i mean it is laughter it's better than it's ever been there's no difference between a homeless or a homosexual a child molester and a woman that's committed an abortion because she has killed her child and i think all three are deserve the same penalty. abortion there are be home why do you think i'm so mad at god he has been chosen by god to run this country and if anybody around him is against. homosexuality and against abortion. and for our children's rights to live yeah i'm will vote for. this tells us so much about what america is like right now to be outside the bubble or where you are d.c. or do york or l.a. in the middle of america what you need to know is guys like that vote they're politically active most christians don't believe the same thing that he believes even most conservative christians don't believe what the religious right believes even the new york times stated a story about evangelicals and young evangelicals that are breaking away from the

politics of their parents in the politics of trump the religious right though they are very organized they have a strategy and they vote so for those who look at the midterms coming up as a kind of complacent they don't know if we're going to go out a vote or not this is how a very small minority has become politically extremely powerful because they have a strategy they have a plan that begins in the voting booth it runs through just carry it with the whole plan is to reshape america into what they see as a christian nation and that just leaves a huge question for what does that mean for the rest of us who aren't christian who don't fit into their worldview and it's not just a different world view they see a different world they they home school their kids their kids go from home school they go to christian universities they watch christian t.v. channels or listen to christian radio stations they never really have to intersect with the worldview that any of us would be familiar with they see a completely different world they're surrounded by completely different facts and information and they have a political plan for this country and they by all means are not complacent about

this election coming up we're hearing from some of them on line this is susan b. anthony list the organization that is an anti-abortion rights advocate group they write in the under trump two justices were appointed to the supreme court to respect the constitutional right to life they also then go on to say that there's been twenty ninth circuit court judges and fifty three district court judges confirmed thanks to president trump so and from the people that you talked to was anyone able to reconcile the things that they saw as being pro christianity pro the bible with the way that trump has lived his life. you know some people did try to rationalize president trant then apply you know biblical stories about how god has used sinners in the past. there were other people who very realistic about the relationship that it was a quid pro quo and that this isn't really unprecedented in american politics and

many people on the left would be frustrated with president clinton's sexual harassment for example but overall his policies and danced their agenda and people were willing to you know support him so it's not really our precedented it just seems jarring given that these people call themselves values voters and this man and not s. as you know this family scandals and behavior that many women expect from. somebody supporting these christians they have a deal though and the deal was an implicit it was explicit when trump was just a candidate they flew like a thousand of these pastors to new york had a private meeting and he said give me your vote give me your church's votes and i'll give you what you want what you want to judges not give more to you in a christian writer covered at the time and said that they shouldn't have taken the deal that jesus already turned down when jesus goes into the desert is tempted for forty days and forty nights by the devil one of the last temptation is as the

double shows him all the cities in the world and says they can all be yours if you'll just build amid all this political power can be yours and jesus said no and that was the deal that these pastors took according to like some of the christian press who saw them take it but it was an explicit deal that i made religious cover and i need your votes and i know what you want them to give it to you the charges. and he said filming in. july. then you also were at the capitol hearing and you saw a lot of women that all of women who were really upset about about the way the cabinet hearing was going and there's usually in every four lines episode a moment which is incredibly emotional and painful and hard to deal with was that moment. yes i'd say the most emotional part of the shoot for me was definitely being in those senate hart building and during the cabin i hearings they didn't just do it women's march they did just survivors march where they mined up

survivors two by two and they led this march of hundreds of people around the city wow cavanagh's speaking to the senators inside and it was one of the most powerful things i've ever experienced i think everyone there well that you know this pain that these people were sharing. that it would mobilize a little power but it became very clear that while these people were on the streets and being very. near power was not translating into halls of congress and they do have a plan for the midterms we'll see if they get out the same way that religious right as many of the tweet from tom who read earlier he says given how things have gone on in washington and historically high approval probably disapproval ratings that have followed this dynamic linking evangelical even jellicoe ism with the top administration has not been

a good advertisement for jesus so much to talk about the finale day and just washing thank you so much for joining us from appreciate it thank you for me thanks for having us. we move now to our moral debt the legacy of slavery in the usa producer how does the our correspondent in the film wind through the american south as journalist james gannon explores what effect the oppression of been slave people by his ancestors still has on black lives in the u.s. today take a look. a journey of personal discovery my great grandfather he was a slave the lead property al-jazeera is james excludes he's family's legacy and. you know like my family status and wealth has benefited from their choice to save and to america's debt to black people today some of us. to speak out because it's a problem. al-jazeera correspondent. joining us from doha james gannon who is also

a deputy news editor for al-jazeera english while going james to the stream now for our audience that has not yet seen the film spoiler alert you are a descendant of combat or a general robert e. lee and so keeping that in mind i want to bring up this tweet because there are a lot of revelations in this documentary and back here talks about why he says whatever happened to the promise of forty horses forty acres of land and freedom to the slaves and in popular culture now that is forty acres and a mule so that is the idea of reparations are not something that a lot of our audience seems to pick up on and that's something that was picked up on in the film as well so here is a comment from steven thomas he's an organizer and a lecturer who actually featured in the film and here's what he had to say next year two thousand and nineteen fortieth anniversary of the arrival of the first and slave africans to the shores of virginia this documentary. serves to remind

this nation's citizens the racial reconciliation is indeed possible beginning first what the government is jewish and what probably should be a commitment to reparations to african-americans descended from bolz. reparations is that something you had thought much about before doing this documentary. you know it really wasn't i mean i think it probably crossed my mind before as something that seemed like a good idea but might you know not have ever might not ever be possible or really practical. and when i first started making this film the focus was really just on statues you know like robert e. lee is my family member and you know seen what happened in charlottesville with the unite the right rally right right wing protests that erupted there around the plant removal of one of his statues i nationally wanted to take a look at you know that issue the more i got into it though and looked at the

legacy of enslavement that that my family had left for me in this country the more i realized that the root causes of institutional racism and inequality that we see today really need a much bigger way to address it and reparations was the one that i landed on james what struck me was that while this film tendency is was learning about black people one on one level so much that they didn't know and so much they didn't understand how is that possible as an american living in a multicultural multi racial society that there were some very basic things that he didn't know about black people. i think that it's really just so easy to live in a bubble in america and you know if i'm honest i lived in a pretty privileged life you know my family wasn't rich but but we were comfortable

and. you know growing up in mostly white communities the inequality was something that i was never really faced with or came face to face with and so i'll though i had a general awareness of it it was easy just kind of to go through life without having to to come to terms with it and you know i'm just really grateful that i was able to to learn more about the black experience in america through this film and and share some of the really striking facts and figures about that through the project so many lessons learned let's just give our audience a little taste of one of those lessons have a look i actually met recently the descent descendants of one of the people my family enslaved and found out that i had actually known this this woman a style that was ninety years old now and most of my life and it's hard for me. her

name is. time blanking on her last name stella. telling you know that she needs many years your senior and yet you refer to her by her first name. there it is right there i mean i don't mean any disrespect. to check. well apparently no one else has referred to the other and. yeah yeah absolutely right i think it probably made both of us uncomfortable you know for you for you to call me out there. maybe medvedev you know maybe not but. yeah i j you can redeem yourself right now miss. stella

belt. i will never blink. but i mean this this is what i was talking about since really basic knowledge about how you address. a black male. in your community you really being what it meant to be inside african among american culture where that fit into american history. there are organizations that are doing the work that i think many will hope that this documentary does as well so this is just one of them and serge d.c. is the handle here they are an organization that organizes people for racial justice and they say a big canvas that involves in-depth one on one conversations that engage white people specifically the need for reparations as a way to divest from white supremacy to go on to say that they also tried to emphasize in every event reading group every issue we discuss whether policing incarceration segregation it's all rooted in legacies of white supremacy and

slavery so with that in mind what was the one thing that you think stood out to you is the most surprising. i think the thing that stood out to me is this how close history of enslavement in america really is you know we think of it as something that was a long time ago but one of the things i learned through this film is that my grandmother's nanny was actually born in slavery in my family and so that meant that that means that i knew somebody that knew somebody that was born into slavery so that really brought it almost to how close it really is and that that legacy you know really is having a profound effect on the modern day. it's interesting we will have to leave it there for now james gannon thank you so much for joining the story and you'll be sure to catch his film a moral debt now streaming on al-jazeera dot com so our final film comes from the

documentary series witness the things we keep is the story of a unique video correspondence over the course of a decade at a border reflection on the themes of discovery trust this illusion meant and what it means to come home have a look. career reporting to the won't do it here one journalist documents life beyond the headlines. that certain stories can change us in the easiest please use when you need. to change anyone a unique journey into what it means to be human the things we keep a witness documentary on al-jazeera joining us now we have the film's director is in los angeles casey kaufman and in florence italy at a sound. gentlemen welcome well this worked out well only took you ten years to put

this film together. but when did you decide you had a film. good good question i think that i mean alice on the show is the is my friend in the co-director who had the original idea. you know some of us have friends who are journalist and and stuff like that and we see the reports on t.v. but allie sondra being a filmmaker be an artist had the crazy idea to ask me to send him all of his footage ok all of my put it in a lot of the footage you know any care man or reporter knows that you should a lot of footage not all of that is not. in others some of the wanted stuff end up on t.v. he wanted to see what else was there. i mean that i he had that idea i mean years ago seventy eight years ago in from that point on he just started to collect and

collect collecting them in a leak as you know some something that somebody working in the news industry would never have literally do it's a beast i mean once the project alice sound oh yeah i mean when i ask the to see this was a job i had no idea at the beginning to make such a film but it was something that developed through the years because at that time i was leaving to berkeley and i was you know we mentioned before the word bubble you know i was kind of living in a bubble just you know going to parties live in the nice life in berlin and then suddenly i was watching the kids this food so huge like you know i could watch six hours straight of kids. i was. into these words and i could connect that could relate to those distant words and i you know i start to think if i can groups these in

a film. i think it would be interesting and that's. or develop. a way out to be more more or less interesting you say that because i think that's exactly what the audience took from it so this is suzanne who tweets and the fact that they kept their friendship going was amazing in itself casey stripped the guys that were both heart wrenching and joyous and watching ali son joe with his dad reminded me of moments with my late father who also had cancer she goes on to say i'm india's have casey's journeys but i also saw the toll it took on him and they found no although he didn't travel as much had a different trouble and i'm wishing them both well from ireland so casey talk to us about that because people who are followers of al jazeera english will know your work from there will know your time spent there the story that you tell in the documentary inside having a different ending tell us a little bit about that. although the very nice comment that you just read out

things i mean even on my reporting trips not the larger films one of my goals in gaza like everywhere was to try to tell very small personal stories and. because sometimes those are the stories that people and other places around the world can relate to the most because and i think that's also what motivated alessandro to dive into the footage more because he also felt that same feeling where. you know if i can see you know the normal life in the normal you know ups and downs of people whether it's good or bad you know you feel a little bit more like them and that was really the the reason and what alexander wanted to convey i mean the update for who seeing the film or and not really a spoiler for who hasn't but the update of that of that family and guys i mean the second kid who was born to the same name as the first kid. who

passed away unfortunately and that kid is now growing and happy and strong and they've also had a second child so you know like like every situation where people live in extreme difficulty and hardship there is also normal life and things that bring families joy and their life goes on as well as honoring the final many elvish as time goes by fox oddly this is not just d.c. pass mill film what do you think the general audience of algae and i just think should take away from the film that you made. for me the most important message of this film tools to judge a girl.