has made for an unprecedented and challenging debut for athletes i think it's a matter of just digging in during the absolute best and despite all of the external joys you just go to block it out and just keep on. marching forward. hopefully towards chalking up he stood still in peak medal gauge al-jazeera caliber . this is al jazeera these are the top stories the 1st shipment of 10000 doses of the russians foot neck vaccine has arrived in iran another 400000 are expected in the next few weeks health care workers and bell mobile groups are 1st in line to receive the limited doses dosage pari has more now from tehran we have heard from officials who said that this is a very welcome news that the 1st shipment has finally landed in the country after

months of attempts by iran to secure vaccines from various sources of course the iranian officials had said they would not purchase any vaccines made in the us or britain but they did end up purchasing $18000000.00 doses in total from countries such as china india and russia and we've just seen the 1st batter arrived in the country a few hours ago and the world's 1st researches at oxford university in the u.k. are going to explore if it's effective to mix doses of the pfizer and astra zeneca coronavirus vaccines scientists will evaluate if you can alternate between the 2 for primer and booster doses the u.n. security council says is deeply concerned about the state of emergency imposed in 1000000 ma since the military staged a coup there that's calling for the immediate release of all detainee is almost 150 people have been arrested including the ousted leader aung san suu kyi. international criminal court at the hague has found the ugandan militia leader dominic unwin guilty of war crimes

a judge said he ordered the killings of civilians and abducted children the iraqi government is holding funerals for victims of the religious minority killed by ice on what the u.n. call genocide the remains of 104 people have been examined and identified from mass graves in northern iraq a prominent lebanese activist has been found dead in his car after being shot lots and sleen was a journalist and political analyst he was well known for his condemnation of hezbollah the u.k. has revoked the license of china's state run t.v. channel c g t n broadcast regulator ofcom in london certain investigation found c g t n's license was wrongfully held by the star china media group china's foreign ministry says it has a right to take measures against the u.k.'s public broadcaster the b.b.c. up next the bottom line more news in 30 minutes hopefully we'll see that up.

i am steve clemons i have a question now that the democrats are moving into the white house well the rights of american workers actually improve let's get to the bottom line. compared to much of the developed world the united states is the wild west of labor markets protections for american laborers have eroded unions are shunned by the biggest and richest corporations in the world and workers are all too often the most expendable parts of the corporate equation if capitalism was working right why is it that virtually nowhere in america can a full time minimum wage worker find a 2 bedroom apartment technology continues to move forward disrupting jobs particularly for large segments of the lesser skilled workforce some really win big

but this also creates more and more unstable low paying jobs with few if any benefits today we're honored to speak to a legendary leader who literally spent her life trying to give voice and power to the voiceless and powerless she was born 10 years after women secure the right to vote in america the lords who are to made history along with cesar chavez were both began organizing poor and abused farm workers in california in the 1960 s. and she's not stopped her quest for equality in america ever since in 2012 she was awarded the presidential medal of freedom for advocacy of civil rights workers rights and women's rights by president barack obama she's also originator of the uplifting catchphrase si se puede a yes we can doris who it's a what an honor to have you on with us today i want to read something to you that jared questioner said and ask you to respond to that he said president trump's policies are. policies that can help people break out of the problems that they're

complaining about but he can't want them to be successful more than they want to be successful when you think about american labor american workers i do red flags go off guess definitely because early simply saying that work is only just gunned down. continuously the lead constantly has gone up and end it worked it's impossible for them to catch up and even when they talk about a $15.00 an hour minimum wage we know that that minimum wage to keep up with the casa living should be more like $30.00 an hour and maybe not even more than that maybe $35.00 or $40.00 an hour. because workers cannot make it on a minimum wage of today and workers have to work 2 or 3 jobs just to be able to pay their rent to be able to put food on the table a little and try to save money for their children's college education so. in an

impossible dilemma right now because they are not getting this type of support that they should be getting in the 1960 s. when you and cesar chavez you know got out into organizing farmworkers in california and started such a major movement i guess my question today is how do you feel that today differs from that time if at all is the toxicity different is the attitude towards workers different do you feel like there's been a lot of gains made that we can build on but there are so there's still a lot to to do. no i think the work is right in the interior deteriorated substantially and we have seen this happen with the fast food workers who are not given a 40 hour work week you know they have $10.00 temporary workers they come in one or 2 days a week we see this but the best industry we see this will bomb are the one of the nation's major employers who are workers are not given a 40 hour work week so they don't qualify for health plan. we see what happened

recently in california with proposition 22 when drivers in a live dry risen all of these good workers were literally have voted through a proposition and the reason that people voted the way that they did is because he had millions and millions of dollars that was spent on advertising and mailers to get people to vote against workers have me basic labor right and i'm talking about social security unemployment insurance you know just some basic basic things that work is going to protect them and yet these giant companies like amazon they sent millions of dollars and over the people in the in the lift owners to prevent workers from having basic labor rights coverage it is just incredible and then recently trump has been pushing. for the department of

labor to diminish the minimum wage for workers that are brought in from other countries and what this does is got only diminish is there really just learned also a lessons in wages of the domestic workers weak is what happens to those contract workers that are brought in from other countries d. is for an agriculture the 2 a work h. 2 a workers then it also lowers the wages of the local farm workers. when do you think you're being heard now in in the new team that's coming in with president elect biden and president obama's personal economy harris do you feel that they get it how secure. you know are workers rights with the new team coming in well i think workers' rights are still in prayer and prayer alone i know the president like biden and both camel heritage they both support workers and they support labor unions but at the same time we have seen that the power of the corporate world has

just been is going so immense that it will it will be very difficult for them to be able to change anything and especially they do not elin control of the senate in the judge election so gen generated fit and that judge election is going to determine you know how much the president can actually change and he can't he can change. the people that will run the national labor relations law and appoint people in that respect but in some of the bigger major issues i think it will be very very hard for him we know that he wants to raise a minimum wage to $15.00 an hour and in states like this sounds places where right now the minimum wage is only $7.72 an hour that will help in many places even on the east coast in places like california in the in the west coast it will be the $15.00 an hour really doesn't do that much. part of the doloris who wear brand

is going door to door organizing with people personally hearing their worries and speaking to them one on one or one you know to a family and understanding where that's at you know where in the air of coke right now lots of people have suffered in and have been impacted so much has gone on to you know the digital online space how are these how is this time of coded change your work and change the organizing and advocating for labor rights well it is it is really a i think it is very adversely because we do people the people organizing we have meanings in people's homes to call them hostile needs would just lead to 6 people maybe 8 at the most and mostly with families and and what we do then is we talk about the issues we talk about how the issues can be solved and then we end by them to come and commit themselves to work on these issues to be able to to improve them . because we cannot do this and and many of the people that we are most of the

people that we were going to have to low income people many of them are from the immigrant community they don't have a computer is. in a place that they were in didn't have broadband so in that this is a place of the children. now in the schools when clothes are children have been set back so much because they were not able to to have a hot sponsor 1st computers that they needed to do their work. so it's been very very difficult and in the last elections the campus seen going door to door reminding people that they had to vote registering people to vote we did that all on the person the person basis and of course we couldn't do that with a pandemic. we were able to do some work on the census and we did have camus's but it was very very difficult for them to do their work and then people there is so much fear in the community because the president trumps conses attack against

the ona's especially mexican people were just terrified up and just even to open the door so it was all of this coming together made it very very hard for residue our work so we had to revert back to doing as much as we could online and we were able to reach a lot of people but then there's a lot of people that we were not able to reach to be able to get information out to folks about the resources that were available to them with the pandemic which is we ran a lot of put best we had to resort to telephone calls and and texting. doing a lot of leaflet in even sending people letters in the mail a to let them know that these are as we sense is a bailable to you so we could get out the information that in order to recruit more people and to motivate more folks a come and join the movement the grasses moment it was more difficult i was enjoying the p.b.s. documentary about you dolores and fascinating but i was also struck by the fact

that she didn't understand what a big role bigotry played in the workers movements campaigns and that the bigotry of of that time the bigotry of today i sort of feel it see it it's a big deal we've seen it in the you know toward floyd murder protests in the racial tensions in america but we've got 60000000 latinos in america right now you're not you're not only just about latino workers you're about all workers but my question is how are you been able to deal with the bigotry out there and some of it's been directed towards you. well you know that this is part of unfortunately. american landscape that we signed a letter racism and we just have to make people understand that the reason we do have racism is to somehow be able to justify that you treat people of color differently and how some of their supposedly subhuman are not human not human

enough to be treated the way that white people get cheated and so this is something that we have to dress in our society all levels because we have all of our agencies of government in our institutions how does intuitions are indications institutions . justice institution these are all you might say tainted by racism and so we have to start dismantling the racism as reverend lawson says dismantle the systems of oppression that exists in our society. and we and workers have to understand that that it's out about them it's about this race assistant that we have in the intense it's america and so that they cannot let that inhibit them or stop them from trying to go forward in trying to improve their own conditions but you know we know that young people especially are demanding change right now they've been marching on the streets they're demanding racial gender and

economic justice and. hopefully the pressure will continue especially on our politicians. to make the laws that we need to have made change this race a system that we have in the meantime we're just have to keep trying to go on and organizing and fighting for themselves as much as they can and in keeping the pressure. on her to change all of this how do you see the state of unions in america when i look at europe and say you know 65 percent of the workforce is is unionized i look at united states you sort of see 10 percent a declining i'm interested in what you think is going to be needed to either give unions an uptick or to give labor in some other form the kind of power it needs to get to the equilibrium it needs to have. i think that's the big question just as a $64.00 question and we know that the corporate power in the united states is so so excrete and so harpo that it is very difficult for labor unions to be able to to

fight against this power i mean even a little example here in california but the farm workers union. a company that i actually ran the election. begin the negotiations over 20 years ago and the united farm workers has not been able to get a contract with that company and they prefer to spend millions of dollars literally millions of dollars to prevent workers from having a union contract and better wages better health conditions or pension plans for that and other those millions that they could have given to the workers directly in some of these benefits they use that money to buy unions and so the unions are really hamstrung right now would have the laws that would make it very simple for unions to get recognition would be to. have card check elections if the conflict is signature would be good enough to be able to get recognition and if your signature

is good enough to buy a house buy a car get married get a divorce. but then it should be good enough to be able to represent your union and not only that but like the current is in months or a living gets representation of the employer's interest of bond and. every legal option that they have to work is from getting a contract and when we see what's happening with like wal-mart and and or and left in these companies here they say they don't want to work they have representation they don't care about their workers all they care about is making money and this is something that is very insidious and cynical and wrong in the united states of america and the thing is if we do not have labor unions if we do not have a strong middle class which is what labor unions delivery in the create a middle class and if we do not have a middle class if we don't have

a democracy. and when we say they have rosen of our democracy and then once it's america that is where is an important tool and say this is happening because the working people do not have the power that they need to have in our society so it's a big dilemma and a big threat and we have to figure out how we're going to change this and we have to pass laws that are going to help our labor unions because at this point in time they need a lot of support. you know we have a lot of unions in america you know richard trumka of the a.f.l.-cio randi weingarten of the american federation of teachers you know mary kay henrietta cia you know lots of lots of union leaders out there and i guess my question to you perhaps in an unfair one is what are is there something they are getting wrong is there something is there a blind spot that unions have about how to become more vital more successful in this equation no but if you keep losing the question is how do you begin

reorganizing to win more you have thoughts on the. well let me just mention mary kay henry with a with service employees international union and got into the teachers' union remember these are public institutions service employee represents a public work is pretty much the people that work for the government. state or federal. but the thing is that the other unions and they are much stronger you might say then the unions a represent just regular working people like in construction. the auto workers etc etc well the employees have been everything that they can to weaken labor unions and it's going to take a lot of laws to be able to support them for instance a lot of the industry then move to the south where you have right to work laws were getting better getting rid of those what right to work laws in the south they places like texas would actually make it easier for workers to be able to join

labor unions in the 1st place but the other thing is is that the employers they lie and they see ok well if you're into what happened here with publishing 22 in california. and that it took away any possible drive to work as a workers who drive the sewers and lives and these are the king drivers darby as it wouldn't it be. in they did this by lying literally to the to the public spending so you know when you're dealing with people who lie cheat and deprive the workers of been of theirs and they should have you know because of all of the money that they have to deceive the public this makes it a very unfair game you know in you don't have a referee in the middle so the only revery of this would be our governments that so many of the people in government and they are also the one with the need to say that great crudely but ah my these large employers so we've gotta bring

honesty and trust and justice and caring for workers back into our life and into our government and and then i think that is a start electing progressive that are going to fight for workers and they're not going to give in to the pressure of these major corporations that are doing all this damage to work is into our society it's fascinating to talk about the right to work laws because people to judge who is now going to has been nominated to be secretary of transportation has said specifically he wants to work to roll those back so we'll have to see what it is you have to tell me what you're going to visit the transportation secretary people to judge and of course the president and try and work on those right to work laws. and it's good that you mention that to me because we also have happening in the global in the global world right where so many jobs that we know have been shipped overseas and i haven't seen anything now

in terms of the last now after that the 2nd after that was passed that's going to be up in american workers and in in even those countries like mexico. the mexican partners who have been devastated by nafta and when they talk about illegal immigration i think it was something like 80000000 of their work is it came from mexico commit united states. these are farmers these are small family farmers will in no way could compete with the agribusiness that we have in the united states mexico is where the corn was right was conceived in mexico and today in mexico they import more corn in the united states and what they grow in mexico and so we can see this imbalance in i know that many of the organizations like public citizen they work on global issues you know they talk about these and so you have

what is it that is suffering not only in the countries where we are exporting our goods but we have the same thing happening to our workers in that it's safe so instead up on stately say that workers all over the world are suffering because of these global trade agreements that are there they are very very helpful to the corporations but they are very harmful to workers. you know i have to ask because you have the benefit of long experience out there fighting battles and whatnot and i just was amused and kind of. excited and jealous that you were that your own presidential medal of freedom ceremony was shared with people like tony morris and bob dylan and all of you when you look at you you look at the folks that were up there lived through times of great division in the country great divide and tension and in part that's what the president was awarding and

highlighting when he did this but i also know that you were in the room when robert kennedy was assassinated when you look at this time when people feel like it's been a horrific time in america i just love the know how you see it is this just like any other decade where we have problems or is this time worse than others well you know i was born during that depression. as a child and during the depression and i remember as so many things that happened during the depression i got my dancing lessons and tap dance in my ip law in lessons and i know all of the great art work that was created during the depression and that's only got social security and one work that's got the right to organize then i live to world war 2. where my father and my brothers all had to go to the service and when we came out of that we had that large numbers of women that went into the workplace and it never happened before we had

a soldiers that were coming back from the war to go to college for free you know so you know there were things that happened after each one of these crisis in our country and i do feel that now that we are highlighting some of these issues that we have lived with for centuries you know that racism this sexism you know and now we have the new issue of climate change to it which is a brand new one for us here that i do feel very very hopeful and the reason i feel hopeful is because. the young people all of the people it took to the streets and not just young people. and people of all ethnic groups you know we had white people and brown people and by people in asian people they were all marching for economic racial and gender justice and i do see that this is going to happen that is going to change we just signed this last election the year that more people voting than any time in the history of the united states of america and that's where the

pandemic where people like ourselves can go out there and register people to vote and cameras to get to people on the boat all that this happened and and we see that now we have all of these tools like like the internet and these tiktaalik on instagram. that all of that especially the young people haven't their disposal and we've got young leaders like grant you know ows fighting for climate change emma gonzalez florida who's fighting to get rid of gun violence and. i think it's a remarkable moment in history right now and i feel very hopeful because the spotlight is on all of the things that we need to change the injustices against people of color against women against working people against students occasional system that needs to be completely revamped and remade so i feel very very hopeful because i think that the energy is there young people especially that are committed to make these changes it's going to happen it's going to happen and i think those

people especially the politicians stand in the way they're not going to be there for very long they might well part when they don't cycle but eventually they're going to have the they're going to have to. get it get into the movement does it i think again. or the lords who are today an iconic labor and civil rights advocate i just want to thank you but i want to tell my viewers that you're not just about hope you're about doing an action it's real honor to have you want our show today thank you so much and thank you it's my pleasure and thank you for inviting me so what's the bottom line i guess it's human nature for the well off to look down on hardworking people at the bottom of the economic ladder but things were bad before the pandemic for millions of americans and now people have to make their way with less and less the. and we're going on slightly earlier this spring in the very latest from the white

house developments that the white house press secretary jeh psaki to king questions from assembled reporters specifically off the back of some information to do with the new u.s. president joe biden's 1st visit to the state department let's listen in to what's being said time in our nation's history and a little piece of history for all of you every president has attended the breakfast since dwight d. eisenhower made his 1st appearance in 1954 trivia for dinner table ok couple of other updates. the president and his administration all of us are continuing their close and gauge went today on the american rescue plan a top priority for him and all of us at this moment including outreach to lawmakers and stakeholders as well as our continuing work to make the case directly to the american people or heartened that congress is moving quickly on this over the next several days committees will have a chance to review the legislation as you know that's kind of the next step in the

process next week after the vote or ramah tonight's very washington term but that is literally what it's called and republicans will have additional opportunities to provide input and help improve the final product that's how the process is supposed to work and we're encouraged there is agreement on the need to move swiftly and the goal of making this bipartisan bill and package. there's a couple of questions that many of you have asked us and others have asked us over the course of our effort on the american rescue plan so i just wanted to address some of those here 1st why do we need a package of this size or will it be fine but the status quo obviously this is a good question that asked as economic data comes out so i just wanted to highlight a couple of pieces for all of you i.c.b. over port found that without any additional stimulus our country wouldn't reach preprinted demick levels until 2025 and it would take just as long. to get back to full employment this week was the 46th consecutive leak that jobless claims have exceeded the pray pendennis record high kevin hassett president trumps top economic

adviser said quote we need to be risk averse and that without a major stimulus. negative spiral for the economy this is a grim picture but analysis ass and now says after analysis shows us that the rescue plan would make a huge difference moody's analytics found it would get us to full employment a year faster brookings predicts it would get us back to prevent demick levels by the end of the year and over 90 percent of economists surveyed by reuters found it would drive substantial growth the 2nd question we often get another good question is when we will see bipartisan support for this bill the reality as we see it every single day a certain new survey from navigator research out this morning shows 72 percent of americans support the rescue plan including 53 percent of republicans a quinnipiac poll yesterday found that 68 percent of americans back the rescue plan who you gov survey and money sure that over.