phil: phil: good evening. from new york, i am phil donohue. not only am i happy to be sitting in for tavis smiley for the next couple of nights but also pleased to be sitting across from him. starting tonight, i get a chance to turn the tables on him, who is here with me at new york university along with princeton professor cornel west. not only do they co-host a show together, "smiley & west," a very clever title, but they have teamed up in a new book about the growing divide in this country between the haves and have-nots, no small issue. the book is called "the rich & the rest of us: a poverty manifesto." we are glad you have joined us tonight, and we hope you will join us tomorrow.

one of my conversations with tavis and dr. west is coming up right now. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ phil: look who is here. we have some movers and shakers. two guys who keep on keeping on, a fabulous, fabulous thing to say about a person who has

been around and about as much as they have. they have been to washington. they have been to the oval office, and they have been to jail. we will talk about that, too. now, first of all, you have just come off of a tour. how many cities? >> 18. tavis: 18 cities. phil: what did you learn that you did not already know? >> it was good to spend time on a bus with some high-quality people. the group that was there with us, it was magnificent, and then struggling, shuddering, suffering with highly dignified poor people. part of the fight back. on a reservation. went to the brown side and the yellow side and the black side of town. we went to see white brothers and sisters who had broken

thephil: you really have taken this from a very important scholarship level, right down to a meeting live people. what do you bring? tavis: first of all, i want to say what an honor this is. i watch you every day. you being on this program. phil: well, i am trying to get my picture taken with the both of you. [laughter] tavis: what i came away with was a better idea of what this is all about. for so many americans, it is no longer about trying to pay their bills. they are so behind in bill payments that they are at a loss of everything. it is no longer about trying to navigate the embarrassment with

family and friends about how long they have been unemployed. it is about dignity at this point. so many people are struggling. we met so many people who are struggling to hold onto their dignity, and i had not know it had gotten to such a base level, people try to hold onto their humanity and their dignity. people want to feel that, and i did not like the dirt and paucity of dignity in the country. the second thing i took away with was a slight uptick in our economy is not going to solve what we saw. people tend to think that if the economy starts to swing up and will become the party will be addressed. to eradicate this. phil: there are some people to say that this is the rock of

gibraltar, and i am this other, so what good can i possibly do? and that is the beginning of the end of any kind of political action, you would agree. tavis: i do agree, but i think one thing that makes a difference to your question is that poverty for so long has been color-coded. when we think party, we think black vote and brown from which a black folk -- we think black folk and brown folks. this is impacting all kinds of americans that the conversation is no longer just about braque and brown -- black and brown. we talk about this in the text that the new poor are the former middle class. in an election season like the one we are in now, politicians are always like to speak to the angst of the middle class, and

you cannot do that this time around because the new poor are the former middle class. they have fallen into this property of this, so now what you have is the perennially poor or the persisted pork, and on top of that you have the new port and the near poor, and you are looking at 150 million americans who are at poverty or near poverty, and that means one out of two of us is wrestling with this. this is more grievous than it has been in times past. >> yes. phil: i have to confess, growing up in an all white neighborhood, kind of a norman rockwell neighborhood, working- class, nothing wealthy about my childhood, but it was so idyllic. a church, a white father, a white sun, and the holy spirit came to us as a white dove.

all of the statues in church were white, and i began to think about this as a teenager. not very deeply, i have to say. i was probably too busy looking at girls, but i was a slow learner, and it took me a long time really to appreciate the nature of racism, where it comes from, and i began to think about all of these white, and i began to realize that racism is a lot like cancer. you do not always know you have it, and you were out there, and let's get this understanding out there early. you saw not only black and as you say brown people, you saw white people in poverty. >> indeed. indeed. you think in that idyllic moment during which you grew up during your childhood that just down the road, there was some

ugly jim crow and jane crow realities of people catching hell. not just discrimination or segregation, people taught to hate themselves, todd they should not have a sense of possibility, that it was invisible, and what we attempted to do is to say there is new forms of oppression. there are actually new forms of slave like conditions. it has been invisible. it has been invisible, and 25 years ago when i first met this brother in los angeles, we made a covenant. we said we were going to be so true to the legacy that we were going to give our time, energy, lives, and be willing to die for the people that they were concerned about, and what martin luther king and others did in the moment was to make jim crow and jane crow visible. you either do this, or you lose your democracy.

make a choice. these days in 2012, we either deal with poverty, or we lose our democracy. phil: that is not the only then that may move us to lose our democracy. i mean, we have got now people in power who believe that this is a nation of law unless we are scared. miranda schmrianda. do not even talk about that. >> the connection between poverty, tied into social misery, and oligarchy tied to greet avarice -- tied to read -- greed and avarice. the top 01% compared to the bottom 150 million.

democracy cannot survive in this sense, but worse, and this is where we try to shatter this, everything is up for sale. and what was wonderful about brother martin and others is that even if they were tied to a losing cause, they were never up for sale. they were going to speak the truth. [applause] they were going to bear witness. you know what i mean? and it comes through strong in the text of that tradition. we are vessels. it is a tradition coming through as that we want to be true to so that when we die, people will say, "those two negroes try to be true to something bigger than them." [applause] phil: please give us some numbers again.

what percentage of children in this country are poor? tavis: the numbers are growing every single day. in 2009 and 2010 alone, over 1 million children fell into poverty, over half a million into extreme poverty. we just had a conversation not long ago in new york called made visible, women, children, and poverty in america. we discussed in that conversation that the majority of americans in poverty are women. women and children are falling the fastest into poverty, and we talked about the fact that this says something damning about our society and our nation that we would allow women and children to fall fastest into poverty and not see this as a state of emergency to arrest the development among women and children, so, again, across the board, too many women are dealing with this, and there is a chapter in the book where we talk about the poverty deniers,

people who still want to deny that poverty exists, number one. the heritage foundation put out one year ago, you remember this, try to define what poverty is in america. our friend, stephen colbert, and there was a person on his show at the release of the heritage report, that if you own a cell phone, you are not poor. if you have a microwave, you are not poor. if you have a refrigerator in your house, you are not poor. they tried to define poverty in such a way, what we wanted to do is, as we said earlier, we have to get serious about poverty and the poverty a priority, to eradicate it, and have a serious conversation about the criminalization.

phil: everybody knows the percentage of the black population in prison. we know what is going. somehow, and maybe it is because all of the rest of us have enough problems. we cannot solve the world. i do not know. >> what brother tavis is talking about, living in poverty, in the richest nation in history of the world, it is immoral obscenity. it is an ethical abomination. [applause] we have got over 40% of our pressures read children. we started on an indian reservation because we believe indigenous people do not have to be in a room. they do not have to be next to us to be concerned about this. this country began with an attack on those children.

the same is true with our brown children. black children. 38 percent said. they are 100% of the future. what are they talking about? all we have to do is look at this. n the richest nation in history of the world, it is immoral obscenity. it is an ethical abomination. generation after generation, is socially abandoned, economically neglect a community and then put the committee under surveillance. we are zeroing in on a war against drugs in the black and and community. the ending up with an expansion from 300,000 to two 0.7 million -- 2.5 million today in the new jim crow. the connection between poverty and prison. who is making money on the prisons? there is profit in the prisons. phil: how about the privately operated prisons? you have to cut expenses they can make more money.

>> you have to have more customers. [applause] phil: give me your wisdom on media. >> wisdom on media. phil: i just enjoy talking about myself. [laughter] i was let go from msnbc. >> you were courageous. [applause] phil: here is what is interesting, we have more than four dozen young men who will more than 4,000 young men wh -- more than 4,000 young men who

will never have a talk show, never write a book, never go to a tailgate party, came home after one of the most, the biggest mess of blunders in american foreign policy. these are the people we need to keep in mind. by the way, a much larger percentage were soldiers, men and women, of color. they of the first ones to go and the first ones to come home. so, definitely, by the way, i mentioned i was let go. your applause is critically -- gratefully received. i did not make any sacrifice. i did not take any courage. i have money. i do not have to worry about feeding the kids. there are a lot of folks who do not speak up for that reason. all of these things work. [applause] which brings me to pat buchanan who also was fired from a mess

and the city-- from msnbc for writing a book. the brown people are coming. we are losing our culture. we are losing our feature of this nation. it is fear. he figured he is going to put up a fence and that is going to work. that has to contribute to the mindset. this man of authority, he is on television, saying things like that. tavis: on the question of war, we talk about in the book, a full treatment on the notion that war -- that war is the enemy of the poor. when you think about all of the services and all the opportunities we can afford.

we have a chart that lays down what could have been done and what could be done. to the extent that we are now done with the war. if we lay out suggestions on what we think ought to happen. to your second point, about the fact that there is fear in this country. we talked about that. there is a peer of fort -- there is a fear of poor people. you are not going to appreciate any people. the poor people and of being on their own. the worst thing you can do is to render him or her invisible. that is what is happening to many americans who find themselves poor. they are being rendered invisible.

we went on this 18 city tour, i recall, what i love about this text, it is not just a public policy analysis. you know this. we read the stories of everyday people who we met on this tour. as long as i live, i will never forget the faces of all kinds of americans. particularly in michigan. remember this? under a couple of freeway overpasses. you have to walk this way and this way. there was a tent city. we only had the chance to go to one. we chose this one in michigan. i wanted to know how they were surviving in the summertime. what it would going to do in the winter months. it was cold in michigan. how are they going to survive? the people we met, 48 families,

48 families living in the city. i talked to one woman. i asked her, how did you end up out here? she said to me, she was referred to the city by the house in -- housing people. a public service enterprise that is supposed to be dealing with this issue is so overwhelmed and lacking with services, there is possibly with their own ability -- the government entity is recommending the tent city to her. the point i am making is that there is a fear of the poor. -- the point i am making is that there is a fear of the poor. they're falling through the cracks. even the numbers we had in the book. we are suspect of these numbers. phil: there is a documentary that i was proud to do.

here is what i learned. the iraq war resolution. congress was coming here, mr. president. the cia, cover your backside. you know what? you know what? i will tell you something you do not know. it passed by a large margin. every person of color in the house voted no, except for jefferson, congressman jefferson from a louisiana. this is the guy who put his money in the freezer. do you remember that? i mean, what did they know that george bush did not know? and all of those people did not know? they can say that they are going to be the first one to go.

>> poverty is not just a political question or an economic issue. because it is connected to truths, it is a moral and a spiritual issue. to not collapse and have a breakdown. [applause] as opposed to having a breakdown. unfortunately, that is not always the case. there is more on the chocolate side of town that is open to the unsettling truths than on the vanilla side. we are in a historic era right now.

[applause] disproportionately young brothers and sisters who are on vanilla. you are talking about the middle-class. the foreign policy, children. they say this is what they are. terrorists on their t-shirts. they find that incendiary device, and they are killing children. this is on the watch of barack obama.

>> bush. they are saying, what are you critical of the black president? you are a black man. i say, i am a truth telling black man. my morality cuts deeper than pigmenatation. if a black man is right, if a black sister is right, i will go with her, but if they are wrong, they are saying, you should be ashamed of yourself. [applause] tavis: i do not want to be trivial about this. there is a certain deference, not just on the part of african americans, wildly celebratory of this historic moment, but there has been a deafening

silence about the issue of the poor in this country. people are afraid to speak up. the courage, commitment, the fear of being ostracized by that particular apparatus and that particular administration. but it does hold people back from speaking the truth about poverty. phil: the book of which you speak is "the rich & the rest of us: a poverty manifesto." we will have much time next time with tavis and dr. west. until next time, i am phil donahue. good night. [applause] >> for more information on at pbs.org. phil: hi, i am phil donahue. join me next time for a continuation of my conversation with tavis smiley and cornel west. that is next time.

>> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more. >> be more. pbs. pbs.