's no going back. do you remember who you hugged 22 years ago? uh-huh, i thought so. the obama scandal that isn't. and lots of millions in the latest jobs report, but i'm focusing on a particular 1.9 million that really breaks my heart. plus, in 1997 we lost the one who was living every day like a hustle. 15 years later we are still missing the notorious b.i.g. but first, there's power and then there's power. good morning, i'm melissa harris-perry. what's the first thing that pops into your head when i say power? did you think of a power with authority, imagine wealth or coercion? most of us do. power is about getting others to think or do what you want.

but there's another kind of power we have been seeing a lot lately. not the power to tell people what to think but the power to tell people what to think about. let's take the recent news cycle. is it just me or have you noticed how much time we have all spent thinking and talking about a certain conservative talk radio show host. for nearly two weeks we have had all a little less room in our heads and daily news shows for much of anything but listening or responding to his latest rantings. he doesn't have the power to make us agree with him, but he's been effective in using his power to get us to talk about him. and that hour, the power to set the agenda and define the terms of the debate, is very important in politics. want to know what the media thinks is important? check out the questions think ask first in the60 seconds of the stump speech. want to know what's on sarah palin's agenda? check out the facebook updat vo

what's important to them, it looks like the first question of the debate or the first question of the stuff steep. and yes, like sarah palin's facebook page. why? because these people like the loud radio company they or the have agenda-setting power. it is what political scientists peter backrock and morris barton call the second face of power. not defining many states are passing laws to fix voter fraud, a non-existent problem? wondering why we have a robust debate about the availability of contraception in a country dealing with the housing crisis and high number of employment? that's the second face of power at work. the second face sets the agenda and hijacks the agenda to include issues that wouldn't otherwise get attention. it also keeps certain topics off the agenda all together.

the second face of power can change the terms we are already talking about. think about it, before september of last year debt ceiling and debt reduction were the words of the day. then a bunch of people set up camp in a park in lower manhattan and those words were replaced by a new one, inequality. and never again would 99 by known only as the number that comes before 100. now i'm going to show my second face of power and welcome the voices that i wanted on my agenda this week. dorran warren, columbian university assistant professor of political science and a fellow to the roosevelt institute director. and organizing for women rights at change.com, michelle beam knox, thank you for being here. >> thank you. >> i want to start about how brilliant the gop has been at the second face of power. we were just chatting about this in nerd land and this language that if you ask americans about the affordable care act they have no idea what you're talking

about but know they are against obama care or the death tax rather than the estate tax. am i wrong here or has the republican party been better at the second face of power recently. >> absolutely. the second face is agenda setting. the first face is simple coercion getting somebody something you want them to do. and then the third face is around ideas. and influencing ideas and what people think. so notions of the death tax or other conservative idea,s, free markets. that's the success of the republican party the last 30 to to 40 years. >> that said, shelby, you are trying to infiltrate the agenda, trying to reset the agenda in ways so it is not just the moment power informal the first face sense. with the coercion action, you do seem to have an awful lot of

agenda setting power. >> one of the cool things about change.org is that remember americans take off on this site and people take on corporations. there was a 22-year-old woman named molly who took on bank of america and got them to drop the debit card fee. then took on verizon to drop the fee for paying the bill. americans want to talk about taking on corporations. when you look at the politicians, they are slowly backing away from these people as donors and backing their policies. by using the internet and by using the means that have not been previously available in such a widestream form that the american people are actually pushing back against the gop setting the agenda. >> the bank of america one is besting because we came out of the economic crisis saying the banks have done something bad, but it didn't feel like you can do anything about it. what can you do about bank of america which seems enormous but always a concrete action, is

that part of the ability to have a concrete action on which you call people to behave in some way? >> definitely. i think that we have to understand for this generation, especially of activists, that what starts online has to go offline. so there was this great surge of people signing molly' petition and talking about it but occupy wall street was con up fronting those in the streets. the confrontation of the two is how to set the agenda. >> there are organizations around the country running campaigns focused on bank of america and other banks around the foreclosure crisis for months and years, frankly, before occupy. but the brilliance of occupy was it took a social movement to reset the agenda and allow these groups who had already been advocating for people to stay in their homes to get some traction against the banks. so social movements often have the agenda-setting power for powerless people. >> i feel we are pretty

comfortable with social movement having the agenda-setting power. it feels like these are ordinary people coming together. i may be less comfortable with a certain conservative talk show radio host or even one who i might agree with having such power to direct the conversation. i kept thinking that if i just ignored it it would sort of go, i kept thinking, i'm not doing tv hits on that. we came together as a group and said, we are not going to say his name on our air and participate in this, but at a certain point if we didn't talk about i, we became foolish because it is the central item on the agenda. >> i think we always have to challenge reigning idea that is are oppressive to the news. i think we have to challenge those in power setting the agenda, which is not in our interest. and that takes a lot more work on our part to do that. it takes a social movement when all it takes is one big fat guy to start spouting off about somebody to set the agenda, but it takes thousands of people to come together for us to reset

the agenda. that's the reality of grassroots politics. >> but that's the responsibility of social movements and we are seeing that happen. we are seeing a resurgence of feminists online who are angry. he's been doing this for 20 years. >> this doesn't feel new. >> this is not new, but this time, this anger at this point when the republicans have been recent, we are having a debate on contraception. that was not decided so long ago, so at this point people are angry and pushing back. it is our responsibility, someone who is a feminist activist, to make sure we take this moment to push back and reset the agenda on our terms. >> interestingly, this is not just happening at this level but at the level of presidential politics. so this week, of course, we had super tuesday, so the republicans were in many ways setting the agenda, but then president obama played, i think, a kind of second face of power, power move, i want to look really quickly at the press conference president obama had on super tuesday and what he had to say there.

>> what's said on the campaign trail, you know, those folks don't have a lot of responsibilities. they are not commander in chief. >> what would you like to say to mr. romney? >> good luck tonight. >> it is an interesting moment, there's a reflection of the 2008 moment when sarah palin said, oh, community organizers, they are not people with real responsibilities. it is like being a mayor with no responsibles. responsibilities. but that notion of, i'm the president, at any point i can hijack half of melissa perry show to have a conversation with the press, i kept thinking that it is interesting that the president with all the first-face of power he has never felt the need to come in to reset the agenda as well. >> i think what's interesting about the agenda setting happening in the republican primary is that it is starting to backfire on them. so if you look at what's happened among women, democrats had roughly a four-point lead going into the summer, last

summer. now they have extended that to a 15-point lead over republicans in terms of elections of congress. so this agenda setting to focus on social issues and contraception and the focus on reproductive rights has backfired. i think the republican party thought the agenda setting in that direction would change the conversation away from the economy, for instance, and some other things. and so you never know when you're agenda setting what the backlash could be. >> newt gingrich is going around with his gas can trying to reset prices. stop looking at women ice women's uteruses and look at the gas tank. there's the common decision or the taking conservative radio sponsors away. is there still an asimilar industry of the second face of power? >> yes, definitely. because they have for so long been practicing at this politics

of fear. we are fighting the politics of fear whereas we want to talk about women's health, they want to talk about women having a lot of sex, whereas we want to talk about the newspaperses nuances and gas policy, they want to wave a gas can around and scare you of gas being $6 if the president remains president. we are having a difficult conversation. on the progressive side we want a nuance conversation, and they are falling back on telling voters, these people are going to make your life worse. >> there are some on the right interested in the nuance conversations, coming up i'll bring you the real presidential candidate to talk about pushing his agenda. buddy roamer is joining us after the break. ♪ today i'm talking to people about walmart's low price guarantee.

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as i see it there are four reasons people run for president. one, because they want to be president. two, because they want another job. vp or member of the cabinet. three, money. there's a lot of it to be made through book deals, speaking engagements and for a former presidential candidate. and the last reason people run for president, to set an agenda. agenda setters doing double duty as presidential candidates are in the game to force the leading contenders and the rest of us to pay attention to what they have to say. and i just happen to be speaking to one such person today, americans elect and e reform party presidential candidate and former louisiana governor buddy roehmer is joining me from baton rouge, louisiana. and i have shelby knox here from change.org. mr. rohmer, thank you for

joining me. >> thank you, melissa, good to be here. >> i want to ask you how out of the politics agenda is doing in this cycle. are you gaping traction on talking about getting money out of politics? >> i do think they are gaining traction and it is not because of what i'm doing. it is not about me. it's about what's happening in the real world. i love your discussion this morning about how to set an agenda and how to get things talked about. well, how can you escape not talking about a man whose given a presidential candidate $10 million? how can you escape not talking about a president of the united states raising a billion dollars, at least half of it from special interests, and saying, oh, i don't want to do it, but i've got to take that super pac money. how can you not talk about this? >> what i appreciate about the way that you have been trying to talk about this kind of influence of money is exactly

this, that whether you're a supporter of president obama or a supporter of one of his opponents, the fact is both of them are playing or all of them are playing by similar rules. they seem constrained by the system but part of what we are asking from our leadership is something new on the question of setting the new agenda. running for president is tough work. is it worth it to do it from your perspective in order to do this kind of agenda-setting work? >> well, you know, i was a four-term congressman, governor of louisiana, i was elected to rewrite the state constitution when i was a kid. you know, 30 years ago, 40 years ago. so i'm not a ross perot or nader who is an independent third-party, let's do down with america, i have run for office. i've been in congress. i've been governor. i've been in both parties. >> you've been there as a democrat and a republican and now have three faces of power. you have three parties at various points in your career.

>> exactly. i need to settle down. about every 20 years i change parties. you know, i give it all i've got. but let me say if this i can, i respect both parties and love america. it is not about that. it is about us. it is about us being more than spectators. it's about us getting off the couch and out of the living room. and into the neighborhoods. it's about us rebuilding a country. and i don't think the democrats are going to do it. i don't think the republicans are going to do it. i think we are going to do it. we have to come together in a unity ticket. that's what americans elect is. let me say, the key thing is not tax reform, although that's critical. it is not budget reform, although that's critical. it is not jobs reform, although that's critical, it's not bank reform, health care reform or immigration reform. it's about campaign reform. i am a reform candidate.

until you clean up washington, the people will not be heard. >> buddy, i want to bring in dorran and shelby, dorran has a question for you. >> governor, i'm wondering, the second face of power is about agenda setting but also about the rules of the game, and i'm wondering if you can talk about that if terms of the challenges for third party but also the republican primaries that excluded you from the debates. can you help the viewers know how the rules affect your voice in the process? >> let me talk about the republican primary process. i announced a little more than a year ago, i announced that i would take no pac money and i never have in office, not as governor, i was the only governor not to take pac money. i was the only congressman for the eight years not to take pac money. so i set that as my rule. $100 limit. full disclosure. instant reporting, no super pacs. so i go to new hampshire for seven months.

every day running for office, i can't get invited to a single debate. when i called the republicans, and i've been a republican for 22 years, when i call them they say, well, you don't have enough standing in the polls. and i had just announced i wasn't on any national debates. how do you get standing in the polls? i said, i'm the only person running whose been a congressman and governor. they say, keep working, governor, we'll get to you. i missed 23 debates. and the rules were always a little higher than i could get. for example, i hadn't announced, they said you had to announce. i did. then i didn't have 1%. they said you had to have 1%. i worked five weeks and got 1%. i called them back and they said, you have to have 2%. i called them back. they said you have to raise $500,000 in 90 days. it'sry duck ridiculous. that's how you get mitt romney

as your candidate. you excuse anybody with experience or passion or freedom or who puts america first. >> it is so interesting hearing you tell this story, governor, i have a daughter who is 10 working on a project about shirley chism, the first african-american woman to run for president in 1972, and the videos we have been watching together of chism sound very similar. here was this african-american woman elected to the u.s. congress who had the support of many people, who had a vision, who had something to say, but in this party system kept getting excludesed. and yet we can still see today the ways in which her candidacy, although it was doomed from the beginning that she was, in fact, not going to be president, but help the agenda for young people being engaged and active. part of what we have to do is get off the couch. don't get off the couch until noon eastern time. sit there first and watch mhp,

but change.org is about this. did you want to engage with governor roemer? >> i'm wondering how you are seeing online organizers, young people engage in your candidacy. they have said my generation doesn't identify with the parties. so i'm wondering what you are seeing on the trail and online around your candidacy. >> good question. good question, shelby. the largest party in america is none of the above. it's independent. the only party actually growing in america are independents. i talk to them all over america. and they are retirees and young people. it's a very interesting connection here. you know, i'm 68 years old, i'm a granddaddy, three kids and three grandchildren, love my kids, love louisiana, but i was the first candidate to go to occupy wall street. and i want went to occupy washington, d.c. and manchester. i went to listen. it is not that i agree with their solutions, but what i

agree with is what they smell. they smell corruption in america. and here's what i mean. when a big check can take the place of a big idea, this country is in trouble. and when you look at manufacturing jobs, when you look at the state of our economy, it's better than it was a year ago, but it's worse than it was two years ago. and it's not nearly strong as it could be. and all i want is for us to talk about the power of corrupt money in washington. and by that i mean special interest. washington is not just broken, it is bought. i was a congressman for eight years. washington is bought. and it is worse now than it was 20 years ago. and mr. president, it's no excuse to say, well, i have to do it to win. no, you don't. stand up and lead. and say no to the special interest money. >> governor buddy roemer, i, too, love louisiana.

i think the real question of whether you could have won the republican primary is whether you love grits and can say y'all. >> i'm a high school graduate, public schools, boejer city, i did go to harvard, i hate to mention that, but i can still say grits, i promise you that. >> governor roemer, thank you for joining us. up next, hugs, kisses and standing side by side. the controversial politics of standing by your man. ♪ what do you get when you combine the home depot with this weekend?

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surfaced of then student barack obama at a protest rally introducing harvard law school processor derek bell. now professor bell spent his career questioning the institutional racism that affects america's legal structures. this week conservative media outlets offered the video by proof of association that president obama is adhering a rad cay anti-american agenda. derek bell died in october of last year so he's not here to correct the lies circulating about him. thankfully, he left behind a rich legacy of legal activism in scholarship that speaks for itself. who is derek bell? he was a man who possessed the courage of his convictions. in 1959 while working in the civil rights division of the department of justice bell was told to let go of his naacp membership because supposedly a contrast of interest. he kept the naacp membership and

let go of the american government instead. he was a from fess sore at harvard law school at the time. at the video, bell spoke about his decision to sacrifice his salary and take an unpaid leave of absence to protest the school's failure to offer a woman of color a position. now surely a man who used his position of privilege and security within the academy to bring attention to issues of diversity affecting other people than himself is worthy of a handshake, a pat on the back or this. president obama's puck public display of affection and appreciation for a man he clearly respected and admired. but this moment that the president's critics have seized upon as a smoking gun, president obama tried and convicted in the court of conservative public opinion for the unforgivable offense of hugging a black man. it is starting to feel like the 1940s around here because that

was when eleanor roosevelt first lady, was regularly criticized for the same crime of public proximity to black people. these photos of eleanor roosevelt validating her mere presence, the idea of social equality for black americans led for some to call her to be tried for treason and deported. now we are asked to see this photo not as two legal scholars embracing in solidarity in justice but embracing a radical idea. seven decades have passed between that photo and this, but social equality is still somehow anti-american. coming up, why you need a job to get a job, if that's after the break. delicious gourmet gravy. and she agrees. with fancy feast gravy lovers, your cat can enjoy the delicious, satisfying taste of gourmet gravy every day. fancy feast. the best ingredient is love.

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electronics company. pays well, nice bonus, good job for someone with experience and education, but read the fine print. if you're unemployed, even with experience and education, you need not apply. same for this health care job in all dallas. must be currently employed. and for this gig in mississippi, paying around $40,000 a year, you have to have a job to get a job. the 227,000 jobs added in february is undeniably good news, but it still means that around 13 million americans who want to be employed are not. and this morning we are focusing on a particular 1.9 million of them, those who have been without work for more than 99 weeks. the time that the federal unemployment assistance runs out. joining me n o the problem of lo unemployment is joe carbone, executive officer of the workplace, an organization based in connecticut to help people

enter careers. and melanie douglas wright who was unemployed for two years and is now working. thank you so much. i greatly appreciate you being here. joe, i want to start with you, talk to us about the organization you have. what is workplace and sort of how you are addressing this particular element of the unemployment crisis? >> workplace is whole fairfield county not-for-profit. we've be there for many years and we do the work in lower fairfield county, but we also take on a responsibility to be more of the economic resource, a research entity, so we think beyond our region. we think about issues that will impact our people. but there's a lot of things we can do in our region that can affect the national kinds of challenges and long-term unemployment is one of them. >> i have this sense, joe, that when we are facing disastrous consequences and the disaster happens quickly, a hurricane, an earthquake, you know, some kind of huge problem in that way, you

know, americans think, let's get in there and send charitable activities in there, let's build new infrastructure, let's figure this out. but when you have a crisis that is as big as our current unemployment crisis, but it is long and it's slow and diffused and in all these different places, it is harder to get that sense of urgency to get in there and address it. >> that causes me to be haunted by it. they are a hidden population. and to a lot of folks, i think there's a lot of folks that think maybe they wonder why they're unemployed and the more likely it will be to leave the force. when they do they can have the effect of lowering the unemployment rate because of their hardship. i call it a carnage a few weeks a ago and it is. there will be 4 million people at some point this year this category of unemployed and the way the market is changing, it's a pious market out there, we can't deny that, but it is militating against the interest

of there ever been in a position to market themselves. >> i'm so grateful for you being here. and so often we talk about the unemployed and the nameless, faceless group. and part of my enthusiasm about having you at the table is i really just want to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about your experience of having been unemployed for two years despite the fact you have been a worker since you were a teenager. and sort of what that meant for you in the job market. >> right. so i became unemployed, i had gotten ill, and i had to take some time off. i have always worked since i was a teenager, taxpayer, did all the right things and it came to a season where now i'm going back to go to back to work and couldn't find employment. and i'm someone who has always been -- the resume looks great, present well, my interview skills were great, and all of a sudden no one was returning calls, you wouldn't even get response for your resumé. it was a really difficult time and i didn't understand what it was i was not doing right or not saying right.

but i couldn't get interviewed to save my life. >> we have in this country legal protections against placing ads that say something like, women not apply or parents not apply or people of color don't apply, but we do not have in most places laws against saying, no unemployed. i was looking at bmw of bayside who was in queens, new york, saying you must be currently employed to apply for the sales manager job. hospital in california saying you must be employed to apply for the job. john hopkins university in maryland saying you must be currently employed to apply for the research sup visor. did you find there was a discriminatory aspect, not for race and gender, but for having them unemployed? >> yeah, when i'm sending my resumé you don't know what i look like or sound lie, there's

a discrimination that i didn't know was going on. it was not until i became part of the program that i realized there were things in print that they could do to get away with. i had no idea. >> surely you can't say this class of people shouldn't apply. so what then do we do, given at least at the moment, there's activism around trying to change the laws, be new the meantime while people are looking for jobs coming up on the end of their unemployment opportunities, what kinds of things are scaleable in your nonprofit to the rest of the economy? >> i think the first ten step to recognize is there's a difference being unemployed to two years to three months. your needs do change. there's emotional issues you have to deal with being unemployed for two years. there's the self-confidence issue. those are the components try i to put in the platform to employment program we have here

in connecticut, which meal knee melanie was one of the participants. she's are these are the challenges. we are part in parcel to tell the people to walk the plank and get out of the economy. i think it is the american thing to deal with this up front. the analogy you used before, if there's a tornado or a hurricane, fema comes in and the president comes in and everybody comes in and says, we are going to stay here until this community gets back on its feet and everybody can return life to normal. well, there's 4 million people in this category. they're competing and can't get a chance to demonstrate their kills skills are marketable. >> i want to get a look at this number because i was bowled oaf here at the monthly average of the people in the long-term unemployed category. here we are looking at the numbers going up.

when you look at that ticking up, these are people unemployed, the 99 weeks. this is a different kind of 99 than occupy wall street. look at the numbers, that is a growing proportion of the group of people who we now understand as the unemployed. so your point is there are personal psychological self-esteem issues in addition to the things we normally think of with skill building and the ability to get back. from your perspective, what were the key aspects in your experience that led to ultimately a positive result? >> well, to joe's point, there are psychological issues. you know, if you keep sending your resumé and going on interviews and are not getting employed, you start to second guess yourself. your not employed so the social activities and things with your children, going to the dinner and the movies, hanging out with friends and neighbors, you are almost like this -- i hate to say this, but you're like shunned because you don't fit

the populous anymore. you are a segregated group. it is difficult on the psyche and to get your mind right to feel positive to then find employment. so it is a very difficult time. and my family, we experienced that. we experienced where we were up against foreclosure, where -- >> you have four children, is that right? >> yep, we have four kids. it was financial difficulty that was tough on the scale here where you have to decide, do i buy groceries or pay the light bill? that's a reality. from somebody who was doing well and was doing okay, it was a life altaring situation. >> we are going to continue on this situation and also broaden it out a bit and talk about those who are not only the long-term unemployed but those trading college degrees for an apron. we'll bring more folks into this conversation and that's right after this break. row make that new stouffer's steam meal so tasty. actually, the milk from my farm makes it so creamy, right dad. ah, but my carrots have that crunch. it's my milk in the rich sauce

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the challenges faced by the long-term unemployed and even though we have new positive looking unemployment numbers it's important to think about what lies beneath the math. former mhp guest has a new article called "minimum rage." a fitting title for a snapshot of what's going on for a lot of folks dealing with a different aspect of the job's crisis, being stuck in careers that don't fit a lofty and expensive education. even as the long-term unemployed are working hard to reach employment, many parents are living out the cautionary tale not to flip burgers their whole lives. she writes, quote, we internized the message that service jobs aren't real jobs. we wanted to be therapists and lawyers but we didn't want to spend our working living reciting specials and making drinks. we tell ourselves this is not

what we are doing and that it is okay because it's only temporary. let's bring back joe carbone, melody douglas seawright and joining me is elan james wright and founder of this week in blackness. thank you for being here. i know so much of your work has been around labor conditions, so we have been talking here about just trying to reenter the workforce, but i'm also thinking if you can't even apply for jobs unless you currently have a job, that might mean a willingness to take very low paying inadequate jobs, what kind of -- we are looking at better unemployment numbers but what kinds of jobs are people currently facing? what are the working conditions? >> that's a great point. there are two issues at the workplace. job access that you have been talking about and job quality. and there's a notion that job quality is something natural to the job, it's not something we create. when we look at what built the

middle class in the america of the 20th century, people took really crappy manufacturing jobs and made them good quality middle-class jobs with job ladders where people could move up in their careers and actually afford to send their kids to college. >> so the transition to a surface economy does not have to mean low wage, no living-wage jobs, in fact, we could transform, within the context of the service economy. >> absolutely. most people would say, oh, well, just get more education so you can move up, but the reality is you're creating really good jobs here, but also just as many if not more really bad jobs. then the question is, do the bad jobs have to stay bad. they don't. we can transform really bad jobs into good jobs, but that requires a range of things. it requires legal changes, it requires workers having a voice on the job once they get access. >> in speaking of taking bad things and making them better, you were just in alabama this week. >> i was.

>> and you were there for this selma anniversary march and reverend sharpton and others talking about voting on political issues, but unemployment is at 8% in alabama. what were say, people saying about the south in your travels? >> a lot of labor unions went down there. we were brought down there to specifically cover this aspect and the idea that the middle class is eroding. it is because we have completely demonized the unions or the ones that created spaces to allow people to keep their jobs. because when it comes to this type of situation, it's, like, when you don't have a career and people say, you just need to get a job, go flip burgers, do something. when i entered the workforce, i knew i couldn't put certain things on my red resumé because it would drop my pay and make me look bad to another job. it is not just as simple as get another job. if i go get another job, i'm

flipping burgers and then i want to go for my career job, i can't because i take that off and i'm not employed anymore and apparently i can't get a job if i am not employed. >> i saw you shaking your head with getting a job but a particular kind of job. >> of course. not to say anything disparaging, but if you're making $6 an hour, you can't pay a mortgage or have the kids in school. you have to decide which is thelesser evil. you take the low-paying job. now it is on your resumé. if you go for your career job, they ask you what your last salary was. >> why were you doing this? >> right. when you could have been doing that. it's a vicious cycle. you can't get up for air. it is very difficult. and i don't think america understands the implications of being unemployed this long. i mean, in the group that i was in, people were getting

divorced, there were problems with teenagers, it is awful. >> right. it is not just a job, it is not just about money, it's about all the things of who we are as people. so how does underemployment then connect with this question of unemployment in the work you're doing? >> well, i think what's clear at this point if your underemployed it improves your chances of becoming employed on a full-time level because there are many employers. you pointed out a few ads, there are thousands of employers that practice that way but won't advertise it that way. it is pretty bold to put it in the paper, but they practice that way. a lot of folks are getting the message to take any job, be employed and this week you'll apply for something as an employed person. does it improve your chances? absolutely. >> for all of us, we are happy to see the numbers improving but we are wanting to get beneath the numbers. thank you so much for taking the time to come in and think through this with me a bit because it is complicated. thank you to joe, melanie, thank

you for joining us. eli and dorian are hanging out longer. coming up, hundreds of thousands of people are disappearing every year and hardly anybody is talking about. it we are up next with that because we are going to change it. today i'm talking to people about walmart's low price guarantee.

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66 people have gone missing since we have been on the air this morning. and we will never know the names or see the faces of most of them. here's why. 1,900, that's approximately how many people are reported missing to the fbi every day. 40% of the missing are racial minorities. that is 270,680 people of color who went missing in 2010. 34% of all the missing people are african-americans, mostly black men, even though 13% is the portion of the u.s. population that is african-american.

daily 2,000 children are reported missing to law enforcement. and 65% of kids who are taken by non-family members are racial minorities. most of them being african-american children. now here is where the numbers trail goes cold because i can't tell you how many stories i saw about elizabeth smart. and i can't tell you how many network news hits there were about chandra levy or the disappearance of natalie hol willway. like you, i saw and heard a lot about those stories, and i felt for all the women and their loved ones, but i also feel for all the other families who wonder and search and wait, which brings me to the number, zero. that is how many national news stories i saw about yasmin akry of chicago missing since january of 2008. or monica bowey missing since 2007. or pamela butler of washington, d.c., missing since 2009.

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in the criminal justice system as told by the tv drama "law and order" criminals are caught and victims avenged in the span of 60 minutes. for 16 years these gripping stories were told in part through the perspective of the new york police department's fictional lieutenant anita van buren. she was portrayed by the longest running african-american character in the history of television holding down the thin blue line. in her new world she continues to represent the victims of crime but this time she is now reminding us how often justice is not served in tiny well-scripted packages. she's the host of cable network tv one's fine hour missing.

and it seeks to draw attention to an issue much of the media ignored, the persistence of missing african-americans. this drama helps to find those missing by sharing the specifics of the stories with a wider audience. here with me now to discuss this is the woman herself. i have to be sure i'm not committing a crime of any at the moment. i'm excited you are here. >> it is good to be here. >> you did for a long time play a fictional police officer. and now here you are engaged in real crime in a certain way, or at least in these real human stories of people who have gone missing. how is this work now filling in the gaps in real police work for you? >> well, i don't think it is filling in police work for me, but certainly, i think what the most important thing is that these stories now have a national forum. and that's been the issue all

along. i was listening to your opening and you made that very comment, as you hear about chandra levy and clez beth smart, but what about monica bowey. >> you are in the business of television, and so we know that part of how stories end up on television, part of how the television agenda is set is the idea that some things are more come peopling or more interesting or more important, so why do you think the stories of missing minorities have not been seen, for the most part, come peopling enough to be on air? >> i think it is a few things. i think it is negligence in the media, i think that it may be racism involved in it, i certainly think there's apathy. and i found, even talking with derrica wilson of the black and missing foundation, with tv one has partnered with, that

sometimes it's -- it really is them thinking that these kids are just runaways. and that's the thing that's unfortunate. so you -- some of them could just be runaways. >> this is a different way race could be operating. there are network executives who are just racist and don't want to find black kids, but it's another thing to say, okay, the problem is there's a set of assumptions at every step along the process that these are not really missing people, these are somehow people complacent in their own suffering. >> and certainly that time, that important time that could be used with clues and finding those important clues in that first 48 hours are now disintegrated as the time goes by. >> i wanted to sort of think about the fact that this has been a conversation that i've

heard for a long time in african-american communities. and in other communities of color, this idea that our missing don't matter. and i just went and was kind of looking at some of the news and the kind of announcements about the show, and i read, i read on the blog post at the bottom, and people were saying, this is racist. having a show that focuses on our missing that doesn't, you know, portray the natalee holloways, that this is a reproduction of only some bodies matter. how do you respond to that? >> i read some of the blogs, and then i ignored them. because the most important thing for me is that tv one saw the need. and the truth is in the national news. there was not a forum for these missing people. so people are going to hate. and there's just only so much that you can do to deal with that. but i was really taken aback by some of the responses.

because the bottom line, some people are missing. and so it's important that we do whatever we can. if that means that tv one takes on this challenge, then let tv one take on the challenge. so that we can find these young people, we can connect families with their loved ones, or we can give them closure. >> i wanted to show just a quick segment of the upcoming tv one episode. because there is -- you have a certain force at the end when you are making this appeal to people. and i wanted to show just a bit from unique harris' story. >> somebody had to see where this was going. this is a mother. has the wrong l me you don't definition of being a snitch. >> so this is unique harris' story. we have a gentleman here who is obviously, in part, implicated

communities for not speaking. we have been talking about the press not speaking, potentially the police department not engaging, but here's another idea that maybe there's someone else implicated here. do you think there's a no siting alabama aspect to any of this. >> i think that's an issue in the community where you are afraid to say something when you see something. and i do believe, again, this is where the show can be quite helpful. because at the end of it, the call to action, there's a number, there's a local number that you can call. and then you can also go on the website. because at this point, we need the people who have the conversation. and so if there's a way to do this where you don't feel like a snitch, that you can literally just e-mail tv one, you can call the local number, the important thing i keep saying over and over again, the important thing is that we have to be proactive as a community. and tv one is giving us this

opportunity to be proactive, to be a part of the community, to help in the community. because that's the way it used to be when i was a kid. you know, mrs. upchurch up the street told my mother i was smoking. you know what i'm saying? that's how we were. we need to get back to that. to me, that's what tv one is trying to do. they are trying to get us back to community. >> it is interesting to think of television being able to stand in the place of mrs. upchurch, that's part of what happened. so you as the embodiment of aknee that van buren can stand in the role of mrs. upchurch and say, we have missing people. i want to show one more segment of you in the role. and this is from unique harris' story and making that call to ask people to do the work of calling in. >> unique harris' family continues to search for her. although her children are too young to join the efforts, their

job is to hope for the best that soon they'll see their mother. unique's mom holds it together for the boys knowing come what may, some day, she will get the answers about her daughter's disappearance. >> i think for me watching that and reading so many of the stories as we were preparing was a sense of empathy, part of what happens is you feel, oh, these are young people or these are adults whose stories matter. so we are going to take a quick break, but we'll come back. we have more voices in this conversation, including a mother who lost her daughter and found her. right after this break. [ male announcer ] with six indulgently layered desserts,

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i'm here with the woman from "law and order." also joining me is janelle johnson dash, whose 17-year-old daughter was missing for six months. and she just came back home just in time for her 17th birthday. thank you, both, for being with us. i actually want to start with you, miss johnson dash, as i was reading your story, i just, you know, the idea of your daughter being gone and what you had to have been feeling and what your family was going through, can you share some part of your story with us. >> well, i would honestly say the impact of my daughter's search was tremendous on everyone. from family out of state, we

even have family in canada that helped search for her, my husband's friends and family, my oldest daughter, she was out on foot right alongside me and my husband searching for her. it was a huge burden. we had to fund everything ourselves. we didn't get any outside contributions, no flyers, posters, anything. we did everything ourselves. with the help of black and missing. they were our angels throughout this whole thing. >> i was going to say, we were talking earlier about tv one and bringing this to the news, but black and missing has been doing this work kind of underneath without the televised help, but black and missing did the thing that i understand you credit as kind of the turning point in getting your daughter back home. >> yes. through "black and missing," through natalie and derrica wilson, working mind the scenes, we are doing our groundwork at home. i get a phone call and i hear, hey, janelle, do you want to go

on "the view." ? i'm like, "the view"? 15 minutes after our daughter was told on "the view" we got a call in. and she was home by the next morning. >> she was home by the next morning after you had in the national television -- >> this is proof that it is possible that people are listening. and what they needed was the opportunity to hear the story. and that's what black and missing foundation provides, that is what tv one is trying to provide as well. >> yeah. i think that notion that it is not -- so part of it is, okay, we finally have the intelligence and we finally have the information, but i kept thinking, so you have been doing this alone, to think about the cost, not just the emotional cost, but the actual cost, talk to me about sort of what is it that families are facing when they don't -- before they have our missing, when they don't

have "the view" to help take the next step. >> i was speaking to your brucer last night and told her one of the most -- one thing people don't realize is, your average afterry dan african-american new york city family doesn't have the money to open a call center with 25 volunteers. we can't get the nypd on our side with the dogs out and the city searching. we have to pay for our our flyers, postcards, laminations, our own ink. we spend hours online on facebook and twitter building websites. >> on foot. >> let's not talk about on foot. i have to credit several mta workers. when we ran out of money, they were the runs that opened a gate and said go through. they knew we were going to hang posters every night. >> so you have mta workers who were basically helping in the smallest way to try to subsidize your search for your daughter. >> we just couldn't afford it anymore. i remember sitting at home looking at my husband with tears in my eyes and said, baby, we

can't afford to look anymore. he said, we can't afford not to. what if she's out there and she's found dead tomorrow. we pushed through. those closest to me, i'm a spoken word artist, and i used my spoken word in the streets of new york city to raise money for posters. because my family did what they could do. everyone did what they could do. >> this is, in part, the power of your celebrity, now you can help to provide that voice. >> i think that's exactly what it is. my face is that face that's saying, here, it's time for us to call you to action. it's time for us to be proactive. i think that's exactly what the idea is. and i would like to also add to what janelle was saying, because i've met some of the families of missing people. eyana paterson, thelma and derek butler, their daughter has been missing. iyana's daughter has been gone

for 10 years. but what the folks have done is they have made -- they have taken a bad situation and they have made themselves heroes for me. they are doing things in their community to keep the word out. they are consistently connecting with local law enforcement. iyana paterson and her family started a forget me day. forget me not day. and that was in her town, so that each year, little alexis paterson is thought of, but it is also a larger event because it helps people who are going through the same thing that iyana paterson is dealing with. >> and there are so many more than we have any clear awareness of. >> one thing i would like to add is through all of this, five months, two weeks and three days, when we came home with her from the precinct, i spent the five months, two weeks and three days in front of the same computer, making phone calls, seconding e-mails, phone calls,

faxes and things, and i sat in the chair and said, my gosh, he's home, now what? our life is totally different. young professionals just starting out, over again, we just went back to school. my husband is graduating. i was at internship and our kid goes missing. we tap ourselves completely and the kid is home. and there's no after care. >> i was going to say, undoubtedly, the family needs support, medically, psychologically, it is beautiful but it is not over. >> we have gotten her into counseling. she just really wants to be normal again. she didn't know all this was going on while she was missing, so she just wants to go back to school and get back to volunteer work and look for a part-time job, things of that nature. but starting over again, we exhausted ourselves physically, mentally, spiritually, financially, in every way, you just can't imagine what it is like to have a missing child. >> i just want you to know, everyone who is watching right now is thrilled with the work

that you are doing, is feeling both the thrill and the pain, and i appreciate so much you taking the time to come on. >> can i add one more thing, i would like to ask anybody out there watching, if you see a poster of a missing child, call the number. ask the family if they need posters, if they need flyers, if they need postcards, do they need t-shirts, do they want help organizing a rally? ask the family, do they need donations? sometimes families may need car fare or community awareness rallies. i mean, there's so much you can do to help a family by just picking up the phone and asking them. >> thank you for that call to action and thank you for all your work. we are going to also make a call to action. if you want more info on how to provide tips to authorities and what to do if your loved one goes missing, visit our blog, mhpshow.com. up next, why are we going to spend the next part of the show talking about hip-hop? because politicians have done so for decades, and now it is my

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see what a raymond james advisor can do for you. ♪ yes, in just a few minutes we are going to talk about the notorious b.i.g. why would a political show discuss a slain rap artist and why should you care? because hip-hop has been politicized for years. from bill clinton in 1992 to a certain conservative radio talk show host today pointing to hip-hop like it is to blame for his own verbal indiscretions. yesterday marked the anniversary of biggie's death, but what better way to start a conversation on biggie than to go to brooklyn? and this week we visited a new exhibit called question bridge black males and the brooklyn museum where 150 black men tell

their very real stories. take a look. >> it is funny because i wasn't sure it would work. my name is biatay raw smith. i'm one of the artist on question bridge black males. what we wanted to do was create a situation where we allowed a variety of black men to speak their truth honestly, openly and candidly. it is black men in conversation with each other. black male identity in america has always been misunderstood, it is ever changing and is more dynamic than any of us, including me as a black male can comprehend. >> what is common to all of us who makes us who we are? >> this is the easiest question in the world to answer. >> the thing we have in common is we are male and we are black. >> one of the purposes of question bridge is to allow black males the same space to discuss who they are but allow viewer who is don't have the opportunity to talk to black

males to feel in a safe space to be the fly on the wall and to be a privileged observer to this conversation. >> it made me feel like i was at a modern roundtable with different backgrounds and different settings and different black men from different walks of life. it gave me a better perspective of how our men feel in this day and age. >> seeing how it is kind of how we live our lives and identify ourselves with the people around us. >> the reaction and the very educated responses each speaker gave almost wanted me to speak up and say, i have something i want to say as well. i have an opinion i would love to include. >> a chance to really hear people open up and speak from the human point about their lives and experiences is the thing that's most come peopling. it is really important social moments of bringing people together. >> listening to the emotion behind the words to me is what

struck me most. what is it that's central to a person's identity? is it about race or is it in relation to some other aspect of how they identify? >> even though black males are prominent in mainstream media images, they are not in control of the imagery that's used to define them and they are not speaking on their own terms. none of us are what we appear to be in this variety of depth to all of our insights. some people might think, well, this is kind of cool, it's an exhibit about black male identity, that doesn't really have anything to do with me, but the reality is it does have something to do with you. this is a microcome of a larger approach to a larger identity. i would hope people who come into the exhibit come away with knowing that you cannot say black males are one thing. >> and that's exactly the point. black men are not just one thing, they will complex, feeling, thinking beings who

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well beyond the lyrics. >> do you remember where you were that weekend, march 9, 1997? we have the parents of your production company and we have the viewing audience that may not know what the rap music is or who biggie is, but stick with us because i want to convince you that this anniversary is much bigger than you think. americans have a ten den zi tendency to fall into moral panics and hip-hop is a moral panic generator. every now and then policymakers blame rap music for a whole host of ills blaming hip-hop and while many want to talk about school failure and violent crime and drug arrests on hip-hop culture, the staff actually showed that white suburban youth are hip-hop's main audience. so dead the memorable and

undoubtedly raw lyrics of biggie do harm, good or just do music? here with me is joan morgan, the author of "when chicken heads come home to roost." also, elan james white is back with us, and also from the brooklyn and columbia university professor and a fellow at the roosevelt institute, thank you, dorian, for being here. okay. i don't know if the 15th anniversary of biggie's murder is news to anyone else, but it felt like in this week when that conservative talk show host was being roundly criticized for his sexist comment that it was worth talking about the ways in which cultural discourse and moral panics in the culture are

brought about by hip-hop. joan, because we are very close to the same age, we are both self-identified, kind of progressive feminists, and yet hip-hop is the soundtrack of our youth. how do we reconcile what it means to have been participants in and continue to be participants in the thing that is hip-hop and the realities of the politics which are often quite different than that music? >> i think for me what was really critical in hip-hop in my development as a feminist is it gave me a point of entry that wasn't easy. i always say that hip-hop made me a better feminist because i couldn't rely on very simple victim oppression models. i had to acknowledge the place where i liked things that weren't necessarily good for me or feminist or p.c., but i think that feminists need a space where we can explore that complexity and in some cases that complicity. and big was an incredible

example and point of entry for me to develop my own feminism, the hip-hop feminism. he had problematic lyrics but i also loved him. to this day i almost miss the car coming over here because i had the music turned up so loud. >> he's been on my playlist. i have been doing nothing but listening to biggie the last three days. i allow myself to fully hear the lyrics, i think, oh, but there's something sonic about him that's extraordinary. >> i try to express to people what b.i.g. did or how his music works. i'm someone that would assume people don't think i'm going to go shoot you right now, okay? if you don't believe that, then -- >> the hat makes you -- >> it's the blazer, i know. but the fact is, that's what i came up on. i came up on the gangster wrap that everyone talks about that

destroys the black youth. i'm like, biggie smalls taught me was a metaphor was. fall back, because for me that made me fall in love with words. if you stop for a moment, step away from biggie smalls and what you think about rap. think about the stories he told. he told stories to the point where you can talk about the violence, but i was watching a movie, when i watched "rambo" i didn't think, i have to go to the forest to start killing people. i listen to biggie smalls and think it was a beautiful story. i can't not quote who is paging me at 5:46 in the morning, crack of dawn, now i'moning. now i'm yawning. >> it is interesting, when i was listening to, god help me, the ten crack commandments i was listening to it and and thought, this is a blues song.

because he says at one point, basically, even your mother would sell you out under the right circumstances. even your mother would wait in the bushes prepared to kill you, right? there's a blue anesthetic to you can't trust anybody, you're trying to come up -- life is difficult, is there still something of value in the context of biggie, even as we acknowledge the problematic aspect? >> i think so. what's interesting about biggie and the realm of hip-hop era from the early '90s is for a lot of us, we became politicized through the music. even if the music was not explicit political, your reference to blues music, it spoke to an experience that either we had or we knew people have lived that kind of life. and there are implications, political implications. but there's one interesting thing from the university of chicago black youth project study, and that's out of all other racial ethnic groups,

black youth want to hear more political references in hip-hop music, which i find fascinating that we consume it. i'm not youth anymore, but if you consume hip-hop, a little less than white youth, but they want to hear more politics. i think we interpret lyrics in a different way than the rest of america. >> we are listening to the lyrics. when people talk about hip-hop, they think of the blaring bass or something like that, but the idea of sitting down and actually sitting down with the words of these things, that's what brings the emotion and passion. >> when you talk about that, i want to show you the words. we found the words of biggie's that we can play. >> that's amazing. >> i want to show just his stanza from "mo money mo problems." he's in here talking about the dea and federal agents and also doing this sort of general emcee

brovada thing. if you were at a party, this always happens. as he says, wave them side to side, he says, i'll give you, girl, the eye. then you have the guys in the party waving it and meanwhile, i'm actually taking your girl from you. so there's all this double play that does feel like it's part of an african-american oral cultural tradition, but also was tied in that segment to dea and federal officials. so even this musical had political aspects. >> i think that elon made a point that we listen to hip-hop and lyrics, but we live the lyrics. for me, it has never been an issue as, you know, i'm not from brooklyn. i'm a bronx girl. but i lived in brooklyn for 13 years and lived in brooklyn while biggie was biggie and when

he was murdered and he carried the dreams of the community. so to be able to sort of listen to this from a distance and want to dismiss him because of lyrics is very different than, you know, the neighborhood drug dealer could also be the guy who helps you with your grocers. it is also the guy you pass every morning and have conversations with. you learn how to have a certain kind of peace and reconcile the relationships within your own neighborhood and your own living. and so i think that b.i.g. means a different thing to people listening to the lyrics regardless of where you are from and living them at the same time. >> when we come back, we'll have a lot more. none of you are going anywhere. we have more biggie and more on the world of hip-hop and the way in which it has changed when we return. [ male announcer ] this is lawn ranger -- eden prairie, minnesota. in here, the landscaping business grows with snow. to keep big winter jobs on track, at&t provided a mobile solution that lets everyone from field workers to accounting,

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about hip-hop like black men, like it is just one thing stuck in one moment. but when naa's ice cube stars in family movies and snoop dogg is more like a cuddly puppy these days, the culture responds as artists who make it change. biggie was murdered just before his softmore album dropped, so we don't know who biggie could have been or who he might have become. his talent continues to shape the dynamic and politically relevant industry. we are back with critic joan morgan and elon james and dorian warren. we are talking about the life and death of no or the yourself b.i.g. we went to the brooklyn museum and talked to people questioning the bridge. black men were presenting themselves in the multiple ways. i was thinking of versions of hip-hop i came up on and too short and public enemy, and it felt like there were multiple

ways black men could be within hip-hop, then it felt like the space narrowed. do you think that's right when the context of authentic hip-hop narrowing? >> you see it more with women rappers. you see the reduction in terms of -- you know, the commercialism of it is really relevant. there becomes a direct correlation between the shrinking number of record labels and how many images that they think are sure fire-sellers, and in some ways they are not wrong because we are not the main consumers of hip-hop. so you have to ask who you is buying, who is consuming and what are they interested in when consuming the images. >> this is your point, dorian, black kids want more politics in their rap. >> when you back to the '90s, it made me think of other hip-hop artists like will smith. >> right, he started in hip-hop. >> right. kind of a nerdy kid almost,

right? but today we fast-forward and we have the strange beef between drake and common around masculinity. whereas drake is presenting a very different kind of mascul e masculinity to the world. but then you have common from my hometown of chicago who started off as being the alternative to west coast rap and east coast rap. now he has to prove his manhood. it is bizarre this manufactured beef, but it constricts the attack on drake constricts, i don't like drake, but nonetheless the attack constricts the way in which black boys and men feel they can present themselves. >> i'm not a fan of drake. in my day they didn't have beef but tofu, you know what they had, but the idea here, when you're talking about the narrowing of what's allowed to come through, it's actually speaking to a much bigger picture within media. about what's accepted from black

at the moment. what is the negro moment? you have to be in a certain way and that gets pushed. unless you hut the three places that they believe they understand how to label a black person, it is like, you are too complex, how are we going to put that on a box? i can't put that in 140. >> i can't think of anybody harder to put in a box than president to into obama, to show his political, cultural knowledge during the 2008 campaign, i want to look at this moment that i think is hip-hop iconic. >> when you're running for the presidency, then you've got to expect it and you just got to kind of let it, you know, you know. that's what you got to do. >> that's why he's scary.

because people saw that and were like, what is that movement he's doing with the thing and all the black people were like, whoo! >> you go from hugging your harvard professor, you can't make sense of it. >> it is not black people who immediately knew what that was, it was every young person that knew what that was. i want to show you one more political moment because this blew my mind. i don't know if you caught this on twitter, but the florida state legislature had a debate about jay-z's 99 problems. they were having a debate about an amendment and an african-american democrat quoted jay-z inaccurate, you have to watch the correction. it is a little long, but it is so worth watching. >> to go even further, when you think about a wise businessman, he even said, he knows his

rights, and jay-z said it best, and i'm going to quote for you, i know my rights, so you're going to need a warrant for that. and he even went further to say, aren't you sharp as a tack? you a lawyer or something? so members, when you're looking at this, support this. if you support jay-z, support this amendment. >> i have to agree with the correction, in that song it was the officer who said, aren't you as sharp or a tack or something, you should try for a lawyer or something, so i got you on that. if you are going to invoke jay-z, you must get the lyrics correct. >> that's awesome. >> hello. this is the best thing that happened in my day yesterday. >> i'm prepared to leave. >> there's nothing left to say. when off florida republican white male legislature accurately quoting back "99

problems" from jay-z -- let me say, we don't have a lot of time left, but if notorius b.i.g. would be alive, would jay-z still be important? would we have -- would it have taken up all the oxygen in the room? >> if b.i.g. was alive, it would change all the dynamic. when we talk about the businessman jay-z was, he was always a businessman win b.i.g. was alive, but the space he was allowed to jump into once b.i.g. was out of the picture changed the entire game. when you talk about the type of person he was, he was 24. do you remember what you were when you were 24? i was an idiot. flat out, i was all sorts of -- okay, we said dumb things at 24. fast forward 10 years, all of a sudden i calmed down and understand certain situations, the reality, the bigger picture. if nothing else, like at ice

cube! we allow someone to grow and live, all of a sudden they are making family movies and it changes the entire environment that they -- >> and you have a whole new space. >> indeed. >> coming up, teaching a woman to fish, but first, in but first in the strangest transition ever from biggie smalls to "weekends with alex witt." i have to tell you. i have something to pick up on that. i can't believe it's been 15 years because i covered his funeral with fox 5 here in new york, and i remember he was laying in repose on frank's funeral home on madison avenue and there was this whole parade with the cars and the -- it was really -- it was quite something. i remember that. so i was on the scene then as i am now for you, melissa. here we go with a little tease, everyone. president obama rolls out a new message at a fund-raiser and it could be a new theme he strikes. we'll hear it in a few minutes. we'll take you to kansas, the geographic center of the u.s. and it happens to be the center

of the gop. a caucus is under way right now. security camera images of a tornado from recent storms and it is remarkable, to say the least. we'll bring it to you in our 12:00 to 2:00 hours and "the hunger games" is stirring a new buzz. it's not in theaters yet, but we'll tell you why it's blowing up in media sites. back to you. >> thanks. up next, the president to gop pipeline. that after the break. today is gonna be an important day for us. you ready? we wanna be our brother's keeper. what's number two we wanna do? bring it up to 90 decatherms. how bout ya, joe? let's go ahead and bring it online. attention on site, attention on site. now starting unit nine. some of the world's cleanest gas turbines are now powering some of america's biggest cities. siemens. answers.

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11 years ago one woman walked out of prison after three and a half years for nonviolent crime. she never looked back. it sounds easy enough until you consider that more than half of women who served a prison sentence are re-arrested and 30% return to prison within three years of their release. back then, that woman couldn't have known that as of 2010 more than 112,000 women would be

incarcerated and by 2012 women's prison population growth would outpace that than the growth of men. what she did know was that redemption and transformation are possible. she knew that a prison sentence could be a beginning and not an end and so it was in 2001 she found her new start when she walked in the doors of new york's college and community fellowship, a program whose mission is to help formerly incarcerated women change their lives through higher education. in 2006 that woman, reverend vivian nixon who was once a client became the executive director of the college and community fellowship and she has spent the last decade giving other women brand new beginnings of their own. ccf started with six women who all earned undergraduate degrees by the end of the program's first year in 2001 and by 2005 all six had gone on to earn post-graduate degrees. today under reverend nixon's tenure the women who completed

the program have earned 35 associate degrees, 105 bachelors degrees, 50 masters degrees and one ph.d. ccf supports women through the rigors of academic life and helps them to balance their studies with family and work and probation, and parole obligations. they're committed to changing hearts and minds by teaching women self-worth and equipping them with long-term success with guidance toward self-sufficiency and economic security. over the last decade, ccf's graduates have been literally beating the odds. they've defied the new york state's department of corrections 30% recidivism rate with fewer than 2% of the women who participated in the program returning to prin. through her work with formerly incarcerated women, ref rebd is the living embodiment of the proverb, teach her to fish and she'll eat for a life time. about her work she told us, quote, i'm motivated to do this work because this has given me a

new vision and a new dream and i want all of the women we work with at ccf to have bold, audacious dreams for themselves and their children to leave the stigma and take hold of their dreams. reverend vivian nixon is our foot soldier of the week. thanks to e lon, james white for sticking around and talking hip-hop with me. i'll see you tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. eastern. margaret cho will be joining me at the table. coming up "weekends with alex witt." thanks, guys. i love that my daughter's part fish.

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