#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Trump’s Dictator Parade, Dem Governors Defend Sanctuary Laws, Moulton vs Hegseth & Rangel Farewell

Episode Date: June 14, 2025

 6.13.2025 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Trump’s Dictator Parade, Dem Governors Defend Sanctuary Laws, Moulton vs Hegseth & Rangel Farewell Is it a birthday bash or a flex of power... Trump will roll out tanks and troops through D.C. on his 79th birthday, turning the Army's 250th anniversary into a political spectacle. But not everyone's celebrating. Maryland Governor Wes Moore, a former Army captain, joins us to call it out. Then Capitol Hill gets heated.... Congressman Seth Moulton confronts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over explosive allegations of leaked classified information.  We'll say goodbye to a legend. Harlem's own Congressman Charles Rangel is laid to rest. Tonight, we honor the legacy of a man who broke barriers and built bridges for Black America. And we'll show you my Juneteenth speech I delivered in Memphis.  #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 Black Star Network app at http://www.blackstarnetwork.com! We're on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku, FireTV, XBox and SamsungTV. The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. A lot of times big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways. Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. Small but important ways from tech billionaires to the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastain. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to everybody's business

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Listen to absolute season one Taser Incorporated on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Clayton English, I'm Greg Lott and this is season two or the world on drugs by podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. at the recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to it. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A rapid way you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to

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He makes sure that our stories are told. Thank you for being the voice of Black America, Roland. Be Black! I love y'all. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN.

You can't be Black-owned media and be scared. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home, you dig? So Hey folks, today is Friday, June 13th, 2025, coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live with the Black Star Network. I'm here in Columbus, Ohio, where in an hour, I'll be moderating the State of Black America conversation as part of this Father's Weekend with their daughters. I'll tell you more about that. Coming up on the show, though,

we talk with Maryland Governor Wes Moore about Donald Trump's use of the military to serve his partisan purposes, and also this joke of a 250th celebration of the U.S. Army this weekend with a massive military parade. There's really nothing more than a birthday parade for him. Also a long time Harlem Congressman Charlie Rangel was laid to rest today.

We'll show you what took place at his funeral in New York City. And yesterday I was in Memphis talking, speaking there, the 32nd annual Juneteenth Freedom Celebration. We'll show you that speech as well. Folks, it's time to bring the funk. I'm Roland Martin, I'm Filchard. Love Black Sun Network, let's go. He's got whatever the piss he's on it. Whatever it is he's got for scoop,

the fact the fine. And when it breaks, he's right on time and it's rolling. Best believe he's knowing. Putting 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' It's Uncle Roll-Roll, y'all

It's Rollin' Martin, yeah Rollin' with Rollin' now He's funky, he's fresh, he's real, the best You know he's Rollin' Martin now and we'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. on what is called Black Girl Dad Week. And so there are a number of events that have been taking place all week,

taking place on this weekend as well. So I participated in this event last year. And so looking forward to that conversation. We'll be carrying that discussion live right here on the Black Star Network. But first, I wanna talk about what's happening in this country. You have all sorts of craziness going on

with the use of the military for partisan purposes. A federal judge has struck down Donald Trump's commandeering of the National Guard in California ordering him to back off. That decision came down on yesterday. Now, of course, Trump administration appealed the decision, so the appeals court has stayed the decision until they actually hear the case. But it is one of the things that people are talking about in terms of his use of the military for

his purpose. Earlier this week, he spoke at Fort Bragg, very partisan speech that he gave. And now we also know that that they were that the that the military base told Trump in his team, they could use a pop-up store selling MAGA gear, but they were overruled. This is absolutely outrageous. Joining us right now is Maryland Governor Wes Moore, of course, a veteran. He understands very well what U.S. Army rules

and regulations are when it comes to these type of things. And, Governor, glad to have you back on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Just as a, let's not talk capacity of a governor, but as somebody who served this country, it has to be offensive to you to watch how this man is using the military and they're using, even using the language of his troops, his army. That's not how presidents have often referred

to members of the military. I just believe that one of the most important jobs of the president of the United States is to serve as commander in chief. It's one of the most important and frankly one of the most sobering responsibilities for any president of the United States is that you are the commander in chief

of the world's most powerful army and military. And there's a level of humility that needs to come with that that I just think that this president does not absorb. He doesn't do humility. And, frankly, watching him give a partisan speech in front of a unit, that was my old unit when I was in Afghanistan. I served in Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division. And to see the same paratroopers with the same patch that I wore on my shoulder, Ben standing there as props while he is giving a hyperpartisan speech, while he is blasting their former commander-in-chief, President Joe Biden, was just a deeply embarrassing moment in our nation.

And, you know, it just goes, it continues to highlight the lack of seriousness that I think that he is taking, not just this role of president, but frankly, the lack of seriousness in terms of the role of president of your commander in chief. One of the things that, of course,

that federal judge decided in California that it was illegal with how he commandeered the National Guard, you are a governor. We know what the protocol is. Typically, in order to activate the National Guard, a governor makes a request. There's an actual law in this country that stipulates members of the military serving

on the streets of America. And these folks do not even remotely care about the law or customs or things along those lines. This, many people are suggesting that this is really his focus of trying to use the military to stop peaceful protesters across the board because of what took place in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. Yeah. Well, and I think it's important for people to know and realize that there's nothing

that I take more seriously than any of us as chief executives of our state take more seriously than the safety of our people. We believe in making sure that our people are safe. And we have multiple means and tools to be able to ensure that our people are safe in their communities, in their own homes, in their neighborhoods, in their own skin.

And there are scales of escalation, right? So we know that we not only have local police authorities, we have state authorities as well, and that the governor has the unique authority to be able to activate a National Guard because each governor is the commander in chief of their state's National Guard. I take a deep sense of pride and humble responsibility

to be the commander in chief of the Maryland National Guard. And so when I make decisions about when I'm activating the guard, whether it is for a flooding event, whether it is for unrest, regardless of the reason, I am doing it in coordination with my local jurisdictions because they also have the best understanding on the ground of what is required.

And then I then can turn around and make the decision. What we saw here was a decision being made that completely usurped any type of input that came from the local authorities and the people on the ground. And so I have no problem with the idea that we have to make sure that people are safe, that we have to be a state

that doesn't just guarantee rights, but also that follows the laws. I get that. But I also understand this, that the decisions on things like the escalation to a National Guard level are decisions that are made in coordination with my local jurisdictions. That did not happen. And then especially when you're talking about the activation of active duty Marines, try asking them to do policing activity inside of communities. It's not just unprecedented, to your point that you made earlier, Roman, it's a violation

of fasciomitatis, and so of the law. And so once again, this is just seeing how the administration is continuing to try to use tools of intimidation. But I want to be very clear that in Maryland and in all those other places, like I will not be intimidated. And we will not be intimidated. That we will make sure that our people are safe,

but we'll also make sure that the laws are being followed. Gotta ask you about this military parade happening in Washington, DC. It's gonna cost upwards of $100 million. Many folks are saying this is nothing more than celebrating Donald Trump's birthday as opposed to the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army. I talked to a retired two-star general yesterday. He said, and normally when they have military parades, they are designed to actually be

family affairs, community affairs. And so it's about really the Army families in the community. That's really, if you're gonna be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the US Army, you don't just celebrate the troops and the tanks and the missiles, you actually understand that when you serve in the US Army or any branch of the government,

or branch of the military, your family's also serving. And so what do you make of this, what he is doing this weekend with this celebration? And what are you hearing from your fellow U.S. Army service members who are no longer serving? You know, I started my day this morning going down to Fort Meade, one of the active duty bases in my state. And then we did a two and a half mile run in celebration of 250 years of the United States Army,

myself and over a thousand other soldiers who are all out there celebrating the 250th. And just thinking about the impact and the contribution that the United States Army has made to our society, that our society is what our society is. The freedoms that we enjoy are the freedoms that we enjoy because we had people who were willing to put on the uniform and defend those freedoms. And I think about what is being done tomorrow. And again, it cannot be said that, oh, we're just trying to conflate his birthday and the 250 Army birthday because they said that. We're just repeating a coincidence that they happen to highlight.

And so my only point is this, if you want to talk about or if you want to celebrate veterans, then don't cut the Department of Veterans Affairs, which you just did. If you really want to highlight veterans, then don't do things like lay off thousands of federal workers knowing the fact that one in every three federal worker is a military veteran. If you really want to celebrate veterans,

don't do things like lay off people whose job, fire, fire people, whose job it is to make sure that our military veterans are getting a proper burial or making sure that those veterans who are coming back home suffering from PTSD, that they are not getting their treatments cut. If you really want to celebrate veterans, then honor their service.

Do not use that mechanism to try to honor yourself. And so I have a very real issue with this and particularly being done in the guise of this is a celebration of the Army 250th, because I can think of a lot of better ways to being able to use that capital, those resources, that time and that attention to be able to celebrate the men and women who are willing to serve

on behalf of others than doing something like this, which in many ways, again, is almost offensive, being able to see how you can spend time cutting the Department of Veterans Affairs, but then simply say that you believe in the troops because you're willing to put on a parade on your birthday. Last question for you. The military was desegregated in 1948 by President Harry Truman. We have seen historically African-Americans

serve with distinction in the U.S. Army and other branches as well. When you think about the importance of black soldiers, of course people could talk about General Colin Powell, General Benjamin O.O. Davis, a senior and junior, and we can name so many others. Just what does this anniversary mean for African- Americans who gave their

life, who contributed to this country, many of them who did so knowing full well they didn't have full freedom when they came back home. What do you say about those folks on this 250th anniversary? Some of the bravest soldiers that this country has seen have looked like UNV. We're talking about people who are willing to fight and risk their lives and many gave their lives on behalf of a country that was not willing to sacrifice on behalf of the individual. was not willing to sacrifice on behalf of the individual. When I think about the military, we're talking about an organization,

and again, I am a very proud military veteran, I'm a very proud combat veteran, I am a deep patriot, and I believe in this country, flaws and all. And I believe in this country because I know its history, not because I ignore it. And I think about the fact that we had, you had desegregation take place in the military before it even took place

in society. I think about the fact that you had military generals before you had black, Fortune 100, CEOs. The military in many ways was the chance for us to be able to shine even in a country that oftentimes did not give us the opportunity to shine in other ways. And so the military has always helped to lead the charge when it came to opening up angles and opportunities for so many people within our society. And despite the fact that we have people who came and served, and when the military passed a GI Bill, they were literally saying, we will pass out a

GI Bill unless you're black. So the fact that we've continued to sacrifice on behalf of this country, to serve on behalf of this country, to make this country better, I think the importance of celebrating the 250th for the Army is not just about the contribution the Army has made, but it is about also celebrating the individuals who made the contribution to the Army and why it's so important for us to remember our history, why it's so important for us for our history to be lifted up. I think about in the state of Maryland where we are watching how Pete Hedgeseth, the secretary of defense, is going around banning history and banning

books on military bases and on our service academy. We're in the state of Maryland. What have we done? We've banned the banning of books. Well, you cannot do that in the state of Maryland. So this becomes a time for us to really embrace the power of this history, the unevenness of the history with a core understanding that action is required, repair is required, but it takes people who are willing to be true public servants and willing to be true soldiers in this moment in order to make

those things happen. Governor Westmore always a pleasure to have you on the show, Fratt. I'm going to go to the front. I'm going to go to the front. I'm going to go to the front. I'm going to go to the front. I'm going to go to the front. I'm going to go to the front. I'm going to go to the front. I'm going to go to the front. I'm going to go to the front.

I'm going to go to the front. I'm going to go to the front. I'm going to go to the front. I'm going to go to the front. who served his country during Korea, former Congressman Charlie Rangel, laid to rest today in New York City. He passed away the age of 94. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. Next on the Black Table with me, Greg Carl. Dr. Kwesi Kanadu, author, scholar, and healer.

He is one of the truly representative thinkers and activists of our generation. I had a dream, you know, a particular night when I woke up. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week,

I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up, So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chafkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams,

and consumer spending expert Amanda Moll, we'll take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I wanna learn about VeChain. I wanna buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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

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Ad free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glodd. And this is season two of the We're on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir, we are back. In a big big way in a very big way real people real perspectives It's kind of star-studded a little bit man. We got Ricky Williams NFL player Heisman Trophy winner It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves music stars Marcus King John Osborne for Brothers Osborne.

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and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to

Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcast. set up goals, don't worry about a setback, just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position, pregame to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org, brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Several ancestors came to me, and they came to me and said,

we really like what you're doing, but you have to do more. His writing provides a deep and unique dive into African history through the eyes of some of the interesting characters who have lived in it, including some in his own family. The multi-talented, always-fastening Dr. Kwasi Kanadu on the next Black Table here on the Black Star 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. I'm gonna go get some food. St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City today was jam-packed with many luminaries, politicians,

and community activists and others as they celebrated the life and legacy of the late congressman Charlie Rangel. He passed away at the age of 94. Rangel served this country in Korea. He also of course was one of the top member of Congress known all over the world for that raspy voice. He replaced Adam Clayton Powell in Congress and served with distinction for more than 30 years. Wrangel was celebrated and celebrated by so many today. There were numerous celebrations. He was a member of many organizations including my beloved Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., where there was an Omega service for him as well.

And among the people who spoke at his funeral, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries from Brooklyn. Also, of course, President Bill Clinton. Here is some of the speakers today at the funeral, Congressman Charlie Rankin. With a heavy heart that we gather here today and that on behalf of the House, I offer our deepest condolences on the passing, Stephen and Alicia and the grandsons of your father, your grandfather to the Wrangell family of this great patriarch and this great leader.

We mourn his loss, but of course we are also here to celebrate the life of Charles B. Rangel, a great American patriot. Now, Charlie Rangel loved the House of Representatives, and the House of Representatives, all of us, we loved him. Which is why there are more than 20 members, and present of the House who are here today, including Speaker Emerita Nancy DeLisandro Pelosi. I would ask the House delegation if they could all stand. And I'm thankful.

We are here, of course, to celebrate Congressman Wrangel's life. What a life that he lived. What a leader. What a legacy. The legendary Lion of Lenox Avenue. America is better off today because of his service. Now a lot can be said about Charlie Rangel, but let me just briefly make clear one or two things. Charlie Rangel was a good man, a family man, a well-educated man. A well-dressed man. An alpha man.

An army man. A community man. A courageous man. A compassionate man. A heroic man. A humorous man. A hard-working man. And above all else, Charlie Wrangel was a Harlem man.

He was a Harlem man. He loved Harlem. In fact, I came to believe, came to understand in my conversations with the great Charlie Wrangel that in his heart of hearts, Charlie Rangel took the position that the H in heaven stood for Harlem. We're thankful for his life, his legacy, his leadership. I'm personally thankful.

All of us in Congress are thankful for his advice, his guidance, and his mentorship. Always generous, no matter how new you were Congress are thankful for his advice, his guidance, and his mentorship. Always generous, no matter how new you were in public service, new to the United States Congress. He helped us become the best public servants that we could be. The most effective representatives on the ground, back at home in our communities that we could be. Helped us with our re-elections,

taught us how to get re-elected, which he was able to do more than 20 times to the House of Representatives without ever losing a race. And you know, thankful for his advice, his guidance. One of the earliest conversations I had with Charlie Rango was a new member of Congress. It was on the subject of fundraising, which of course you have to do to continue your public service journey.

And it was a conversation related to his annual birthday event, an event that he would hold each and every August at Tavern on the Green. A who's who of people would show up. And as a new member of Congress, I had the opportunity to attend recognized at tavern on the green. A who's who of people would show up. And as a new member of Congress, I had the opportunity to attend, struck up the courage, and I said to Charlie Wrangel, his annual birthday event in August, I said, Mr. Wrangel, is today your actual birthday?

He said, no, Jeff. Now, Charlie Wrangel would often call me Jeff. Now, Charlie Rangel would often call me Jeff. I believed it was short for Jeffries, but I never confirmed that because this was Charlie Rangel. And so you go with the flow. He said, no, my birthday is in June. I said, Mr. Wrangel, your birthday is in June, but each and every August you have this spectacular birthday event year after year after year. He said, Jeff, my birthday is whenever the hell my fundraiser tells me it is. He was a good man, had a big heart, big personality, got big things done. So as I take my seat, let me just simply say he returned home, dropped out from high school, went to the Army, was sent to Korea, returned home a war hero.

Purple Heart, Ron Starr, saved over 40 members of his unit who were under attack by the Chinese. He told us the story often. Had he done nothing else in his life, he would have already done more than most Americans have ever done for their country. Nothing else. But that wasn't the end of Charlie Rangel's story. So he had to figure out what he was going to do next. And he told us, of course, that he was inspired as it relates to his career by his maternal grandfather

who helped to raise him, who worked, of course, as an elevator operator in Manhattan Criminal Court. And his grandfather urged him to go to law school, having spent a lot of time around lawyers. And Charlie Wrangel would tell us that had his grandfather been an elevator operator in a hospital, he may have gone to medical school. But aren't we thankful that his grandfather worked at Manhattan Criminal Court? Because if he didn't work at Manhattan Criminal Court, Charlie Rangel would have never gone to law school.

Had he never gone to law school, he would have never become a lawyer. Had he never become a lawyer, he couldn't have become a federal prosecutor. Had he never been a federal prosecutor, he likely wouldn't have been elected to the New York State Assembly. Had he never gotten elected to the New York State Assembly, he would have likely not gone to Congress. Had he not gone to Congress, he never could have helped found the Congressional Black Caucus. Had he never been a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus, he never would have been appointed to the Ways and Means Committee in 1974, first African-American ever to serve on the Ways and Means Committee.

Had he never emerged as an effective member of the Ways and Means Committee, he never could have become such a champion for using the tax code to make life better for the American people, the champion of the low-income housing tax credit, champion of the child tax credit, champion of the economic opportunity tax credit, champion of the child tax credit, champion of the economic opportunity tax credit,

champion of the Wrangel Amendment, which used the tax code to help dismantle apartheid, champion of empowerment zone legislation that revitalized the inner city. Had he never emerged as an effective member of the Ways and Means Committee than he never could have become. The chairman of this powerful committee, the first African American in the nation's history to serve, using that committee to do things like helping President Obama pass the historic Affordable Care Act. We're thankful for Charlie Wrangel's journey, because Charlie Wrangel's journey taught us that while the devil may be a hater, God will be your elevator. He'll open the right door, he'll press the right button, and he'll get you to where you need to go.

And I'm thankful that Charlie Wrangel had one last stop on his journey. It wasn't City College, it wasn't the Rangel Center, it wasn't 145th and Lenox. He had one last stop on his journey and it was up in heaven. And when he got there, I'm told that Alma Rangel, his beloved wife of 60 years was there. And Hazel Dukes was there and Constance Baker Motley was there and Percy Sutton was there and Basil Patterson was there and David Dinkins was there to greet him. But the first person that said anything to him was Charlie Wrangel's grandfather who said welcome home, Charlie. You've reached the top floor.

God bless you, Charlie Wrangel. Thank you. Although Congressman Charlie Wrangel was an institution in the House, he of course was from New York. That means working closely on the Senate side. And so one of these speakers at his funeral today was Democratic leader in the Senate, the minority leader Chuck Schumer. Whenever you lose a loved one, someone as dear as Charlie is to all of us, someone who's

been part of our lives for so long, you never know what quality of theirs will stand out as you look back. I am speaking of that special quality in someone that spontaneously just comes to you over and over again as you look back and miss them. For me, with Charlie, it was his voice. You remember that voice? I think of Charlie and I hear it echoing around in my head and in my heart. The voice comes to me. No one, I mean no one, sounded like Charlie sounded. The voice had an instrumental quality to it. It was alternatively raspy and resonant.

It whispered, it wailed. He went high, he went low. The voice, like Charlie, had so much range. And Charlie played that voice like another Charlie. Charlie Parker played the sax. He was a master, sometimes playing a sweet melody, sometimes playing a unique, witty, and genius improvisation. That voice, that voice was a gift from God. But as we all know from the parable of the talents Jesus taught us, about the three men

who were given different amounts of money by their master and told to use it as they felt best, it's not about the amount of value of the gifts you're given. Rather, it is about what you do with the gifts you have been given. And from the streets of Harlem, to the halls of Congress, to the West Wing of the White House, Charlie used that unique voice of his to speak for others. As Harlem rappers Eric B. and Rakim would say, Charlie was the invincible microphone fiend, a smooth operator operating correctly. To persuade voters, to build power, to deliver help to those in need, to call out injustice and economic unfairness and racial bias, to fight for the underdog.

That even included me. Charlie endorsed me for the Senate. No one thought I could beat Al DeMato when I was at about 8% in the polls, and precious few believed I could win. But Charlie and the wonderful Jim Cappell, does everyone remember Jim? Went all in for me and played a massive role in turning things around and paving a path to victory.

When Charlie endorsed me, he told me in typical fashion, I'm with you till I'm not. But he was always with me, not only when I got to the Senate, but throughout our career. The Chuck and Charlie show was always moving forward. I'll never stop thanking Charlie for all of that. From the lofty platform he achieved via his talent and hard work. Charlie used that voice to make policy that reflected those biblical values he learned as an altar boy at St. Aloysius. To clothe and feed the poor by robustly funding SNAP—and we're fighting to keep SNAP, we're not going to let those sons of guns take it away from us. To house the needy. When everyone else on the Ways and Means Committee would ask

for little goodies for themselves, the only thing Charlie ever asked for was increased the low income housing tax credit and millions of people are living in decent housing because of what Charlie did. To care for the sick with better access to health care, including passage of the Affordable Care Act. And together we fought to get equitable Medicaid for Puerto Rico. To visit the imprisoned and help them get back to the community when he passed the Second Chance Act. Or better yet, to pass laws that fund education and job training and create empowerment zones

to make it less likely people go to prison in the first place. Yes, Charlie used that wonderful, amazing, sonorous voice for others. He used it in all too human a way as well to make us laugh. As we know, Charlie was a funny guy, and he was master of the sharp-witted quip. Above all, he used his voice to care for those he loved. Come on, come on. Let's shoot the ball, kids. The main UOG was delivered by former President Bill Clinton, of course, who served eight years. And it was when Republicans did not want Bill Clinton to open his office in Manhattan, saying it cost too much money.

He then chose to take his office to Harlem. And who was there to greet him with open arms? It was Congressman Charlie Rangel. The president talked about that in his eulogy. I would like to thank Charlie's grandchildren, Stephen and Alicia, and the entire family here today. First for asking me to say a few words about my friend, my steadfast ally, and, as has been said, one of the most effective members ever to serve in the Congress, but second for supporting him in his long career. I thank the members of his district who let him come to Washington 23 times and for giving him the space and support not just to faithfully serve Harlem, but to serve the rest of the nation

and people all around the world. Not every district will do that. And the people who sent him there deserve thanks for the life he lived. You know, another great New Yorker, FDR, was called a happy warrior. Really, he called another great New Yorker, Governor Al Smith, a happy warrior in his speech. But I don't think I ever knew a happier warrior than Charlie Wrangel. And there are so many things you can talk about, but I want to talk about two things he did in particular that touched my life and changed my ability to be president in the right way.

First, when we were working on our first big economic bill, Charlie wanted very much to include the empowerment zones. So did I. I campaigned on it. I didn't know if we'd get it because in the beginning we only had enough money to do six in the whole country. But the very first one was in Harlem. So I signed the bill and we went to work. And what happened? In just eight years, unemployment in Harlem went from above 20 percent to 8 percent.

Thank you, Charlie Randall. And in so doing, we proved it would work everywhere. If you just gave people the incentive to look at poor neighborhoods and poor people as opportunities and equal citizens, you could get unbelievable results. Now second thing I want to say is he also was a major sponsor of the Africa Growth and Opportunities Act. As we see every day, a lot of people don't seem to know much about Africa or care very much about it.

But Charlie did. And I thought this was a great idea. And this idea has stayed with me in my little house in Chappaqua to this day. Because a couple years after I left the White House, I went back to Ghana, where I had the biggest crowd I'd ever spoken to as president. There were like a million people in the streets. It was unbelievable. So I went to Ghana, did my business, was back on the airport tarmac, and was walking to

the plane. And this woman said, President Clinton, don't go, don't go. And she was running after me on the tarmac, waving something. So I stopped and shook her hand, and she said, because of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, I am one of 300 women who have our first paying jobs, and all our kids are in school, and we're making shirts. And I wanted to thank you little shelf in my closet so that every morning of my life I would see that shirt and be reminded, first of all, of the power of people who care to do good,

and secondly, that that woman was a man of mere America. She knew that they might never be as wealthy as we were, but they were way better off. She knew that somebody beyond her borders cared. That is the kind of thing that Charlie Wrangel deserves to be remembered for and appreciated for till the end of time. The other thing I want to say is, if he was your friend, you never had to look over your shoulder. So I—when Hillary was elected senator, after Senator Moynihan retired, the first person

who called her and asked her to run was Charlie Wrangel. And once he settled on that, he never stopped caring for her and working for her and standing with her. He could not be intimidated to change his position. And then when I went to announce I was moving to New York, I didn't pay much attention to where I was going. Nobody—I was too busy being president. And my office found this beautiful suite in a building next to Carnegie Hall. And since I love music, I thought this would be a cool gig.

I'd just walk next door and hear anything. But oh, you would have thought I had robbed Fort Knox. All these Republicans were really upset. And one of them was, you know, wanted to do an audit and a hearing and everything. And it reminded me of Benjamin Franklin's wisdom when he said, our enemies are our friends, or they show us our faults. I said, I don't care about this. And I was—I remember I was laying on the bed in the middle of the day in Miami, having gone there for a speech, feeling sort of sorry for myself. And I picked up the phone and called Charlie and I said, can you get me an office in Harlem?

And he said, not before tomorrow morning. And that's what happened. And I know a thing or two about what he had to do to open this opportunity, but all of I had an office on the top floor of 55 West 125th Street, and it is still there. So I never will forget that. And Charlie was there when we opened it, and Cicely Tyson was the emcee, and we sang Stand By Me. Charlie Wrangel stood by every single solitary person he ever tried to help. Nancy Pelosi didn't after all. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up.

So now I only buy one. Cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on everybody's business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chafkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith.

Every Friday we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull, we'll take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops 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 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, I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glodd. And this is season two of the We're on Drugs Podcast. Sir, we are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.

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

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

It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcast. I always had to be so good no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive.

But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at tearthepapersealing.org brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. Worry about him when the vote counting came. Hillary didn't have to worry about him once he ventured out

into national politics. And I never gave it a second thought. Or we disagreed some. And one disagreement we had, I was right and he was right. We were both right. It just depended on who was president. When I was president, it looked like a good idea what I did when he was president, when I wasn't. And the members of the other party who was president looked like Charlie was right. I am so grateful that he proved the Scriptures right, that a happy heart is good medicine,

but a broken spirit drives the bones. He got here for 94 years. And I am convinced... I'm convinced it's because of his happy heart. I am grateful for him. I get to look at that shirt every morning still and think of Charlie Wrangel, who cared about people halfway around the world and never once took his eye off Harlem. That is the great trick of all public service in a democracy. Now, there are people saying literally democracy can't survive.

AI is going to make it irrelevant. Something's going to happen. It's going to be awful. And we see it stressed today in many ways. I ask all of you never to forget the smile on his face, the spring in his step, the steel in his spine, and fight on for the world he loved and the country he believed in. Thank you. about. Of course, his home-going service, Charlie Ringo, 94 years old, one hell of a laugh. Folks, going to break we come back, we're going to show you the speech from Memphis for the 32nd annual Juneteenth Freedom Festival. Don't forget, if you

want to support Roland Martin Unfiltered, do so by contributing to our Bring the Funk fan club. Your dyes allow us to be with the crowd around the country, do things like this, be able to bring shows to you on the road. So you want to do via cash app, use the Stripe QR code you see right here on the screen, click the cash app button to continue to contribute, check some money order, make them payable to Roland Martin Unfiltered, mail them to P.O. Box 57196, Washington D.C. 2003 7-0196. PayPal is R. Martin Unfiltered, VIMO RM Unfiltered, Zell, rolling at rollingsmartin.com.

Again, PayPal R. Martin Unfiltered, VIMO RM Unfiltered, Zell, rolling at rollingsmartin.com, rolling at rollingmartinunfiltered.com. Back in a moment. On the next Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, have you ever had a million dollar idea and wondered how to bring it to life?

Well, it's all about turning problems into opportunities. On our next Get Wealthy, you'll learn of a woman who identified the overload bag syndrome and now she's taking that money to the bank through global sales in major department stores. And I was just struggling with two or three bags on the train, and I looked around on the train and I said, you know what, there are a lot of women that are carrying two or three bags.

That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Black Star Network. This is Reggie Rod BBike with you watching. Ron Martin unfiltered, uncut, unplugged and undamn believable. All right folks, yesterday I was in Memphis for the 32nd annual Juneteenth Freedom Celebration. I had the opportunity to deliver the keynote speech there. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to show you some of that speech.

We'll make sure you all love it. Then I'm going to reset. I'm going to get ready for the State of Black America panel here. There will be live streaming right here on the Black Star Network as well. So I'm here in Columbus today but this is my speech yesterday in Memphis. Thank you so much. Glad to see everyone here and glad to be back in Memphis. I've been here numerous times and so glad to see all of you. Six or seven years straight I did Reverend Waylom's men's month and so it's always good to see him and see members of no Olivet, but also

to say what needs to be said We also thank the folks who have supported What I've done over the years, especially the last six and a half years. When TB1 canceled, the news went down in December 2017. There were a lot of people who were upset, who were angry at that, but I wasn't. And it was interesting when Alfred Liggins, the CEO, was telling me that he was canceling the show. They were looking to cut their debt, cut their debt load. Literally as he was talking, I was already planning. Because I understood where our industry was going. There were people, and in fact at the time, I was talking to some folks at YouTube,

and they were funding various projects, and it literally said that black news simply would not work. There were black folks who told me the exact same thing, but I knew that they were actually wrong. And so we went about the business doing what we do and doing the work and focusing on that and building it ground up. And in six and a half years, we went from 157,000 subscribers on our YouTube channel to 1.8 million.

We have grown tremendously, going from one show to five shows. But if you want to understand what happens when you just put in the work and you do the work and you don't worry about the naysayers, when I met with the same YouTube folks in August, they told me that when they grouped all of the different, what they call progressive shows, and I make it clear, our show, we're not progressive, we're not conservative, we're not Democrat, we're not Republican, we're black. And so, where we center African Americans,

which is not the case in most places. And what they said is when they grouped us in all of the progressive channels, all of them channels that are much larger than us, folks that have three, four, five, six million followers, that we were number one in terms of watch time per viewer, meaning folk watched our content longer than all of those other shows. And then on March 4th, then on March 4th this year when the twice-impeached, criminally convicted, felon con man-in-chief gave a speech to Congress, we decided to do what we

called the state of our union. And I sent a text message out, six or eight people, and I actually forgot who I sent it to. And the text message I sent out said, hey, we're doing this coverage, let's not give our black eyeballs to these other networks, let's watch it here. And I said, let's have 100,000 folks watching now up until that point the most People that we had watching our show live at any time was the day the Tyree Nichols video was released We were at 8,000 folks that day when 7 p.m. Hit when the video was released 7 p.m. Eastern In 15 minutes went from went from 8,000 to 29,000.

So that was the mark. So in my mind, I said, I threw it out there, but if it's 40, 50, I'm fine. And I wasn't even necessarily thinking that way because I don't get wrapped up in those things. Yet, and then of course on that night, we had Bishop William Barber who gave our speech. I did not carry a word of what Trump had to say.

Bishop Barber gave out the state of our union from our studios. And when we went live that night, and what happened here was, again, I just sent the text message to six or eight people. Then all of a sudden, like on Sunday, a couple of people hit me and they said, hey, is this real?

And I said, yes, it is. Then on Monday, about five or six people hit me and they said, hey, is this real? This showed up in our family group chat. The patriarch or the matriarch of our family posted this and they saw this. Then on Tuesday, about 30 people hit me saying, hey hey this showed up, my uncle posted this, my aunt posted this, my mother posted this, my grandmother posted this.

And what we began to realize is that literally in black chat, text groups all across the country this one text message was spreading. I didn't do any black radio, I didn't do any interviews. We didn't do any advertising. It literally was a single text message. So when we went live that night, within two minutes of going live, we were sitting at 40,000. And then within five to ten minutes, it was 67,000. Within 20 minutes, we had crossed 100,000. When I tossed the Bishop William Barber, we were at 200,000. At the peak of him speaking, we had 250,000 folks who were watching live. When they came back and put it all

together, out of all of the media outlets in America, out of everybody that was covering the speech that night, out of all of these channels on YouTube, we're talking about media companies, Time and Newsweek and NBC and ABC and CBS, all of these major companies on that night, our channel was number five out of everybody in the world that was covering that speech. Now why is that important? Because first of all once you show you can do it, it means that there's no excuse it can't be done again. And on a consistent basis. What it also showed is what can happen

when black folks move collectively. In terms of an action. See, we often say, well, we can't do this, we can't do that, but it actually happened. I remember when I was the editor in Dallas and I had a reporter and I always talk about Kelvin Bass. He works now for State Senator Royce West in Texas and Kelvin he wrote a story on Erica Badu and he knew Erica Badu's grandmother and so he really

took his time writing the story and researching and putting everything into it so when I read it I didn't have to do much editing to his story. Now the following week after it ran on the front page he turned in the story and I said Kelvin come over here and he came over I said what the hell is this? He's like what do you mean? I said this story sucks. I see so then I proceed to cuss him out. I said because see you messed up. He's like what do you mean I messed up? I said see you messed up because you showed me last week what you can do when you give a damn. What you are now telling me is this story means nothing,

so you didn't spend any time, anything in it, I say, and it reads like crap. I say, you messed up because you showed me that it's actually in you. Now my expectation for you is I got to see that now every single week. And I say that because that really has to be a state of mind for many of us,

because too many of us literally are making excuses as to why certain things cannot happen. At the table, I ask the question, what's the largest black-owned business in Memphis? Folk couldn't give me a name. That is a problem. And so I need us to understand that I'm not interested in the same old same. I'm not interested in another black mayor. I'm not interested in more black council members. I'm not interested in more black county commissioners. What I'm interested in is what are you doing while you are they?

while you are they. So allow me to, and church-going folk are familiar with the phrase, allow me to tag this text. So just in case, just in case you don't remember anything and I got to give you a title that you can, people ask you what what did he talk about when he came to 32nd annual Juneteenth celebration I must you can give him this here I'm not satisfied I'm not satisfied this holiday for me is a lot more personal than it is for other people. First and foremost, this is the only national day where this nation has to utter the word slavery. slave. See a lot of folk have made fun of black folks in Texas because all y'all got the word too late as if there was Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat in 1863. Dr. Gerald Horne has written a book talking about the counter-revolution in Texas that preceded the Civil War and what he lays out that that war in Texas for quote Texas independence, that war preceded the Civil War and actually set up what took place with the Civil War and the fascism in this country.

And he talked about how the story was told when General Granger came to the shores of Galveston, Texas to give the word to the people who were enslaved of African descent in Texas that they were now free. But the problem with that is like the problem with so much of American history. It literally is white history. What Horne's research showed, there were thousands of black troops that accompanied General Granger. It showed that there were people in Texas who defied the law, the Emancipation Proclamation that was actually given. We also know that that's the case because same president, Andrew Jackson, ignored the Supreme Court ruling, which literally led to the Trail of Tears, which was a part of elimination of Native Americans. So don't be mistaken, there is historical precedence in this country of

presidents or people who occupy the Oval Office ignoring Supreme Court rules. Now understand when the Emancipation Proclamation was then issued and then folks in Texas found out, really what happened was they were actually being kidnapped and held captive because the folks in Texas knew about the Emancipation Proclamation, but they chose not to abide by it. So it wasn't that the black folks there found out late,

they were being held captive by their, I call them prisoners, that's what I call them, they were actually prisoners of these racist folks because you have to understand that Texas independence was all about slavery. Just a couple of weeks ago I came home and my wife was watching the History Channel and they had this four-part docu-series on the frontiersmen. And in this docu-series, it is talking about how all of these individuals, how they settled America and they settled the West and what happened with the likes of Davy Crockett, who was an American hero and others, when they went to Texas. And then there was this battle over land.

And I'm watching the docu-series, and all I'm hearing them say in the docu-series, and Leonardo DiCaprio was one of the executive producers of it, amongst many other names. And they kept saying they were fighting for Texas independence, Texas independence. But they never were defining exactly what that Texas independence was, because really but they never were defining exactly what that Texas

independence was because really what they were fighting against was that you had a Mexican president of African descent that abolished slavery in Mexico and Mexico was a border state with Texas. They controlled Texas, the border state with the United States and so the white settlers in Texas did not want to have slavery in So then we what we have again white history white history And again into we grew up in the grub in Texas Every Texan is required in the seventh grade to take a Texas history class the book is literally that thick it is a

bullshit book because they have created the myth of remember the Alamo but nobody asked well why should we remember the Alamo because the fight at the Alamo where David Crockett and others were killed was the Alamo was a battle over slavery. They were fighting to keep slavery. They did not like the fact that Mexico had abolished slavery. And so they said, we need to succeed from Mexico to gain Texas independence so we can steal the land

and keep slavery. That's the real history. But again in this country when folk write the story don't look like us they conveniently left that out of the narrative as to why they were fighting for quote Texas independence. And so then you get to the point where we get the word in. You then begin to have this annual celebration of Juneteenth. And what folks need to understand, and I was having this conversation with Governor Westmore, my Alpha brother, because he asked me to come to the Maryland event. I said, well, I'll be speaking in West Virginia on June 19th and in St. Louis on June 20th. I said, but Governor, do me a favor.

I need you to make it plain that Juneteenth is not a day of parties and picnics and concerts. It is a day where the people of free folk of Africa that sit in Texas always said it is a day for not some freedom, not partial freedom, but complete freedom. It was freedom to vote. It was freedom to live. It was freedom to have housing, was freedom to have jobs. It was freedom to own businesses. It was freedom to have jobs, it was freedom to own businesses, it was freedom to be able to walk in the stores and not be followed, it was freedom not to have your women raped and pillaged by other folks, it was freedom to have your kids educated. That's what it's about.

I said, so when this became a national holiday and folks, I said don't make the mistake, I said talk to folks in Texas to understand what it was all about this is what not do it was a not another nice little cute little time it was a cost a yearly reminder of the fight for freedom of people of African descent and so that really has to be the mindset of every single person here. And so if you're celebrating Juneteenth here in Memphis, you now need to be asking the question, what is it we are doing to gain our freedom in Memphis?

And see, I appreciate earlier what the pastor said that America is called Memphis the blackest city in America. Well, here's my problem with that. When they talk about Washington, D.C. as the chocolate city, they're talking about Mary, Mary, and Mary, and other black mayors and the opportunities they created for African Americans using their powerful black business when Atlanta is called the black Mecca it's because of Maynard Jackson and Andrew Young and Maynard Jackson and Bill Campbell and Shirley Franklin and Cassim Reed and Keisha Lance Bottoms and now Mayor Andre

When they talk about other seat when they talk about the seat in terms of of what they have done, I'm confused. I'm confused. How can this city be the place where Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King was killed, and he often talked about the issue of economic freedom in the speech that he gave on April 3rd, 1968. That was an economic blueprint where he literally said in that sermon at Mason Temple that we need to pull our resources. He at one point said, Jesse, what do you call it? Redistribute the pain.

In that same sermon, he said the companies that should be boycotted, if folk are not doing business with us, we don't do business with them. Well Memphis I need y'all to explain to me how in the hell you are 62% of this city and you are in the condition that you ain't. I need black leaders, black political leaders. I need business leaders. I need black leaders, black political leaders. I need business leaders. I need preachers in this city to explain to me how are you so comfortable in a city that literally practices economic apartheid against black people?

I need you to ask the question of the black mayors that were elected before you, how is it that they were complicit in allowing the economic apartheid to continue? There is no way in the world you can have a city that is 62% African American and your contracts don't even reach 25%. That means that every black person in this city that is paying property taxes, sales taxes, you are spending money, you are virtually not getting a return on your investment, but we are just happy with the facade of leadership. See, I'm not satisfied because somebody black

is sitting in a position, because let me be real clear, there's a difference between being present and having presence. See, when you're present present you just show up. You can be present and no one knows you're there. You can be present and literally have no fingerprints, no footprints, but the question is do you have presence? When you walk into the room does the temperature change? When you walk into the room do some folks start getting uncomfortable? If you are a black leader in Memphis and you walk into a

room and folk in the room don't get uncomfortable, you simply are present. I'm not interested in the performance. This is a question of results. And let me be real clear, results and let me be real clear they are white Americans who care more about the collective of black folks than some black folks when you look at the history of the black freedom movement for black freedom movement the civil rights movement you have that when I listen to folks sit here and say no no no you shouldn't criticize the founding, you shouldn't criticize the founding fathers. You shouldn't criticize the folk who had slaves because they were men of their time.

Well, so was John Brown. John Brown was a white man who believed in the Bible who was willing to kill folk because he despised slavery. That means you need to have folk in this city who don't have the same melanin who should be angry with what they see economically that's happening in this city. Every single year we commemorate the assassination of Dr. King minus an economic conversation. I'm not interested in any more gatherings. We go to Selma to commemorate Bloody Sunday and Selma looks the same today as it did when they walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In fact when we go to Selma we don't even stay in Selma because ain't no hotels to stay in Selma. Folks stay in Montgomery and drive to Selma for the event to walk across

the bridge and go back to go back to Montgomery. See at some point we have to have an attitude of I'm not satisfied. And I'm telling you right now I know what's happening I know that I know there's people who politically is in the room who like well known what we know we're doing a lot I Can't accept that Because I need to see the fruits of your labor I Need to understand right now How black Memphis is not having a daily march against Elon Musk turbines

in this city. See, I don't want to hear all that, we the blackest city in the country. Well, damn it, show it. Because if anybody on- A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has

gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action, and that's just one of the things we'll be covering on everybody's business from Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Max Chafkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer

spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the

answer will always be no. Across the country, cops 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 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. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two of the We're on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way.

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

NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamouche. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real.

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcast. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We gotta make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback.

Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position, pregame to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org, brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Understand the history of black people. It has been one of agitation,

of protests, of demanding for change, not being comfortable not being willing to accept the status quo see when we begin to accept the status quo then we begin to say well no everything is good we great it's all fine so we really shouldn't say nothing do nothing we don't want to upset the battle you want to make folk upset no we shouldn't do that because you know you know the mayor's black so we don't want to do that whole thing. I started with Obama. There were black people. There was, I remember being a part of a conversation. I mean, it probably was at least 30 degrees at the table. They were like, well, no, Ro, we can't be doing that because you know, if we ask for a lot of stuff, you know, white people are not going to vote for him in the second term. So we can't ask for nothing because we got a light weight to the second term And then when the second term was like when we really can't ask for that. I said now I'm confused

Because and I said this all the time I said black people were the only ones who stayed at the inauguration parade everybody else left We were so happy and excited to look up always got a black first family oh but everybody forgot he was a 44th how the hell did we put a pressure on the previous 43 but we said no we ain't gonna do nothing to 44 because he's the first I don't know he's the first black but he's the 44th so I can praise being the first black but David he's the 44th. So I can praise being the first black, but David, I can ask for some stuff for the 44th. And that literally is the posture that we often take.

We have folk in this, and let's just be, see again, I'm interested in dancing around stuff. Cause let me be real clear. My mama, my mama, we 78 November, it was eight kids in her family. The eight kids had 39 kids. The 39 kids had 70 plus grandkids. No, the 39 kids, which my grandparents' grandkids,

the 39 kids had like 70 kids, the 72 had more like 120. Every Sunday my grandparents house for 15 years so my grandfather died. We were there every single Sunday, all of us together in that 1500 square foot house. I've never slept at a non-family member's house till I got to college because I had family. I didn't have room for friends. So let me real clear everybody in the room. I don't need no new friends I come from a large family, so I don't have to sit here and play nice with folks The network I have I own The only person on my hierarchy or my flowchart. There's God didn't meet

There's nobody above me So you can't call nobody You can't text nobody You can't you can't even call my wife but she like I, I can't tell her what to do so I'm going to let y'all know. So with that said, it is stunning to me and I see this all the time and I've been following lectures and I am confused. How in the hell you got races with five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten black folk running? When the ten run, eight of them know they ain't got no shot whatsoever.

And then when you lose, now you mad. When Tasha Jones ran for mayor in St. Louis, the reason she didn't get elected last the previous time is because there was there were two or three black male candidates who ran, but they didn't want the sister to win. But if you ask those same black men running, who likely are running their operations is sisters. It literally is the dumbest thing in the world. See, if you don't understand how to amass power, then you don't know how to use power. That means sometimes y'all gotta have the courage to tell people, I need to sit your ass down, you don't need to run.

See, I told you, I'm not here to miss words. That's a problem for me. Atlanta is what it is because Maynard, Young, Maynard, Bill Campbell, Shirley Franklin, Kaseem Reed, Keshia Lance Bobby, Andre. That's why Atlanta is what it is. Because they have had consistent black leadership that has leveraged political power, economic power, to create opportunities that go beyond the city of Atlanta. So I need you to now ask the question, if we talk about historically what Washington, D.C. has done for African American economic empowerment and what Atlanta has done and

what Houston has done and what Houston has done and what Chicago has done even though Chicago now for the first time had back-to-back black mayors so Chicago in its history has only had three black mayors Houston in its history has only had two black mayors you've had five, three elected. So I need to now ask you the question, how is it when we talk about black elected leadership in all these other cities and what came out as a result of them being elected, you now should be asking the question, why is Memphis never mentioned? So if Memphis is never mentioned in terms of outcome for black folk that means the folks that you have had elected did not deliver. Results are results. I'm just trying to tell y'all. I deal with this every single day.

When we talk about, right now, when we talk about what happened in the 70s and 80s, we talk about Hatcher and Gary, Indiana, Stokes in Cleveland, Jackson in Atlanta, Coleman Young in Detroit, Maynard Jackson in Atlanta, and how they use that power. When Maynard Jackson said Atlanta, and how they use that power when Maynard Jackson said tumbleweeds will be going down these runways before I allow this airport to be expanded without black participation. Maynard Jackson told

the banks in, the T told the banks in Atlanta, y'all got to add black board members. They said ain't no black folks we can find. He said, Mr. City Treasurer coming to my office, take our money out they banks. Oh, hold up, what you doing? He said, no, no, you not gonna have city money in your banks, but you can't find black folks to be on your boards. When he became mayor, African Americans were getting 0.0012%

of all city contracts, not 1% not half a percent not 0.25 not 0.10 0.0012 see this is America y'all if you ain't having a money conversation you are not having an American conversation if you want to understand America just go to Washington DC DC. If you stand in front of the White House and you look at the White House, the White House represents power. If you look to the left, you see another building that's on the same lane as the White House. That's the Department of Treasury. The White House is power, Treasury is money. Treasury is money, the White House is power those two things go together

Why do you think when that convicted felon at twice impeached thug went to Saudi Arabia? 32 American CEOs went with him who were running multi-billion dollar companies because Politics and money go together. Let's not be confused And so I understand we can talk about social justice and we can talk about voting rights, we can talk about housing, but everything in America emanates from money. King understood that, Abernathy understood that, all the folk understood that, and so why is it that this generation is being so soft and

unwilling to be challenging folks in this way when I asked the question can you name me the largest business? folk couldn't name it there's no reason in the world there is not a major black-owned construction company in this city or engineering firm an architectural firm you should be able to run down the line but it's not there you should be asking yourself that's a problem because if you're not incubating and growing and building capacity of black businesses then you're not creating opportunities for the next generation and so then when folk run,

they are running on the agenda of how can I lower crime? Do understand this, John Hope Bryant talks about it all the time, you ain't never seen a riot in a neighborhood with a credit score of 700 or higher. If you show me, if I lay out a map of Memphis right now, If you show me if I lay out a map of Memphis right now and if you see the most low the lowest crime areas in Memphis, I Guarantee you that correlates with money

So we ain't having a money conversation then we're not having a conversation And so we don't talk about June 2, 2025. There has to be a group of radicals in this room, in this city, who are willing to challenge school districts, city council leaders, county leaders, state leaders, in order to change what is happening in this city. You should be unleashing protesters on their asses every single day. And that means groups showing up in power. I'm a life member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity incorporated. I need to understand how is it that you got alphas and deltas and aka's and zetas and

links and Prince Hall Mason and Eastern Star and all these groups. I want to know when the last time has your organization showed up in mass presenting an agenda at the City Council meeting. Imagine if all of a sudden two and three and four and five hundred women in pink and green roll up to the City Council meeting saying here's our agenda for Memphis Imagine if red and white folk women in red and white or brothers in black and gold go to a Shelby County Commissioners meeting saying here is our agenda and let's be clear if you don't enact it We're gonna make sure that somebody is put in here who actually can enact it. I'm sick and tired of pastors getting together,

slapping each other on their back, reciting scripture, but not putting the same scripture into place. If Jesus had the audacity to turn over some tables, when was the last table you turned on? Yeah! was the last thing that you turned on. Gatherings like this are not about eating an unseasoned piece of chicken.

Gatherings like this are supposed to be recommitment efforts for you to be focused on the agenda of freedom and liberation of our people. If you came here to take some selfies, to eat a dinner, and then go back and say I checked off this event of the Negro event I went to for the month of June, then you're wasting your time. If you come back to this room next year for the 30th event and the city looks the same way it did this year, you've wasted your time. Your job over the next 364 days is to change the look and the feel and the condition of this city and the people are waiting for you to show up. So if you're in this room calling yourself a black leader but damn it act like a black leader, walk like a black leader, talk like a black leader. Be

willing to fight and if you are a white ally whether you a male or female you do the exact same thing but you need to understand this is gonna require folk having the guts and the tenacity and a revolutionary mind and a radical agenda to be able to say we're not satisfied with what's going on. You got to be willing to fight. You got to be willing to challenge. You're gonna be willing to make some of your friends and frat brothers and sorority sisters and church members uncomfortable. I don't care if they look like you. They need to be pushed and prodded and forced to change. This is a generation that's got to learn

how to fight for something. And in the words of my friend, by the burden of what's entending, we will fight until hell freezes over and then we will fight on the ice. Yeah! Woo! Tierra Janay Teague, 25 years old,

just graduated from the University of Pittsburgh. I'm going to take a little personal privilege. Double master's degree, Mike. Social work and public health. Somebody better recognize. Brothers, you know, I'm not a... A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways.

Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on everybody's business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chafkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith.

Every Friday we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull, we'll take you inside the boardrooms, the back rooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

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

I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio 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. Add free at Lava five and six on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

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

It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug band. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill.

NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette, MMA fighter Liz Caramouche. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real.

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcast. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game.

We gotta make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org, brought to you by AARP

and the Ad Council. Here to talk about me, but I am here to talk about brother Roland S. Martin. Over the course of a journalistic career that has seen him interview US presidents, top athletes, and entertainers in Hollywood. Roland S. Martin is a journalist who has always maintained a clear sense of the calling of the world many have bestowed the title upon him of the voice of black America. Yes. Martin is the host of the managing editor of Roland Martin Unfiltered, the first

daily online show in the history focused on the news and analysis of politics, entertainment, sports and culture for the unapologetic African AmericanAmerican perspective, it launched in September 4th of 2018. Brothers and sisters, on September 4th of 2021, Martin launched the Black Star Network, an OTT network that features a variety of shows focused on the news, culture, finance, history, and wellness. The Black Star Network is available on Apple. I'll write this down real quick.

It's available on Apple, Android phones, Apple and Android TV, Roku, Amazon, Fire TV, Xbox One, and Samsung TV. Brother Martin is busy, he's busy. For the last two years Martin produces a twice daily commentary on the iHeart radio black information network heard on nearly 40 stations nationwide. We can give it up for that. Now some of y'all might want to take a pen and pad out for this one. Martin is the author of four books, four books.

His latest book, watch out now, White Fear, How the Browning of America is Making White Folks Feel. His other books are Listen to the Spirit Within, 50 Perspectives on Faith, Speak Brother, A Black Man's View of America, and The First. Barack Obama's role to the White House and originally reported by Roland Martin himself. Martin is sought as an international speaker, delivers speeches and lectures to numerous groups annually, electrifying audiences with a deep understanding of history, politics and culture.

He has been named four times the Ebony Magazine as one of the 150 most influential African Americans in the United States of America. Martin was also awarded the 2008 President's Award by the National Association of Black Journalists for his work in multiple media platforms. He is a four-time NAACP Image Award winner, including named best host for the last two years in a row. Martin spent the last six years as a commentator for CNN appearing on numerous shows and earnings accolades near and far for his No Holds Bards approach,

conviction, and perspectives on various issues. In 2009, CNN was awarded the Peabody Award for its outstanding 2008 election coverage, of which Brother Martin was a proud member of that team. He is a founding member, a founding news member, editor of Savoy Magazine, the team of New York-led Vanguard Media, and the former founding editor of BlackAmericaWeb.com. So I'm just going to give youall a little bit on this one. Mr. Martin is a life member of the National Association of Blacks in Journalism. That's right, y'all can clap for that. Martin is also a life member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity incorporated. Brothers did you hear me say he's a life member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity incorporated.

Richard Clark, you can't take these jokers nowhere, can you? Brothers also, he is a member of Sigma Pi Phi fraternity and he is a board member of the education reform group, 50C CAN. But most importantly, brothers, I just want to highlight that he is married to the Reverend Mrs. Jackie Hood Martin, author of the fulfilled, the art and the joy of balanced living, and the wedded bliss of 52-week devotional balance and living in the children's book series, Hannah's Heart. They reside in Northern Virginia and also outside of Dallas, Texas. Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, please rise to your feet and receive my fraternity

brother, Brother Roland Martin. All right. So how we doing? Make one correction. My book, my new book is called White Fear of the Browning of America's making white folks lose their minds. That's the title of the book. Someone already asked me that. Did I bring some?

I did not. This is the third city I'm in in three days, and then I'll be in Houston tomorrow for Father's Day, celebrating my dad. And actually, it'll be a dual comedy. It'll be Father's Day, the celebrating my parents' anniversary, which was June 10th.

They're married 58 years on June 10th, so... So we'll be there. So I'm glad to be back in Columbus. Shout out to Congresswoman Joyce Beatty. I got to give her a call after this. And so it's always good to be here. Let me first start by thanking the folks who support our show, who support the network. When TV won, canceled news won now. A lot of people were upset. They were mad. They were frustrated. But I wasn't. I was literally focused. As Alfred Liggins was telling me they were canceling, I was already planning on what I was doing. And understand what happens when you have a vision. Anybody who reads Habaka chapter two,

they will understand what that means. I was very clear in terms of what we were gonna be doing and how we're gonna be doing this. And I remember at the time YouTube was funding a number of different projects and they actually said that black news wouldn't work. I said, okay, watch us work. And there were a lot of people who actually said, man, don't do this. I don't think it's going to work. But I've never listened to other people. So it doesn't matter to me what they have to say. And when we launched this

show on our YouTube channel, we started about 157,000 subscribers. Right now we see that 1.81 million will be at 2 million by September. I purposely chose not to do a subscription base. I wanted the content available everywhere. And when I went to our audience, I said, listen, we're going to do a donation plan. I said, I'm not sending you hats, shirts, swag, all that. I did. I said, all that stuff costs. I said, when you give to the show, it's going back into the show.

And so we've had more than 36,000 donors in the last six and a half years who've contributed in excess of $4 million. And that's important because every year, $350 billion is spent on advertising and black-owned media gets anywhere from.5 to 1% of the 350 billion. And so the reason Ebony is what it is today

almost non-existent, the reason Jet doesn't exist, the reason black-owned media is withering on the vine all across this country is because these ad agencies and these companies are practicing economic apartheid and they don't support black media. And I can tell you, so one of the reasons you don't see a lot of interviews of shows or movies on Amazon Prime and Netflix and Apple TV Plus and Hulu

is because those publicists, they send me pictures for them to be on the show, but they never call about money. So they value my audience to want their talent on to promote the shows, but they don't want to spend advertising money on the network, so I don't let them come on. And I did the same thing when I was at TV One. And so that's what people have to understand.

And we literally have to build and create it, because everybody said that doesn't work. And two things, if you want to understand, why all of them were wrong. So in August, when I was at the Democratic National Convention, once you hit a certain level on YouTube, they signed you your own person who deals with you and your channel. And we met with them and they said, they grouped my show among all the progressive talk shows.

And I made it clear to them, I said, we're not a progressive talk show, we're not a conservative talk show, we're not a democratic talk show, Republican black show, we're a black show. So we center black people. And so what was very interesting is when we when we did that they said they were shocked and stunned that when they grouped all the progressive shows together they were stunned that our show was number one in terms of most watch time per viewer and they couldn't believe it because there were other there were other shows that had five and six million subscribers, but our folk watch our show longer than any other any of those shows. Because which tells

you our people are craving the content and they want real information that you're not getting elsewhere. On March 4th when we broadcast our State of Our Union, raise your hand if the text message showed up in your family chat group about watching the show. OK, let me tell you what happened. I literally sent that to just six people. And on a Sunday, about four or five people hit me. Then on Monday, about another 10 people. Then about 30 people hit me on Tuesday.

They would say, was this thing real? Is it real? And the text message was simple. I said, yeah, don't watch the networks. Watch our coverage. Hey, let's hit 100,000. Up until that point, the most people that had ever watched a live broadcast of my show was 29,000.

That was the day that Tyree Nichols' video was released of him being beaten to death in Memphis. So we had hit 29,000 people watching live on that day. Normally we're averaging anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000. Well, when we went live that night, the moment we pressed live, within five minutes we had hit 50,000. And then in 10 minutes we had hit 100,000.

When Bishop William Barber got up to speech and I tossed it to him, because I didn't carry Trump's speech, I carried Bishop Barber's speech. I'm like, I ain't carrying his speech. When I tossed to Barber, 200,000 were watching. At his peak, 250,000. That night, out of all of the media

that was covering that speech, all media, I didn't say all black media, all media, our channel was number five. Now what does that say? See, here's the problem. When you do it once, you've proven to me you can do it. So the problem is, if 250,000 folk were watching live on that night, who says we can't watch that every night? And this is part of the point that I'm gonna talk about, and then what we're gonna get to with the panel is,

we have to understand the power of the collective and how you wield the power of the collective in order to make a difference. And so we showed it on that night and they were stunned by that number. And then my girl Tiffany Lofton was putting on a conference for college students and on that show she said, we got a conference, we're trying to get these 35 students

from Florida A&M here, and I said, how much money y'all need? And she's like, well, I said, okay, we gonna keep talking. You figure out how much money you need. The first lesson in that is when you say you need something, always be prepared to state what the actual need is. Not what I want, what I need. So about five minutes later she said,

all right, so she said, we need 39,000. I was like, got it. I said, so the show we gonna do 20, audience responded. When I drove home at 2.30, she hit me, she says, Roller, she says, we raised $84,000. Because when we did it, it was midnight, $100,000 was still watching.

So the point there is our audience is craving information, but you actually have to build it, you actually have to maintain it. Then we have to continue to support it because everything costs. I mean, right now we are live streaming this event on the network. Y'all saw me doing the show earlier.

I had Governor Wes Moore on the show. We covered the funeral of Congress and Charlie Rangel. I mean, we're carrying this live. And this is the whole point, because if you don't create the network, then folk who are not here can't see it. And so we are so caught up in white validation, let me be real clear.

We are so caught up in white validation, let me be real clear, we are so caught up in white validation that we don't think it's real if CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS don't cover it. So we're begging them to show up and they rarely do. And we're now living in a digital world where you don't even need them to show up because you can literally do it yourself. So, I wanted to say that.

So let me segue into my comments and as I said, when you talk about the power of collective, April 3rd, 1968 when Dr. King gave his final sermon at Mason Temple, if you go back and listen, first of all, all of you need to go back and listen to and read the sermon because far too many black people, because I get sick and tired of this on MLK Day and then Black History Month, we love playing the mountaintop part, which is a two-minute part at the end of the speech, but there's another 41 minutes of that speech. And in

that sermon, he talked about black people being individually poor yet collectively wealthy. I just gave you the example. There were people who individually poor, yet collectively wealthy. I just gave you the example. There were people who literally said, and I had a seasoned saint who stopped me at the Atlanta airport. She saw me, she's, oh my God, I love your show. And she said, all I have is this.

And so she had this dollar bill, actually I took a picture and put it on social media. She had this dollar bill that was folded up and looking like a flower, I mean a bird. And so we took a picture and she said, this is all I have. Her dollar is just as important as the person that gave us 10,000.

Because in order for us to hit that 4 million number, it's a whole bunch of dollars in five and 10 and 25 that's a part of that. That's collective. King said, if we are to move properly we have to do so as a collective. Now even though I was live on the show I'm totally multitasked so I was listening to y'all pre-discussion and I heard lots of folk complaining about what we need to do and who's not doing this and who's not doing that.

But what most folks never do is get a mirror out and then say, what are you doing? And then what are you doing and how you can get with another person, now you got two, now it's four, then four is eight, then eight is 16, then 16 is 32, and it goes from there. I spoke at my parents' church in Houston and a brother came up to me, he said,

man, he said, I wish this place was packed. So it seats about 3,000, you probably had about five or 600. I said, first of all, I don't talk to empty chairs. I talk to the folk who are sitting in chairs. I said, now you're concerned that there was only five or 600 here. I said, yet, if the 500 here go tell one person next month, you'll have a thousand sitting in the room.

Then if a thousand go tell one person the next month, now it's 2,000, by the third month you won't have capacity. So you're complaining about who's not here, but that you bring somebody with you tonight. And so that really has to be our focus when we talk about where do we go from here? How do we begin to move? You see this happening right now with the boycott of Target, but not just Target, so many other companies.

All of these companies, they desire our money, but as King said in that sermon, he said, if you're not doing business with us, then at one point he says, Jesse, what do you call it? He says, we're going to redistribute the pain. He said, the garbage workers are experiencing pain, now we're going to redistribute the pain. I've had people say, well, why you calling specific companies out? Go back and listen to that sermon. King names four specific companies, but then after he names the companies about boycotting, he then tells the black

folks of Symbol, then you need to also be supporting black institutions. He says the SCLC opened an account at a black bank. He said you need to be getting policies with a black life insurance company. Do understand when we built our studio, we set two blocks from the White House, one block from the AFL-CIO, right there on, what is formerly called Black Lives Matter Plaza, but I still call it that.

Our production room was a quarter of a million dollars being built that was done by a black engineering company out of Atlanta. Our green screen was done by a black drape company out of California. The lighting system was about 160,000 done by a black lighting company. The news set was done by a black set design company.

Most of the, nearly all the artwork, except three pieces in the studio were done by all black artists. So I was intentional on making sure that money given by black people to a black media company then uses black vendors. Black vendors have families, have folk working for them. So we can't keep assembling and talking about

what we need to do if we are not being intentional in how we move. And so that has to be. And we've got to also stop this idea of, well, I tried it once. Julian, I was getting in the car and I was telling him something when I was at TV One. Somebody said, one of the staffers said, well, you know we are a black company. And I said, say it again and you will be fired. And they looked at me and they said, what do you mean? What they didn't understand was that phrase, they were literally saying we are a second class company.

They were literally talking down on the company. And I said, if you say it again, you will be fired. Because I needed them to understand that we may not have the money of CNN, but we can still have high quality. And in fact, that was so crazy. I did a panel with Procter & Gamble, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. And on the panel, the brother sitting next to me, he owned a barbershop in Cincinnati. And he really thought he was being positive. He said, y'all, we really got to support Roland Martin Unfiltered.

This is literally what he said. He said, now, it's not going to look as good as CNN. I was like, hold on. Now we in church, I ain't gonna tell you the second part of what I said. Just understand, he got cussed out right there. I said, hold up, bro. I got 4K robotic cameras in my studio. I said, no, no, bro, I'm support, no, no, no, no.

You literally just said it's not going to look as good as CNN. I said, they may make a billion in profit. I said, but a 4K camera is a 4K camera, and if you got good lighting, you gonna look good. But he literally articulated that, and he didn't even realize that he was actually degrading the product, but he thought he was actually degrading the product,

but he thought he was praising. So if we're going to have these discussions about the state of black America and what we need to be doing and where we need to be going, then there has to be a, what I call, John Hope Bryan says black America needs a reboot. I say, no, black America has to be reprogrammed. There has to be a reprogramming. And that's the real thing. So in the reprogramming,

literally has to start with an individual. So you can't have a great America without 50 states. You can't have a great state without a great city. Cities, it goes cities, neighborhoods, neighborhoods, blocks, blocks, streets, streets, houses, and then one house, and then at least one person in the house, and then one person in the house, first of all, infects, affects to create an effect of the people in the house. So then it goes house, neighbors, block, street, block,

neighborhood, city, state, country. So if we're having the conversation, it literally has to start with each person that is sitting in the chair, where you have to make a decision, leaving here, how are you now going to operate? And then when you come back next year, you should be doing a personal annual report. So what companies do and churches do this as well and say this is how the company did in the last year. So they give an annual report. Well,

too many of us don't do annual reports as individuals. So you come to these events, and we do them all the time, and we love having the conversations, and I dare you to go to YouTube and go pull up all of those State of Black America conversations Tavis had and go listen to all of the people who were on those discussions. And then I want you to listen to what they all suggested what we should be doing. And then I want you to listen to what they all suggested, what we should be doing. And then I want you then to do while you're watching it, then go, did any of those people do the same thing that they were actually talking about?

And the answer you're going to discover is probably about 90% of it was rhetoric. And it amounted about 10% of action. So no matter what happens up here in this fireside chat, you have to make a conscious decision leaving here, what are you prepared to do? And then how are you prepared to lead your family and then lead your neighbors and then lead your neighbors

and then it sort of builds from there. And so we are a part of organizations. And what I'm about to tell you, understand, I said this directly to the last five, six alpha presidents. I said it to the Brotherhood at our convention in Baltimore and I said it to all D9 organizations and I've said it to the Boulay and I've said it to the Lynx and I've said it to the Boulay and I've said to the Lynx and I've said to Prince Hall-Mason's and I said to Eastern Star, I'm not interested

in walking around in our colors talking about how great we are if we've never showed up in mass at a city council meeting. And let me just show you how easy this is. If the city council meets once a month, that's 12 months. There are nine D9 groups. If you add Prince Hall, Mason, Eastern Star, and at the links, that's 12. That means each organization, all they got to do is show up to one council meeting in the whole year. And so now you say, okay, let's go a county commissioner, that's one county meeting the whole year. And then let's one school board meeting the whole year. So all you're doing is asking folk to put their colors on and I need you to understand,

do you understand what would happen if all of a sudden two, three, four, 500 folk in black and gold and pink and green and red and white and all these different colors showed up every month? Trust me, even the black elected officials be like, okay, I don't know what they doing, but because that's votes. So we sit around and shout out how great we are doing, but if you actually look at what we do, we're having internal conversations. My wife was a Delta.

I was like, I don't know what y'all meet about. Y'all meet too much. And your meetings are too long. I'm being straight up. If it's a Delta, y'all know I ain't lying. I told y'all national president, y'all meet too much. So if we're meeting so much, what is the result that we're meeting?

And is it internal business or is it external business? So maybe the reason people feel the way they do who are not in Greek letter organizations, because they never seen us outside of a party or an internal meeting. So maybe if they saw us in our colors in the community moving different, they're going to respond differently. And so the exact same thing happens with churches. They are in their men's group, their women's group, we got all these different groups. So how do 10, 20 church men's group move when it comes to black men. I'm not saying wait on past to do it. It's communicating with other folk.

And so I need us to completely change how we are approaching moving in our communities because right now it's not working. I'll close with this. Last night I was in Memphis yesterday for the 32nd annual Juneteenth Freedom Celebration. And the person, the preacher that he talked about, he said, our mayor who's black,

he talks about how Memphis is the blackest city in America. And I literally said, I followed that, I said, but you wanted the of the broken cities. I said, so how can you be a city that's 62% black, you've had five black mayors, three elected, you have all this black leadership, I said, and your contracts are less than 10%. I said, that's a problem. And so I want us to, again, the outcome tonight is to be thinking completely different about how we're going to approach this conversation. So let's get it going.

So listen, so Columbus is going to be different. So I'm going to tell you that right now. And I just want to make one connection before we move to the fireside chat. So I'm going to ask the brothers to come up here and actually move these things. So just how this works. And people see Roland as a public figure, which he is,

but I wouldn't share this, but I think you shared it. I know you shared it the last day, last year. This brother literally, so the reason why he's here is also because he's a personal figure too. This brother literally last year, we sat in the car and talked for five hours straight after the State of Black America event. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about

on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on everybody's business from Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Max Chafkin.

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So the reason why we're here today is because this brother sets a standard that then I have to follow in the city that I'm in. All right? And what I want you to know is, so this is not going to be like one of those other states of black America that he just talked about you see on YouTube. This is going to be the beginning of a process that for the next three years that we

will talk about. We have, we're not unintentionally here in the church. We're going to organize the faith-based community in the city of Columbus. We're going to organize black elected officials in the city of Columbus. And we're going to organize around K through 12 education in the city of Columbus. We're gonna organize black elected officials in the city of Columbus, and we're gonna organize around K through 12 education in the city of Columbus. So this is not just a conversation, this is the beginning of a process, and it started with this brother setting a standard for me personally last year.

So I just wanted to say that publicly, and I appreciate you so much. So we actually gonna pivot to the fireside chat, so I'm gonna ask all our panelists to go up. If we can actually going to pivot to the fireside chat so I'm going to ask all our panelists to go up. If we can bring some water upstage too, I'd appreciate it. Brother, Kevin, you around? Because I want to say one last thing sort of related to this. Another, okay, we go talk about the donations now, right? One, two, one, two, Let's try this. One, two, one, two, one, two. All right. So, first of all, can we give it up again for Roland Martin, y'all?

All right? This, we all know a lot of people have great ideas, but the work is a real thing. And one of the things that I've learned over my time, obviously, owning Columbus Black, is as a black-owned media platform, we don't necessarily have the resources that we would like to have to do the work that we want to do. And so when Roland talked about what he's been doing you all will notice right now there's a QR code on the screen right. If you scan that QR code it's gonna give you the opportunity to contribute to both the war toward the work that he's actually doing right. One of the things that we recognize is that

as black-owned platforms, entrepreneurs, One of the things that we recognize is that as black-owned platforms, entrepreneurs, black-owned businesses, we tend to be like a lot of our community, under-resourced, under-capitalized to do the work that needs to be done. But today, you all have the opportunity to participate in helping to support what you see him doing every single day for our community.

So feel free, it'll be back on the screen a little bit later. You can scan the QR code. You'll have the ability to donate at different levels. We appreciate the work you're doing, Roland. And we'll turn it over and get ready for the panel discussion now. All right, does everybody have a microphone for the most part?

All right, everybody got one? OK. Mic check. So we're going to go from that end, coming on down. Introduce yourself, your title. So we're gonna go from that end, coming on down. Introduce yourself, your title. Tim Clark, senior minister here at First Church. Yeah!

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! I got a question. Michael Young, I have the privilege and pleasure

of being the lead pastor of City of Grace Church. Derrick Holmes, I'm the senior pastor of the historic Union Grove Baptist Church. Hello, for your duty. These tables too spread out. Y'all slide, y'all act like y'all don't know each other. This ain't COVID, slide down. Sitting far apart like

Ain't got nothing. Let's go. All right, keep going. There we go. There we go. Yeah, I just break rules. I don't care. I don't care Michael Cole, board president, Columbus City Schools Michael Cole, Board President, Columbus City Schools. And once again, I am Shayla L. Davis, President and CEO of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus Foundation. And just, can you do me, can you just do me a favor, uh, zooming? Go ahead, I do it. You go on, you start, I'm gonna to zoom the camera in because it's too wide. So my job actually is to do my best to get out of the way because just look at the talent that you have on this stage, right? So the first thing I want to say is this is not unintentional.

We are actually in the house of the Lord. And when I think of, I'm going to say some words to you, Bishop, and I'm going to go start off with you, not just because you, I'm not going to say just because you're old. I'm not going to say it just because you're old. But the reality is witness, worship, and works. You heard those words before? I know you've heard those words before, Bishop, but just talk to us a little bit about this idea about why those are not just words, but when we think about the tradition of the black

church, why this conversation, and particularly in this particular moment, regarding the state of black America is so important when it comes to our history in the church and how we think about hope, if you wouldn't mind. Well, I think there are several ways to approach that. I am, last week I had the opportunity to speak at Anderson University in Anderson, Indiana for the National Preaching Clinic. And it was a audience, a congregation,

almost evenly divided. And Dr. Cheryl Sanders and I were sharing in a setting somewhat like this. And I was talking about the role of the preacher, and it hit me as I looked out that one part of the audience was getting with me and the other part was looking at me like a cow looking at a new fence and it dawned on me that for our brothers and sisters of lighter you they had no historical frame

of reference for the demands the, the responsibility that rests on the shoulders of African-American pastors slash preachers. And that is because even though we don't like to frame it this way, black church, white church, Dr. King loved to quote that hy him in Christ there is no East, no West, in him no bond or free, just one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth. That's true in Christ, not in America. And because of that, we have to deal with the tension that exists between the two communities.

And so in the African American church, the black pastor doesn't have the luxury of merely standing on Sunday morning and pontificating for 22 minutes. Because we must be involved in the warp and woof life and living of our congregants every day in every way. And so we have a gospel with shoe leather and sometimes that shoe leather's worn out because we're so busy going to various places, ministering in various ways. So I see no dichotomy, I see no contradiction. I don't even see a contrast, as it were,

between witness, worship, and work. They are symbionic, they are intertwined, interconnected, and one gives legitimacy to the other. If my witness and my work are not backed up, then my worship is empty. And Paul says you're sounding gong and you're a clanging cymbal. All right. Listen, and let me just say this. So Brother Roland, the way in which this is, and I'm saying this to everybody, so my role

is to kind of just ask some questions. But I'm going to throw it to you at any point to kind of respond. And the first thing I want to say is that our beautiful sister on this stage who's already introduced us is only there as a single sister because one of the things that we wanted to do, and this is through the vision of Bishop, is to make sure that we have some of these younger generation of pastors here. So I just wanted to make sure that we have some of these younger generation of pastors here. So I just wanted to make sure that you understand it wasn't that we were just trying to weight it to the brother side.

This is really a conversation that we want to have the black church, particularly in Columbus, lead. And so we have some of this brilliant leadership represented throughout this church. So with that- So is she the only woman on the panel or she's a single woman? I'll try to figure out what you're saying. I was like, where are you going with this? See now this brother got jokes now. She said she both. I was like, I don't know where he going with this. We got a single woman on the panel. I was like, single sister on the panel. How about that? You want to have a love connection show? What we doing? Go ahead. I'm sorry. I'm

sorry. I just couldn't. It was like just sitting right there. And I know some of y'all were thinking single sister on the panel. How about that? You want to have a love connection show? What we doing? Go ahead. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just couldn't. It was like just sitting right there. I know some of y'all were thinking that y'all didn't want to say it, but my show is called Rolling Body Unfiltered. That's not true.

These sisters right here said that ain't true. Now listen, so Brother Stanley, you're the youngest, I believe. I could be wrong on this panel, but given what- How old are you? 29. Huh? 29. Okay, you young. So we heard the words of bishop, which I think resonated with the audience here. And there's this profound history of the black church. There's no doubt about that. But my guess is that one of

the questions that you're thinking about is perhaps why is it given that history that there are many people who don't think that the black church today are meeting their needs. And so when you think about that question, what sort of things come to your mind about why is it the church perhaps not necessarily seen as meeting the needs of our community today? One, I want to say I picked the wrong seat sitting behind Bishop. I should have sat somewhere else. However, to your point, I'm the youngest pastor in the city, so I think my perspective may

be a little bit different. I would argue one of the things we have to wrestle with is the reality that we're not in Kansas anymore. So the reality of what the black church is and was has changed. And to what Mr. Martin said earlier, it's not about rebooting, but it's about reprogramming. I would argue that the black church has to rediscover our prophetic identity.

Black church, I don't believe, was never meant to just be a place, but it was called to be prophetic. So my question is, are we, for those who feel like their needs aren't being met, we might not be speaking or preaching or teaching about what it is that people are dealing with where their feet actually rest. We have to reclaim our role as truth tellers

and justice seekers and liberationists. In the tradition of prophets and the legacy really of the civil rights movement. The church's relevance is tied to its willingness to speak to the pain of black people in real time, not to just preach salvation, which we must do, but also fight for liberation. So I think we have to rediscover our prophetic identity while also moving from platform to pavement. We can no longer be content with just having powerful worship services inside our sanctuaries

while the world is on fire outside of our doors. Our ministries have to be seen in sidewalks, on school boards, in city council meetings, at the corner store, at the rec centers. The church must become a community partner. So it's to the point where it can't just be one day or two days, Sunday and Wednesday, but seven days a week to where we're meeting real needs offering mental health resources Offering economic support offering reentry programming having housing advocacy meetings and more I'll stop there. That's no I appreciate that

So rolling it before I actually pass it on to pastor young Those things that he's talking about. There's a big word. I'm sure I'm not going to say it right, but called public theology. And you had Brother William Barber for your state of black America. And I'm just wondering, why do you think it was important, why did you think it was important to have that brother talk from the moral perspective, as the moral witness of the church as it relates to the times and the struggles that we face. Well, first, Bishop Barber is not only a prophetic leader, he's also my alpha brother, and he picked up the mantle of the Poor People's Campaign.

Dr. King was killed on the 4th of 1968, and they have been focused on poor working class, low income folk all across the country. But he also is from North Carolina. North Carolina, they practiced in the late 1800s fusion politics. What folk don't understand is that when black folks have always fought for changes in America, whether economically or politically, broke white people benefit, even though they vote against their interest. And so one of the things that he did when he was the state conference lead of NAACP, and actually I spoke at their last conference when he was the state president, I met about

four white women. They said, bet you ain't never met four white women who are founders of an NAACP Chapter in the hills of North Carolina So when they were doing moral Mondays It started with 16 or 17 people and he told and then of course and then it just expanded to thousand He told me a story. He said they were at a parade and he said his redneck walked up to him with a Confederate flag Draped around his neck But he had tears in his eyes and he had Bishop Barbara we don't agree a lot he said but I gotta

thank you he said because y'all's fight for rural hospitals impacting me and so when I look at religious leaders in this country when I look at a lot of the folks it's a lot of folks who are, it's a lot of folks who are talking. It's a lot of folks who are like, you know what somebody tells me they say, man that was a great, man pastor preached it. I then go, what was the scripture? And then give me what a lot of preachers call the A. Lewis Patterson three-point principle. They go, well I don't know, he was just preaching. I said, oh, so you talking about the hoop part. You're not referencing the scripture.

So you got excited by the hoop part, but the scripture sets up the end of the sermon. And that's where too many of us are. So one of the things that Bishop Barber does, they are intense about data, data collection. And he and I on the same page, out of... I have no problem saying it, out of all of the civil rights leaders, pastors that I've dealt with over my 20-plus year career, he is the only one, and I'm saying this very clearly, the only one that understands organization,

mobilization, and data. So it's a lot of folk who have rallies, but they don't know who's even there. They've collected no names, no phone numbers, no addresses, no emails. So after the rally, when you need them to show up at the city council meeting, you don't know who to call. They have the data. So they can send the text message, we need 50 of you here, we need 100 of you here. And so he and I talked a lot about this

because that is one of the greatest failures of black leadership is that oftentimes it's emotional, but it's not data driven. We're not moving people in a different way. So for instance, and every preacher here will agree, one of the biggest mistakes preachers make is they say, I have X number of members, but a real church doesn't count individuals.

They actually say, I have X number of families. Because a family isn't transient. Mom, dad, kids typically stay. Now it's multi-generational. So real preachers say, I have X number of families, which is more indicative of the strength of your church than individuals. And so the data is important.

And so that's what he's focused on. What they're now doing, when they break apart a big, beautiful building, which is more like a BBL. When they break, they are breaking apart the bill on the negative impact it's going to have on low income, working class, poor people. He is trying to galvanize the 100 million plus

working poor folk in this country. 90 million people didn't vote in the last election. Trump did not, they said a majority of people, no, a majority of those that voted was not a majority of the people. And so we've got to have a different tact when it comes to leadership, and we make a mistake when we keep having rallies

and protests, we're not collecting data, and we make a mistake when we keep having rallies and protests, we're not collecting data, and we're not focused on what we do on the Monday after the rally or after the protest, and that's one of our biggest mistakes. And so that's the sweet spot in which he's been able to really lead that movement. And last point, this is what he does, which is most important. When they have events, impacted people speak. It's not loaded with politicians and preachers and other big names. They will have impacted people speak first. And if you are a big name, you have to sum up what the impacted people said and it's a whole lot of national civil rights

leaders and others who won't show up to his major events because he tells them it's not here for you to give a speech. We need to hear from the impacted people. He wants the voice of the poor. And that's why Biden never met with him, because the White House wanted Barbara to meet with Biden. And Barbara said, no, I got to bring impacted people with me so you can hear directly from these poor people and not from me. Thank you.

So this idea, and again, public theology is just a big word, but this idea, what is the relationship between the prophetic tradition and public policy, right? William Barber, if you want to pull him up, talks about this bill as the big fat ugly death dealing bill and language is important. So when we listen to these other pastors, and I'm going to go to Pastor Young now, City of Grace, such a beautiful name. I just want to say that. But the reality is what... No perfect people allowed. Is that right? We think about all this sort of potential. We think about this tradition

that Pastor Young talked about, all the sort of needs that the church has. But the reality is you've also just talked about and meditated on the barriers for actually this tradition becoming what it is. And so I think what I want to ask you to just talk about is when you think about the black community and the black community has made up a number of different sort of constituents, whether it be fraternities, sororities, fathered organizations, these lack of potential collaboration, the question becomes how do we use our individual platforms? How do you think about how do we use our platforms

to drive collaboration so we can do some of the work that the church, particularly the black church tradition, needs to do moving forward? Thank you for that question, Brother Jewell. First, I want to give honor to Bishop Clark, grateful for you hosting us tonight and being such a great example. Thank you for Brother Martin being in town with us.

If I can take 30 seconds to just point of privilege these two fine gentlemen talked about the black church. And anybody who knows me personally and knows me intimately know that I'm a defender of the black church, especially because we see a significant migration of some of our most gifted individuals leaving the black church in favor of the white church.

I'm not saying that the black church is not exempt from growth opportunities and maybe even points of criticism, but I will put the black church's resume against any other ethnicity's resume as it relates to the uplifting of our community every single day of the week. So I'm constantly asking the question, why would you take your time, your talent,

and your treasure and support an entity that is never gonna do anything of significance for your community? You know, it goes back to the old adage, and Brother Roland spoke to this earlier, we just look for white affirmation. There was a story that somebody said white ice was colder than black ice.

They said, what do you mean? They said it was a ice shop that was owned by a white man on one side of the street. There was a ice shop that was owned by a black man on the other side of the street. People went to the white shop, tasted their ice, went to the black shop, tasted their ice, and then they took a survey. And the conclusion was the white ice was colder to the black shop, tasted their ice, and then they took a survey.

And the conclusion was the white ice was colder than the black ice, right? This is the mindset or the paradigm that our community struggles with, right? So the black church is far from perfect, but give me the black church every day of the week over any other, come on somebody, entity or ethnicity as it relates to the uplifting of our community. Now to your question, brother Joel, about collaboration. I would suggest that we are in a day and a time where collaboration is not a luxury, but it's a necessity. Let me say that again.

Collaboration amongst the black community is not a luxury, but it's a necessity. One of the reasons is, is because those who seek to pull down, tear down, disenfranchise the black community, they're already unified. Right? They can disagree on a whole bunch of other things, but they're going to be unified on their agenda. Hence, Project 2025. President Trump came in, and he's doing everything

he told us that he was gonna do, and all his constituents, come on now, were supporting him and voted for him to do, right? Because they were unified. They had a systematic plan. They already had synergy. So for us as the black community, collaboration is not a luxury. It was collaboration. We can go to the civil rights movement as a whole.

It was collaboration. We can go to some of the most important things that we can do to help the black community. We can go to the Montgomery bus boycott. We can go to the Montgomery bus boycott. We can go to the Montgomery bus boycott. We can go to the Montgomery bus boycott. We can go to the Montgomery bus boycott.

We can go to the Montgomery bus boycott. We can go to the Montgomery bus boycott. We can go to the Montgomery bus boycott. We can go to the Montgomery bus boycott, it was collaboration. We can go to the civil rights movement as a whole, it was collaboration. We can go to some of the transformative things that happened in 2020. Pastor Armstead, it worked because of collaboration, right?

We all came together, whatever little idiosyncrasies or disagreements that we had, we set them aside for the uplifting and the benefit and the blessing of our community as a whole. Collaboration is a powerful thing. Now, if collaboration is the secret sauce, if collaboration is so powerful, then the question has to become,

state representative, why is it so difficult for the black community to collaborate? Whether it be politicians, preachers, business owners, activists, right? Why is it so difficult for us to collaborate? It's because we become more concerned about who's gonna get credit for the success of the collaboration instead of operating with the mindset when the tide rises, all the boats come on now that are in that particular tide rise

So so we choose egos over advancement We choose personalities and personas over progress instead of us coming together and saying you know what when you win I win too. Come on somebody Right. The Bible tells us rejoice with them that rejoice But what we do is is we start comparing and competing instead of learning how to collaborate to go further as a community. But if we can shake that mindset and understand that the scriptures say how good and how pleasant it is for brothers and sisters to dwell together in unity or in collaboration

They said God commands the blessing there, right? God commands the blessing where there's collaboration and unity and now when we begin to move like that now I begin to understand it ain't just about me But it's about my brother. It's about my sister So when I get into my position when I get my platform I understand that god is the one that gave me this platform and this platform ain't just for me to have gucci and louis And drive good and live good but this platform is for me to open the door for somebody else. Come on now Just like they do. I wish I had a witness in the church tonight

If you think about doors on the building, there were certain doors, probably even on First Church, there were certain doors that don't open from the outside. They don't even have a handle on the outside because there were certain doors on every building that don't open on the outside, which means they have to be opened from the inside, which means if one of us gets on the inside, the expectation,

the demand and the mandate from our community should be, come on now, you open the door from the inside and you don't just sit pretty all by yourself. We got to collaborate, family. Is that right? That sounded like a preacher right there. So I gotta ask a question. Name me the last major initiative that the black church moved as a collective and achieved a desired result in Columbus, in Ohio, in America, in the last decade.

I think we can name at least one small win, 2020 George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, everything associated with that. Bishop Clark, myself, and really most major black churches in the city of Columbus, we came together for what we labeled as a prestigious protest. It was several thousand black men suited and booted. We marched and to your point,

protesting alone is not enough. After we did the protest, then we sat down with elected officials and began to talk policy, right? We began to hold them accountable in that particular moment. We recognized that it was a prophetic season to where hearts were open

and it was kumbaya moments, so we seized the moment to get major changes in the FOP contract here in the state of Ohio. The one that is here in Columbus is the model for the one that is used around the nation because it warned the greatest protection for law enforcement officers. However, in that moment, uh, we utilized the momentum of those protests, policy discussions. -♪ A lot of times, the big economic forces we hear about on the news

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

going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull, we'll take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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

when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio 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. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glodd. And this is Season Two of the We're on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne.

We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug means. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Caramouche.

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

And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcast. I always had to be so good, no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling, the limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes, rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at tearthepaperceiling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the ad council. To get the charter changed here in Columbus, to now hold police officers more accountable for what it is.

In addition to that, the pressure that we put on the police chief in that particular moment, who was a white man who really had no favored. Had no cultural competence. Yeah, no cultural confidence. I covered it. I covered the story. Yep, so as a result, our mayor, I commend him for this,

he hired a black woman to be our police chief. Her first assistant chief is another black woman. They put together a strategic plan to buy out the old culture, right? It was a $3 million investment from our city, but it was $3 million to invest in buying out a systemic culture in our police department. So that was 2020?

2020. And then what was the follow-up to ensure that those things are happening? What happened in 21, 22, 23, 24? Yep, so we actually established a civilian review board here in Cleveland. No, no, no, so we actually established a civilian review board here in Cone. No, no, no, I don't mean the civilian review board.

I mean the preachers, the churches. I'm going here for a reason. So that was the issue. You moved together, you collaborated to get that done. Did the group then go, what's next? Or was it just that? How was it sustained? How was the collective movement of the preachers sustained to

take on other issues? So here's what I can, you want to answer it historically? Go ahead. No, no, no, no. I want historically. I want 21, 22, 23, no, no. I want historically. I want 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, because that's the point of how you even started. Yeah. We do something one time,

and what we then don't do is say, what's next? The beauty of Montgomery, the beauty of Montgomery, it was the sisters in Montgomery that actually started the boycott. it was the sisters in Montgomery that actually started the boycott It was the sisters and then it was a one-day boycott then they went five it lasted 382 after that They then went what's next and so in order for us to achieve the point of top of state of black America Is how do we continue the collaboration? After George Floyd to the next and the next and the next,

and you build upon that. That's why I'm just asking, did that happen? Well, I think that you're gonna be excited about what we're gonna be doing in the future. So I'm not sure if we, you know, sort of, if it's, we can go back over that time period. But the reality is exactly what we're doing tonight, and we're gonna actually look at the goals and objectives.

The three-year plan that these bishops and pastors have actually worked on in advance of this is exactly the type of work that you are actually talking about moving forward. So if somebody wants to talk about those couple years, I'm going to open that up, but I'm also going to say that what we're really interested in is doing exactly that moving forward. interested in is doing exactly that moving forward? You reference the fact that I'm old. And I wear that proudly. I am the oldest person up on this stage. How old are you?

Almost 70. Okay. Name it, don't be so, almost, what is it, 69, 68, 68.5? Right there, that one., 69, 68, 68.5? Right there, that one. Okay, all right, okay. Let me, because these are my sons and brothers and nephews. And as Jewel said, when he came to me about this tonight, I said to him, Jewel, at this point in my life and ministry,

I don't need anything. I've spoken at every major convention, every major platform, I have every major preacher's number in my phone. This isn't about me. I'm trying to make sure this next generation of preaching prophets are heard. That's why they're up on this stage. I also said, you don't mind me putting our business in the street. We met yesterday. I said, hey, Jill, Kevin, great list. I don't see no sisters on here.

And we've got to make sure our sisters and our daughters are represented on this. So let me quickly say, Barola, I hear you, I agree with you. And if you look at the Montgomery bus boycott, I wish we could say the Poor People's Campaign, but Dr. King's death put us in such traumatic shock. Absolutely. Poor Dr. Abernathy and Jesse and all of them, they were traumatized. So what could have happened in the Poor People's Campaign just didn't, which is why Bishop

Barber is so important and significant because he's lifting that. I only bring that historical perspective to say that what we're building on here in Columbus, Franklin County is next-gen leadership. How do we speak into them, empower them, engage them so that they are equipped to go out and continue to build on what we've done. But I do think it's important we do not minimize what that Civilian Review board will do, and what it meant to buy out racist police officers

who didn't live in this city and saw black people, particularly black men, as objects of scorn and fear. Moving them out has changed the whole trajectory of how we police in this community. So the reason why I said that, Martin Depp is a white pastor. He was on the executive committee of Operation Breadbasket. Yes, sir. His book is amazing. He's still alive.

This is what he said. He said of all the amazing campaigns of Bread Basket, he said the greatest mistake that they made was the follow-up. So they would push, protest, get a deal, and they succeeded in lots of different deals, but they failed with the monitoring of the deal. So the reason I said that is because we can be,

we come together to do that one thing. My point again, when I say with 250,000 watch, what then happens if we say, okay, all right, brothers and sisters, we did it, what's next? Then attack, then what's next? What's next? So in order for us to achieve it, we have to have sustainability.

And also by bringing in other people, when one person says, yo, I'm tired, fine, you now have diverse leadership to say, we'll pick the mantle up. So we have to keep pressing. So it's great when we talk about the black church in historical terms. to keep pressing. So it's great when we talk about the black church in historical terms.

The fear that I have is 50 years from now, we will still be referencing Montgomery and not anything in 20,025. Well, it's our job to actually change that. And this is also because I know Roland, he didn't see our agenda. So we go actually make sure he gets to that later on. So this is all in the plan that we have for the City of Columbus.

And the reason why you're here in part, brother, is because we're going to be a model for the nation. The reality is that I have convinced Roland over the last year is that what we want to do is to be a platform so he can bring us on as a level of accountability and say, Mayor Bivens, what are you doing now differently in the city of Whitehall? So he can ask some of these pastors. So this level of accountability starts here so that we're not talking about that history. But also I wanted to say I think some of that has to do with perhaps what might be different

now. And so what I want to turn to you, Pastor Holmes, is this idea that there's something about this moment, you know, because some might, we're in the house of the Lord, and so I won't curse, but there's this idea that we've been suffering in this country since the moment we arrived here. But the reality is something feels like it's different now with this current administration.

And so this idea of what is the role of the church, the role of education, the role of black elected officials seems different given what's happening now. So I want to ask you, just when you think about the moment now, you think about reimagining what can happen, thinking about what could be a black social agenda, why is it important for us now to actually think about this particular moment in your opinion? I appreciate the question and to Bishop and to all of those we're sharing on the stage with really an opportunity.

Real quick, I'll go backward to go before because I appreciate it what Brother Roland mentioned and it's healthy to have that type of accountability around being strategic moments as opposed to movements because Pastor Young is so humble. He didn't say it, I very much feel like bragging on the black church. In an example, that's in line with what you're saying. The past two prosecutors in Franklin County have been decided by the black church.

That is an empirical fact. You're supposed to be clapping right there. That is an empirical fact. I don't have problems saying names because this isn't my church, amen. Ron O'Brien was the prosecutor and had some of the worst prosecutorial rates for black people in the country.

And because the person that was running behind him had something that I won't say on a camera happen, the black church organized, pastors organized, there were public forums around that, not just to have conversation, to bring out a vote, because that was happening during COVID. And so when that happened, there was literally technology advances where it was happening on Zoom and all these other things, not just to have conversation with the prosecutor about who was

next, but also to create accountability. From that, there were a group of clergy that met with the next prosecutor when they were there to say, okay, we're so glad that you came to our church. Now let's talk about the lack of representation in the office. Hey, let's talk about the way in which when you try young people as adults, that type of thing happens.

And we're going to get on your nerves until this changes. And when you stop talking to us, if you don't listen to us now, then I promise you, you'll feel us in November. That literally happened. And the reason why I'm bringing that up in context is because when the next prosecutor ran, which by the way is a black woman, right,

when that person ran, right, it was the same type of accountability. So to your point, when that happens now, it's a culture of accountability. So we're not just voting on name recognition on anything else because there's something strategic that's happening. So I wanted to lift that because I think you're right

around that. To the point about the moment that we're in, I'm really tempted to think about this in a different way. And I pray that you indulge me because I think there's an opportunity for us to all get on the same page. This is not the first time that we've had evil in high places.

This is not the first time that there's been a commander in chief who doesn't value black life. Say it again. This isn't the first time that there's been a commander in chief who doesn't value black life This isn't the first time there hasn't been hyper aggressive legislation to marginalize black existence the difference in my mind and I harken back to Montgomery and these other things in a historical context is because Back then 30s 40s 50s 60s, we were fighting for something. Now, 2025, we're fighting to keep something. And the agitation has to be different.

And the reason why, and I'm so glad that you lifted that, and I don't know if you saw me point at it, because one of the things that we should be fighting for right now is that there is a budget that the state is trying to pass where over 750,000 Ohioans will lose Medicaid, our elders will lose benefits, and there are black pastors and the black church that is activating around that and our white counterparts are silent around it. The reason why I'm lifting this dichotomy in this way in which we should think about

the bifurcation of fighting for something as opposed to fighting to keep something is because I believe that we are in a moment that before we do anything else, we have to take back what's been snatched from us. We can wax poetic all day and we should have conversations about structures and institutional oppression and the difference between racism and discrimination and bigotry, right? We should have all of those conversations. We should be pooling our resources. We should be organizing and collaborating in certain types of ways.

But here's where my concern is. I'm not sure with all the things that get stolen from us that we realize that our fight has been stolen from us. Listen, y'all shouldn't have invited me. Look, they want our culture and they want to look like us and they want to dance like us and they want to wear their clothes like us and they even want to be with us because it Gives them access Here's the thing that they've stolen that we don't realize they've stolen our fight They've stolen the nerve of the preacher the nerve of the black church

Because when it's nerve, I'm not afraid to fight with you because I know I'll win. You missed your shout. Let me try it over here. When I have my nerve, I'm not scared to fight with you because I know I'll win. Y'all two holy. One more time for the Holy Ghost. Let me try it in the churchy way. He that is in me is greater than he that is in the world.

So when I'm thinking about the moment, now's not the time to perform and parade. Now is the time for us to fight. Now is the time for us to be speaking truth to power. And listen, I don't want to deal with the symptoms. I'd really rather wrestle with the illness if that's okay. We've been oppressed in such a way to where we've been deluded into thinking that the mountaintop is access.

Say it again. We've been deluded into thinking that representation is the mountaintop. I'm not fighting just for representation. Our ancestors fought for liberation. There's a difference. I don't have to beg you to know me as free. I was born free.

And emancipation was cool because I'm here, I'm not going anywhere else. But the goal should be for liberation. And there is nothing that has happened in the history for black people in the history of the United States that we have ever gotten from the beneficence of the empire. Everything that we've gotten, we've had to take. Bishop, everything that we've gotten, we've had to fight for it. So hear me, I don't know if we're thinking about the moment the same way, because maybe

we've gotten at ease in Zion. Maybe we've gotten to the point where it's the 50 cent theology. Get rich or die trying. Maybe we've adopted the rhetoric of the oppressor it's in your Bible over in Exodus 17 they are liberated they are now making their way on their way to the promised land and they say a crazy thing pastor they become frustrated along the walk because the wilderness is hard you can lose your life in the wilderness. And they become so frustrated. It's almost better to go back to where we were. And so I think we should consider the

moment and really question where is our nerve? This is not the moment where we can sit still in our spaces. This is actually the moment where we have to fight and if it makes somebody uncomfortable and if you lose friends and if you don't get invited to dinner and if you have to find another situation to be in, I feel like it tonight. If you have to find another church to go to, if it means that the organization don't call you as much, it doesn't matter because I'm trying to make it to what God has for me. So when I think about the moment, I think that we should be really trying to rediscover the fight of the black church, knowing that the God that's with all of us, the God of justice is on our side and it is stronger than the enemy against us.

Sound like some preachers in this house. Listen, and I'm going to make maybe a small transition. What I hear in this idea about nerve and particularly the role of the church and I hear a sort of prophetic tradition behind there. The reality is that we've lost a lot of faith in not just the church and church as an institution. Correct me if I'm wrong, board president, we've also lost as a people faith in institutions like public education. And one of the things I heard recently, at least saw recently, was Roland did a piece on charter schools and talking about how black parents are, you know, typically

used as sort of pawns in this sort of system to think about and blame and shame what's happening in public education. So would you just take a moment in your wealth and knowledge and just talk about one, the role of K through 12 education, but specifically the importance of parent and parent involvement in K through 12 education as it relates to policy, educational policy moving forward. Thank you, brother.

And good evening, everybody. Good evening. All right. Let me start first and foremost by saying what board members are responsible for. Most folks don't understand what a board of education is responsible for. We're responsible for GPAs.

We as board members are responsible for GPAs. We as board members are responsible for GPAs. Albeit we're not in the classroom, we're not providing instruction, we're responsible for what is generative in our organization. We do generative work around hire and fire and retire of executive level leaders, of administrators, teachers, right? We appropriate, excuse me, we create policy. We create policy. Wrote one today.

We create policy. And the last is we appropriate. We do generative work to run the district that's legal, that's any number of things that fall into many laps, many of our laps that don't even in certain other parts of local government. We do policy and we do appropriation. We have a budget, we're working with a budget at this point in time that is seriously threatened to be cut by possible $600 million between the state and federal government.

Listen, what's happening in our school district and school districts around the country, there are 13,000 of them. What's happening is that we're seeing this loss of faith in our institution in large part, and this is where I'm off our counterintuitive approach to it, how much do we culturally value it? How much do we give real cultural value to our education? Pre-K through 12. How many of us, irrespective of what our situation is, and this is not

indicting, it's an opportunity for us to do some inward work, some me work, to figure out how we succeed with our we work. We got to do the me work first. What have I done as the parent? What have I done as the volunteer? What have I done as the parent? What have I done as the volunteer? What have I done in relationship with the school to get to know what schools are offering? To get to know how students are performing? If I were to ask you, back to this GPA question, if I were to ask you a question about Columbus City Schools 2025 cohort,

what their average GPA was. What would you guess? Throw out a number. 2.5? 2.2? 2.3? Okay now that's a C average. It would surprise you to know that your graduating cohort in a cohort in the state of Ohio is ninth grade through 12th grade. Students who started in ninth grade and finished together in 12th grade. That graduating weighted GPA is a 2.7. That's a B average in the state of Ohio. Now listen, there's work, there's

continuous improvement opportunity, but any of us who understand education know very well that this ain't no 100-yard race. This is a marathon. This is a 25K. And for some of us who didn't put kids through college, we understand the work still continues on after that, running alongside them. I ain't getting no amen on that one. You taking care of they cats and panty bills. My wife and I just became grandparents of cats. But I say that all to say that it's important that we do the work first.

And the work is understanding the relationship. I love how Pastor Young talked about how good it is to dwell among brotherhood and unity. There's a feeling that's derived from that. There's a feeling that's derived from that. There's a culture that follows that. The greatest perpetuator of joy or sin is culture. So what is your work in terms of coming to a school and helping the school turn out instead of you turn showing out. Come on now. How many of us

are showing up to school to elevate our students to gift them with the wisdom that they need? One of the biggest issues I think that confronts the church and schools is this thing right here. This thing right here. And how it's so easy to get information whether you know it's true or not, but how so how easy it is for our young generation of folks to continue to disassociate themselves from those guardians like us who love them, who try to nurture them up who try to encourage them And provide fiscally for them But they in a room on their phone

They're distanced away because they're looking for knowledge Relationship and everything else that they otherwise would get in this kind of commune on that phone in a virtual Community in a virtual space. I am not discounting the value of it. It does. But it does not have greater value than this right here, than your actual presence. It does not have greater value than your actual presence and the spirit of it. The spirit of it. These are the things that we supposed to train a child up in so that they become adults. They will not depart. On the political side, I'll say this. There's

a passage in the fifth chapter of Matthew, the Beatitudes. It says, you know, one of them is, blessed is the the merciful for they shall obtain mercy Lord have mercy We are in the space where politics is local. I work with them local politics, but as of late Politics has become straight local. I Have a state legislature that don't want to hear from boards of education We've come to provide testimony and do everything else. They're threatening not only to cut funding, but they're also threatening to pay more towards

charter schools. At this point in the state of Ohio, nearly $1 billion has been afforded to charter schools and private schools here in the state of Ohio, nearly $1 billion has been afforded to charter schools and private schools here in the state of Ohio. So I got a question. Yes, sir. How many black run charters? A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways.

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

With guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull, we'll take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I wanna learn about VeChain. I wanna buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing.

So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops 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 multibillion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. 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, 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.

Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glodd. And this is Season Two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes sir, we are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.

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

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

It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcast.

I always had to be so good no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling, the limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at tearthepaperceiling.org brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. gets hired, how many actual school districts do we run?

Now, why am I saying that? There's no system in America that white folks did not create. So if there is a charter system that allows for me to control the curriculum, the hiring, and the contracts, why am I going to allow them to be running it? I've spoken all across the country support charter schools because I want black people running them, controlling them, controlling it. Now, I believe in all

forms of education but if there is a system that has been created, I'm not checking out of the process. Now, I hate sorry charter schools. I want them out of business. I want sorry char- operators out. But here's what I'm saying. The mistake that we have been making is we have been checking out of a process while others are checking in, and there are real examples of black run charter schools networks where black people are killing it and what we should be doing is going to friendship public charter school in DC and sitting down with them saying, how y'all doing this? There's a brother, there's a brother heart in it, I had him on a show in DC.

He worked in the traditional school where the black boys were failing in science and math. He launched his own school down the street, took the exact same boys, and now they love in math and science. So all I'm saying is, I'm not, I'm gonna, I have fought, I spoke against the Texas voucher scam because it was a total scam. I've spoken against horrible charter schools.

What I will support is if I can control that school and I can educate our kids and I can control who gets hired and then I can control the contracts, that means black people should be saying, okay, y'all gonna create a system, we gonna run that system too. And they're sitting right there

and we have black examples. Steve Perry, what he's doing. Hardinett, Friendship Public Charter School. There are schools in Memphis. I just want us to be thinking differently about it because I went to all traditional schools. I went to school from K through college, I rode buses. It doesn't mean that I don't wanna control

those schools too. So I want us thinking differently about education. I want to run both. For me it ain't either or. It's both and. So listen thank you so much for the comments. People might recognize that we actually are going a little bit late. It's what happens when you have brilliant folks on the stage, particularly pastors. So what I want to do is actually with your permission, everybody is to actually absolutely, we definitely go get sister there. But I just, yeah, I wasn't, I wasn't using this as a means by which to go pastor. I was going to say this is this after President Davis gets done, we're actually going to skip a certain section.

I'm glad you cleaned that up. There you go, man. Listen, you got me up there. So listen, with your permission, after President Davis gets done, we're going to skip. I'm glad you cleaned that up. There you go, man. You got me up there. With your permission, after President Davis gives her remarks, we're going to skip the community question and answer. Apologies. And what we want to do is get to the idea of what are the next steps.

Because again, these brilliant bishops and pastors we have been meeting to talk about the next three years. Not just about problems but what are the next steps. Absolutely. And again, very much with what both Roland and President Cole were talking about. President Davis, you have been very intentional in your role in creating space for the Ohio legislative black caucus

foundation. About the importance of black people and black organizations being able to own their own and to actually do things like Roland talked about, have our own data, organize around our own sort of political issues. So please share with us in your own opinion, and I'll say this very last thing,

because this time last year, Roland, one of the first questions that we talked about was this whole idea about black men voting more Republican. Obviously, we have this issue that happened in the election. So President Davis, I know you've thought about real deeply this important question about what does it mean for black men and black women working together, but especially when it comes to creating our own institutions to drive our own sort of policies and issues moving forward.

So first, thank you guys. Although I'm the last person to speak, I am not a pastor, but I'm going to talk about policy. Me and you, bootleg. Right. And I'm going to talk about my love for black people and black Ohio and why I sit here today. Political things happen, which is why I'm no longer in office but to

your point I chose not to go home right I chose to do something different from the outside in and I have to give a real shout out to Representative Dontavious Gerald's I remember he called me. This was probably in August of 2023. I left office December of 2022. He said I need you to do something for me. I said what? Because he always wants something. He said I need you to apply for this position. I need you to take over the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus Foundation. I said nope He said what do you mean? I said, I don't want to be bothered He says sis I need you to do this. We need to elevate our work from the outside

Ian I Said I'll think about it So I applied for it and I got offered the position, which is how I'm now the president and CEO of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus Foundation. But what I'm not about to tell you is this fluffy story. I'm going to tell you the truth. It was a dying organization, extremely underfunded, to be perfectly honest, with no funding. You know where I went wrong? When I interviewed, I did not ask, what is the budget? Now I've been a chief.

You didn't ask about the budget? I did not ask about the budget. Girl, that's the first mistake. Absolutely. You always ask about the money. Absolutely. But my passion was for us, and I was determined to turn it into something.

So I started working on a strategic plan. I started thinking about and projecting and having the vision for where we needed to go. How we could be a convener across the state of Ohio for every entity, for pastors to come in, to talk about police brutality, for educators to come in, to talk about what's happening in the school district and at our charter schools. One thing I will share with you

guys that is in the current budget that our white Republican legislators and a black one wants to do is to decrease accountability for our charter schools. That is a problem. That's the issue. So we have to ensure that the standard and accountability of educating our children is represented at the most highest level. With that, I thought about all the other things. Black mothers are dying along with their baby steel at three times the rate of white women. Why is that happening? It is simply happening because when they see us, they see us.

They see us as black folk and nothing else. It happened to Serena. So is that a money issue? Absolutely. Happened to Serena Williams? It is literally just this that we can't change. And so I am intentional about sitting in this position and making sure I go across this state, and I'm tired, y'all.

I am tired. And make sure that people understand who the foundation is, why we exist, and what my expectation is. It is to hold our black elected officials accountable and our white ones, but also understanding that with the accountability, this brother right here, this sister back there, that is two of 98 members of the House. And then I see Senator Craig over there, one of 35. So while we sit in these positions, that's still not enough. I think someone

over here said representation isn't always just what it's about. It is how you all get involved, how you all show up. Someone said this earlier during our pre-session. Do you know how many times I said in a committee hearing, and I wanted to look out into the audience and see my people affirming me? Because it is difficult to be a black woman and speak truth to power. And I'll take it back a

little further. I started my political process from working for the Public Defender's Office in Cuyahoga County. A young man was charged with rape. Black man. When I went to visit him in the jail, I was sitting there waiting. It was a Monday morning and they line up all the inmates because all the attorneys and everyone is there. What I saw was an image of a modern-day slave ship and us being ushered through. That image never left my mind, and when I saw the young man, I saw my son who at the time was 17, and I thought what if my son, who at the time was 17.

And I thought, what if my son were on the other side of this glass? I left, I went home, and I kept saying, what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? Because it ain't this. It's not law. And I woke up the next day, and I feel like the Lord said,

run for office. And so I did. But I thought, what am I going to run for? I ran for city council in a city that was 47% black, pretty working-class community nothing highfalutin, nothing extremely poor, but the entire government was white. I was the first black woman elected to City Council in 2019. No, I don't want any claps for that. That's a problem. The city had been around for 101 years. How?

How? But it took me to want to stand up and do something. After that, I said, I'm running for mayor. I just thought I was everything at that point. But then white folks showed me that I wasn't gonna be their mayor, okay? I got death threats and everything else under the sun, but it has not stopped me, which goes back to this full circle moment.

We need our black men and women to come together. Because I was a single woman, I believe that I got the level of attacks that I got. I did not have black men standing up and supporting me, but they wanted me to run for office. Everybody and their mama called me. I got a parking ticket. The police did this. They did that. But not one of them stood with me. And this is not an attack on black men.

This is the reality of what we've got to do better in 2025 going forward. They want us to stay divided. And so we have to come together. We have to build one another up. I need every black woman and every black man in this room to stand beside me and be and help to empower me. We all need that. It is so critical and so important that Ohio, we look at what we're going to do. The state of black America, let's talk about the state of black Ohio. We're developing a report.

We are going community to community to hear the voice locally. Turn those conversations into actual data. Use that data to develop policy to drive change at the state house. And I am charging my brother, Assistant Minority Leader, Don Tavius Gerald, with the duty and the responsibility to help push these policies forward. We can't just sit at the table and have these conversations. We need to know what it is that everyone needs for us to be in power. I know the clock is ticking, but I didn't get to talk y'all.

So you know, I just want to talk a little. It's so important that we understand how all of this ties together. You can't have a school board. You can't have a council. You can't have soap. You can't eat French fries from McDonald's, which you shouldn't eat anyway, without policy being involved. Policy is in every single thing we do. Somebody down there eats McDonald's French fries?

Bishop turned a little bit quick after you mentioned that. Somebody probably own a McDonald's franchise. They like, shh. I mean, I'm just saying. But my point is, policy is in every single thing that we do. And if you don't want to run for office, if you don't want to go to the state house, reach out to the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus Foundation. My goal this year was to raise $500,000.

And if I'm being transparent, and I had this conversation with you about three weeks ago, I've raised $88,000 so far. This is June. This report that I'm trying to do is going to cost us $400,000 to go across the state with all the researchers, develop the marketing and all of that. That $5, that $25, that $10,000 matters in situations like this. While everything is happening at the federal level, it is happening right here 20 minutes away at Cap Square. I need the support of everyone. I need the black church. I need the pastors, bishop. Don't go get no more fries. Donate it to the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus Foundation. Yes.

I hear you. Listen, did you want to finish your statement? OK. But you, yes, go ahead. This report will be so critical in how we move policy forward, which will then tie into what Jules has been working on, that we're going to talk about in the end. I will end with that, but please go to

www.olbcfoundation.org, Ohio Legislative Black Caucus Foundation. If you can't donate, follow. If you can't donate, share. We are trying to do the work to ensure that our voices are heard and not silent. Thank you. Let's give them a hand. Jewel and Kevin, there is a moment in any mass group where you reach the point of diminishing returns and I think we're, in the words of my grandma, Pritt- near there. But I, we want

to have Brother Roland, he and I, we're gonna wrap it up. I'm gonna defer to you. I'll be standing up there Sunday dance. Okay I'm waiting. We're going to all stay and see our daughters dance. So unless, unless you are doing open heart surgery at a hospital in the next 30 minutes, everybody's staying. In the words of my brother Marvin Sapp, close the doors. Close the doors. Close the doors.

Close the doors. Ain't nobody else leaving, close the door. I know we've, Kevin, we're gonna talk about the offering. Let me just say this and then we're gonna have Brother Roland come and wrap it up. Tonight has been great, but Columbus, we don't need anyone to make us get together. We can do this again on our own. Come on. Because there are more things,

we won't get to do the community involvement because it's 907. But we do want our daughters to dance. We do need to make the appeal. So we support Brother Roland. Say it again. Say it again. Amen. We support Brother Roland, and I want us to hear that, and then, but, Jewel, but, Kevin,

whatever you want to do, but I'm going to defer my time and release that to Brother Roland and let him have all of the time. So I'm a firm believer in the what's next. So y'all saw it's pressing. So when you, when they were mentioning education in churches, I've been saying this for the longest. Every church should establish at least a quarter mile radius around their church.

And then just like in the Bible, they should do a survey of every home in that radius to know where the children are in those homes, what grades they are in. Churches should be tapping into retired teachers in their congregations and use their churches as after school study halls for the kids who need help. That's a very basic thing that can easily be done. So that's the one thing. But what you have to do as individuals is here.

So, Jules said they've already collected the data of everybody who's here. What I want you to decide, I want you to decide, I don't want you to make a list of things that you care about. I want every person in this room to pick one issue that is the most important to them, and I want you to commit yourself

over the next 364 days to that thing. Now, when they communicate, when y'all communicate with the team here, I'm assuming they're gonna put together various different teams, and so who's focusing on education, who wants to do economic empowerment, who wants to do this,

and that's the only thing I want you to do for the next year. So that way, when do for the next year. So that way, when you come back next year, you can now do an assessment of what did you accomplish in the last 364 days. Because we are excellent at making lists, and then a year later, we pull it out, if we actually pull it out,

and all we were successful at was making the list. And so if you do that now you're tailoring your focus to one thing and then you're able to see how you're aligning with other people. That's how basic it's really how basic and fundamental this thing is. Second thing is this here,

and that is as a part of your creation, and that you can do this within a church or even as a city-wide situation, is if we talk about education, this is very, people, I speak all over, people give me plaques and stuff. That's great and wonderful. I would like for us, now if you got a plaque business,

I understand by my hurt your feelings. I would rather us hand folk books instead of plaques. All a plaque does is sit, y'all, I literally got about four, 500 of them. But I prefer my books. I've really got about four, 500 of them. But I prefer my books. Second, encourage barbers, stop having conversations in your barbershops about how the brother,

how many points he scored. When you see a young brother or sister, you should be asking them, what are you reading? Follow me here, but what are you reading? Follow me here, but what are you reading outside of school? I did that with my barber son and they were talking about his basketball exploits. I said, no, no, I said, Cotton, what are you reading? I said, next time I come in here,

I said, yo, when I get, I said, when I'm in here, I always have a book in my hand. I wanna know the title, the author, and what the book is about. These are very practical things we can do tomorrow that then will completely change what happens in our communities. And the last point is this here.

Create a day, and my man, Pastor Kenneth Whalum in Memphis did this. They forgot, it was on Mondays. And what they did was they focused on specific black businesses every Monday. And so imagine if you say, from a church standpoint or whatever, this month we're supporting this restaurant.

That was a video that folks did on Instagram where a sister had a store and they did a massive black buy-in. She looked up and 200 folks showed up and they bought everything in her store. So now you sit here and now collect stores, restaurants, and the like of businesses. Now all of a sudden, as a collective,

you're moving and impacting economically. These are very small basic steps, and I'll close with this here. And the reason, and one of the reasons why, when the pastor said, well, one small thing we did, this is what we missed with what Dr. King and the leaders also understood. The people have to keep seeing progress.

So we have to keep celebrating the small win. So if last Monday we generated $18,000 in business for this black business. So after we do those things, we got to tell the people what we did because what we're essentially doing, what this is all about, the biblical model for what we're talking about here is actually Nehemiah. Nehemiah got the call, the wall had crumbled. He was in pain. The king said, go check it out. I'll let you go.

Nehemiah went back, saw it, came up with the plan. Here's the key part. He gave the vision, but it says, the people said, let us rebuild. Nehemiah couldn't build it by himself. The second most important thing is, if you keep reading two, three, and four, is that it lists the people who built the section of the wall. So if you are on one part of Columbus, you can't be worried about the other side of the city if you're not focusing on your portion of the

gate. So we think in those terms, the wall got rebuilt. Now, also remember there were haters, and the haters said, y'all ain't gonna do it Nehemiah said keep building then the haters then say oh we gotta stop them from building there are going to be some people who look like you who are trying to stop this movement and Nehemiah said keep one hand on your weapon, but you keep building on the other the point there is The wall got built because they focus on gate by gate by gate this can actually work and you actually don't need to start with anybody who's not even in this room because there are more people who are sitting in this room right now than were sitting in that

church in Montgomery when they launched the boycott. The only way this works if the people here decide that you are committed to doing this, and then when you do this, you come back next year and you do your annual report and you say we increased by two, three million dollars to these black owned businesses. We kept this bookstore open, this business launched, this happened, this happened with test scores. Then people say, we did all that in a year. Your response is to clap and scream and then say, what's next?

Thank you. All right. All right. So let's do one more thing. Let's give it up for Roland Martin one more time, y'all. All right, so before I bring up another special guest for a very brief message, you all see that we have the QR code up on the screen. We want to keep those donations rolling.

One of the things that Jul and I have been talking about a lot and rolling as well on his show, we have to go from protests to invest. He just dropped the message right there, right? We have to get behind each other, support each other, see. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action.

And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on everybody's business from Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Max Chafkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone, Sports Reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull

will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I wanna learn about VeChain. I wanna buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time,

have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops 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 One, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio 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. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two of the We're on Drugs podcast. Apple podcasts. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

Marine Corvette. MMA fighter. Liz Karamouche. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real.

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcast. Retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them.

Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. The progress that we make and then keep on doing it because we can do it. When we work together, right, we always make it happen. So with that, I'm actually going to continue to contribute as we continue with the program. I want to introduce our president of the National Pan-Hellenic Council of Columbus, Mr. Adrian Moore is going to come up and give us a very quick speech,

and then we're gonna continue with the program and wrap up, all right? It's all yours, Brother Moore. It's on, all right. I don't know about a speech, but I'll try to make this. First and foremost, thank you, Bishop. Thank you, Brother Roland. I hear a lot of A5A, so let's just make sure we clear.

Room to the Qs. Room to the Qs. All right. Hey, don't do that. I'm going to have to get you out of here. I'll help you get out of here, brother. Good evening, everyone. To our esteemed speaker, generalist, thought leader,

and proud member of AFA fraternity incorporated Mr. Roland Martin. We welcome you with gratitude and respect. Thank you. To all the Divine Nine family, can you please stand. Our allies, the greater Columbus community. Tonight is proof of what we can achieve when we move beyond what divides us and focus on the strength we share, our unity. About to lock the door. The National Pan-Atlantic Council, or NPHC, you can remain standing, has a broad and powerful

reach with over 1.5 million members worldwide. As members, we are charged with the responsibility to be aware of social issues that impact our people, to stay informed no matter our political or religious views, to act with conviction, even as nonpartisan body. Here in Columbus, we just don't show up. We lead. With 15 active local chapters, we're among the most engaged NPAC chapters in the nation. But engagement isn't enough anymore, you all. We must unite. When new policies

threaten the health and safety of our communities, we must unite. When suicide rates among our people of color continue to climb with black Americans seeing a 58% increase in the last decade. We must unite. When the Columbus Dispatch reports it could take 700 years for black residents to reach the economic equity with their white neighbors. Once again, we what? We must unite. So tonight is more than a program, family. It's more than a program. It's a call for action.

Let's listen. Let's learn. More importantly, deny. Let's lead. Thank you. Let's get to lead. Thank you. Let's get to work. Thank you. Let's unite.

Thank you. Brother Adrian Moore. Thank you. Hey Kevin, real quick. I want us to acknowledge a living legend in this room, Dr. Joel King. Celebrate Dr. Joel King tonight. We love you, sir.

All right, let's give it up, y'all. Come on, celebrate Dr. Joe King tonight. We love you, sir. All right, let's give it up, y'all. Come on, celebrate him. We love you, my man. He knows. And is Tia Ross still here? Tia, stand up. Tia is running for city council. Come on, we gotta get her in there.

We gotta get her in there. We gotta get her in there. I've got so much to thank God for. So many wonderful blessings and so many open doors of bright new mercy are all within. I praise you. And for this I give you praise. I will give you praise. I will give you praise. I will give you praise. I will give you praise. I will give you praise.

I will give you praise. I will give you praise. I will give you praise. I will give you praise. I will give you praise. I will give you praise. Let me see the sunshine of a brand new day. A brand new mercy along with each new day. That's why I praise you. That's why I praise you. That's why I praise you.

For this I give you praise. You're the home of child. That's why I praise you. You've been my provider. That's why I praise you. So many times. That's why I pray. You see, so many times. That's why I pray. So many times you rest to me.

Oh, that's why I pray. For the God you give to me today. That's why I pray. Oh, that's why I praise you. And for this I give you praise. For every mountain, every river, every river, every river, every mountain, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every

river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every

river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every river, every For every trial

For every mountain You brought me over For every trial You've seen me through for every blessing. Hallelujah for this I give you praise. I'm praying for every mountain, Lord, for every mountain. You brought me over. You secretly brought me over. For every trial.

For every trial. You saved me from the past. For every blessing. For everymore. Lord, I sing hallelujah. Hallelujah. For this soul, for this soul, for this soul. Hallelujah.

Give your blood, blood. For evermore. For evermore. For evermore. For evermore. For evermore. You come for every mountain, you come for every trial, you come for every sin, you come for every sin. Every night I'll be your light For every night I'll be your light I'll give you

Right Right Right For every mountain You're for every mountain You're for every mountain I'm gonna make it my master Forever

You see, as a cryer He's leaving me with you Forever Forever, I'm singing, I'm singing Hallelujah Hallelujah Hold it slow, hold it slow I give you All right, all right, all right, all right. Let's give it up, y'all. Let's give it up.

Let's give it up. D-E. D-E. D-E. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so right, all right. So listen, y'all, obviously this was an amazing performance.

Can we give them one more round of applause real quick for Depp, y'all? All right, so we have reached that point. Obviously people are ready to leave and head out. Once again, for those that have been trying to scan, many of you have been able to get through it. If you have not, the domain is there. Stateofblackamericatofundraiser.mile.com. You can actually go there.

Or if you can come closer, you can still scan it. You'll be able to donate. This will also be shared for everybody who RSVP'd. You will get an email with the way for you to donate to contribute to the cause. How to scan? Or how to... Okay, so use the camera on your phone. Don't take a picture of it.

Wait for the yellow prompt to come up. Tap the yellow prompt, that little button, and it'll button, and it'll button, and it'll button. A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways. Four days a week. button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button

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and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll button and it'll putting, if it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chaston. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated.

I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season Two of the We're On Drugs podcast. you get your podcasts. stories matter and it brings a face to it. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap away, you got to pray for for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov.

Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. This is an iHeart Podcast.