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gotcha. that's powerful. verizon. this morning, my question -- why is mayor michael bloomberg trying to shame single mothers? and the connection of guns, race and mental health, and how i almost ended up with a career as a funeral director. and right now people are talking about "leaning in" so go ahead, "lean in." ♪ let the river run ♪ let all of the dreamers ♪ wake the neighbors good morning. i'm melissa harris-perry. it is primetime saturday in 1974, and the country is tuned into cbs, and the network is airing the popular sit-crom

about a single white woman in her 30s making her way in the world of work. we had been introduced to heroine mary richards when these opening credits rolled for the first time. ♪ you're going to make it after all ♪ >> and with that hat toss, we became equated with mary as played by mary tyler moore on the e upon mouse show of a spunky show that who was the smartest nern the office, and in the seven years she son air, she con fronts issues like equal play and sexual liberation, and a host of other personal, and ethical and political struggles. also in 1974 on a friday night, cbs debuts a different kind of show whose opening credits rolled over a very different kind of song. ♪ good times ♪ ain't it time to meet the

payment ♪ ♪ ain't it time to be afraid ♪ in a time that you are out from under ♪ ♪ not getting hassled ♪ not getting hustled >> extra points if you know the words. you remember "good times" and the evans and the struggling black family struggling in the black project. the evans' household may have been headed by james, but the heart and soul is florida evans who is the fierce woman trying to keep her family afloat in the post civil rights era which meant little for the struggles she faces. florida does not work outside of the home, but damn if she is not always working hard inside of her home. as a '70s baby, these are the two models of women i was raised on. i mean, i never missed a single episode of these shows or honestly of the reruns and the spunky white woman leaning into the career and meeting gendered battles of sexism every way and

the married black matriarch who leans into her family with every spiritual and financial and emotional resource she has to make it work. these fictional women are on my mind right now as i watch the heated discussions, primarily among women over this book. "lean in," women, work and the will to lead. it does not go on sale until tuesday, but the book and the author facebook coo cheryl sandberg are everywhere. this is sandberg on the cover of this week's "time" magazine, and she h be sitting down with 60 minutes in an interview to promote the book. next month, it will be featured in "cosmopolitan" magazine, and reviewed this weekend by "the new york times", and the most rekre recent of the most several mentions of sandberg's book that has received in the paper and a record, and the first was a february story that sparked the back lash and the back lash to the backlash to the, you know,

the backlash as the heart of the debate is the central idea of sandberg's book that among the real deeply entrenched barriers to women's success in the workplace, there is another impediment standing in their progress, women, themselves. sandberg's advice, don't leave before you leave is to urge women away from making choices that can derail or diminish the career pros spekts before they get off of the ground. in the book, she writes, we hold ourselves back in ways of big and small and by lacking self-confidence and not raising our hands when we are pulling back and when we should be le leaning in. we ternlize the negative messages and lower our expectations of what we can achie achieve. that is not bad as far as advice goes, but maybe not so good either according to the critics who are considering the source, because this self-help book for the average working woman comes from a professional woman who is anything but average. sandberg is one of "fortune"

magazine's most 50 powerful women in business and she holds the reins on a $66 billion tech company and millionaire many times over. she is privileged and elite and out of touch say the voices of one side of the debate, but what about the women who have been robbed of the structural inequalities to even make choices about the career, but others see values in the sandberg's decisions. and that brings me back to mary in florida, because 24 is not a question of either/or, but both/and, and you see that mary tyler moore and florida evans are not at opposition of each other at the polar ends of this debate, but close enough to one another to share important common ground and opening up a space for women to lean into their lives makes it understand for women to understand how to intersect to make it mutually beneficial for all women, but it equally is recognizing the challenges for mary and nearly

impossible for florida like wage disparities and the child care and the health care and harassment and discrimination, and women will only be able to lean so far. at a table, women who know what they are talking about. katrina van der hubl, and valerie core is a filmmaker, and fellow at auburn cemetery, and joy reid, editor of grio.com, and also the ceo of cinnabon who operating franchises in 22 count countries. all right. what do we make of the book and the debate it has sparked. >> well, for women, it is also difficult, because as you said when a wealthy woman who comes from a certain privileged class writes a book sort of telling other women how to run their careers, it is easy to roll your eyes and say it does not apply to me, especially if you are a person out in the world not able

to make decisions and it was yahoo sclm who made built the day care next to her office and telling other women they cannot work from their home. it does come across as looking truncated. i think that a lot of what s sheryl sandberg is saying is true, because we self-sabotage and some say that the roommate in your head this is negative and telling you, you can't do that or you should not speak up, or you are going to come across as crazy. >> this is interesting, valerie, and part of why i wanted you at the table because i have been talking to my college students and young women finishing up school or going into their law school experiences, and they are hearing something here that is meaningful to them in part, because, you know, she talks about this sense that you have to start planning for, you know, for your family work-balance before you pr dating anyone seriously. does this resonate for you? >> absolutely. i just returned from my

honeymoon, and so -- >> here we are at work. >> and here i am, and this whole debate is intersecting in a raw way with the questions that i am struggling with everyday, how to start a family and continue building a career. it is on the minds and constant topic of conversation for anyone in their 30s, and now their 20s. and what we are seeing is that the conversation fails to are recognize the kinds of specific struggles that we are noticing in our lives, that we believe that women's liberation won't be possible in america until it is possible for every single woman to live the good life. unfortunately, in the process of leaning in, who are are women in power leaning on? nannies, housekeepers and d domestic workers and care givers and millions of women with less privileges and immigrant women and women who are are struggling and so rather than taking this

as the banner for women's advancement and we ought to think of it as a way to lift up all women across the board. >> well, i am struck how the immedia media has first of all unbelievable the attention, but -- >> it is amazing. >> so much of the media it seems to me has been about pitting this as a cat fight. they want women to debating other women. i think that we should be fighting injustice and not each other. >> and jody canter and moreen dowd have helped to create that. >> yes, and amplified by a media that seeks in that debate more of a cat fight than perhaps exist exists, because listen, i'm not kumbaya hold hands, but i believe in fighting injustice and not each other, and there is a serious debate to be had and the discussion of the media, think of how many women are cut out of representation. you don't hear about a woman i wrote about when the ann marie slaughter, atlantic cover story

and ann marie vasquez, a mother of three, a janitor, and cleaning buildings as jesse jackson says takes the early bus if she can't take the late bus. so in this hand, she has gotten a raw deal, and all power to a woman who bants to make feminism 101 or rosie the riveter 101, so let her have her voice. she is not marissa mayor of yahoo sc yahoo! who said, everyone must come to work. >> and it is a pleasant book and i sat and read it last night, and it is reading like a commencement address. and the thing about it though that is so surprising about the level of angst that it is giving is that i keep thinking about the steve jobs' biography that i read last year. and jobs was not a nice human being, and he was high a lot. i mean, that all seems to be

very clear in his road to succe success, and she is still in many ways, still doing her girl social saishgs and sizatio socialization, and it is let me help other people, and maybe it is set no all that complex, but it is still not steve jobs. >> yes, and one with of the challenges of addressing injustice is the level of access. one of the largest criticisms of sheryl is that she has all of the accesses in the world, and instead of criticizing that, we should build a bridge from her story and highlight the incredible women leaders who don't have the access, but still doing great things and paving the way for their daughters and creating great social movements in their communities to help to elevate other women leaders. i'm on the board of directors for this women's food service forum, and as a woman growing up in corporate america, i had a bunch of men to work with and no examples of what is possible in

my company, but there are groups and movements in society that allow young women to say what is possible, and we should not fault a book that highlights what is possible, but we should try to fill in the gap between this woman on high. >> and we are just starting, and i promise, we have a lot more on exactly this, and we are leaning in. lots of ladies at the table when we come back. with the spark cash card from capital one... boris earns unlimited rewards for his small business. can i get the smith contract, please? thank you. that's three new paper shredders. [ boris ] put 'em on my spark card. [ garth ] boris' small business earns 2% cash back on every purchase every day. great businesses deserve unlimited rewards. read back the chicken's testimony, please. "buk, buk, bukka!" [ male announcer ] get the spark business card from capital one and earn unlimited rewards. choose 2% cash back or double miles on every purchase every day. told you i'd get half. what's in your wallet? told you i'd get half. it's not what you think. it's a phoenix with 4 wheels.

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women almost never make one decision to leave the workforce. it does not happen that way. they make small little decisions is along the way that eventually lead them there. these women don't even have relationships burk already they are finding balance and balance for responsibilities that they

don't yet have, and from that moment they start quietly leaning back. >> that was facebook coosheryl sandberg giving the 2011 commencement address at barnard college. i want to show as we are talking about her book "lean in" and when she is talking about power and in particular corporate power but when you look at the women in executive positions and board seats and even elected congressional positions, you are talking about fewer than 20% of the positions held by women and when you look at women of color, abysmal numbers at less than 5%, and compensation, and although the wage gap has closed for women since 1970, it is only narrowed and not closed. we are looking at 59 cents per dollar now compared to 77%, but still not dollar for dollar, so i want to ask you about this,

cat, because when valerie said a moment ago every woman can live the good life, and so if we turn the numbers into 50-50, would that constitute success? you are a woman in corporate america, and come up through ho hooters and cinnabon, and i would say that hooters is sexist, and sin bon is not good for the health, and i don't want women to be 50% of them. >> well, i don't believe that 50% is enough. when women are involved in gender leadership teams, the financial success is there. the gender diverse leadership is proven to be successful. whether it is a sweet treat concept or any concept, women make a positive difference leading. in fact, women have the skills today that are so critical for leading effective businesses and particularly collaboration. cross functional and cross generational collaboration. and for me, i did grow up in the

hooters organization, and the only female executive on the team. >> that is amazing. >> and interestingly every boss i ever had in that company was a woman. >> interesting. >> every boss. i grew up in a single parent household and i saw a powerful woman who worked two jobs. my mom started out as flo and ended up as mary. it is the interesting transition to watch. i'm the oldest of three girls and i have been surrounded by seeing strong women. i think that companies in order to see this change, this less than 20% get to 50 and beyond, you have to get the women on the corporate boards, because the women who are moving up needed a voe kates and sponsors and individuals to provide them access and opportunity, and if the boardroom is full of men, we are never going to reach the tipping point the make this different. >> colling at this, a in ing -- like my feminism a little more structure, and all power to sheryl sandberg, but her theory

of change is trickle down feminism, because you will see more women because of women in leadership position, but i am not sure that is the case. i think that we need women in leadership and media corporate leadership and you are the first woman of color running your own political show on a network, right? and we don't have many women in media, and that might change through representation, but on the other hand, we have the examples of margaret thatcher and indira gandhi, and i think that you need more women at the table, but you need to change the table. the ongoing discussion of whether you are just entering a system as it is or whether you will bring to it structural real change. i think that is lost a little in sandberg's story, but you know, she can't represent everyone. we need the either/or and more and the global piece gets lost. in this country, our great country, we have to look out at the world, so interesting that so many of the debates were

happening on international women's day and so many other countries do better by their women on the structural front. >> and the other thing that is a bridge and it sort of gets at what katrina was saying that you gave the statistics of women in leadership positions and in politics and this is despite the fact for pep women of color, there are more women in college than men and particularly in women of color, and we outnumber men at that point and right to the point we graduate from school, we outnumber men, and what happens when the women, and particularly of color graduate from college, but women in general to the time they are climbing into the corporate structure and part of it is when women leave and exit the workforce because of having families and that is difficult, because of the expectation of women who have law degrees were tough to be hired because of the assumption they would leave and have kids, and you are a more risky hire, because you will drop out of the workforce because of kids and people are

delaying and delaying that, and what if you wanted to do that at 30 or 40, it is a problem. so what is happening between the time that we are great coming out of college and when we get to leadership? >> right. on the one hand, the initial part of the pipeline, the pool of which it is drawn is more diverse than ever at least in terms of pure gender questions, but it does not necessarily end nup leadership, but then we must ask the question of leadership of what? if in fact if these women are still leading organizations that contribute to deep wealth inequality and flow ball inequities and war -- global inequities, and maybe what we need is more fem inists in leadership and not more women. >> and i feel it is systemic, because i feel myself between two different sets of women. one as a woman of color and family of immigrants, i have seen women leaned on for generations, and my aunt works double shifts at a factory to

bring home platters of baklava at christmas and then disappeared to work until she died. so she encouraged all women to succeed. i have gone the ivy league colleges, and connected to a different set of women who are connected to powerful companies and college, and now in the 30s we are horrified that we are in for another version of sacrifice for us, and jobs that don't give us flexible hours or paternity leave or give us a track to slowdown and stay on course for long-term promotions, and we are not able to put the egalitarian values in practice. that is why the system is what we want to talk about. >> this is what i want to talk about from this break, is because are we just saying that it should be all work and

everybody work harder and harder and everybody is a cog in the wheel, but like the idea of telling wealthy white girls to work harder, because poor p black girls have been told to work harder, so i am down with that, but other tech executive who is turning heads every time she speaks. and how yahoo!'s executive figures into all of this. she and sandberg are buddies. quicken loans understood the details and guided me through every step of the process. and how yahoo!'s executive figures into all of this. she and sandberg are buddies. wherever the military sends me, i can depend on quicken loans. [ male announcer ] why do more emergency workers everywhere trust duracell...?? duralock power preserve. locks in power for up to 10 years in storage. now...guaranteed. duracell with duralock. trusted everywhere. girls have been told to work living with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis means living with pain.

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if there is more less stuff then you might want to have some more and your parents just don't let you because there's only a little bit. right. we want more, we want more. like you really like it, you want more. right. i follow you. [ male announcer ] it's not complicated. more is better. and at&t has the nation's largest 4g network. ♪ few women at the top of the tech industry means that sheryl sandberg has inevitably drawn comparisons to the other woman at the top of the tech industry making headlines, and this is her best friend yahoo's ceo marissa mayor. she issued an edikt to the people in her office, work in the office or don't work at all. it was a policy change to help

bolster the struggling company, and the message was muddled because of the messenger. after she was the first pregnant ceo, she built a nursery in her office which made her a ceo working alongside her baby, but the policy ensured that she is one of the few women at yahoo! with that luxury. and that said, i want to work alongside my baby. i mean -- >> i don't get it. >> that is not sounding -- >> isn't the point that you are supposed to go to work because the baby is crying. why would you want to bring the crying to the job. >> and there must be a child care provider as well. >> she has a nanny? >> well, first of all, if a guy had done, this he wouldn't have been nailed, but you cannot build a nursery for your own kid and tell employees, women many of them, that they cannot stay at home or have flexibility. she should bailed day-care center at yahoo! pronto and say, at the nation where i work, the

editor, we have a lot of women, and all editors and women, and when people are at home, the office, and you don't have the great spirit and the conversation and the debates, so again, it is either/or, but she did it badly. betsy reid, and she was on a o yahoo! chat yesterday, and the white house reporter who needs to pump, and the white house does not have the place yet, and the affordable care act, they will add it, but betsy doing the chat was advised by the yahoo people, let's not discuss the tell commu telecommuting issues, but focus on the pumping issue. so you have this dissent. >> well, if you want to run a corporation, good, great. have this track, and i want to talk about the structures that we can build to make it easier and i taught at princeton under a president who was a woman who had been a single -- and was,

and she is a woman, shirley tillman, and she had been a single mom coming up through the ranks of being a laboratory scientist and got it and made policies that made it easier for princeton faculty, and nobody wants to know that she made it easier for princeton faculty, and boo hoo, because the princeton faculty have it so bad. so what is the fundamental thing that we are talk about when we are are talking about corporate america, and can women change that thing so we can value life as we do profit. >> women can absolutely change that thing, and the reality is that structure dictates funct n function, and women do have to change the structure, but one woman can't do it. and women have to do it together and we have to build a bridge between those in the corporate elite group who seem to have the access in the world and the young women coming up, and we have the bookend the argument and the activity and start at global economic forums and davos and elementary schools and high schools and fundamentally change the structure of organizations,

the work schedule, time, the quality of work, not quantity of work. >> and the mentoring piece, we tend to think that women have to mentor other women, and one of sandberg's clear points is that it was larry summers and a variety of men who had access to power who helped to bring her along and it felt to me that was in part saying, men, this is your responsibility to diversify this workforce. >> and women harm themselves when they wait around for only a women or the, and i have had in my career a lot of men who have stepped forward to say, i will give you an opportunity, and the man who hired me is a man, david wilson, so you have a diversity of potential mentors, but at the same time, too, you know, we don't necessarily get the same feedback from even our attempts to supersede all of the barriers, right? you have had the women who have made the choice to pursue the careers and all people ask about is why isn't she married? and you have women who have a child, and they say, why would she sabotage her career to have

a baby? and then the case of the woman who is a bad guy of building the nursery on the side, and then to katrina's point, well, she is trying to make a choice to be flexible and at the same time legitimately so, why not fair to employee, and then i think of women in positions like my mom and your mom who have to work and they don't even have the option. this is not a conversation and anything they can ask the boss, but find a way to get the kids cared for and some day care somewhere and get to work, or they will be fired. >> and i want to keep the eyes here, and say, for most people in is not a choice, and what kind of great child care you are going to have, but on the other hand, there is something that we lose in feminism if we don't point out that even at the top gender remains a disprivilege and once you are wealthy and white, don't worry because gender is unimportant, and part of the recognition is that even at the top it matters and as much as i want to stalk about the structures, but there is something to learn about how men walk through the world, right?

with this sense of just, like this, is always in my point of sarah palin, she ran for office like a man. who care that she was not qualified and men run for office unqualify and sometimes twice when they run qualified -- >> well, just saying. >> and to answer any of the questions about how we encourage other women on a personal level or how we make structural changes we have to start with the question of what is the good life? and what does the good life consist of? right now the entire discourse is dominated by two representations of female women who are ceos and corporate executives and i'm afraid they don't capture the full measure of success and what success means to us as young women and men coming up in our 30s. just last night i was speaking with my dear friend jes a ka who is an academic about how the models of success making it to the top and juggling the family and the career and having the cradle in your office and how all of those things don't, are

not appealing to us if it means a sacrifice of our own wellness and health. what we want is a balanced and flexible life. we want to be creative and productive, and we want to make a difference in the world. we want enough money and not a lot, but enough money to live without fear, and we want to be able to take care of our friends and families and communities and we want to succeed, but not at the expense of our own wholeness. >> and some women just want to succeed. they are ambitious. >> and that might be okay, too. >> i go back to mary tyler moore and prime time feminism, and that show was important, because it did not define her by the family or the husband, but her work. >> her work. >> yes, it was a different representation of success and happiness and don't forget rhoda and phyllis, because they both had their own lives. and i think that you have to allow a diversity of measures of success, because there are sheryl sandberg's who want to be in the corporate structure and

i'm not as optimistic as you are about the ability of the women to take on the economy of the country, and there are particular movements. >> there are is on the topic of this, i am worried about this talk as important it is, distracts to us the real dangers of the women out there in the world. as certified recovery specialists at lifelock, we're dedicated to getting you back on track from identity theft. to protect you from being a victim in the first place, we have specialists for that, too. ♪ [ alarm blaring ] ♪ [ lasers zapping ] ♪ yep. we make a pretty good team. [ male announcer ] call 1-800-lifelock or go to lifelock.com today. [ male announcer ] call 1-800-lifelock [ boy ] i used to hate eating healthy stuff. but badger likes it, so i do too.

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may i ask you about being in congress? >> i loved every second of it, and i still miz it. >> what about that picture behind there? >> well, it is churchill and i'm on the board. >> the rachel maddow show installed a bar in my office. >> just one side of "weekends with alex witt" weekdays at noon.

got ya ! gotcha ! got ya. that's all you got, brother ? take that. never having to surrender the things that matter. gotcha. that's powerful. verizon. encouraging women to choose to lean into their work assumes that women have the freedom to make that movement in the first place, but taking away women's reproductive options, there are few choices at all and suddenly summoning the power to lean in means nothing when policy makers are trying to shut women out. we got a harsh reminder when the arkansas republican-led

legislature the republican majority voted to ban abortios s of 12 weeks of pregnancy. and a direct contradiction to the supreme court decision in roe v. wade. so on the one hand, we are going to build a lot of nurseries. >> they won't put any money into it. >> no. >> and if men could get pregnant, and you have heard this stuff, this stuff would not be going on in any states, but don't forget that the violence against women act, and how many months did it take to move out of this tea party-dominated house. anyw anyway, it is you are right, the barriers to equality and inclusion are really staggering in the 21st century. >> and given that we started with mary tyler p moore, and part of the reason that mary tyler moore happens on television is because of the pill and this movement of women's capacity to control the reproductive capacities and if they can't, then the rest of this is just, blah, blah talk. >> and i agree, and i have been struck by the obsession that a

set of men in this country have with controlling women's reproduction from the birth control issue to abortion. and it is an obsession that we will use the power of the staten that we the conservatives say that the state should not be in our life and we should not be able to buy 18 uzis, but to order women and tell women, because these anti-abortion laws are ordering the state to order women to give birth. >> and there is a possibility to force you to stay married and so ted gasman who is a state congressman in iowa introduced a controversial bill about eliminating no-fault divorce, and i would like to listen to ted gasman listen to why he would like to do that. >> there is a 16-year-old girl now in this whole mix now. guess what, what are the possibilities of her being more

promiscuous, and all of the possibilities of all of these other things surrounding her life than a 16-year-old with hormones raging can get herself into. >> so he wants people to not get divorced because their 16-year-old daughters might go out to have premarital sex, and yes, this is an obsession. >> and who are they having sex with? is there a fanp tom at the end of the transaction? there are boys doing some stuff. >> there are more and more men who get it and we were talking about the ugly comments on the internet sites which allow these people to speak in ways, but more and more men understand they need to be partners and pa partners in the reproductive rights and it affects the family and their lives burk you do have a movement here that wants to overturn the civilizing a advances that women fought so hard for in the 20th century, and that requires more than just leaning n but it requires leaning in, but also a movement,

and not just one woman, and the groups that sheryl sandberg is going to form, and we haven't talked about them the little bit corporate social marketing, but if you could bring women together and build a movement out of that, all power. >> and in fact, what they may have to do is to lean out a little bit from work in order to have time to do the community-based organizing and to write their senators and congressmen to stop the crazy town. i have one piece of advice for women going into the careers though, don't smile and nod unless you are happy and agree. i am just saying. katrina van der hueval a, thank you. and my let eer of the week is coming up after the break. [ record scratch ] what?! it's not bad for you. it just tastes that way. coming up after the break. er of coming up after the break. ter o coming up after the break. you can't go wrong loving it.

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as well as they could because they don't take it with food. switch to citracal maximum plus d. it's the only calcium supplement that can be taken with or without food. my doctor recommends citracal maximum. it's all about absorption. all your important legal matters in just minutes. protect your family... and launch your dreams. at legalzoom.com we put the law on your side. whatever choices women make at work and in life, those choices are easier if they delay child bearing. having a kid while you are still

a teenager can seriously curtail your options which is why it is good news that american teen pregnancy rates are at historic lows. the rate of teen pregnancy has been falling since 1991, and dropped again dramatically in the last four years. so i must ask, why in the world as the crisis is abating and fewer teens are facing the challenges of early child rearing would the city of new york spend $400,000 on a campaign to publicly shame teen parents? seeking an answer in this week's letter goes to the man who signed off on the campaign. dear mayor michael bloomberg, it is me, melissa. what happened? i mean, mr. mayor, you have an enviable track record of supporting reproductive rights and advocates for common sense and proven strategies to reduce unwanted and unplanned teen pregnancy. you mandated comprehensive appropriatis ex education in schools. you have worked to make sure that birth control is available

to young people to make wise decisions, and delay becoming parents, and the city's teen pregnancy rate has declined more than 20% in the last decade, and good job. and this week, these troubling posters began appearing all around the city, and each one featuring a well fed gorgeous, but obviously distressed toddler who is viewing questionably interpretable data and showing shame to his or her mythical parent. if you finish high school and get a job and get married before having children, you have 598% chance of not being in poverty. no, no, no. you see, mr. mayor, that is what i am talking about and you know that full well poverty has increased even as teen pregnancy as decreased and it is more closely linked to low wage work and barriers to employment than teenage pregnancy. and you know that poverty in latinos and other immigrant communities have increased

despite dramatic decrease in teen pregnancy. so that is the type of thing that could lead some people to blame young mothers for the poverty crisis than putting it where it belongs, on a system that concentrates wealth at the top and public policies that entrench it there. and there is this poster, honestly, mom, chances are, he won't stay with you, what happens to me? i am rendered speechless, but this one, i cannot -- in a society that constantly tells black girls and women through popular culture and public policy that we are easily disposable and unmarriageable and wholly unlovable, this image of a child mocking her young mother with partner abandonment is simply a step too far, and maybe you don't realize this, mr. mayor, but those of us who were raised by single moms had no interest in shaming them. we tend to praise them, and recognize their sacrifices and see all of the ways they worked

to make the world better for us even when it was hard for them. so, listen up, mr. mayor, i know you have kind of a thing about labeling as public health strategy, and you can't even so much as buy a fa lal fell from a street vendor these days without reading a label with the information aa aa aal nutrition attached, but as it goes, please keep your labels off of these young people. sincerely, melissa. is the better choice for him, he's agreed to give it up. that's today? [ male announcer ] we'll be with him all day as he goes back to taking tylenol. i was okay, but after lunch my knee started to hurt again. and now i've got to take more pills. ♪ yup. another pill stop. can i get my aleve back yet? ♪ for my pain, i want my aleve. ♪ [ male announcer ] look for the easy-open red arthritis cap.

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deal as a writer to have your first book published or any book for that matter, but it is another thing altogether to have the support of literary powerhouses like toni morrison andsolomon rushdi, and that is

"ghana must go" and it is beautifully crafted, because it tells the story of a man's death and abandoned his family 16 years earlier and how that loss serves as the healing process, and equally important is the focus on the immigrant presence and the struggles that immigrants go through and how we as a society can think about the benefits and the contributions and the realities, and the humanity of those who we label as immigrants. so i am so happy to welcome the author of "ghana must go." it is lovely to have you here. >> my pleasure. >> i want to start by asking you about the movement to writing, becoming a writer. >> sure. >> we have been talking a little bit about the idea of women making choices, and i was reading this lovely interview with you in "elle" where you talk about making a choice between the boy and the book. all right. you ultimately decide on the book. how do you choose this path for

yourself? >> i think that what was happening for me in that moment, and i imagine that it may happen for many women is that i had fallen absolutely in love with absolutely the wrong person. the good news is that i was already absolutely in love with writing, so it was at a time when i had written the first part of "ghana must go" and tasked to write the second and the third, and i was experiencing a writer's block for many reasons, and fear being amongst them, but i was trying to be something that i wasn't was literally preventing me from being what i was. in order the write authentically, you have to be authentic, and so you have to look at yourself in the mirror in the morning and know you are true. so when i woke up in the morning and looked at myself, i realized it was not me, and so when i changed myself and got back the

myself, i was able to finish the book. >> and i loved every moment i stayed with it, and it is courageous, because it is poetic even as it is fictional and it feels so real. there is a sense of embodying the characters. you write men and women and younger people and older people, and tell me about the process of embodying? >> sure. it is a bit of a magic act in a way what a writer does i think. sometimes i read passages that i have written and i literally ask myself, where on earth did that come from? i am neither a mother nor a wife nor old man nor dead, so how can you tell these stories. >> right. >> and you are experiencing the humanity of others, and they know. i am a human being, so i am not a mother, but i have loved. i am not a father, but i have wanted. i am not dead, but i have

feared. i think of my experience as a human being as equipping me to receive truths about other experiences, and i just do the best i can to render that truth and to do so beautifully. >> i want you to share a passage with nerdland, with our audience about the specific experience of the african immigrant experience within the context of the black experience, but much more importantly the border crossing reality of what it means to be both human and immigrant, and share this passage that i love. >> absolutely. at the point, the character is on his last legs. yes, we are one page from his death, and he says this. he says, to have dared to become, to escape would have sufficed to be free if one wants swelling strings, to be beyond being a citizen, and beyond

being poor. it was all he was after in the end, a human story, a way to be kweku beyond being poor. to have them in the village to have spat them up and be nameless villages, cogs, to have fled thus unhooked on the small sssai for the vastness and the smallness of life free of want, the petty triumphs, and the state, grinding work, civil war, yes this would have been quite enough kweku things. born in dust, dead. >> thank you so much. and coming up, how i almost worked as a funeral director. there is more nerdland at the top of the hour. i really loved this.

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welcome back. i'm melissa harris-perry. it has been 85 days since the sandy hook elementary school shooting that left 20 children and 6 adults fatally wounded. 85 days since that tragedy spark ed a national dialogue about gun control n. that time, a great deal has happened to keep the momentum going for change. this week was no different. on wednesday, former congresswoman gabby giffords returned to the scene of the shooting that left her severely impair and killed six people two years ago and still in recovery and the only difference is that she was only able to offer a few words this week to ask for unceasing effort to keep gun control in reform, and not to be outdone, the nra is ramping up efforts, and the lobby has seen fantastic earnings in the past quarter. in the last quarter, smith and

wesson reported quarterly earnings of three times a year ago and sales of $136 million. fellow gunmaker strum ruger and company had a stellar quarter with sales of $142 million. on friday a new market of potential gun marketers opened up to them, why? because the governor of south dakota signed into law a bill making the state the first in the nation to specifically allow teachers to kcarry firearms in classrooms. but those fighting for gun control are keeping the pressure on. today a team of 26 cyclists departed from sandy hook, connecticut, on a journey to take them 400 miles to washington, d.c. to honor the lives who were lost in the massacre. and also a new poll of mayors against gun violence shows that the background check legislation has their support. of the district congressional districts polled, showed

background checks for all, all, all gun sales. yet the will of the people is not getting through to those on capitol hill, and while there are several bills in the ju d h judiciary committee, only one has made it to be go through committee. only one republican signed on that one. and despite the high partisan hopes to expand the background checks for all gun buyers, it stalled this week signalling that comprehensive gun control has a tough road ahead. with me is the mayor of bridgeport, connecticut, bill finch and he is a member of mayors against gun violence and msnbc contributor and managing editor of thegrio.com joy-ann reid, and also professor of psychology at vanderbilt and author of "psychosis" and valerie kaur, a filmmaker, and fellow at seminary. and is it possible to get meaningful legislation on gun control in the next year?

>> i really do think it is. mayors have been working very hard on this issue for a long time. my city, unfortunately, very, very close to new town. my police chief lives in newtown, and one of our teachers lost a 6-year-old son, the same age as my son, and it deeply impacted our local community, but i have seen the debate has changed. mayors who are more tepid, because of more conservative areas, but basically, everybody is throwing the caution to the wind and saying that the people are here and with us, and the wind is at our backs. we have 89% in your mayors against the illegal guns poll, and 81% against the assault weapons, so we are have to tighten the gun show loophole and 6.6 million guns per year are getting into people's hands without any background check at all. that means people who are stalker stalkers, terrorists, domestic violence, and the like. it is a lot that has been talked about in mental health, and it is an important part of it, but

the most important thing is to reduce the supply of guns out there, and the mayors are trying to do that. >> when you say that, reduce the supply of guns out there, joy, that means that folks who are making money, and making these guns will have fewer profits, and that is really a sticking point, right? it is not the 89% of people who say get the background checks burk it is these folks who make this saying if you want fewer of these, that is fewer dollars in my pocket. >> and the gun industry understands the market is going and they are not selling more shotguns or pistols, but they are selling more semi automake it -- semiautomatics. >> is that because the deer are faster? >> yes, and severely aggressive. >> and how many hunters shoot more than two bullets anyway? >> well, it is not the hunters buying the guns, but it is the survivalist, and the people running out into the woods and

the gaming and then we did a forum and the three of us together, john nan and the mayor and i, and i talked about a guy i met in mississippi a conservative republican and we had a great long conversation and he said, look, i didn't have guns and i was not interested of them, but when we heard that the president was doing gun control, i started to go out there to buy them. >> because they will be valuable. >> so you have people collecting them, too, and gun industry understands they have to support the industry where their bread is butter and that is semiautomatics. >> and you have to love that, this is going to be rare, let me get some. >> and it is a product that has no liability, and you can dump them willy-nilly and you have no liability when they start to kill people. >> and even though you don't have ill intention, it is the second and the third owner. >> valerie, we have talked about newtown as the moment sort of where the death of children becomes so appalling that we are unwilling to sit still any longer. before that at the oak creek

shooting in the sikh temple, and what is happening in that community that you spent time with them in that community? >> yes, i was in oak creek, and the moment our plane landed is when the shooting had happened in my own backyard, and so i was traveling from the site of one mass shooting to another, and what it has been producing in the sikh community and every community that has faced gun e violence is the realization that it is not one community's struggle anymore. for the first time in recent history, we have a critical mass of people across faiths, across race, and across regions and across any and all demographics who are coming together to call for an end to gun violence. this is something new beyond the noise that a movement has emerged, and it is an extraordinary moment for action.

a 18-year-old young man who lost his mother in that mass killing, he goes every week to sit in the spot where his mother was killed and in the spot that the fbi wrapped her body to be close to her. this heart-broken young man and shy young man working with the coalition had the courage the go to the halls of congress and he became the first sikh american in history to go to the u.s. senate to testify not for the stopping of violence against sikh people, but all people. it was filled with latino, jewi jewish, christian, all communities, and while the gun lobby is powerful and has a lot of money, it is no match for the energy in that room. >> and now i am looking at the quinnipiac poll that tells me that there is enormous support for background checks and 88% of

registered voters and 88% of gun owners themselves and 83% of conservatives say we want background checks, but at the same time, i'm looking at gun sales and gun sales since newtown, 7 million. so on the one hand, we want to restrict it, and is this because we all see ourselves as possibly this child in this community, but we also think that somehow we have to be armed against the shooter? >> well, we had a tremendous panel at nyu who talked about this, and we talked about the anxiety that surround iings thi issue, and discourse of othering, and i support background checks as a idea, but i also need to protect myself gai against somebody else. joy ann and i also knew that we had known dennis and people who sta

started to buy pistols against -- >> dennyss like the people who work on teeth? >> yes. and setting up to protect themselves against people. when we looked at this on a cultural level even though people support this idea in theory, there are historical stereotypes and certainly we saw the othering of the mentally ill after newtown and remember that the nra press conference where wayne lapierre got up and it was coded with the delusional crazy people, and stigma of mental ill jumped up even though as we have seen in the tag line that far more people are going to be shot, and they should be arming themselves against sane people. >> yes, and right. there is an nra moment where they are going on interesting complex ideas. i want to look at this nra advertise mement with the new spokesman and african-american named kalid nuar. >> they want to protect

themselves with the government who held us down with water and attacked us with dogs and would not allow us to eat at their restaurants and could not own guns when fools with sheets on their head were riding across our lawns and murdering us. >> so we need guns to protect us from the klan? i mean, don't get me wrong, because there's a historical argument there, but it also feels like -- >> not in bridgeport, connecticut. or newtown. >> and joy-ann, helped me put a piece on the grio.com about this debate and the point i was making on the editorial is that this is a piece that is on the nra website, and you put an angry black man with a gun on the website, and there are not a lot of african-americans logging on with regularity and taps into white guys who are then prompted the go get guns. >> and if that is the person for

whom they are for, and that will prompt me to -- we are going to stay on this i promise right here. there is so much more. and i want to come back to continue on the question of the hitting home, with we have a congressman joining us as soon as we come back. tylenol works by blocking pain signals to your brain. bayer advanced aspirin blocks pain at the site. try the power of bayer advanced aspirin. hi victor! mom? i know you got to go in a minute but this is a real quick meal,

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despite momentum flagging on gun control in congress, a bipartisan group of represents may have found one bill they can all get behind. last month the drug trafficking prevention act of 2013 was introduced by the house judiciary committee and the bill seeks to make drug trafficking a federal crime with the intent to stop straw-buyers who purchase the guns and give them to felon s. one of the bill's cosponsors elijah cummings of maryland suffered a personal tragedy two years ago when his 20-year-old

nephew christopher cummings was gunned down in a random shooting at his college apartment near old dominion university in virginia. the congressman says that this painful loss helped to inspire his strong support for gun control measures, and he joins us from baltimore. thank you for being here, congressman. >> good to be with you. >> i want to tap into this, because it does feel to me like the personal piece of this is part of the intensity, so tell me how this personal loss impacted your position on guns. >> well, first of all, i have been a strong advocate of trying to make sure that the guns do not get into the hands of the wrong people, but when my nephew was killed at 5:00 in the morning and somebody busted into his apartment, and he was an honor student at old dominion, and a junior, paid his own tuition, and then they tried to rob him and killed him, shot him to death, and then until a few

days later to see his blood and my blood by the way splattered on the walls and then to see tissue from his body on the walls and on the floor, a young man who had just a few days earlier been talking to me, and looking forward to going on to law school, it leaves a pain. as i listen to the panel, a lot of the things, melissa, a lot of people don't understand what a force this is. there are a lot of people who have suffered a family member being killed. or injured by somebody using firearms, and what happens, and although i have been to funerals, i live in the inner city of baltimore and i have sint, it is nothing like going through it. when you go through it, there is something that what happens is the pain turns into a passion,

and you -- and then you want to carry out your purpose. that purpose is to make sure it never happens to anybody again, and so with the guests when they were talking about this coalition that is now building, sadly, the coalition is building everyday, because more and more people are going through this. >> right, right. >> and i can tell you that in the end the nra is going to be no match for these folk, because they will address this issue until they die with a passion. >> so, i think that this point is so key. i want to come out to you, valerie, because the congressman is suggesting just what you suggested that there is something about the personal raw experience of loss that changes people as advocates. >> yes, whether it is children on a connecticut morning in a school or a sikh worshippers on a sunday morning or aft african-americans on a street coroner chicago, it is touching every single one of us in a deeply and personal and painful way. just now, we are finding a way to channel the energy into organizing. this week, newtown clergy sent a letter to work with pico which is a moral mandate on ban of

assault weapons and asking for enforceable background checks and end to gun trafficking which we saw made some traffic, and thousands of people will have going to ground swell.com to sign that let e and there are everyday people who have opportunities to make change on this issue and meetings this sunday in their places of worship as well. >> and this still requires the work of policy makers so there are three senator, mark warner of virginia where your nephew was killed and bob casey of pennsylvania and all of the s senators and the democrats, and there is some reason to believe they are more highly influenced by the nra than losses of their own constituents. >> well, i cannot say who influences them, but i can tell you that the nra has a very powerful image. that image has been that if you

do anything that even touches guns in any way, they are going to come after you. in other words, they are going make sure that they try to find somebody possibly to run against you. they are going to make sure that, that person is supplied with the money they need. maybe they will put out ads against you. that has been the history of the nra. i will tell you when i watched what happened here in chicago with the election of the, well, the primary election of the young lady and bloomberg coming in, and mayor bloomberg putting the money in that race, i think that, the more that happens, people will be emboldened to do the right thing, but again, the nra is very, very powerful. and the image, the image, and the idea that you will have these folks coming after you with ads and millions and

million millions of dollars and people want the retain their seats, and so that is a problem. >> job number one is to be re-elected, but i like this point that as we change power that to get re-elected will start to shift. thank you elijah cummings from ba baltimore. we will talk more on this issue, and we are not done with guns. protect your family... and launch your dreams. at legalzoom.com we put the law on your side. and launch your dreams. try running four.ning a restaurant is hard, fortunately we've got ink. it gives us 5x the rewards on our internet, phone charges and cable, plus at office supply stores. rewards we put right back into our business. this is the only thing we've ever wanted to do and ink helps us do it. make your mark with ink from chase.

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that stay stronger longer, so you can clean 2x more greasy dishes. to get the job done. you're full of suds after all. now drop and give me twenty spaghetti bowls! [ female announcer ] dawn does more. [ sponge ] so it's not a chore. i had a very long day in the airport yesterday and weather troubles on the east coast made it difficult for me to get here, and i was in louisiana. and i had a passenger say to me, aim a hunter and i believe in guns and i believe in background checks. so i thought, maybe this is a space to build a coalition, mayor. >> yes, as far as the mayors in the state legislature, i was very pro hunting andmade the

nra guys break that. because i said, you have a hunter who is going to break apart the coalition, because i am for hunters who do not have any reason for large clips or assault weapons. and i'm a reagan gun owner. and finding the polling and the sense of the nra members and finding out where we can hurt them. we can hurt the nra by applying to common sense legislation by banning the assault clips and weapons that the hunters by and large agree with. so the most important thing for sus to build the community consensus, and also one of the things that we talked on the panel last night is working at the grass roots community level with the clergy and doing the take back the night rallies and the gun buybacks and we bought over 700 guns back off of the streets of bridgeport, and ironically, the first gun we

bought was a ar-15 but the guns at the buyback gave me tremendous courage that the people are with us. and long-time gun owners say, i want this out of my house and not the fall in the hands of the wrong p person. >> and the gun movement has said saying the right things, and we are all for a strategy, and you have to isolate the nra and p pursue divestiture of the company, because pension funds scare them more than the nra and when you have cal p per seeing we will divest from this fund if you don't drop the company that owns the bush master company. and if you have organizations like mayors of illegal guns saying we will spend $10 million against you if you don't vote for this gun control legislation. that is scaring them more than the nra.

>> and you have to be ethical and moral and social movement, but also strategic. >> yes, and even the nra thought that the newtown movement would pass and die down like it has in the past, but it is still building. so i think that having that, you also have to have at lt of money and be willing to use it. >> valerie, i feel like you -- >> yes. >> i feel like you are over there saying, i have something. >> i have many things, but this is a fight for gun owners, too. i was raiseded in a household where my father owned a gun. >> hello. >> and he was raised on farmland where he used a gun for hunting and so it was normal and a card-carrying member of the nra when they stood for gun control legislation, and it is not until they became the legislation they are today proposing a more guns to all of the social ills, and after newtown, armed

schoolteachers and aft african-american in already saturated urban areas pick up more guns. it is crazy making, and it is absolutely imperative that gun-owning people who believe in the second amendment like my father join the fight, too. >> yes, absolutely. we have a lot more to say on this topic, and specifically, the question of mental health, because this guy, jonathan metsle is a psychiatrist and he will answer a lot of our questions. but, at some point... giant leaps gave way to baby steps... and with all due respect, you're history. if you taught us anything, it's that you can't cling to the past... if you want to create the future. that's why, instead of looking behind... delta is looking beyond. pushing u.s. aviation to new heights. all 80 thousand of us. busy investing billions in the industry's boldest moves.

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exciting and would always come max and pto my rescue. bookstore but as time passed, i started to notice max just wasn't himself.

and i knew he'd feel better if he lost a little weight. so i switched to purina cat chow healthy weight formula. i just fed the recommended amount... and they both loved the taste. after a few months max's "special powers" returned... and i got my hero back. purina cat chow healthy weight. as we wait for the represents in congress to wait on impending gun control legislation that would have a national impact, many states have acted. some of the quickest responses came from new york state which passed one of the strictest gun control laws in january. it requires a controversial provision to require providers of mental health officials to report any patient who makes credible threats. so it is a fear that it st

stigmatizes the mentally ill, and in reality, they are more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than the perpetrator. this week, a study shows that those with mental illness are five times more likely to be a victim in a murder. with statistics like that, it makes you wonder why our legislation is not seeking to protect them, the mental ill from us, the supposedly sane. i think that this is for me, jonathan, it is part of the question, like, it feels to me like i hear people say the one thing that we can agree is that the mentally ill should not have guns burk how do you define that and how is that a problem? >> well, it is funny, because i have been doing a lot of conservative talk radio over the past month. >> i'm sorry. >> and it is to point out to people who are nra members, but disaffected with the extreme policies and the prevalence of this thing to get the guns away from the crazy people is this incredibly entrenched historical stigmatization, and two problems with. one is that what you suggested

is that people with mental illness as an aggregate group are withdrawn and seriously mentally ill people are odd, and they are far more to be be victims of violence than the target i targeting persons. there are terrific studies about the lessons that we draw, jeff swanson doing a bunch of work at duke, but the lessons that we draw from the mass shootings, and a lot of times we ask the psychiatrists to become prog nos kay or tters, and there are tho who fit the stereotype of the angry male and paranoid that psychiatrists can't use diagnostic criteria, so we can't ask the psychiatrists to predict who is going to become a shooter, but instead to support the foundation of caring for people and the community of

mental health is a far more succe successful strategy. >> it feels like a strategy of politics that at least we can agree that crazy people should not have guns, but there is a particular shooting or murder that we are trying to keep from happening again and the newtown that we don't want to happen again, but the idea of pendleton, and there is no particular reason to believe that the person was mentally ill in a classic sense. >> yes, go ahead. >> i believe that america's response to gun violence has troubling racial undertones, and when the perpetrator is black, brown or muslim, america dyi diagnoses the problem as an entire community and the threat of people. when the perpetrator is white, we talk about individual problem or personal problem or problem of mental illness when we know that less than 5% of all violent crimes in the u.s. are committed by people who are mentally ill, and let's not forget last august when the perpetrator of the shooting in oak creek, wisconsin, the gunman who opened up fire in the sikh temple was

motivated by hate. so the gun lobby pointing fingers to the mental health system is a tragically now diversionary tactic to stigmatize another group. >> and when you go to the legislature, it is the conservatives and the republicans who talk about mental health is the real issue. in my city and unless we are talking about community mental health which is a huge issue with young aftrican-american males. >> and people experiencing traumatic mental health from living in these communities. >> and growing up without a dad and not going to college and growing up with no real hope, and there are too many guns. what we want to make sure is that america does not get distracted in the process of sequestration. this is a moment of time, and i

had to sit with survivors of newtown and talk to large christian concert or arena down the street that our children have died without something happening and make sure it has not happened again. >> don't let them die again on the sequestration fight and the petty battles that we have manufactured when we have something real. >> we have the morale highground and the political high ground and the most important thing is to focus on the magazine clips and the assault weapons and the trafficking and the background checks. if we get those four thing, we can change america, because americans are are watching -- americans are watching guns right now, and there are more guns than people. >> yes, and it is also important not to focus gun control on trying to stop the mass shootings, because they are the most dramatic, but it is the hydeia pendelton situation, and

those are the situations of the deep depression and the handgun, and those situations where it is more politic in a way to talk about crazy people doing a mass shoot shooting and if we can stop that, but it is a small percentage when there is the day today degradation in the v violence of the cities or the suicides, and we won't do a bill that touches handguns and lt of the shootings taking place in the inner city are gang-relate and that is a policing problem and rooting out the systemic problems and that is mental health, but it is a whole lot of other things with poverty and other ing, but do what we can for now. >> and last night, i said mostly young people at nyu, and i said there is going to be a second amendment and you will have a rightful right to ownership. we are not out to change the constitution, and ten amendments in the bill of rights and they are all legal, but not one should be more important than

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parents do it, teachers do it, pastors do it, neighbors do it and even strangers do it, when talking to a school aged child you ask, what do you want to be when you grow up? and we ask to learn more about the aspirations of the young person and gain insight in to how they see themselves, but rarely do we hold them to it. except we do. in the sixth grade i took an aptitude test that asked a battery of tests that asked about skills and interests, and in a few weeks, i got the result and i was best suited for a job as a funeral director and so my small town middle school thought it would be good to track me in the vo-tech and out of the h

honors classing and thankfully my mother was not having it and i do this instead. that is why i am nervous about a new move in grammar education to use educational testing to determine career paths for relatively little kids and to steer them that way long before the dreams and the abilities haven had a full chance to matu mature. joining the panel to either really piss me off or talk me off of the ledge is jeff madison, a national krcradle to career initiative to bring together educators and parents to help kids. talk to me about cradle to career. >> what we mean is that right now we don't have to do what they did to you back in the day. we have enough resources there to support children that if we were really intentional about how we used the resources we could individualize learning for every single child. so once we do understand your interests, we should not think about the schoolhouse or the vo-tech as the only options to help you tease out what you may

be interested in, but afterschool programs and host of resources that if we were to be more intentional about using them and meaning if we were to actually look at the data and say, you are interested in this that and the others and connect you with the afterschool program to expose you to something, but not track you to a specific career. >> talk to me about the data aspect of it, because we have been read tact great teachers and the way that they have the capacity to see that thing that you write and part of how i end up here and not as a funeral director and that is a great profession and i would be wealthier, but not having taken that is because there was an english teacher who saw the thing in me, right? how would data help you to see a child in that way? >> well, my wife is a teacher and at home with our two sets of twins, if you can believe, that and she is a phenomenal teach e and one of the people who sees the spark. she had to work 90 hours a week, right? she had to work constantly, because she was all by herself trying to identify the opportunities and the resources. say we had a day the system where we understood not just how

you were performing academically, but where the interests were, and we had all of the services the nonprofits and the social services who were able to work with the data to say, we can intentionally connect you rather than it being on the back of the teacher, and it is a community as a whole to wrap around the child to say, we can bring all of the resources to bear on your learning and the data is a tool to make it happen. too far, and too much we just let the tools sit on the side and put it in a data warehouse and bring it to life so we can actually understand what a child needs and interested in and then bring the resources to bear so that the child has the opportunity to learn. >> joy, what i like about how jeff talks about it is that we see so much educational data and it is testing like at the end of the semester or the year, and we will test you and then reward you or punish you even more. is this a stronger and better way to have us think about using data in education. >> no, i love it and i want to know when you can get it started for my three kids.

i totally agree, because my mother was a college professor and the bain of her existence was multiple choice tests, and it is because we are programming the kids to be clever in options, and not knowledge test, and we can discern between two wrong options rather than learn something proactive and if you add to that a layer of also make you interested because one of the big problems for kids who are bright this school is boredom and one of the problems for kids who are struggling in school is that they are tracked into the you are not so smart, so we won't give you opportunity. i have dealt with both of the issues within my own household of children who were very smart, but who weren't good attesting, and so didn't get tracked into the opportunities, and the schools my kids are at now say, wait a minute with my one child with difficulties in florida, and they say, you like to write, you be on the literary magazine, and that opens up the child to make them interested in all of the other stuff you are trying to teach them. >> and mayor, this is the big

vision, right, thep wrapping around and the multiple services, and we are program rich but network poor? >> system poor. >> yes, and that requires public, and public investment to make that happen, and if i come to the mayor and say, is there a way to make it happen? >> well, at the u.s. conference of mayors we get around democrats and republicans and say, there is no way to be a democratic way or republican way to fill a pothole, but be commonsensical. and one thing about jeff and we want him to come the bridgeport and i have been talking to him, but more costs and less money and every year we wring, wring, wring the budget to get every penny out of it. and what happens is that all well meaning people come to the cities to do good and at some point it is like the tower of babel, and everybody is doing their thing, but it is not coordinated so you need a

outsider like jeff to come in to coral them and say, i'm on mother theresa's side over here, but you don't have the numbers or the da ta and you need to work more efficiently. >> what is it that you come in to do to people? >> read them the riot act. what we have developed after learning many lessons and frankly, we have failed forward and den things wrong a lot, and we have learned the lessons that we can bring to communities and say that there is a framework for you can build a civic infrastructure and basically four key things, and you need a shared community vision and bring the key leadership and the practitioners together to share accountability for results, right? the second thing is that you have to identify the outcomes that you want to move, eight to ten outcomes n. our community, there is eight, and every time we make a educational investment we vet whether it is going to improve third grade readyness or reading rates or what, but you have the bring the practitioners

together, and empower them. they are saying this tutoring for example gets result, and how can we spread it across the existing resources rather than we need some miracle to solve all of the problems, and then the last piece is investment. you need people. i got to wake up everyday as what we call the chief cat herder to bring all of the players together, but you also need investors and the public and the private investors to say, we will stop doing spray and pray and spread the resources all over and pray it works out. we are going to actually focus and say, when we find something that works, how do we actually take that across the existing program services and systems and that is power of this. it is not all snazzy and this that and the other, but it is essentially what we need to do when we have limited resources right now, and we have to make do with what we have got and do better work with the time, and talent and treasure in place. >> and valerie, all of the way back to the beginning of the show when we were thinking of

what it means to be successful in women as careers is how we were framing it, but it feels part of it here is a redefinition of what it means to have succeeded at educational reform. >> yes, what is really exciting me about your model, jeff, is that you're understanding that it takes a ecosystem to allow a child to thrive and it is an ecosystem that keeps a child down. what i want to lift up about what you are doing is a collective impact model to be applied to other social issues and hundreds of leaders across sectors and government, an nonprofit, and education and corporations coming together around a shared goal in order to effect change. so it is no longer the old way of problem solving, where i want to figure out the cure to cancer in my lab before you do, but it is all of us coming together to say, this is how we effect change and push at ground swell and that is what i am seeing happening with the landscape of social change and what i am hearing from young people who want prague mmatic issue s ts t

huge social issue wes are facing. >> and this is employing the data with the human touch and not tracking folks based on one set of apt tut -- aptitude tests. >> i would say three things to pay attention to. >> well, only one, because we have 15 seconds. >> look at the local data, because chances are that the interventions exist in your backyard. don't think that what is happening in new york is going to save the day in dallas and kalamazoo. use the data in your own backyard and lift it up. >> i love that, jeff. first, it is time for a preview with alex witt. >> i love this conversation and so interesting and right up my alley. everyone, the knife fight is on, and today, more reak shction fr one group who is particularly up set with the tas's decision to allow knives on planes. we will talk to the leader of that group. and there is more on the filibuster of rand paul and it

involves tea and apple. >> and save the rhino, and an ex-navy s.e.a.l. and current green beret and their story is scary an fearful moment during his investigation of richard nixon. back to you. >> let me tell you, i spent, you know, 14 hours in the airport yesterday with some very irritated passengers and i've got to tell you, i hope none of them were carrying a knife. >> well, exactly, that point. that point they're going to make from the flight attendants, like the last line of defense. >> this seems like a bad idea. >> agreed. up next, she beat the odds and she's helping other women to do the same. . our foot soldier this week is leading in by example. [ male announcer ] when ziggy the cat appeared at their door,

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we began the show with a look at the challenges facing working women and the new book urging them to lean in and seize the day. but before you can lean in, you need skills you can lean on. before you can climb the

corporate ladder, you have to reach that first rung and that's where our first soldier of the week comes in the executive of women in work program at queens college in new york which offers free job skills and life skills and training to poor women and survivors of domestic abuse. she was inspired to create the program after overcoming her own tough circumstances, including a battle with cancer, being hit by a car, divorce, and financial difficulty. at the age of 47, carmel a went on to pursue a masters degree and a ph.d. in sociology. she wanted women to know that they really wanted to rebuild their lives, they could. and that she was living proof. so marrone started women in work in 1998 with just seven participants. 15 years later, the program has helped more than 1800 women ranging from teenagers to seniors in their 80s. for 12 weeks, they take classes

in everything from computer training to reading and writing. women and work even offers advanced college and masters courses for participants. and 85% of the graduates enter the workforce and have a retention rate of three years or more. it's also about finding them a better life. offers counseling and referral services for many of the issues that women face beyond the workplace. every graduate hired is an ambassador for the program, always looking for the next open spot to help the next woman. >> women never forget us. they write, they call, they send us pictures. when we save the lives of women, we save the lives of children and families. >> we agree with the viewer who nominated carmela march roan, we need more people like her. so for choosing in and lead so many women in the workplace can have a place, she is our foot soldier of the week.

and that is our show for today. thank you to jeff, joy, valerie and thanks to you at home for watching. tomorrow we're back on tv 10:00 a.m. eastern. host of this american life will be here to talk about harper high school in chicago. and, remember, spring forward. it's daylight savings time tonight. set your clocks ahead. coming up, "weekend with alex witt." if you think running a restaurant is hard, try running four. fortunately we've got ink. it gives us 5x the rewards on our internet, phone charges and cable, plus at office supply stores. rewards we put right back into our business. this is the only thing we've ever wanted to do and ink helps us do it. make your mark with ink from chase.

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