captioning sponsored by wnet >> thompson: on this edition for sunday, september 24: on football sunday, nfl players protest president trump's comments about them and their sport, and in our signature segment: angie thomas and her novel about police brutality atop the young adult best-seller list. next on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.b.p. foundation. the anderson family fund. rosalind p. walter, in memory of abby m. o'neill.

barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, megan thompson. >> thompson: good evening and thank you for joining us. president trump's suggestion at a political rally friday night that pro football owners fire players who kneel during the national anthem, in protest of the treatment of african- americans by police, has ignited a storm of defiance involving three major sports. today, pro football was unified in pushing back. the first indication came when players and coaches from the jacksonville jaguars and baltimore ravens knelt and

linked arms before their game today in london, england. jaguars' owner shad khan, who gave a million dollars to the trump inaugural committee, joined them. in chicago, the visiting pittsburgh steelers, except for one player who's a military veteran, opted to stay in the locker room during the anthem, leaving their sideline empty. at every game today, with the new york giants, the new orleans saints, the new england patriots, the buffalo bills, the tampa bay buccaneers, and other teams, players either knelt or linked arms on the sidelines during the national anthem. before the games, mr. trump reiterated his views on twitter, saying: "if nfl fans refuse to go to games until players stop disrespecting our flag and country, you will see change take place fast. fire or suspend!" many team owners condemned him and defended their players. among them was robert kraft of the super bowl champion new england patriots. kraft, a trump friend who also gave a million dollars to his

inaugural committee, said: "i am deeply disappointed by the tone of the comments made by the president." and of his players, kraft said"" i support their right to peacefully affect social change." basketball superstar lebron james, who yesterday called mr. trump a "bum" for disinviting the nba champion golden state warriors to the white house, followed up with a video posted to twitter. >> obviously, we all know what happened with charlottesville and the divide that caused. he's now using sports as the platform to divide us. >> thompson: oakland a's catcher bruce maxwell became the first major league baseball player to kneel during the anthem, last night. maxwell who is african-american and comes from a military family, said he was protesting the, "racial divide that's being practiced from the highest power we have in this country." for more about this weekend's intersection of sports and

politics, i am joined from washington by npr contributor," washington post" sports columnist, and university of maryland professor kevin blackistone. >> so i first wanted to start out by asking you about president trump's motivations. ink he decided to wade intoyou this? >> well, of course the cynic in me suggests that he did so to divert our attention from serious things like what's going on with north korea, what's going on with climate change, what's going on with the health-care bill. but on the other side of it, i also think he just interjected himself into this debate simply because it was in front of his base in alabama and he thought coget away with it. >> it is rare when it comes to owners with hot button political topics but we are hearing from many of them and they are by and large agreeing with the players. how do you think that that is

going to affect this national conversation? >> well, i think it gives it a-- to go forward. right, because when we started this football season, the conversation was around a few players who were dropping to a knee in support of colin kaepernick and i don't think that the owners, certainly the commissioner did not, the nba commissioner, adam silver did not, the golden state warriors did not appreciate the language and the intonation from president trump about the protests that were going on that started over a year ago by colin kaepernick. >> talking about colin kaepernick, as you said, this all started with him. how do you think all of this is going to affect him both short term and long-term? >> well, i think long-term he has etched a place in history. in the short-term, what does it do for his career, if all of the

owners are coming out in support of this, the commissioner has come out in support of this, the fact that he just got the-- an award from the nflpa, the players union for humanitarian and community work that he's done, i think makes it much easier for him to get back into the league and makes the argument that he is show a par rya extremely specious. >> last week it was revealed former player aaron hernandez who was only 27 years old when he committed suicide in prison for murder, it was revealed that he had severe cte, the defen rattive brain disease. and in comments on friday president trump basically encouraged hard hits saying that rules preventing them were ruining the game. i wanted to ask you, where are the league and football fans on that issue? >> well, i think it's become

much harder for many of us who are football fans to watch football, be it professional, be it semiprofessional which is college football, even high school and little league games. simply because we know that what we're watching could result in some serious brain damage to the participates. so it is a difficult situation. but what president trump had to say about it was uninformed, and need not be said. and the fact of the matter is this is a huge problem and it's a medical problem and it really needs to be addressed. >> kevin blackistone thank you very much for joining us. >> thank you. >> thompson: the chances of the u.s. senate passing the latest republican attempt to repeal and replace president obama's affordable care act this week receded further today. republican senator susan collins of maine said she finds it,"

very difficult to envision a scenario," where she'd back the bill sponsored by senators lindsey graham and bill cassidy. unfortunately the graham- cassidy, basically keeps most of the obamacare spending, almost all of the spending. >> thompson: texas senator ted cruz also said today he'll oppose the bill unless it brings down obamacare premiums further. arizona republican senator john mccain said friday he opposes the bill. with only a two-vote senate majority, republicans can't pass the bill with three or more defections. but white house legislative affairs director marc short said he remains optimistic, as the white house is still in talks with undecided senators. there was a mass shooting at a church in nashville, tennessee

today, and the alleged attacker is in custody. police say the gunman shot and killed one woman and wounded seven other people at the burnette chapel church of christ in nashville's antioch neighborhood. police did not give a motive for the shooting. as expected, angela merkel will be germany's chancellor for a fourth, four-year term. merkel's conservative democratic union party came in first in today's parliamentary elections. she claimed a mandate to form a new government, but her party's percentage of the vote total is projected to be lower than in the last election, in 2013. the nationalist alternative for germany party, which led the opposition to merkel's admission of a million migrants and refugees from the middle east, had its best showing ever. that party is projected to win more than 10% of the vote, making it eligible for seats in parliament, marking the first time since the end of world war ii that a far-right party will be in the bundestag. despite widespread international opposition, iraq's kurdish

leaders plan to go ahead with an independence referendum tomorrow. though the results are non- binding and not expected to trigger a declaration of independence, the united nations and united states oppose the vote, because it could destabilize the region. iraq, turkey, and iran, which each have pieces of historic kurdistan within their borders, fear the vote will fuel kurdish separatism. turkey has threatened to use military force to prevent the creation of a kurdish state in northern iraq, and iraq's government today asked all nations to cease buying oil from the kurds there. >> thompson: five days after hurricane maria hit puerto rico, federal aid has begun arriving in the u.s. territory, much of which remains without power. 11 ships carrying large amounts

of water, food, and power generators, began to arrive in d by air.s newly-reopened port fears have subsided that a dam holding back a swollen reservoir in northwest puerto rico would collapse, after a spillway eased pressure on it this weekend. the hurricane is blamed for at least ten deaths in puerto rico. mexico's government said today 318 people have died from last tuesday's major earthquake, including 180 people in mexico city, where there were widespread building collapses. but the epicenter was a two-and- a-half hour drive south of the capital city. newshour correspondent william brangham and producer zach fannin went to a rural community near there to see how people are coping and coming to grips with their losses. >> brangham: it's early saturday morning in ocuilan, mexico and faustino jimenez hopes he won't be delivering more bad news. he's an volunteer engineer, trained by the mexican civil defense force. hundreds of homes have been damaged or destroyed in this area. jimenez's job is to decide which ones can be saved, and which

ones must be demolished. the garcia family lives in this modest two story house. 86-year-old catalina hernandez vargas raised her two children here. they grew up and raised kids of their own. over the decades, the family and the house expanded-- three generations under one roof. today, jimenez will determine whether they can stay any longer. ocuilan is in a rural, mountainous area in mexico state, about 60-miles southwest of mexico city. there are no tall structures here, so only two people died in the quake. dozens more were injured. mayor felix alberto linares toured the wreckage of an 18th century catholic church. the balloons remain from a celebratory feast a few weeks before the quake hit. it's not clear if the church can be saved. >> ( translated ): the issue here is that we can't let the effects of the earthquake be forgotten after a few weeks or a month. we are going to be following up with those who lost their home

so we can help them rebuild. >> brangham: everywhere we went, we saw similar damage. in a neighboring town, its historic church is cracked and crumbled. in the tiny hillside town of tlatempa, an estimated 75% of the homes are badly damaged or destroyed. back at the garcia home, it's what everyone feared: their home is too dangerous to live in. 22-year-old noemi was born and raised in this house. >> ( translated ): my parents' house cracked and they told us we had to evacuate. they say everything is going to collapse. we have to find another place to live because the ground could keep shaking. nothing is easy. we don't know what's going to happen next. >> brangham: jimenez's team immediately begins helping them pack up their belongings. noemi's father, edilberto garcia hernandez, is a local policeman, >> ( translated ): my parents

built the first two rooms of this house. when i earned enough money, i built more onto it, the little i could. but we are poor. >> brangham: his mom has slept in this house since she was a teenager, but not anymore. >> ( translated ): i thought of asking god to just let me die. i don't want to live through any more of this. we have suffered, and i don't want to suffer anymore. >> brangham: for faustino jiminez, these days are worst part of his job. >> ( translated ): emotionally, this work breaks you. it's very difficult. you can't just tell someone with a cold heart that they have nowhere to live. but our job is to save lives. >> brangham: in two hours, all the garcia's belongings are stacked outside. they'll stay with a relative tonight, but beyond that, they just don't know. >> ( translated ): i feel destroyed. it feels like these are the last days on earth. we have no idea what's going to happen.

>> thompson: today's protests by pro football players really began last year, when one-time superbowl quarterback colin kaepernick refused to stand for the pre-game national anthem, to protest police brutality against african-americans. a current, bestselling young adult novel deals with the same, real life issue. the book, called "the hate u give," by first-time novelist angie thomas, is now nominated for a national book award. newshour weekend special correspondent alison stewart recently caught up with thomas in her hometown in mississippi, for her first nationally televised interview, to discuss her work and her journey. >> reporter: at the mississippi book festival last month, people waited patiently in 91 degree heat to have their books signed. >> do you want it personalized?

>> reporter: ...and to spend a moment... >> reporter: ...with 30-year-old jackson, mississippi, native angie thomas. >> thank you. thank you. >> reporter: the line to meet the first time author stretched the length of the tent. what were you doing in a year ago? >> i worked at a church as a secretary to a bishop here in jackson. i had just quit my job, and i was deciding to write full-time. and i was in the middle of editing "the hate u give". so in a year's time my life has completely changed. >> reporter: thomas' novel "the hate u give" is a coming of age story tackling life and death issues facing black teenagers, including race relations, interacting with the police, and fighting stereotypes. >> i'm talking about issues that affect so many people. i didn't want to just give a surface explanation. i wanted to get into the heart of these things. i wanted to take things that are made political, and i wanted them to feel personal. >> reporter: since its debut, in february, at number 1 on the "new york times" young adult hardcover bestseller list, "the hate u give" has sold more than 300,000 copies in the u.s.

13 publishing houses had fought for the rights to the book. it's now been printed in 27 countries and is being made into a major motion picture. at the festival, thomas appeared on a panel called "rising stars in young adult". >> i think that some of the greatest work that is being done right now in our society is through young adult books. >> reporter: when we sat down with thomas in jackson, she read us a section introducing the protagonist, 16-year-old starr carter. >> when i was twelve my parents had two talks with me. one was the usual birds and bees. the other talk was about what to do if a cop stopped me. momma fussed and told daddy i was too young for that. he argued that i wasn't too young to get arrested or shot. >> reporter: starr is the only witness to the fatal shooting of her childhood friend, khalil. he's killed by a white police officer. at first, she's reluctant to come forward. but ultimately she tells the police and the media what happened. that decision changes her life. >> what i think has touched so many people is that we're talking about a 16-year-old girl

at the core of this story, and when you're talking about a 16- year-old girl, she's still a child. she still has her innocence. so i feel like some people who maybe wouldn't listen to a 30- year-old are more likely to listen to this innocent 16-year- old girl and see it through her eyes for a second, more so than they would through an adult's eyes. >> reporter: thomas' love of books grew from childhood library visits with her mother, julia williams-thomas, who's still never very far away. but thomas was unsure about pursuing writing as a career, until she discovered a creative writing program at nearby belhaven university, a christian college outside jackson. she would go on to earn her bfa in creative writing. >> i loved telling stories, but growing up i didn't see writers who looked like me in the flesh. i'm from mississippi. we have a very rich literary history, but you're talking about faulkner and welty, and they're both white and dead and i was neither. so i didn't think i could do it. but when i found out that there

was a school not far from me with a writing program, i said, "okay. yeah. maybe you should pursue this." >> reporter: "the hate u give" grew out of a short story from thomas' senior college project. she was moved to expand the narrative by 2009 fatal shooting of 22-year-old oscar grant by a san francisco bay area transit officer in a train station. it became one of the first police shootings caught on amateur video to go viral. >> although it was thousands of miles away it affected conversations here in mississippi. so i was hearing two different conversations about oscar. in my neighborhood he was one of us, but at my school people said, "well, maybe he deserved it. he was an ex-con. and it angered me and it frustrated me because i didn't understand how they couldn't see why we were upset. and i wanted to show the value in a young man like oscar, who despite his bad decisions he may have made at one point in his life, he was still a human being. he still had value. he had still had purpose. and i wanted to show that because every time they said that about oscar it felt like they were saying it about the young men in my neighborhood.

>> reporter: then, again and again, the shooting deaths of unarmed young african-americans made national headlines. 17-year-old trayvon martin, killed by a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain in florida. 18-year-old michael brown killed by a white police officer in ferguson, missouri. 12-year-old tamir rice, shot in ohio by a white police officer who mistook rice's pellet gun for a real one. why do you think a young adult novel has been able to tackle this very complex subject in a way that many traditional mainstream adult novels haven't? >> for one, so many of these cases, we're talking about young adults. trayvon martin's 17. tamir rice was 12. you know? these are young people, so young people are affected by this. and i wanted to write it for them. >> reporter: the main character, starr, sees her best friend killed. he's an unarmed black teenager. and she will only refer to the officer by his badge number, 115. why did you decide to do that? >> starr is raised to believe that names have power. she doesn't want to give him the

power that she feels like he's taken so much from her as it is. so referring to him by his badge number instead of by his name to her says, "what you did in that moment did not seem human to me, therefore i'm not sure i can humanize you by calling you by your name." >> reporter: the title is a modern twist on the biblical lesson "as you sow, so shall you reap," and the phrase "the hate u give" is borrowed from thomas' favorite hip hop artist, tupac shakur. when you reduce the book title to an acronym, it spells t-h-u- g, "thug". >> tupac had a tattoo across the abdomen that said thug life. and a lotta people don't know it was an acronym for "the hate u give little infants effs everybody." own affected the entire citys of ferguson. the hate that was fed into charlottesville with those-- those nazis, that was the hate. it's affected our entire country right now. we're having conversations about this all around. that's thug life.

>> reporter: while writing the book, thomas researched the deterioration of inner city communities, reviewed police procedures, and even the coroner's report of trayvon martin. how was it to live with such difficult material day in, day out? >> it was hard. i had to read the transcripts from the michael brown case. i've read stuff like that. so emotionally a lot of times i cried. a lot of times i was angry. but i allowed myself to feel those things because in turn it came out in the paper. it came out in my words. i think sometimes people tell writers, "don't let yourself go there." yeah, you should, because when you do it comes out in your words and it comes out in your writing. and now i have people who told me i made them cry. i'm like, "oh well, i cried too." >> reporter: join the club. >> we're even so. this is gonna go up on my wall, seriously. >> reporter: though the book has been praised for its handling of a difficult subject, some have bristled at the book's central theme -- that black lives matter. has anyone said to you, "i really like your book, but you know, ¡all lives matter'?"

>> oh yeah. i've had that. and i've had those conversations. and, you know, i just have to tell people all the time, because when you say black lives matter, they assume, "oh, so it's anti-cop book." no. it's anti-police brutality. there's a big difference. >> reporter: have you gotten any pushback from people saying, "you are reinforcing stereotypes about black people who live in marginalized neighborhoods?" >> you know, i haven't had that pushback, but i've had pushback where people say, "why would you put them in the ¡hood? why is it another book about black people in the ¡hood?" but i push back with that by saying, "not everybody in the book that's black is in the hood." you know? starr's uncle carlos and her aunt pam live in a very nice neighborhood, because not all of us live in the ¡hood. i wanted to show both sides. >> reporter: she also used that character-- uncle carlos-- to show both sides of law enforcement. he is a cop, and like her character, thomas is related to police officers. >> i wanted to show a good cop too, who not only does his job and does it well, but he holds his fellow officers accountable. for so many of us, that's the key issue right there.

we don't see enough accountability. and i wanted to show that with this book, with a cop that does actually do it, and hopes that it would influence and inspire more cops to hold each other accountable. >> reporter: during our visit to jackson, thomas spoke to an assembly of 9th graders from several public schools. >> please join me in welcoming one of our very own, angie thomas. >> reporter: she's using her newfound fame as a platform, encourage kids who grew up like she did. to write and to know their value. >> i wanted to thrive even when nobody cared. i wanted to be seen and heard. i've had kids like that tell me, you know, "we don't see ourselves on books." i've had young black girls just say, "thank you for the cover," 'cause they see themselves on the cover. then they hear it's gonna be a movie deal. they're like, "wow, people actually want to hear stories like ours?" yes, somebody's listening. somebody cares. your stories are just as important as anybody else's. so to know that my book has shown them that and tells them that, i'm honored and i'm humbled to know that.

>> thompson: angie thomas' former professor discusses the origin of "the hate u give" online at pbs.org. >> thompson: finally, the trump administration is weighing new restrictions on travel to the united states. a partial ban that went into effect in june expires tonight. it blocked anyone from six muslim majority nations-- iran, libya, somalia, sudan, syria, and yemen-- who had no relatives or prior ties in the u.s. in two weeks, the supreme court hears arguments on whether the ban unconstitutionally discriminates against muslims. on the newshour tomorrow, the political stakes of health care reform and the week ahead in washington. that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. i'm megan thompson. thanks for watching. have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by:

bernard and irene schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation. the anderson family fund. rosalind p. walter, in memory of abby m. o'neill. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

[♪] so, what did your family think? did they say there's something wrong with this man? he wants to just do computers? i was kind of considered a little strange. have you ever thought how your life could be better off if you had gotten your harvard degree? i'm i weird dropout, because i take college courses all the time. what about steve jobs in those days? what was your relationship with him we were both there at the very beginning. you're the wealthiest man in the world for 20 years or more. is that more of a burden than a pleasure, to be the wealthiest man in the world? woman: would you fix your tie, please. i thought people wouldn't recognize me if my tie was fixed, but okay. [woman laughs] just leave it this way? all right. [♪] [rubenstein reading on-screen text]