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Full Transcript: Corporate Lobbyist Howard Franklin On GHOGH Podcast Part 3

Full Transcript: Corporate Lobbyist Howard Franklin On GHOGH Podcast Part 3

Howard Franklin
Corporate lobbyist Howard Franklin chats to Jamarlin Martin on the GHOGH podcast in a three-part series known as “The Swamp”. Image: Anita Sanikop

In episode 57 of the GHOGH podcast, and part 3 of the “Swamp Series”, Jamarlin Martin continues his talk with corporate lobbyist Howard Franklin, who has represented clients such as Amazon, Google and Sprint.

They discuss the backdoor lobbying techniques of the swamp and the Congressional Black Caucus backing DCCC’s Cheri Bustos, who threatened to “blacklist” young candidates that challenge the DNC establishment in the 2020 election.

They also discuss the Congressional Black Caucus supporting the Clinton crime bill (mass incarceration) and the case for reparations for African-American descendents of slaves.

You can listen to the entire conversation right now in the audio player below. If you prefer to listen on your phone, GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin is available wherever you listen to podcasts — including Apple PodcastsSpotifyYouTube, and SoundCloud.

Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 57: Howard Franklin
Part 3 of the Swamp Series: Jamarlin continues his talk with corporate lobbyist Howard Franklin, who has represented clients such as Amazon, Google and Sprint. They discuss the backdoor lobbying techniques of the swamp and the Congressional Black Caucus backing DCCC’s Cheri Bustos, who threatened to “blacklist” young candidates that challenge the DNC establishment in the 2020 election. They also discuss the Congressional Black Caucus supporting the Clinton crime bill (mass incarceration) and the case for reparations for African-American descendents of slaves.

This is a full transcript of the conversation which has been lightly edited for clarity.

Jamarlin Martin: I wrote a book about my life named “Moguldom”. You can get more information about this book at Moguldombook.com. I talk about acquiring the knowledge of self, self-determination and building a business over 10 years. There are some gems in this book that you don’t want to miss. One way to support the GHOGH movement and this podcast is to go to Moguldombook.com. Buy the book on presale to support the GHOGH movement. Let’s GHOGH! You’re listening to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin. We have a go hard or go home approach as we talk to the leading tech leaders, politicians and influencers. Let’s GHOGH! This is part three of my interview with Howard Franklin. Be sure to check out part one and two on previous episodes. Another trick. I want the politicians to do something for me. The politician has plans to either increase the wealth of their private foundation, for example, the Clinton Foundation, where the donors, they can give to the foundation, “Oh, I want to help people”, but the donors are looking for something. I may give $10 million, I may give $20 million, I may give $100 million, but I’m not just trying to help people. I’ve got to play this swamp game at a high level. And so donors to the Clinton Foundation, donors, a lot of Silicon Valley money went into the Obama Foundation. Okay. I’m not suggesting that there’s a lot of conflicts or the conflicts with the Clinton Foundation is connected to the conflicts or swampy activity, potential swampy activity with the Obama Foundation. I’m not saying that. But a lot of the Obama donors, a lot of corporate folks that were riding for Obama, they donated to his foundation. And let me just say, I think Obama’s intentions with the foundation in terms of helping particularly Black America, I think they’re pure. I think he has good intentions. But do you think that there needs to be stronger laws where, hey, you know, I’m going to kick it with Google and I’m not gonna do any regulations for Google and Facebook. I get out of office, Google and Facebook will give my foundation $100 million. What can you do about that or can you not do something like that because there’s no transaction, there’s no paper trail. It’s kind of just an understanding, it’s how the game is played.

Howard Franklin: I think, I would start from a different place in that transaction. When President Obama or President Bush or President Clinton or now President Trump is in office and is not being responsive to calls for regulation, now’s the time to have the conversation. After this person has transitioned to doing post presidency and now can live out the rest of his or her days in a much different space, I don’t know that you have, again, nearly as much leverage in this conversation. So, I don’t have a regulatory framework that I would propose this moment, but I would say if you’re concerned about those issues, the place to do it is with the Congress we have today and the White House we have today.

Jamarlin Martin: You do believe there’s room for improvement in terms of integrity. There’s a lot of room for improvement. Well, of course we talked about a Ferguson brother hiding cash in his freezer, swampy activity. What was his first name?

04:01 —Howard Franklin: Was it William?

Jamarlin Martin: I think it was William. But Cory Booker, if Google is investing in your private company while you’re a politician and you start to start up and you sell it and you have the chief of Google investing in your startup, hey, we know that America’s a very corrupt place, but he’s allowed to do stuff like that.

Howard Franklin: So you’re advocating for rules that wouldn’t allow people who serve at the highest level to take investment or do business?

Jamarlin Martin: I think the first step is the voter has a lot of power, right? If we can dilute the influence of the swamp, that the voter could just vote these people who are doing these questionable things, don’t vote for them or vote them out. The voter needs to be informed about the rules of the monopoly game…

Howard Franklin: And a lot of the people that you’ve named checked are on a ballot next year, right. We’ll have an opportunity to say, hey, your political career goes forward, you pass go or stops here today. I think that’s going to happen for a lot of politicians.

Jamarlin Martin: Do you agree with, when that Black agenda, that serious, cohesive Black agenda is ready to go, that the Black agenda is better off if you made significant strides with how the swamp works. Meaning that, if you try to get good stuff through a elevated swamp environment that maybe it’s better that you knock down a lot of these swamp norms and how the swamp works and the people become more educated, when that Black agenda is time to go through the system, it’s not gonna be diluted.

Howard Franklin: Let me level set here because I feel like maybe you heard me say something earlier and it may be different than what I wanted to come across. I agree…

Jamarlin Martin: So you agree with that?

Howard Franklin: I agree that we should be trying to figure out ways to make influence and money less pervasive in our politics and frankly as someone who is in the influence business, it actually would be better for me so that I don’t have to come to clients and say, listen, you know we’ve got a better idea, but this guy paid some money or we’ve got a better piece of legislation, but this guy’s plugged in.

Jamarlin Martin: Do you agree with this simple framework for our people? If the lobbying value in the United States goes down, the Black numbers, the way we vote cohesively in terms of 90 percent voting for the Democratic Party, meaning that we’re voting together, which could be powerful, that if the lobbying value goes down in the United States, Black voter equity goes up, meaning your vote is going to count a lot more. It’s going to be more powerful if this other stuff is reduced.

Howard Franklin: I enjoy a good hypothetical question as much as anybody, but if you are watching what’s happening in state houses, city halls, at the federal level in Congress and the White House, the reach, the ability that lobbyists have to deploy in the system is not shrinking. It’s growing, right? So if somehow we could fiat that the business of influence were to shrink and would have reversed the trend lines that we’ve seen the last 10, 15, 20 years, then I think this is a worthwhile conversation. In the absence of that reality, I think we’ve got to figure out how to be more impactful in the one that we’re already sitting in, right? My clients aren’t going to pay me to say, hey, if we lived in an alternate universe, I could’ve gotten this bill passed. They’re going to say, well, what can you do today in this universe, in this reality. And that’s kind of the plane I’m trying to have this conversation on. The business of influence is not shrinking. It’s not going away. I think we need to figure out how to engage with, and thank goodness…

Jamarlin Martin: But it’s being attacked, where folks like Bernie Sanders, I believe they have led the charge where now you’re seeing other folks like Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, they’re saying, “Hey, we don’t want any corporate PAC money.” So I’m just saying that there’s things moving,

08:30 —Howard Franklin: No meaningful things. I think you’ve already laid out the avenue for those dollars to find their way into those campaigns in other ways. Other means.

Jamarlin Martin: You’re just saying that, I know about the swamp. That money’s getting in there.

Howard Franklin: It’s going to find a way. I don’t want to turn a blind eye to it. I would rather we say, more important than any dollar you could collect is a vote, right? We has the SEC primary four years ago we had all these southeastern states lined up, casting their ballots for our president and if we speak with the collective voice, it’s going to be much more than any dollar amount could ever amount to for any politician. Money’s only out there to buy the votes. If people say, my vote’s not for sale, I’m actually educated on the issues and the candidates and here is how I’m voting my conscience, all the money in the world won’t change the outcome. Let me just say, I mentioned at the outset of this interview, I spent the first dozen years of my career running campaigns and plenty of those campaigns, we got outraised on, right? People raised more money than us and then still fell to the sword when it was time to count the votes on election day. It’s not strictly a matter of dollars and cents. It certainly is important, right? And I wouldn’t acknowledge that if we didn’t raise any money, we would have still won. But I think we’ve got to acknowledge there are ways to beat back the influence of money in politics.

Jamarlin Martin: Are you familiar with the name Cheri Bustos?

Howard Franklin: She’s a daughter of a president, I believe.

Jamarlin Martin: Cheri Bustos is the chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Howard Franklin: So no, I was not familiar.

Jamarlin Martin: Are you aware of the beef that has broken out in the Democratic Party where the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, they have said that if you’re a vendor who works with someone who’s challenging one of our people who are already in power, we’re going to, I don’t like to use blacklist, we’re going to whitelist you. They’re saying that we don’t want another AOC. We don’t want some of these young people to challenge some of these people who’ve been eaten chitlin fries for 20 years or 30 years, not shaking things up. They’re part of the establishment. They’re comfortable, but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is saying that if there is a democratic candidate that runs against someone who’s already an office, we’re going to whitelist you. Hold on, let me just finish. So there was a report last week that the Congressional Black Caucus is not, it’s not a surprise, they’re on the side of Cheri Bustos and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in terms of this role that we don’t want anybody running against our people in 2020. What do you think about the Congressional Black Caucus siding with the establishment?

11:55 —Howard Franklin: This is not where I’d like to see them. But I’ll put it in some context. You know, DCCC gets behind 10 or 12 hyper competitive races every cycle. We have 435 members in Congress. Each of them is up every two years. 10 or 12 of them will be hotly contested, flipping back and forth between Republican and Democrat. I’ve worked on dozens of races. I’ve never worked along with the DCCC. When I say worked alongside I mean work directly with, and I think this is another acknowledgement of where our politics is going. I would acknowledge that so much of it is certainly problematic. Right. I think part of the issue too, and you know, we talk about this all the time, Atlanta being the home of the civil rights movement, we’ve got plenty of elder statesman in politics who’ve been around for a very long time who need to make room for new blood, new ideas and new leadership. Right? I think most people who are bumping around in politics, at least in my generation, feel that way. But there’s still only one way to send them home and that’s to beat them at the ballot box. But I’m with you. I don’t like the CBC taking this stance.

Jamarlin Martin: Does that sound like the CBC is playing in the swamp?

Howard Franklin: I just think they’re protecting their own, right. Their membership is going to be older Black members of Congress who came in when reapportionment and the voting rights act allowed for seats that would allow Black and brown people to be elected to Congress. Many of them have served 10, 20, 30 years, right? Yeah. It’s encumbered protection and everybody does it.

Jamarlin Martin: Yeah. And this is not a Black thing or a race thing, but let me say this. In Africa you’ve had leaders rob people like Sani Abacha in Nigeria. Over and over again you have leaders that do not want to give up power. They would prefer the people to shed blood or the country goes bankrupt and they want to stay in power until they die, including Mugabe. Okay, so there’s people who are drunk on power and if the people are better off with someone else, they don’t care. If the people are better off with a different vision, a younger, fresh vision, they don’t care. But in these African countries, they want to stay in power. It’s more about them than the people, and I’m saying that the Congressional Black Caucus, it may look different, but you have people where it’s clear that there’s better leadership, there’s fresher leadership, new ideas, who want to present the people with a different vision and they want to stop them. They don’t even want them to run.

Howard Franklin: Well, let me just say I’m not ready to compare autocratic dictators in developing and third world countries to Black politicians in Congress who have largely been out of power and out of favor. Being a member of the minority looks great. You’re still on television. You got some perks. He may be good to go on and MSNBC or Fox or CNN, but it’s not like being the president of a country where you don’t even have to abide by the rule of democracy, right? These people still have to win elections at the end of the day. They still gotta win elections. And plenty of incumbent politicians, even at the congressional level, have lost elections to young upstarts, not just AOC. Ayanna Pressley knocked off a 10-year or 10-term incumbent in Mike Capuano this past year as well. And plenty of folks in the Democratic establishment, myself included, were excited about her leadership, met her and supported her financially and otherwise. So, yes, that’s a bad example and we shouldn’t be encouraging it, but it’s not preventing turnover in leadership. We’ve had I’m sure, as you no doubt have heard, the youngest and most diverse Congress in the history of this August body.

Jamarlin Martin: But it’s a swampy practice.

16:15 —Howard Franklin: This is a swampy practice. I mean…

Jamarlin Martin: You’ve got somebody who’s in the swamp saying that the Congressional Black Caucus, that’s a swampy practice. And how could someone, at first is that the mothership, they’re answering to a white woman named Cheri Bustos.

Howard Franklin: Are you sure she’s white?

Jamarlin Martin: Yes. From the pictures, I’m assuming she’s white. She’s also another one of your multimillionaires.

Howard Franklin: About 90 percent of Congress is millionaires, man. It’s hard to single out the few that happen to be Democrats that are millionaires.

Jamarlin Martin: One other thing on the CBC. So you have some people in the Black community, they give Biden a hard time because he advocated for the Clinton Crime Bill, mass incarceration, Biden banged for that. It’s hard for me to criticize Biden and these white politicians who supported the crime bill, when I know my research says the CBC was advocating for this. My research says Charles Rangel was one of the leaders who brokered that mass incarceration deal. So if white folks in government in power, if they say, hey, I got to listen to you guys, I got to listen to these people who are closer to community. But if our leaders are going to go to D.C. and say we want mass incarceration, or we’re willing to support mass incarceration and they don’t realize that this is very short-term thinking, that it sounds good, but you’re talking about a big beast and based on how the system is designed and structured, your people are going to be worse off. Meaning that our leaders may not even have the vision.

Howard Franklin: I agree with what you’re saying.

Jamarlin Martin: Do do you agree that before we go at Biden and say, “Man, Biden was for mass incarceration. I can’t vote for him.” Shouldn’t we hold our own leaders accountable who voted for mass incarceration? Who told some of these other leaders, yes, this would be good.

Howard Franklin: Charlie Rangel’s no longer in the Congress. Biden’s going to be on a ballot. Sure, so I’m agreeing with so much of the “why” that has driven your advocacy and your passion around these issues. The question I’ve got to ask as an operator is how, right? I hear exactly what you’re saying. I know how to hold someone like Joe Biden accountable because if he does decide he wants to declare his candidacy for president, then he’s got to come through all 50 United States. But if someone like Charlie Rangel up in Harlem, obviously who’s no longer in the house, made a decision that I don’t agree with. I don’t really have…

Jamarlin Martin: But the institution he would bang for, the Congressional Black Caucus.

Howard Franklin: And just to be clear, you and I aren’t funding the Congressional Black Caucus. The same organizations that you got on your soapbox about earlier saying, “Hey, these guys are spending all this time and this money proping folks up there helping these presidential candidates or these prophetic Black leaders. These are the same organizations writing max checks and donations.

Jamarlin Martin: AIPAC.

19:38 —Howard Franklin: Not just AIPAC. And they’re doing it across the aisle. Right. But my point is, the way this works is, I’m just asking what’s the lever you would pull to hold these folks accountable? Right. Beyond talking about them. New York is a thousand miles away from where I live. I don’t have any standing to vote in that congressional seat, right. And whether or not I give my money to this organization or that one is not going to change one iota.

Jamarlin Martin: That’s what I’m saying. When the Black agenda is organizing, crafting a cohesive agenda that has a big tent that brings a lot of people in. It needs to have an element, it’s obvious, we’re going to bang against America, we’re going to bang against white folks. We’re going to bang against white supremacy. That has to be in the Black agenda. But also in the Black agenda, we have to hold ourselves and leaders accountable, that because the system is rigged or white folks have done this and they’ve done that, self-accountability is a critical piece of the Black agenda.

Howard Franklin: Exactly what I’ve been saying this entire time.

Jamarlin Martin: If our politicians are going to go out there and crip walk for mass incarceration, or our politicians are going to go out there and be hoodwinked and vote for the Iraq war, there has to be accountability for the people that we send to D.C..

Howard Franklin: Absolutely. I’m in total agreement with you and I think that’s the thread that connected my comments here. I think it’s great to look outwardly and to say, here are things wrong with the system, but if we can’t even after 50 years of a CBC and plenty of other organizations, I don’t want you to put it at their feet. We got the Urban League and NAACP and National Black Caucus of State Legislators and plenty of other organizations that have organizational heft, that have institutional knowledge, that have relationships to power and have insights into our problems. And if we haven’t come up with a cohesive agenda yet, I take issue, I can’t point my finger at those guys taking advantage of our lack of organization and our lack of discipline. First, I’ve got to say, are we doing what we’re supposed to do? And then after that, and if we have, and we’re still running into brick walls, if we’re still being outspent and out-organize and out-fundraised, if our voices are still being drowned out, then it’s a conversation we need to have about how we address this swamp, and this is not an either or, by the way. I think it’s certainly important, but I have a tough time thinking about all the things that we aren’t doing and worrying about what other folks are doing in the absence of our action.

Jamarlin Martin: Where does reparations land in your Black agenda and how you think about what folks should be focused on? Or do you even support H.R. 40 and reparations?

Howard Franklin: I support the idea. I think a lot of folks, a lot of leaders, whether they are thought leaders, whether they are political leaders, whether they are revolutionary leaders, have talked about how we might do this. And I think the biggest issue isn’t a question of if we should, or why we should. It’s how we could such that this government wouldn’t fall down under its own weight. Right. I don’t think this is a question of whether or not this country owes a debt or whether or not it should be repaying it. I think that the challenge is, with all of the complexities and governance today, that you gotta be careful about pursuing something meant to uplift one group of people if you can show that it might harm another. And I think that’s really the stumbling block that we’ve run into.

Jamarlin Martin: That’s where the study of reparations, I mean, I believe in a process. So one is, America needs to commission a credible study and this is where you don’t want your Black swamp people being on the council, who would be studying this issue. Meaning in terms of these people.

23:54 —Howard Franklin: I would hope an issue like this with supersede whatever social…

Jamarlin Martin: So one is, the study of reparations is not just for white America to understand what happened. The study of reparations is a lot or most of us don’t understand the trauma, the psychological and cultural after effects of slavery and what was done. For reparations to work the Black men and woman here in the United States, first we need to understand. A lot of us have not studied what really happened and we can’t quantify, hey, what happens when you take a person’s name and they don’t have a country that they can connect with, they can’t reference anything and you just cut that off. And they just have to kind of just figure things out. What happens when you systemically rape a lot of the slaves in terms of how can that be an impairment on their thinking going forward or their ability to function normally. And so a lot of our people don’t even understand that a lot of these pathologies are connected to slavery. And so there’s an economic component obviously. But another piece I think that’s lacking is we got to understand what was done to us and how that has impacted our culture in terms of “Shitty Cuz”, who was the killer and a lot of this violence that we see in our streets, even in terms of the self-hate.

Howard Franklin: I totally agree. Let me just say this though. Congress didn’t come to the SCLC or NAACP and say, hey guys, we think it’s unfair that our laws don’t allow African Americans and women the right to vote. Outside agitators had to go make noise, perform demonstrations, shame elected leaders into coming around and then still had to have sharp elbow negotiations to get what was owed to people who built this country. I don’t imagine reparations to be much different. Why shouldn’t we have, in a country with more than a hundred HBCUs and plenty of other PWIs, an academic approach to this that doesn’t have to be green lit by Congress or by a president? Well, we can come back to those leaders and saying, listen, we have performed academic studies that have now plumbed the depths and the horrors of what you put our ancestors through. Here is what we think it’s worth. Here is how you have to come correct. Here’s what we expect going forward. Right? My only concern is that if we’re waiting for elected officials to take on an issue that has proven to be a lightening rod in a divided house where the Senate is controlled by Republicans, the House is controlled by Democrats. I don’t know who’s controlling the White House these days. We’re not going to see it happen. Right? So much of this is self-determination. I’m not saying the responsibility fully is ours. I’m just saying, if you acknowledge that you’re not going to give me what I’m owed, then I’ve got to come knock on your door and demand it, and I can’t do that while waiting for a handful of Black leaders who make up the CBC or any other institution to wrestle the agenda from the majority parties and ascend it in my direction.

Jamarlin Martin: Would you say that the fact that reparations is gaining popularity as an issue in Black America and I give the ADOS movement a lot of credit in terms of building on the prior work on reparations of others and using social media to organize and educate folks. Although I don’t agree with everything the ADOS is saying, I credit them with increasing the visibility and popularity of that issue. But what you say that the fact that Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker now, Nancy Polosi supporting H.R. 40, study reparations, that reparations is becoming a democratic party issue, at least starting with the study of it, that’s reflective that there’s nothing left in the tank in terms of the Democratic Party and Black people. Meaning that, we’ve seen what the Black politician can do, right? You got a lot of credit. Like Obama’s Black, a lot of these Black politicians are Black, great Democratic Party, this, that, but the old stuff does not work for us. These little tricks that the establishment have used to get us, hey, we’ll go to the churches around election time. We’ll bring Jay-Z out. We’ll do this, we’ll do that. We’ll run a Black candidate. Look how sharp he is. A lot of the stuff that has flowed through the system in terms of strategy with the Democratic Party and some of their advisors like Mark Penn and the stuff, all the darts and weapons. The Black people have seen all that stuff, right? Baltimore still looks the way it is, right? The people are still not satisfied. So hold on. So if you need something more potent, and we saw a little bit of this with HRC,

29:50 —Howard Franklin: I read it differently than you do. I think we have a clown car of a Democratic presidential primary. We have almost two dozen candidates, jockeying for airtime, for visibility, and to stake out the opportunity to be the party standard bearer from the left. And so I think there are going to be a lot of ideas that get consideration because we’re just in the silly season. So I’m not disagreeing that there might be oxygen for this discussion, but I think a lot of that oxygen, it’s part and parcel of the presidential race. If we didn’t have prominent politicians from all across the country declaring their candidacies for president, I don’t think we’d be talking about this. Somebody would be, but it wouldn’t be the echo chamber that we’re hearing right now.

Jamarlin Martin: Well, what I would say, I’ve been involved with politics probably since I was 16 and I think Black America is at a point where the inequality, the wealth gap, the stuff that we see, the racism, the white supremacy, the way that other groups have a mastery of tricknology and corruption. And that leaves us at a disadvantage as we saw with the admissions corruption where the guy in Newport Beach has clients all over America and he’s cheating and helping their kids get into the best schools. So we know that this type of stuff is systemic, right? And so if the white supremacy and discrimination is systemic and is not going away anytime soon, I think people are smartening up, particularly the younger generation, is that I cannot give that Democratic Party 90 percent credit every election and this stuff is not moving. And so I get about all this stuff, “Oh, you know, Trump might win if you put reparations on the thing. And white folks may not vote Democratic. So we can’t push reparations”, this and that. But I believe that the Black voter, when you go into that booth, you need to be thinking about the hood. You need to be thinking about people who have a lot less than you. How would they be voting? How much patience do the people in the ghettos across the country, how much patience do we have? I believe that there’s a sense of urgency where you’re going to have to get more for that vote. I’m not saying that go to a reparations-or-bust strategy in this election, but reparations hurting white Democrats in white folks and other groups. Fuck that. I’m not… Shit, all these policies, a lot of them, someone’s getting hurt, and I’m not saying that we’re looking to go out and hurt people, but America has committed a war crime against their people, and so the whole thing is coming down. I think the whole thing is coming down anyway, but if America wants to have a chance to heal, to go on a path of healing. If it wants to possibly save herself in terms of the racial issues in the country, it’s going to have to go through taking that medicine because the country needs to revisit what happened to our people in slavery. It’s not comparable to any group. The Frankensteinization of Black people in America, it’s not comparable to any group, but the people need to understand what happened to us, including us. Go ahead.

34:02 —Howard Franklin: Yeah, I agree in most of what you said. I think one place we diverge, I don’t think it’s up to millennials or young people to vote in place of downtrodden Black and brown people across this country. Right? I think those people, all of us need to do the same thing collectively, which is to vote for our economic futures, right? What we believe the agendas should include. And when politicians and leaders present themselves and the ideas that resonate with us, we ought to find ways to support them. We shouldn’t say, the college educated version of me or the guy who got out of this neighborhood is going to cast that vote for me. The beauty of the American political system is one man, one vote and I think one of the things you gotta be acknowledging, you gotta be cognizant of is that we’re moving toward a majority-minority society. We’re not there yet obviously, but I think the closer we get to are the easier it’ll be to have some of these conversations. Again, my suggestion is not that we should be waiting.

Jamarlin Martin: I disagree with that.

Howard Franklin: Okay. Tell me more.

Jamarlin Martin: So when you say, and here is where I deviate with the Black consensus, a lot of folks will say, hey, once this country becomes majority non-white things are going to get better. Right? Let me just say. I’m telling you that I don’t care if the country flips to majority non-white. A lot of our people, whether consciously or subconsciously, believe in white supremacy. Okay. A lot of the brown men and women, they believe in white supremacy. The system is still in place. You can put a Black face, you can put a brown face, you could put a woman, you can change these things in terms of what’s on the outside. But we need to be looking at the institutions changing, and that all because something is non-white or all because something is brown or Black are female, that that has an impact on the institutional beast that we’re dealing with.

36:30 —Howard Franklin: I agree with you. It’s not all about the color or the gender of the person.

Jamarlin Martin: I’m saying in terms of the demographic shift, I just think that that’s overplayed in my opinion.

Howard Franklin: So I think we can find a happy medium here. I’m not saying that the moment we go majority-minority, all the problems are solved. All the Black and Brown folks lock arms and they enact this agenda that we believe ought to come to fruition. But I do think that part of what you’ve acknowledged is that some of this is a game of sheer numbers, right? And if you’ve got people who will be diligent in their study about who they should be supporting, who are educated about the issues that they want to see addressed, then that electorate will get you leaders who won’t sell their souls to moneyed interests, who will vote their conscience when the time comes for it, and who all strike meaningful bargains that still move the country forward. I’ve got to believe that some degree of balance will be helpful to where we’re headed. And I think it’s going to address a lot of things. You acknowledge, and I think there’s some truth in this. You talked about the Democratic Party being able to rely on 90 plus percent of Black voters casting a lot with this party. I think that you get to a place where you’ve got, again, a melting pot of minorities and women and young people, millennials and now generation z, what have you. I think it’s gonna reset the boundaries of what we expect from our parties and what we think is possible. Hell, we might get a third party or another organization that’s more responsive to what we’ve been asking for the last 50 or 60 years.

Jamarlin Martin: I want to thank Howard Franklin for coming on the show. Where can people check you out online?

38:21 —Howard Franklin: On social I’m @Iruncampaigns, and our company website is https://ohioriversouth.com/.

Jamarlin Martin: Great conversation. This is one of the longest episodes out of 50. I enjoyed the conversation and you’ll definitely be back. Hopefully.

38:35 — Howard Franklin: Thank you.

Jamarlin Martin: Thanks everybody for listening to GHOGH. You can check me out @JamarlinMartin on Twitter and also come check us out at Moguldom.com. That’s M O G U L D O M.com. Be sure to subscribe to our daily newsletter. You can get the latest information on crypto, tech, economic empowerment and politics. Let’s GHOGH!