story on that if we had to get into it. Yeah. Well, great. So, Kevin, thank you for your time. Isaac, thank you as well. Again, just a reminder for everybody, Fanbase has a live offering on StartEngine right now. There's been a ticker scrolling at the bottom there, invest.fanbase. a live offering on StartEngine right now. There's been a ticker scrolling at the bottom there, invest.fanbase.app. You can go there and learn more about the offering. But I just want to thank both of you again for your time. And I hope you both have a great rest of your day and a great week. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, everybody. Take care. This is an iHeart Podcast.