work we've been doing on zika what that means to address maternal and reproductive health with equity in mind, and because of the work i've done in puerto rico, to understand that when you are addressing these issues for populations in which the economic conditions can far outweigh the concern about the disease for which four out of five people infected have no symptoms, the conversation requires true information and informed decision-making for an individual are needing to be informed by the insights that everyone of the panelists here today is going to share. i want to stress that because one of the things i understand working at the federal level is that with all of our expertise

in science and policy guidance, that's what it is. it's work that we don't have of the population. what has to happen with edwards is that it has to be translated to be useful for the individual people who need to be able to make personal decisions for themselves. and in this case around reproductive health. and i know as a physician how much that relies on shared decision-making type conversations with clinicians who understand the, and who have the information required to be able to help women make those decisions. some of the work that we have done that hhs in response to zika has been investing more than $300,000 in emergency funding to our title 10 programs

in puerto rico, to expand access to contraception. we have been doing training to ensure that our work with partners is culturally and linguistically appropriate. and to ensure that our service is really reach those who need them most. the office of population affairs last month released a toolkit, guidance for providers for counseling women. we are also working with states, territories, tribes and local governments on steps they can take to prevent, detect and respond to zika. alongside that health care work we are sharing advice on the best ways to control mosquitoes, working to improve diagnostic capacity, and to keep the blood supply free of zika.

winnie already mentioned vaccine development and improving diagnostic testing. and underneath all of that, what might be most important is the hard work that's done every day to improve our communications. and especially important technical and human scale that is so key for everything else that needs to be done to equitably ensure access and enable women to make the decisions that they need for themselves. and we are working with a number of artists improve women's access to effective contraception. as we do all this, i also understand the limitations of our reach on the federal level which is why it's so important for us to continue to partner with you, if you take your feedback so that we can continue

to be better at our efforts. but we do need to work with you, to spread the word about zika, how it's transmitted, how pregnant women, women of childbearing age, and actually everyone can protect themselves. and we need ongoing advocacy for our communities, for us to the resources that we need to implement not just miscue to prevention efforts and contraception efforts, but sustainable improvement in conditions which, in addition to helping us address zika in the long run when we talk about disparities and equity, can make many more kinds of differences in the lives of people along the way. thank you for your work. thank you to the panelists for what you do and i look forward to ongoing partnership. [applause]

>> thanks to winnie and dr. mullen for setting the stage. i am jamila taylor, a senior fellow for the center for american progress. i will be moderated the panel discussion version of today's program. we have an impressive group of women's health and rights experts here on the panel today. i will introduce them briefly but also encourage all to access their full bios online. so first in the beautiful red dress we have anne marie, senior

director of government relations at the national latina institute for reproductive health. in that role she was responsible for the organizations washington, d.c. office and oversees all government relations and policy advocacy work. prior to joining philippine institute she worked at public policy director for planned parenthood affiliate in california. next sitting next to me we have clare coleman. clear is in her seventh year served as president and ceo of the national family planning and reproductive health association. before joining toshi serve as president and ceo of planned parenthood in hudson valley in new york and is helping number of positions in the united states house of representatives including chief of staff and legislative director for appropriations committee ranking member nita lowey. at the end we have dr. christopher zahn.

dr. zahn is vice president of practice activities. and retired air force officer and a member of the armed forces district. he received his medical degree am uniform services university and is a specialist in comprehensive obstetrics and gynecology who is in pakistan are 29 years. before joining treachery he served as a staff position in the department of obstetrics and gynecology and topology at walter reed national military medical center. and last but not least we have latanya mapp frett. she joined planned parenthood federation of america in 2011. she is executive director of planned parenthood global and vice president global. in this role she sets the course for the international engagement of all international issues and prior to join the planned parenthood, she worked for the

united nations children's fund as well as the u.s. agency for international development. thank you all again for being here. so the first question i had this afternoon is directed to all of you. i want you all to describe how your organization are working to address the zika among women. why don't we start with clarke? >> thank you. the national family planning of reproductive health association is a membership association in all 50 states and several other territories as well as in the district of columbia. we represent nearly 800 institutional provided a family planning and sexual health care nationwide. that includes a 33 state governments, 15% of the nation's federally qualified health center's and about 80% of planned parenthood affiliates as well as many other private not-for-profit providers to family planning. we are working on zika response from two approaches. the first is in service delivery. the federal advisories around how we should address peoples

concerned, women and men, and health services has led to concern and confusion in the field about how to translate guidance which has moved as new information has come to light to individual patients who come in with concerns. we have a team in texas today meeting with title x family-planning or anti-and their service delivery network to talk about how do you translate the guidance that's coming from the fed and the local health departments into practice, how do you operationalize preparedness, and then what do providers in local communities need to know today in order to be a properly responsive to the field? we work in advocacy and communications raising the voice and the concerns of this network. we have about 4100 health center sites around the country come again in government units, and private not-for-profit units that are all working to interpret this guidance, operationalize it for their

community, duke energy awareness to make sure that supplies on hand. it's important to participate in the coalition effort to call attention both from the administration and the congress to the pressing need for resources. >> ann marie? >> national latina institute for reproductive justice is a reproductive health, is the only latina national latina parsonage which represents 28 million the tenets and the family. we do it fo through reproductive justice lands. what we do is twofold. a lot of what we're doing is we have a mobilization and that works in teams in new york, florida, texas and in virginia which also happens to be a lot of hotspots in which zika is taking place. a lot of our work right now is working with the community and try to answer questions and trying to hear what their concerns are and what their needs are.

then relaying that back up to d.c., which is her second part t of the work which is a lot of the advocacy inventing up a lot of this concert addressing them. putting pressure on congress, for example, to move forward with emergency funds. >> it's a pleasure to be here, and thank you for having this conversation right now to c.a.p. it's so important for us at planned parenthood because we had the privilege of serving one out of five women in this country and over 1 million people a year in latin america and africa. for us it's incredibly important to keep women at the center of this debate around the zika. on a normal day women who are marginalized and in particular chief or the world wha whether r not receiving service, faith unmet needs are family-planning that we're trying to address on a normal day, in latin america in particular, the rate of unsafe abortion is startling.

we were just talking earlier this week with our colleagues in the government about the average 15 year old in latin america, initial sexual entrance was through some kind of violence or rape. so these are women who, when we start, our latest racing why don't we wait to get pregnant while we figure out how we handle zika, eye of the wind we are talking about. they can't do that, and so it's very important for us will be talk about funding and when we talk about policies that women remain at the center and that we take precaution from w.h.o. and cdc that reproductive health has to be a huge part of the response. so that's where our work cente centers. >> thanks very much for the opportunity to be here. acog is slightly over 50,000 members of obstetricians and gynecologists and this area is of special interest to us. i think it was dr. frieden to point out, this is the first time its unique time in history,

the first time there's actually a mosquito borne or a vector borne illness whose primary impact his birth defect. never before seen. .. spread the message and spread the information because i'm sure everyone is aware the guidelines change frequently we have updated our guidelines probably six times in the last couple of months picked the most recently came out last night and also, not surprisingly when there was little information known in the beginning the guidelines were relatively brief. we still know far less than what we knew know that the guidelines are more expended and therefore

challenging to understand and implement. the implementation piece translates those guidelines into practice in the trenches the patient shows up who's been exposed or traveling summer, what to do and how to get the testing done and how do we do the testing and advise her on what her wrists aren't what the prognosis is the best we can ahead further manage the pregnancy subsequently and we work closely with some of the other women's healthcare organizations, practitioners, midwives, family practice and anyone involved in women's health to get this messaging out as much as possible and also we are involved in advocacy not only for the funding issue, but access to healthcare, reproductive rights etc. are clearly there is to populations in this, the women who are pregnant or planning to become pregnant and clearly there's the

avoiding the pregnancy and the paraphrase doctor friedman, probably quote one of his earlier addresses, we don't know how to prevent zika, but we know how to prevent pregnancy we need to make effort to do that. >> thank you. can you walk us through the standards of care in a zika related case for obstetricians and gynecologists were pregnant women when they come in if they test positive for zika. >> i should have made more copies, but generally for women -- so it varies based on whether a person lives in an adamic area versus as travel and have a been exposed. unfortunately, within the last week to week and a half we now have adamic area and the mainland but-- the majority this point will still be those people who travel to affected areas and there are guidelines far as who

should be tested and what type of testing should be done. it has gotten a bit easier with the most recent guidelines because there is a division between whether they have been exposed within the first of two weeks or it's been after two weeks, but before 12, so again there are guidelines as far as to what had the testing should be done in the earlier exposure with a combination of the neck-- molecular tests that is done about the blood in the urine specimen and depending on the result of that a follow on test looking for antibodies is done. they actually sort of flip and people who are exposed beyond two weeks, so between two and a 12 weeks as far as what should be done and a petting on the result is how they are managed. if a woman test negative and she is asymptomatic generally we would recommend ultrasound to make sure there are no abnormalities and if ultrasound is normal therefore the most part cleared. for patients who test positive it is much more intensive surveillance looking for

abnormalities, and i could keep on going for another three hours going back to the issue about far less known than what we know, we do know roughly 80% of women who are exposed when that develop symptoms, which exit challenging. we also don't know if a woman gets upset-- infected with the risk of transmission is, so we don't know how the actual babies will be infected and what's been reported range from one to 30%, which is huge. secondly, we don't know if there are certain women and babies, fetuses that might get higher risk of getting infected compared to those that don't. there might be underlying immune profiles or other cofactors that may play a role in how that is manifested. for those women that are asymptomatic, but still expose could they eventually develop the disease? the other is the time course. the women-- we used to think someone-- a sense of initial data that women were higher at risk if they were exposed in the

first trimester of pregnancy, but there's been case reports that refute that women can be exposed later in a rapid time course the fetus developing animality skirt personally come i think one of the scariest aspect of this, we know from basic science research that is none that in a lot of infectious disease the damage that occurs in whatever system it is can be related to the but also the immune response and we know that there is data in zika that zika can actually directly attack brain cells, the neurons in the marines, so one of the real fears in a clear unknown that even with an infected woman with a normal baby and that baby is not showing microcephaly we don't know that pirates will not continue to attack the brain cells in the newborn afterbirth. so, we have no idea what those developmental abnormalities may or may not be, what the risks

are, what they might be what the percentage will be. one of the most important aspects of everything we are doing is to register to follow these children afterbirth to see what happens to them down the line. thank you. >> thank you for that are coming to shift things a bit talk about family planning program. claire talked about this. huge part of her organization work that y'all do. as important as the title program is in terms of access to family planning for women, it's also been a big topic on the hill. as well as in the media in terms of, you know, making sure women have access to family planning through title x clinics, so can you talk about more about how important title x is in terms of access for family planning clinic i'm delighted to. i would love it to be more central to neither the president's original request for

spending which came about two months before cdc confirmed causality and all of the negotiations that have happened throughout the spring add additional resources for the title x family planning network. let's talk about it briefly. was enacted in 1970 and a richard nixon and is intended to provide a network of direct health services as well as support for poor low income, or underinsured people across united states. today, the network has about 4100 service sites in all 50 states, territories and dc. we see about 4 million people and to put that into perspective the guttmacher institute estimates about 20 million just women of reproductive health age need public funding in order to access contraceptive supplies and services that they need. we are meeting about the fit that the need with the resources

congress allocated on a discretionary basis into the title x network. it's also important note title x must be-- see patients with other ability to pay. that's true of all public service programs and we must see people without regard to documentation, so whether or not they can prove citizenship they must be seen. these networks are providing direct contraceptive care, counseling, pregnancy testing, sti screening and treatment as well as services that support people who want to become pregnant. there is a dual purpose in the law. we must equally support people who want to achieve pregnancy and that includes basic infertility screening as well as provide services to help people prevent pregnancy paired there is no question that this is the network that is the safety net for the united states. title x funded centers are not the place were just people with no insurance go. folks with insurance walk through our doors everyday and post with medicaid come through doors everyday.

the title x fund subsidizes the care for people who have no other payer source. these are health centers as diverse as parkland hospital in dallas, which operates outpatient women health centers. 33 state governments run their title x network in states like mississippi, florida, alabama, north and south carolina as well as states like-- a sorry, vermont. these are all states where title x money goes to the state government and they authorize the network. so, trapeze networks people are seeing regards of their ability to say-- pay. what we need in the network is a drastic infusion of funds to be able to afford first, the staffing necessary that is trained and ready to do a wide variety of contraceptive counseling and methods and that is important for a long acting reversible methods of contraception. we need funds to buy supplies. and have it available same day

on sites all across the country, but particularly in the endemic areas and we need funds to support the community awareness and partnerships we are being asked to produce. so, we are being asked by the feds for example to connect with wic programs because the pipe elation wick is often the population we seem title x to make sure folks are coming in for wic services can get a sense of what is available in a title x pm eye, but there's no fund to do any community education partnership development or awareness. the last thing i would say because they're not to stuff he may yet is that it's taken $41 million in cuts over the last-- since 2010, so it's a network that has lost capacity. we have lost 1.1 million people out of the network. we have closed health centers and laid off staff. jamila was nice to know-- nice enough to say that i came from services, season i bounce back

when the crisis arrives unless you have the money to put the people into place that make these services possible. >> i think from what you said so brilliantly, i mean, title x has an important role in communities and it's all underfunded in terms of the need. also, when you tag on anything about public health concern like zika you will have even more people in need of access to services through title x clinics, so thank you. i want to shift thing to amory. emery, i would love for you to talk about the potential impact that zika could have particularly on latino communities are coming in was something that the doctor todd's-- touched on in her remarks and particularly how communities of color could experience disproportionate impact when it comes to zika, so i would love for you to talk about the latino community. >> thank you and i will go a lot

of what she said. we highly rely on title x clinics to access care because we have a very diverse community. we have a lot of roadblocks and ability just to access care. so, certain things uniquely impact our community. for example, just education and culturally competent care. so, in my earlier remarks i said we hear from people on the ground and one of the things that we hear constantly is that there is very little information right now to the community. is hot and cold like zika is really dangerous or zika will not impact made all. there is this thirst and desire to learn more. so, there has been request that we know of from community health workers who have the ability to retest the community in a culturally confident way, but

they don't have access to those training to learn more about zika what they can do. right now with the community they are calling the families in central america latin america and trying to find out what they know, so they know what to do here in the united states particularly in the endemic areas. there is also been cuts to title x clinics, but we haven't seen aca fully realized, so in the states where we particularly focused on like in florida and texas, medicaid expansion has not happened there and medicaid expansion is so important so that folks can have access to care if the clinic is open. so, i mean, i can keep going on the impact on how there's limited access, limited education and limited resources and that is really impacting our community as we had a lot to do. >> thank you for that analysis

mentioned you mentioned florida, which has been in the media and in the news over the past couple of days particularly for new cases of locally acquired transmission of zika from mosquitoes and one of the things i want to mention about florida is the fact that as and marie stated florida has not expanded medicaid leaving lots of people without access to the health services they need. also, there are over 2 million women there that want access to contraception and contraceptive services that don't have it, so there are real issues i think outside of these new cases around local transmission is the fact that access to family planning contraception is limited for some women in florida. coefficients things and talk about the international context of this. as most of y'all know that olympics are set to begin in rio tomorrow and there have also been conversation about, you

know, whether or not it is safe to travel to rio particularly with impact of zika there and i went to pass things over to try for to talk about about brazil and not context of zika and how zika has impacted brazil, particularly women in the country. >> thank you, jamila and i will pick up where many of our panelists for coming from. i mean, zika will highlight a public health gap. we can talk about that now country and and we understand where they are and marginalized women and women who don't have access to health facilities and where they will land, about think about that from the access of a developing country or even in developing country like brazil where there is a hope community particularly women, even afro caribbean women in brazil and other special communities in that country and

countries around latin america who just don't have access on a normal day to family planning, to information about zika, two doctors even. whereas we know that that's went to be necessary as we seek to address this issue. so, when we think about what women will need for zika and to deal with this, we know they will need for access to contraception, not less and we look at where the funding is going, where the emphasis with communication around mosquitoes is going. i am a little worried that women in brazil and other countries in latin america are not going to be as prepared and ready for this. we have seen that, i think. i think the trend will follow if we are not able to as you said operationalize this in those countries, so from the perspective our partners that we work within latin america is a

very clear that we have to do more of the same kind of work that we have been doing around family planning. we have to do more, and lots more round education to communities because it is not just the us. think about women who every day have to deal with the complexities of their lives having to think about this also would not even sure, not receiving information, no targeted services and lots of leaders talking about the issue, but not much funding going towards it other than mosquitoes and research, which most of that is even coming from outside of those countries. so, think it's crucial press to think think about again, women being the center this and when you think about that how do you get information and services out to these women and how do you increase their access in the case of the specially with sexual transmission becoming-- people are hearing in the news, but they are not sure what it means. given people the information

they need to do for themselves what they need and i think that has to be from trusted providers like planned parenthood in the us and also the hundreds of partners that we support latin america because these are the people that women go to anyway and so we have to make sure they are provided with the resources to be able to continue to have a conversation with their clients and to get that out into the community for the community-based programs we run their. >> that is an important point. think another thing that sort of comes to mind when we talk particularly about underserved communities is how do we get information to those communities and as ann marie mentioned in the latino community there are people who are not even getting information and it's not been translated into spanish, so how do we reach the hearts of these communities especially when we are sitting here in our dc bubble talking about zika what these communities need. the young woman in southeast dc

know about zika and how she can get information about transmission. >> i will say from international perspective that the lift at the organizations that are already doing this on other issues. there are other issues. i think about africa with people and malariaand hiv-aids epidemic, i mean, there are many community-based organizations dealing with similar public health crises. we can't act like they are not there. we can't say we just need to go into trials look at mosquitoes in some kind of vaccine. we had to lift those organizations up to planned parenthood has the partners run the rule-- world that do this every day in their committees and there are very far-reaching communities outside of the major cities of most of the country in latin america and we have to support organizations that are there every day and doing this work and now have a particular role, but they are getting less funny matter before. we have to think international family planning again that is getting less money than ever

before. zika is now here and we are having to address these issues, but we are not thinking about how to support strengthen those partners that are already in place and we need to do that. >> and those are the experts in terms of figuring out-- >> best to the communities go to and who they trust. >> zika is an example of highlights where we have gaps in care and gaps of access and gaps of services, so we know what to to come and just prevent unplanned pregnancy. we should dedicate those resources and build upon them instead of cutting them, which as we see instead happening. so, i think looking at the infrastructure, building on the of the structure and going back to what you have already said which is there are a lot of community-based organizations including us who are out in the ground who are already trusted folks for people to turn to.

we just need the resources to give them the information and then i think is also a key element to what we are doing working on. >> you mention resources and we have all talked about the lack of moving forward in terms of funding from congress. the request was made several months ago by the president. $1.9 billion to address the cut-- cuts on transmission in the us and abroad. so, just ask you all, would we do while we are essentially the situation where we have to wait for congress to appropriate the funding we need to address this issue? >> we can't wait. so, certainly there has been effort from administrative agencies to move money that was available. puerto rico, for example got $300,000 in emergency money in april. the money went to recommend the title x system into the title x grantees in puerto rico and

that's very important 20 right there efforts to the rate of unintended pregnancy in puerto rico is criminally high and women do not have access to methods and a much greater rate than we see in the mainland us. $300,000 is a drop in the bucket, but for those systems importer rico they were able to put that money right to use work there's also been emphasis on training, which i think is not unimportant. that is really getting the pipeline together and the notion here is that there are lots of places in the country and this is true and governmental health systems or the local health department is family planning on monday, infectious disease on tuesday, the school nurse on wednesday, back and help the part on thursday because the local health department is doing everything. these are not to networks that are offering five days six day seven-day week access to contraception, so when you wind up in a crisis in a governmental

family planning system, sometime delays just because we don't-- money is family planning day we don't do family planning until next monday, so the notion of trying to be ready every day for a patient who may come through the door and say i have been traveling and i've been exposed and i'm worried, what can i do. i'm going to be traveling, i'm in an endemic area, so we can meet their needs immediately and that's what we have been doing without. i would really love congress to stop the shell game around existing resources. there's absolutely no way we can fill the gap in public health in the us without coming to a reckoning about how much we have destroyed the public health infrastructure in the us and it's not just true for family planning it's also true for stds. now, we understand zika is a sexually transmitted infection. while, we have lost 30% of the capacity in the sexual transmitted diseases system in this country due to funding cuts

over the last six years, so this is not a battle really public health at the structure and it's really unfortunate in this country that it takes crisis to draw attention. i think in the past this country has been able to put together a crisis. this is a place where we had stopped dead. we are not making progress in the face of a crisis. >> the other thing to highlight also is that it's more than just having providers and having supplies by contraception. that this on the concept-- assumption that 100% of women will want a. we have cultural aspects and that sort of thing we need to consider and mrs. highlighting puerto rico as you said the unplanned pregnancy rate is incredible he high, but some of that is cultural that they just don't believe in contraception. i mean, some of it is religious background and we face some of the same issues in the mainland us. so, it's really critical that we get the imprints of the education out that this is a public health crisis that

contraception is not just the pregnancy prevention because of having sex. its privacy prevention because of this and credible illness that can affect the unborn or the fetus, so i think the education pieces not-- certainly from our perspective we have to educate our providers to get the word out and talk to their patients and work in a local communities, but it we also have achieved patients as to what their risk really is and to try to address some of these cultural and various in some cases unfortunately this and work misperceptions about contraception, so we have another battle to fight as well. >> it also comes home that notion about institutional racism in our society and so when we talk about building trust i think what latanya and ann marie had talked about whether people are in the community provide healthcare or they are community resource this is a place for people go to trust and it's not going to be earned in the crisis and there's

lots of concern in puerto rico that they are being exterminated on when it comes to zika prevention and i think if we aren't honest about that and there are lots of good reasons, so if you're not honest about that and you don't go into the conversation saying we recognize there has to be a reckoning then there is no way we will be able to engage patients appropriately to make the decisions based on their risks that are right for them, sensitive to their needs and in the end respect their autonomy. cnet to your point, think about women who i think about all these things on unwanted pregnancy. think about those that want their pregnancy. it's impossible to believe that every woman will say i will take off a year when it's time for them to your pregnant when they want to have a baby. we have to get information we have to be able to provide services and medical facilities for women who do want to have babies even in endic area with

zika, so i think we are highlighting together and i think the public health infrastructure and resources that go into this have to be thought about serious. there's no time for politics. it is something we need to do soon. it should've a number four. >> to build on the public health infrastructure like we are saying education, so sex education is a huge component, but also recognizing that not everyone has the ability to access care because up policies in place. for example, undocumented individuals cannot purchase into obamacare and they can't purchase great along with subsidy health so they can't have affordable healthcare. we had to look at all of the components to make the battle ready. then come i would be remiss to say in terms of contraception used within latinos, a lot of it is not been able to get to clinics. texas implemented hb two parsley and a lot of the clinic shut

down. to just drive to a clinic is far away you have to take time off of work if you have a job to be able to do it. so, access to contraception is a huge component of why latinos don't have or don't have the ability to access care and i would argue that what with notice that at least 96% of latinos who are catholic say they use contraception, so we need to debunk these myths also better community and wireline not we are using contraception. of that is all part of helping to build this public health infrastructure so that we can respond to emergencies in a timely way like zika. >> i will also add and we will definitely get to questions from the audience after this last point that to build upon ann marie's point about restrictions or policies that keep folks from accessing health services in a lot of the states that the cdc

has estimated an uptick in zika relay cases, those are also states that have highly restrictive abortion laws and access to safe abortions should be a part of the full spectrum of reproductive health care for women in this situation. .. particularly if zika can't be diagnosed until the fourth month, and in so many states, access is only for the first

trimester. but would you comment on that? also the issue globally. >> i can quickly talk about the fight for safe abortion continues, and what happened here is that we been talking about these issues for a long time to whether it's zika or whether it's some other kind of issue that a woman has to have when she's making these decisions with your doctor, it is very clear that we have to ensure that there is availability of safe abortion for every woman and access to it. and not jumping through hurdles. it's especially true, they can talk about texas, that might be a good example where a colic just talk about there's no clinics. you've got zika and their father will send a situation where the there's an intuitive as well. what does a woman to? i go back to what planned parenthood has said for a very long time, we have to be in

places where safe abortion is legal, or five access to the most our choice women who can't get it. and overseas i think it's exactly the same thing but we probably have a bigger conversation because in many of those countries if not most it's illegal to have an abortion, period, and it has to be something, it has to be a serious situation with the country does allow and circumstances of health, and it is zika one of those? you have to get into the policy question which many of our partners are starting to look at now. >> i would just add all the state policies that are focusing and attacking abortion, what's happening is limiting the full spectrum of comprehensive reproduction health care but also impacting access to care. you are closing down clinics in texas to florida just passed a bill which hasn't been implemented yet but it would be funded planned parenthood.

that is a huge concern. you see the trickle impact and how it impacts people's ability to a full a ton of their bodies and, therefore, can't protect themselves when things like this happen. so we see an onslaught of this. many of us work at the forefront to try to fight the state of the laws that are negatively impacting access to care. >> hide there. i feel very concerned for the young women in texas and the access to abortion. by questionably would be to you, sir, the physician. abortion is a medical procedure and i would imagine that between

a psychiatrist and an obstetrician, if a woman's fetus is claimed to have come if evidence indicates microcephaly, certainly an abortion would be medically necessary if not for emotional health of the family, et cetera. do you follow? it's a difficult question because it's a difficult predicament. thank you for reading between my -- >> i very much understand and has been said, we certainly support as an or position as well as our providers for the full range of reproductive care that is available which august includes abortion. part of the challenge as also touched on is when a woman manifest these findings by ultrasound it may be very late pregnancy and the are clearly

state laws that impact the upper limit when they can be done. so that's a separate problem, but your point, i don't think i would use the term medically necessary. the determination, it should be an option. there should be an informed and shared decision-making process between the patient and their provider but it's the patient ultimately makes the decision. i don't think it would be any clinician that would say it's medically necessary that you terminate the pregnancy, for whatever reason. it could be a genetic abnormality, a chromosomal abnormality, some other conjunct effect, even though lethal defect after birth. we don't tell patients your baby is avicel folic, they will die after the board, you should abort now the that is strictly a patient's decision when it gets to the point. there are women who want to know so they can prepare to take care of an affected infant. there are women who choose to

terminate. it's the patient's choice after a fully informed decision making process. and einfahrt a process that can talk with family and her support system to ultimately make that decision. >> we have time for one more question. back your. >> thank you so much for the questions i wanted to ask is absurd making sure when we have information they need, obviously strong support of women have access to contracepcontracep tion, title x clicks but my question is more of a tactical one. decease has been putting out guidelines for kind of women who are exposed and are testing positive for zika when they might get information about potential problems for the fetus. initially they been saying 28-30 weeks is one mbyte be able to

detect. there some information about the sender, and i'v and i was wondef you could comment on the state of the research about women are getting information they need, and it frankly if providers come is a training issue? out early or not? is the dependent on individual pregnancy? >> the unfortunate thing, this goes back to what i said earlier. there's far more unknown than known. unfortunately there is no answer to your question. even in those patients, with a little bit of data out of their, presumably infected during the first trimester, when that's manifested in the fetus is a wide range. and few reports. those many who manifested those are gone. there's one case report, i forget the exact timing i believe roughly around 19 weeks the ultrasound was normal and three weeks later the fetus was

severely affected. it could be a very rapid development, it could be delayed or it may not do anything at all. we really don't have the ability, unfortunately, to counsel women that even if she tests positive to say, first of all you're likely to developing, your fetus developing microcephaly as this. secondly, how long it might take to develop. it's unfortunately a very difficult counseling situation. >> also think about the access to care. that's the stage of pregnancy for the many of us have gone through this where you're not getting regular ultrasound. they are not indicated at that stage in pregnancies we talk about having to access resources much more often. that would be difficult even in an insurance context because the entrance has limit on how often, what the expectations are in a pregnancy progressing normally but in these situations we will

be scrambling to figure out how to get access, how does it get paid for, et cetera. i'm qualified to speak to that part of this consideration. regardless of how much money you have or how many supports, you will be in the situation where no one can tell you how often testing will be required. i think that's something we have to bear in mind as we get to this question of when are the resources coming. to support women in all situations. >> internationally where women probably go to the pregnancy -- >> not a single one. >> i will just say even in the context of florida that are new guidelines asking women to get tested for zika more often about the pregnancy. i know insurance coverage has also been issued even in the context. we will continue to talk about this issue. i just want to thank everyone for being here today. this was such a great panel and conversation.

i also want to thank doctor mullan and winnie stachelberg. c.a.p. will continue to work on this issue and think an analysis especially around our zika was disproportionate impact low income communities and keepers of color. thank you all for being here. [applause] >> tonight on q&a, conversation with years of senate youth program students. high school talked about a petition in a weeklong government and leadership program and the plans for the future. that's at 7 p.m. eastern. coming up tonight at eight on booktv in prime time, comments by reporters in the field.

all of us tonight on booktv in prime time beginning at eight eastern on c-span2. >> attorney general loretta lynch and education secretary john king joined african-american and hispanic journalists to talk about race relations, the criminal justice system, policing efforts, education and immigration. the national association of black journalists and the national association of hispanic journalists hosted this event. ♪ ♪ spearing so many to choose from. what up with all those?

here's the message right now. weed out. we have in d.c. than we are about to be joined by the attorney general of the kind of america. is that the nabj/nahj roles? >> i think they're kind of find their way here. go future for them to do something. we are filling. so part of the fill, those of you have been watching my feet, and here it is. there will be more salsa dancing later. and i lived in miami for 14 years. i should be able to do that. we will practice later. people were like we should go to dance on stage? >> perfect. >> here we are at nabj/nahj. great to have your spirit it's great to be with you. i've always admired you for a big fan of you are such we can't opportunity to work with you.

can we get another and for maria hinojosa? [applause] >> and we want to thank nabj/nahj for having us. it's terrific of a joint convention. that's a great idea to bring the block, we difficult for black latino revolution. we are bringing our two menus into one and it's important. >> it's greater to talk about something so important, the issue of race, change, power, demographic change is kind of central a lease in this moment in our country. although as i was saying last night, the conventions, there was a lot of not people of color media there. setting the narrative. this is a conversation that impacts all of us personally. we are really happy we get a chance to a conversation. >> this discussion is so important because obviously with black lives matter having brought the issue, it wasn't

new. we know 400 more than 100 years there have been these complaints about the way please treat communities of color and black and brown folks feel the brunt of that, that sense of disconnect between the law enforcement in fear and law enforcement more than anyone else in this society. this is a crucial conversation, a real important opportunity to speak directly to power, directly to the person who is responsibility it is to bring that sense of justice and to explain to our communities what is happening, what can be done, what should be done, what the attorney general's office is attempting to do in that order. it's important which is why we want to fill the room. how many opportunities do we have to directly query our attorney general? this is really important. >> so without further ado, yes, attorney general loretta lynch. [applause]

>> thank you very much, general lynch. it's wonderful to get a chance to talk with you. it's an honor so thank you for coming. i guess i will let you start, maria. >> that was fun. actually i want to start with where you were yesterday. because i don't know if many of us know where the attorney general was. and i guess i will just preface it by saying all of us, including the attorney general, because we are just humans we are professionals but ultimately we are human, it's been very disconcerting the past couple of weeks. everything we've been feeling calm and we say that we've been through so much and then we get

another point and this is even more intense. as a result of that you actually decided that you believe that some of the important work that needs be done between police and communities need to come from the grassroots. >> absolutely. >> this is something, i don't know if i purchase it a lot but i think it would be good for you to say why did you want to go to detroit? what was happening there? what is this notion you have as an attorney general who is way up here that you believe the solution is going to come from down here? >> i have been focused on this issue of the relationship between law enforcement and the communities we serve really since my first day in office. i outlined it as a priority upon alexa ratings and like to outline what you want to work on but really issues choo-choo i think the issues choose the type today i was torn and as attorney general was the day freddie gray was generalized in baltimore at the date violence broke out that eating.

it quickly became an issue we had to focus on extremely quickly. we have done a lot of work in this area. despite the fact not only has been a difficult month, it's been a difficult couple of years for this conversation we've been having. even though we've been talking about how we restore trust and bring trusted together we often have these conversations in separate groups. it's easy to say if only someone else would do this, or oh change their perspective, we could work on this. what i started out doing my first year in my community policing to her was going to cities that had a very challenge relationship between law enforcement and communities, a shooting, a police incident of some sort, doj had come in and sued the jurisdiction. yet a year, two years, three years later they found themselves in a positive place. my question was what did they see, what did they do and how can we share that with other

communities? there are some very, very strong success stories. even with the success stories, the events of the last month have just been so challenging. i think the irony of having baton rouge come to illustrate both sides of this terrible, terrible tragic situation that we have with civilians losing their lives. not just mr. turley in baton rouge but philando castile in minnesota but also the ambush of the police officers, and so having come so close together shows that for all the communities that are doing well there are others that are still struggling to find a way to start the conversation. >> sorry to interrupt, but want to make it conversation appeared they were about 50 people in detroit. it was a very kind of close conversation open to the public invited. just tell us one thing, one thing to give you a sense of

hope spent the form we had yesterday in detroit is designed of a series of working groups. let's say kind of get to work. we asked what you think about this issue in advance and come with two or three concrete solutions that you think can help. things that communities can do, things that law enforcement can do. it was so exciting and positive attitude in the room, whether you were an old line civil rights leader, whether you're a young activist, was a u.s. law-enforcement officer or prosecutor tom even the elected officials all were saying let's work on com at each other one or two things. very specific ideas. let's talk about police data, for example. let's talk about body cameras for example, and making sure they can be used by law enforcement and the committee. people generally focus on the issues but i was if you're going come it's hard to find the one solution to this large problem but the one thing that does come

up every city that i visit, every group i talk his imports of a relationship between law enforcement and the committee before the incident happened. people have to know who to talk to. they have to know the character with whom they're getting. you have to understand who your police chief is and how they are likely to respond in a situation. a few pull back we have a lot of specific solutions that i think has been it will be very helpful but the most important thing is build a relationship before something happens. >> you talk about the solutions that you've been discussing around the country in these roundtables. want to hear from people in communities, whether it's in baltimore with the freddie gray incident or in north charleston with the walter scott situation, the thing to your over again is the thing that would most change it is accountability. is the belief that police are

accountable and will be held accountable if they do transgress the limits of their power or if they abuse their power. we just saw the freddie gray case of the officers now go all the charges have been dropped because the officers were able to bypass burger, go straight to the judge was sympathetic and potential dismissed the cases. this happened over and over again. talk about what are the barriers. how hot is this bar for the justice department to didn't be able to come and to prosecute? it's as rare as prosecutions in the local level. >> on the technical level our we basically have one statute we can use, section 242, if you to price and other civil rights under color of law. it has been used. i've used it and it is a challenge because of the level of intense we have to show. i think you're right about the issue of accountability and that did come up yesterday in detroit as well. it comes up and almost of ways but accountability to me is the

concept, more than just cannot justice department bring a lawsuit. it's also came to local prosecutors in the case lacks fundamentally our local prosecutors themselves have to be accountable to the kennedys that either elected or appointed. they literally do represent a very specific community. we at doj tried to support those prosecutions also but it goes back further. the accountability has to start of the law-enforcement level. people need to see law enforcement organizations dealing with issues of any kind of police misconduct. we have all seen the most serious examples, people lost their lives but there's a whole range of other discipline issues a place to park and confront. one of the things we've seen effective is when community groups focus on that issue and say not only do we need accountability, we need transparency. we want to have a system whereby we the kennedy know what your disciplinary routine is to their

local law-enforcement. we want to know what kind of infraction leads to a kind of discipline. we want to see the records of the. and where police department can do that, they will make great strides. accountability as a concept start at the very beginning of this police relationship. we have to see law forced the officers at entities themselves setting out as often said to me, they will say to the all the time we don't accept that police behavior. we get rid of people who cross the line. i will say that's great, and i see me because i work with law enforcement. i will say but the general public does not see that. you need to understand people do not have that perception of you because they do not see that. the challenge for law enforcement is how can they bring transparency into a system as well as accountability into a system. >> this is the question you've heard before but given that this

is a meeting of the national association of black journalists and latino journalists, there's a whole other dynamic that's happening in terms of latino communities that are heavily immigrant. although many latinos are not recent immigrants but this whole dynamic of undocumented immigrants actually turning away from the place at every turn. and as an attorney general i just wonder when you think about the fact that right now in the united states on a daily come in terms of immigrants, there is a violation of basic due process, kind of everyday, minutes. how do you process that as someone who's committed to the loss of this country knowing that our government is essentially violated due process in terms of undocumented immigrants and undocumented immigrant children on the databases speak with we are trying to do with and a whole host of ways, was in the actual immigrant experience particularly for undocumented children who are coming to this

country because they need to. they have concerns. of us had the view that if i as a print felt i needed to send my child although to a foreign country, obviously the situation is dire. let's start with that. and recognize that the children would that be your own for a great need and a great concern on their families part in dutch the antidepressant that is the. people are trying to work on the issues of the specific conditions people find themselves in. they're trying to work under specific conditions that the immigration courts operating. we're trying to enhance those courts. we got some terrible situations where not only have the children been unaccompanied as they come into the country but they been unaccompanied through the legal process. speak there is th no access to a lawyer. >> this is a huge issue. but even though there may not be the same pulse to show aspect of our there's a number of ways to provide counsel, particularly for the children in this situation.

we often have issues at the larger level, it's interesting to me that people will take the time to put in your funding writers but you can use your money to do this. we have situations like that that i find a little troubling your there are private organizations have been very, very helpful and would taken the view even if we don't have that little technical obligation is better for anyone, whether you are an immigrant or citizen, whether you're a child or an adult, if you're in court you need a lawyer. that's a recognition i think of a basic equal process right for everyone. people need representation and help to get through the legal system. it's challenging i think there are ways to do that. there are other ways were trying to work on that issue. my former office when i was used attorney in oakland were involved in a situation on long island with a keynote community not only was ignored and harmed

by the police but they were underreported crimes. we ended up addressing the. the language barriers that we often find between many, many immigrant khmers and law enforcement is a challenge but one you cannot turn away from. there are ways to address this. not just ngos and groups but also through the legal process and legal system as well. >> the recent case of philando castile, his death, it had a nexus with what you saw in ferguson in that had been stopped by police dozens of times for minor traffic infractions. you have this pattern in police department around the country of essentially having a lease to act as an economic generating arm of the city or of the municipality by routinely stopping and mainly directed at towards people of color in order to basically increase the coffers of the states, the cities. they were consent decrees. the justice department has been

tough on some of these communities, the ferguson report was damning. but how much leverage does the doj really have to force these communities to change their practices? if you don't specifically what kinds of leaders give you some places like cleveland, ferguson. is the financial wherewithal that is delivered to these police departments from doj, and setting up? >> we can reach into specific jurisdictions. but we cannot cover and mrs. felt but that's were i think we have to use two things. the doj's power of persuasion which is to say look at the ferguson report. we encourage jurisdictions to look at that. if we are working with the city we may see a similar situation our goal is to have them read the report and said i don't want to go down that road. i don't want to find myself in a situation where if there is a flashpoint it didn't, this'll be highlighted and hopefully get them to change. also the power to convene.

not just doj. the whole administration has been focused on this issue. the issue and we called it a fees and fines issue because it isn't just law enforcement and tickets and the like but you often see in small municipalities that have a system or structure of fines for for his offenses ranging from your property issues and license tags that really do fall disproportion on minority individuals. you see a system where if someone gets caught up in said misdemeanor offense, there should which is a fine and i go home because they can't afford the fine, it doubles. what sense does that make what you can't afford to pay $50, so that we were now charge $100. and then we can't pay that, now it is 200. once it reaches a certain economic level, then you can possibly be in prison. when you imprison people they may lose their job. this is been a problem we've

been trying to raise attention to throughout the administration. the white house has had some convenience on this issue as well. we have more than just federal law. that is the power of the bully pulpit. the president has spoken on this issue. there's the power of publicizing these issues. that's i'm glad we are here today with these two associations. these two associations have done more to tell the untold stories of minority people in this country than any other organizations and that is still so important. it still so important. when i travel around, i'm going to cities that have found a way to work together. i was in baton rouge last week and a city that is just increase i will say over all of the incidents. i think they are focusing on trying not to let this be fight us. there are signs and billboards on fast food restaurants, we will not be divided. which is a great message but as i was talking with leaders in

baton rouge it was clear a lot of issues they were raising had not crossed over into the larger baton rouge community and were not being heard. that's what organizations like this are key because if we don't tell our story, somebody else will and will never be the i could store. it will never be the way. >> i just want to give a shout out actually to all of the journalists who are working in the mainstream, and joy, or pushing the issue. for the journalists it's also never easy when we want to push to cover these stories, have a particular angle and we are told that story isn't that important, or we don't need to do it. i shout out back at you, thank you madam attorney general for joining us. >> thank you. thanks for having me. [applause] ♪ >> the tragedy in baton rouge,

three police officers killed in a deadly assault, three were injured. >> good eating. a deadly struggle between police in louisiana and amanda are were trying to arrest captured on video and shared around the world today is provoking questions and outrage. >> unusual speed in the death of alton sterling. the justice department opened a civil rights investigation just a day after a shot by the police in baton rouge. >> got pulled over by busted tail light. the police -- he's covered. they killed my boyfriend. >> eleven officers were hit and one civilian, five of the officers are dead. >> cannot start with a protest march a soldier with the victims of this week's police shooting. too many were killed in louisiana and minnesota.

>> we don't feel much support. our profession is hurting. >> in baton rouge were alton sterling was killed last week, 48 arrests overnight falling within 100 saturday. >> among them, black lives matter activists. >> i remain disappointed in the baton rouge police who continue to evoke protesters for peacefully protesting spent part of a pattern. you would have to stick your head in the state to say this thing wasn't fueled by this vile, vulgar movement. [speaking spanish]

>> with guns drawn these undercover officers surround the red pickup truck they had just fired upon in this neighborhood. >> we are all heartbroken for the families like mine. [speaking spanish] >> we have filed for legal status for so many years. [speaking spanish] >> they are bringing drugs, they are bringing crime, they are raped this and some i assume are good people. >> the bottom line is the way it was used in this case, it can be used. >> i understand the anger and the frustration and distrust of law enforcement, but they are not the problem. the problem is the lack of open

discussions about the impact of race relations in this country. >> all right. let's introduce -- >> i am a bit loud. i am from brooklyn. i can't count on the necessary but we are joined by police chief james craig and kevin double. please give them a round of applause. [applause] speak i think we should start with the detroit police chief. we're just speaking of course with the attorney general and she was in detroit not long ago talking about police in a

roundtable with officials in your city. i guess the main question would be what came out of that discussion from your point of view, and what can police do two asks as the attorney general said, convinced the public there is accountability that starts in the police precinct? >> one of the things the attorney general came to detroit because detroit is a model. we look the relationship between police and community, detroit has written the playbook. that doesn't mean it's perfect. but if you go back to detroit when i started in 1977, 10 years after the civil unrest in detroit, the mayor had the foresight to build a police department to reflect the community. that really hasn't changed. detroit is about 62% african-american, women make up about 24% of the police department which succeeds --

exceeds national average but the one thing we do because when i got to detroit two years ago, the morale of the police were at the very bottom. but also the morale of the community was at the bottom. it wasn't so much because of relationships. it was because people felt they were not receiving service. that's changed and what's changed is that people feel they have a police department. so the conversation is very different and having spent 28 years in los angeles for a member times with a large number of police officers going to neighborhoods, you remember the war on drugs, didn't work out very well. we go in the committee invest instead of cheering as they would do us. in detroit was the opposite. we would go in with to much applause, many of our friends in the media from detroit know, they would see the detroit police department coming in neighborhoods and they would begin to cheer. see, the problem today, the take away is when you talk about

community policing every place from us as they engage in community policing. that's not true. community police and start talking it's about talking with the committee. howdy what your community police to? detroit wants to rid our neighborhoods of gun violence, gang bangers, drugs and we need your help to do that. that's what they want. we didn't talk to them. very different the cincinnati for a much the same when i was chief for a couple of years. >> i'd like to bring in the former philadelphia deputy police commissioner, kevin bethel. utah genetic streets around the country. you're in l.a., you in portland, maine, now detroit among other places. >> cincinnati. >> you've been in philly. actually wrote about something i expect in philly last week as opposed to what i experienced

when i was included when i was in cleveland at the rnc there were police from all across the country, all of them walking in groups of 10 to 15. so they're always together, overwhelmingly white. carrying a lot of stuff there but actually looking shield, like not -- which i thought was interesting. in philly the protesters were met by atlanta police officers on their bikes with her little shorts on and watching the protesters. and i found it very interesting. you have dedicated a lot of your career to going into the base to try to find out what actually works when you're trying to create this better committee police relationship. what have you been able to do in philly? that actually is tangible to say this is working?

i think everybody gets the big picture. we want to know some tangibles, some things are actually working spent what we have done, i was blessed to work with commissioner ramsey who came in with a very strong presence and said we're going to give people their rights. it wasn't just the talk is that educating the men and women the people of the right to protest, people of right to express themselves and what we so doing is embedded into the department. what you saw last week was not something that disappeared, here's the convention, we are just going to start to do that. we started that process years ago. we have made the position we were not going to engage our protesters in a manner. we're going to get down and know them. >> would the term essentially be there was an ethos of de-escalation? >> absolutely. de-escalation has been debakey. we have really changed as you may know i debate program around

school to present my plan. we no longer want to risk its in our schools, 60 had kids get arrested every year in the school district. it was a tragedy. a 10 year old walks into school with their fingers, gets fingerprinted, photographed. maggiore african-american children we then were not do that anymore. two years later of last year will get 500 kids so that from a system with only 1600 kids a year. really looking at the burning. a lot of the things i find, we got away from doing some the basic policing concepts we use to do. we use used to take it or some s i'm going to arrest you today and let them go. we stop to a lot of those things to get people into kennedy a feeling of fairness. return to get back to what i've to wait for these things to happen unless someone else make those decisions that affect someone at work on a project before i left, a first time offender for a drug offense is

in possession who is a drug issues why can' can't i move the president of program versus the risk with the police department is now moving to do a lot of thought into things to take the pressure off. you saw for the convention where those workload violations no longer would soon be arrested for disorderly conduct. they got a $25 ticket like how did you come out with no arrests. because it was finished and the that we decriminalize marijuana, a ticket. we have to go back and say we can't just keep charging these offenses, low hanging offenses. i had only about these fights. putting all these pressures on the community and then people don't understand the collateral consequences that go along with that. >> we know that this has become the nemesis of police department around the country. we have heard up to fbi director comey claimed that there is this

quote-unquote ferguson fact. that police officers deal threatened by the presence of the watchful eyes of the public. as soon as they get into an encounter with an individual come out, the phones and everyone is reporting. police departments, people have given anecdotal accounts of sort of a hostile reaction to them taping by police officers. nobody likes the constantly scrutinize on the job, but how do they get police departments in big cities like detroit and philadelphia are also in smaller towns where their policing predominant black and brown communities, to work within the knowledge that people feel to have to take, feel that record every encounter, feel they have to live stream every encounter with every law enforcement officer? had to get police departments to work with the net and work with a public that is still skeptical? >> in detroit it was a group of

police officers that approach the mayor and and said look, we want body cams. i have wan one of body cams sine unlike other but they volunteered. many not all recognized the importance of having body-worn cameras. in today's a private that's just the way it is. something we started doing, we embraced the video. we have had great relationships with the protests that have in detroit without incident. as was pointed out, that trust goes along way and eventually have a situation where we don't have any arrests. something we just started in detroit in a major way, we all know, talking mostly to the media, that they -- sound bites is the way to go. when i first got to detroit, big headlines when national. chief of police in detroit says don't buy gas in detroit.

that wasn't the truth. i said just be careful if you're going to buy gas at 2:00 in the morning. but the headline read no gas in detroit. so now it may very strategic way come anytime we do press conferences we go live on facebook. because you can't go up the narrative. we created. >> we create a policy that would allow the citizens to fill must the part of that was embedded in the code of the department that you will allow the. police officers, the most powerful position in america come in the world. the ability to take somebody's freedom is extremely powerful. so yes, it needs to be regulated. these cameras, i put in aikido get out in the field and give him all the star. the president could be said here today. he cannot arrest anyone. with that comes the understanding and in history we didn't have those things to regular. it was witness testimony, so the

body cams comes into play to say for the first time i have something to check the officers, no longer know, i don't want not just in the background just in the background but housing treating people in good times? is the idea performing in a way that anyone would expect? i think part of the camera, the camera will be to change think it needed but it will not be the be all. i think some people can't get constantly just because your cameras that -- >> also do you see a spread in this new innovation by some police unions to say that will have body cameras but he won't be able to access the video? the video will be subject to the same police officers bill of rights that other aspects of the job are so there will be a camera recorded the but nobody can access it? >> i think it's important more today than ever to get the information out quickly. because it's no secret there's a rush to judgment especially if

it's a white police officer and african-american that means it must of been a bad shooting the if i can put information out within the first 24 hours every choose a bad shooting or if it is a bad shooting, take responsibility for it. that goes a long way. get it out quickly. >> actually. thank you. >> you are going to speak with our social media -- >> i'm going to move. let's thank please chief james craig of detroit and former police commissioner kevin bethel. thank you, guys so much. [applause] >> good things i wore comfortable shoes. that's introduce our next big this is related discussion will talk about social media and how it impacts as large a discussion about policing that we could not have come asked for a better panel. we have wesley lowery sitting here tonight immediate left who is a terrific reporter from the "washington post." we have former miami herald

reporter and cofounder of hispanicize media group these -- manny ruiz into the middle we have luvvie ajayi who may be will -- thank you for being you. appreciate having you guys you. you heard what the attorney general had to say. hopefully you heard that she talked about this attempt to sort of bring accountability of the federal level to the department. to our limits what the attorney general can do both in individual cases individual shootings and in terms of the leverage they have over the department. they've essentially financial leverage and not a great deal more. you have been covering the shootings all the way from ferguson on. do you think the perception of a lack of accountability all the way up to the federal of is part of what is keeping people's distrust? >> of course. when people do not trust that an incident will result in jessica no matter what justic justice ms

that it's hard for people to continue to buy into that system. our promote justice system hinges on a social contract that we buy into, that will allow police to take some right from ask him to tell us what to do, to put a stop sign here or a stoplight that there. we do that for the collective good for the safety. if people don't trust the system probably it's impossible to have a legitimate system. that's one of the important roles of the department of justice. we know the limits of the department. most of the shootings the agenda that the capacity to bring charges one way or the other because the burden of proof for federal civil rights charged is so high. i've talked to activists who one reason the department of justice investigation are so important is because no matter what the outcome is going to be, the outcome doesn't matter until the end about the integrity of the process. if you don't touch her local prosecutor or your local police department to do the investigation it is important for you to the department of

justice is there having this conversation helping with the investigation. we'vwe have seen places like ban rouge where the department is evolving investigation itself even though what we know is if it unlikely any officer will be brought up on federal charges much less state charges, it is for a committee that price does not trust its police department to investigate its own, its support for the committee to trust that the committee trust's. one of the eyes then on the entire process on these phones. people of taken it in their own hands to become a watchdog over the place and socially has become the truly great leveler what kevin bethel just said is powerful but i don't think a lot of people think of it that way. you give a 20 year-old kid straight out of high school a batch and didn't have the power to do something the president can do, deprive someone of their liberty. that's a powerful concept. how important social needed become in trying to lead to the

people the sense we are leveling out that power imbalance? >> social media, thinking back to ferguson and people like the ray tweeting but was having on the ground and then you see msnbc, fox news reporting something completely different. that citizen journalism has democratized information and has made it to work it's a little plainfield not to get the information out what's also interesting is, funny enough the week before the philando castile shooting i was just lamenting of facebook, everybody is so boring on facebook life. i don't just gets on and sit in their cars while they're in a parking lot. why? in the philando castile shooting happened on facebook life. i was like i take it back. i take it back and i see the value because, to see a social media has brought information to our faces. the debate is racism worse for isn't just had been videotaped?

i think it is just having predicted in ways where before you videotape it, you might upload it to work, myspace? >> nobody ever admits to having myspace. >> the glitter wallpaper. terrible. now you can go on your phone and pick up your phone and press live and show people what's happening in your world right now. i think for police it's going to be in their own best interest to also understand we have that power. there was a patent that apple just got that could block concert shooting to add one extra put that to mean hey, like they could turn that switch off if you're sitting in your car about to film and encountered what is it going to be moving forward quick i say get an android. [laughter] ultimately worth us having that power i think it's going to be interesting how it changes the dynamic if it changes the dynamic. >> you work at "the miami herald," one of my old haunts.

it brings up the point miami herald is both a national, also the paper of record for south florida. it's the local news outlet of record took a lot of tv news in a lot of ways follows the lead of what local print journalism is doing. they feed each other. how important is social media twentysomething heirs had to crop up in local news coverage? i think of the walter scott case in which the initial local news reports which are fed to the national news media getting it wrong, start with the local media talking to witnesses who didn't see it, talking to witnesses who said they saw something that made walter scott look like he was the person fall. didn't think about them and was recently laying on his back with his hands in the air and was shot by police were it not for someone with a photo the local news story would've probably been the police officers narrative, that this person so threatened the officers like he fell the air force life and the

shootings that it would group or to way without social media. how critical is it citizen journalist are collecting? >> my background is unique because i'm a former police reporter at "the miami herald." my brother as a police officer. i have a very unique perspective because and have a terrific brother who's a terrific police officer. he loves his community. he's compassionate. he embodies what i think many of our men in uniform and women represent. so i think social media has really stupid things where sometimes you see an injustice you would not have captured before. but sometimes there is a great first injustice you may not be aware because so should be only captures a certain context. everything else is missing. i think the problem for our police chiefs are facing frankly is a communication issue. they are not prepared for the

work of social media. they do not understand. they are not used to communicating the way that there could have the community kate in this new social media age. that is i think a fundamental issue. i will say one thing i want to see just because i've a nuanced view. i think our inner cities are suffering from both the racial injustice. sometimes the encounter at come up with some police officers who are broke and they are very few. i would register my experience working with many please officers both as reporter and now with my brother. but out of the other issue is that i think we need a two-pronged approach. one approach has to be to work with the police officers and the police chiefs to help them understand they need to have diversity training for example. i think there should be mandated thing of every police force, and nationally instituted diversity training program. they need of social media training to understand what the heck this is that i can tell you my police officer friends, my

brother, they don't understand the pages think it is people posting photos and videos and they're out to get them. we are in this vibrant where police office are being demonized and that could be very bad for society because it could lead to all sorts of unrest at sometimes unnecessary. sometimes there's more to that story. finally, i think the police community needs to really get ahead of the message by working with our community. final point. i think our, i think we should be creative about really didn't almost like an ask price. somebody something for our inner cities are not hurting as much. the way we resolve to go to the moon, try to resolve to fix it so our communities are not places where the police officers are going in there and they feel it is a dangerous. >> one thing i've noticed after the shooting that happened is people thought there was a video

going around of a police officer who stopped to stopping black people. he gives an ice cream. and like the idea can be drawn like this is great but does not pay change vendor to pick that's traumatizing to think about to get arrested and you think ice cream cone? >> i agree. that's a great example of not doing how to use social media. >> just being daft about it. like that's really traumatizing spent. >> terrorizing people. i want to buy the other side, the other love aspect of social media. in the way facebook in particular has given us really sometimes frightening window into the inner lives of police officers. when they talk to each other. when it leaks out into the conversations, and it's, not all but also given it a lot of police departments a place for police officers to sort of

download some other less savory thoughts about communities that they serve. in a sense as part of the social media can also to be to remind police officers that nothing is secret on social media? >> i don't know it's a bad thing that we see this pic of him as a police officer was fired for saying something racist about a shooting as recently as a week ago. some talk about michael brown. it starts to get at this understanding but often want to separate everything into a few bad people versus all of the good people. that begins to adore conversation about systemic problems as systemic communities. if i spend every single not talking to the one bad guy come eventually it's going to start to seep into my perception of the world i live in. when we talk about a few bad apples we forget the whole rest of the analogy. a few bad apples was all of the. that's the point that it's not like we've got to be rid of that one guy. now enjoy this book. i think that remember that.

every person carries with the prejudices and biases. what a soldier because that has allowed us to see those. just because of is a police officer, just because their great ideas me they do not carry biases. also in a with of any society that has specific stereotypes and biases towards people of color. police officer are not immune to that, black, white, hispanic officers. we have to remember that. window type of systemic problems we pivotal conversation about but that singapore is at the races so, therefore, or that person is a racist. what we would talk about systemic problems. not target individual people in the individual innovation. >> i wish would double the amount of time but we are out of time. appreciate it and you guys can find no social media. keep talking to the. we're going to but to our next panel i believe maria hinojosa

is going to take back over again. i throw it back to you. >> give them all a great round of applause. [applause] >> [background sounds] how does education play a role? joined the conversation is education secretary john king. [applause]

>> there's a need of a wall between us. i say tear down that wall. [laughter] [applause] ..

a group of seasoned journalists join us in the front three rows will also be asking questions and i'm learning my journalist in the front three rows i will probably be coming to you sooner rather than later, roland will be prepared . you ready? he's ready. he's always ready he's like, whatwestern mark secretary, you recently came into this position . i know that when you are managing an entire department like you are, you can't do everything so in three very quick soundbites, actually tell us what are your three priorities so we understand kind of what your target is going that you won't be able to do everything? the three things we are focused on at the department is on, equity and excellence throughout our educational

system, early childhood, k-12, childhood education. two is lifting up the teaching profession and teachers made a huge difference in my life, that's why i became a teacher. teachers are at the core of how we ensure that scores all successful. the third is to focus on access affordability and completions in higher education and certainly there's been a lotof conversation in 2016 so far around issues of access and affordability . that's been apparent from the outset but we've also got to focus on completion, we have to many students who start and don't finish and that's a huge part of our default problem. students who default on their debt or students who started, took some credit, dropped out and now they can't count their debts, they don't have the degree so they can't get the good job and now they're trapped so we've got to do a lot more i'm interested in why you want to focus on equity and how you think that any specific policy that you create could actually have an impact on the ground at the grassroots in terms of

changing equity . in yourdream vision , what making equity work, what would actually look like? my commitment comes from my own experience growing up in new york city in public schools, i went to ps see 76 in brooklyn. my mom passed away when i was eight, fourth grade so i was with my dad who was quite sick with undiagnosed alzheimer's.he passed away when i was 12 and homelessness, a very unstable place and a scary place but school was a place that was nurturing and supportive and engaging and challenging and interesting and even after my dad passed ... >> because you had a good public school and saw you as a latino, was it look or wasn't institutional thing because of the public schools in new york? >> sadly i think it was more

like in the case that there were a lot of kids who didn't have the benefit of the opportunities that i did. i was fortunate to have great teachers at ps 276 and mark twain junior high in coney island and those teachers could have looked at me and said here's an african-american latino male in crisis, what chance does he have? but instead they invested in me and because of that unlocked today. because of them i'm able to do this work. >> shout to administrators and teachers who have eyes. so you understood there how you wanted to be seen as an equal human being to all of your peers. what does it look like now, the equity question. paint a picture. >> several things, one is we

have to make sure are all teachers are prepared to work with diverse students and prepared to see students as holding human beings and recognize there is a need for social and emotional development alongside economic development, that was critical. you've got to make sure schools have the resources they need to provide a quality well-rounded education to every student, i was fortunate to have art and music and science and social studies and we actually schools where that's not happening what year was that? >> this was in the 80s that was the public schools, beautiful. >> and we got to make sure students have an opportunity to be challenged and that we don't have schools giving up on low income students, students of color and saying because of their circumstances they shouldn't get these opportunities. i was fortunate to have a chance to do shakespeare in elementary school, that was transformative for me so we got to make sure schools are providing those enrichment opportunities, those academic challenges to all students on an equitable basis. we can't dictate from the federal level but i do think how we implement federal laws, federal funding can push and prod states towards doing the right thing and we have a civil rights enforcement role which is really about saint there are some fundamental protections that students are entitled to and we are going to ensure those happen.

think about that, a midwestern city where we looked at why there were so few latino students in the advanced stem program and this is through the civil rights, we found that information never went home in spanish so if parents didn't speak spanish, they wouldn't know about the advanced stem program, consequently latino students were underrepresented so it made them change that. that is the civil rights enforcement mechanism is a powerful letter. >> is a dream of yours that on a federal level you could i sure that every student in the united states of america is educated about the civil rights movement in our country? >> absolutely and that does not just for ... [applause] that's not just about students of color. >> i'm talking about all students. >> i went a couple of weeks ago, i was at a school where philando castile worked in

st. paul. and was talking with parents and staff there about him and what a great presencehe was in the school . but also reading with them and morning with them and talking about the change that needs to happen in st. paul and minneapolis and the whole region. falcon heights where he was killed. and one of the parents stopped me afterwards, white parents and said you know, i realize i need to think differently about my kids educational experience because my kids thing, there were problems between black people and white people and then martin luther king came and it was all better and that there view. and she said, what do i do? we talked about social studies and understanding history, we also talk about literature and the power of the world a different perspective through literature but i appreciated that she knowledge that her kids don't have a good sense

of the history of how we got here and it was clear in talking with folks at the school that even though minnesota's thought of as very progressive in some ways, there's really a lack of understanding across lines of race and class around what people's experience with police but what people's experience in the community in general. >> i'm going to come to you roland next so we can get the camera ready but i want to ask a question that is, and i don't mean to put you on the spot but i think it's on all of our minds which is how do we our children, how do we as journalists even write about the issues when you have such divisive and yes, hate filled language that is being seen from a presidential candidate? and the trump effects in schools, we've heard this , right? there was one story i believe all the school in north carolina that for their

senior, whatever it's called, senior trek, they built the wall. inside the school and some of the students complained and they kept the wall up anyway. we've heard of teenagers playing and when it is a predominantly white school or a predominantly latino school, chance of building a wall while there are kids playing on the field. we've heard of stories of children saying american citizen children saying if donald trump wins, am i going to be safe and will i be safe in school? facing that reality of a donald trump presidency, how does that affect the work that you are doing on a daily? >> as you know i'm prohibited from talking about the 2016 election candidates but i will sayschools have a fundamental responsibility to make sure every child is safe . schools have a responsibility to act when a racially hostile environment is created and so we been clear in our guidance to school

districts and states about those responsibilities of civil rights enforcement responsibilities but also as educators i think we have a responsibility whether it's talking about elections or talking about these incidents between the community and police over the last few weeks, we have a responsibility to help young people grapple with their world and sometimes that means we have to try to find ways that explain them but those conversations in schools that knowledge the pain that communities feel but also helps students put in context, historical context community context, the events around them, i think that's an important role for educators and we got to make sure we support educators in that work. >> her secretarywere going to go to roland martinson . >> how are you doing . naacp recently voted their convention to call for

national moratorium on charter schools on, i want to get your thoughts on that considering this administration is supportive of a charter school and do you believe that for african-americans to latino students, that is a way for them to control the destiny of their kids education? >> i feel very strongly we should not have artificial barriers to growth of charters that are good and so our position has always been charters should be a part of the public school landscape and can be a driver of opportunity for kids. you and i talked about this for the places around the country where you will find charters that are closing the achievement gap, charters that are sending all their students on to college when the local neighborhood school is sending hardly any students on college. at the same time there are charters that are not good and see need to to either improve those schools or close those schools, they got to hold to the charter agreement which is to meet a

set of academic goals in exchange for that autonomy that they are given so our role at the federal level is both to encourage the creation of schools that are good and also encourage order authorizes to takeserious their responsibility to act when schools are struggling . >> roland, actually you were supposed to throw it out to other members of the three so . >> i want to ask a question. >> b7 roland. >> the ticket from dallas, 95, thank you sir. >> thank you roland. >> is that stuff you wear all the time? there we go. secretary, imc, cbs in dallas texas. i cover the second largest public school institution in the state of texas, the dallas school system and the surrounding school districts you mentioned briefly when with roland in your chart dialogue about charters there are other programs as an

educator, the way schools are focused now on having specialized education, academies and vanguard etc. what happened to focus on comprehensive schools in everybody's neighborhood, every single day where the vast majority of children reside, do they attend schools in their neighborhood? mediocrity is plentiful in charters but what happened to the dedication of my neighborhood school? >> as you look across the country, there are examples of neighborhood schools that are doing quite well and examples of schools that are struggling. i do think there is value in parents and communities being able to have choices around schools that might need a particular need or ambition that a child may have so if there's a school that's arts focused, i've been to some extraordinary, i think of the las vegas arts academy, the one grannies and just phenomenal arts programs because they are able to provide an arts focused

education citywide. then those opportunities are important. the two things that i think should be asked of northstar is every child deserves an excellent education and to the extent we have schools that fall short, we have a responsibility. state, federal districts to improve them. the second is i thinkwe should think about where there are opportunities to create diverse school environments and that may require thinking about the neighborhood a little bit more broadly . presidents propose $120 million for an initiative called chandra together that would accelerate locally led voluntary efforts to create diverse schools as we look across the country. we see so many areas where school are more segregated by race and class than they were 10 or 15 years ago so i think there's a conversation we need to have as a country around how we value diversity in schools and also how we think about housing policies because in many places the housing policies set in motion incredible racial and

class segregation and we ought to be thinking about how we challenge those housing policies. >> what you're talking about is institutional racism right there. we have time for one more question. >> girl, don't get caught. >> i'm going to go to the person behind me. we have not done this. if you are a founder of nabj / nahj will you please stand up? i'm a believer, you got to recognize your founders. [applause] >> thank you founders. >> let me say this again, these are the people that founded the organization that made it possible for you to sit in this hotel. that's all i'm saying. >> thank you for the shout out. >> thank you. joe davidson from the washington post. in the previous panel we

heard that philadelphia, they cut the number of school-based arrests by two thirds area does the department of education have any programs or policies designed to reduce or eliminate school based arrests and what part does a specific bias and overt bias play in those arrests left a mark. >> i appreciate the question. we have an initiative called discipline that's an initiative of the department but also the presidents my brother's keeper initiative which was focused on expanding opportunity for all kids but especially boys and young men of color. we think this discipline effort, where providing technical assistance and support to districts that rethink their school discipline policies area you are right, we have 50 percent user efficacy strategy for responding to school discipline or criminalizing this behavior in schools. it is a driver of school to prison pipeline. we also see disproportionate suspension of kids of color. our recent civil-rights data collection shows that in

pre-k, african-american students are more than three times as likely to be suspended as white students. four years old. in k-12 it's nearly 4 times as likelyto be suspended . part of it i do think is around training and professional development. teachers havingalternatives to inclusionary discipline principles, having alternatives . part of it is about bias and when you look at those pre-k numbers, i don't think you can take it any other way than to say folks are treating the same behavior from white students differently from an african-american student and that's a problem both for african-american boys and girls as well . >> latino students as well. >> but we also have a resource problem. one of the things we revealed in our data collection was that we have 1.6 million kids who go to a school that has a law enforcement officer and no school counselor. so what are we setting up when we have that dynamic that there's no one in the school that as their focus