this morning, my question, is obesity really a disease? plus devious retaliation against protesters in indiana. amazing soldiers fighting the good fight in gideon's army. first, i have a table full of beautiful black men. good morning, i'm melissa harris-perry. if you were a black man on november 4th, 2008, you may have felt like you were the king of the world. that's because as "the new york

times" saw it, a major racial barrier had fallen with the election of president barack obama had been elected to the united states. seemed the presidency had fallen and the election of barack obama was a win for the whole country. he shook up the old assumptions about both black america and black men because he was seen as different. he had parents who were both black and white. he's highly educated and accomplished. but in no way did president obama's win sweep away the last racial barrier in american politics with ease. as the "times" put it not so much it had fallen but an energized lec trot had hoisted him over the barrier. while the national unemployment last month was 7.6%, it was at 13.5% for african-americans and hovers around 30% for young black men. though the number of young black men who graduate from high school in four years has

increased to 52%, still lags behind the 58% of latino males and 78% of white males who graduate in the same period of time. remains the case that 1 in 15 black men 18 years of age or older is inside cars rated. according to newsweek's cover story this week called "the fight for the black man" that is one reason why low in come black men are being left behind in america. is the fight for the black man about the choices he makes or the circumstances he faces? is he partly to blame for his situation and needs to just do better, or is he victim of a system designed and determined to keep him down? lets look how "newsweek" covers have dealt with black men over the years. the civil rights era, this negro and his reason for his fight are framed as separate from the rest of americans. so there were reports about what must be done for the negro in america and reports on how black america was doing as a whole.

there were even vivid portraits of how black men in america were getting along. even when the reports were good for black america, our scepticism was noted. while it's important for us to pay attention to inequality, there was a danger of turning brothers into nothing more than a collection of problems. the tendency is to focus on the pathology and render the humanity invisible. as ralph eleison wrote more than 50 years ago, "i am an invisible man. no, i'm not a spook like those who haunted edgar allen poe, nor am i a hollywood movie equityo plachls. i'm a plan of substance, flesh and bone, fiber and liquids and i might even be said to possess a mind. i am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me." by refusing to see stark realities african-american men face, we risk missing why these circumstances exist. by focusing on the highs of

president obama and the lows of the incarcerated we miss the men in between living fully human lives with successes and failures and joys and frustrations, juxtaposed against humanity is hyper visibility of their bodies to those who assume they are dangerous. whether it is the routine reality of being stopped and frisked or the horrifying possibility that they could face what happened to 17-year-old trayvon martin in february of last year or sean bell killed by police in 2006 or this man gunned down by police in february of 1999. lets be clear. things are not just black men's problems. all of us are right there with them because what impacts the men of the commune affects us all. it isn't so much black men noticed to be saved but they do need to be understood and heard. because their fate is our fate. what happens to black america affects all of america.

at the table, author of "the ugly side of beautiful" rethinking race and prisons in america. director of history and african-american inside substitute studies in connecticut. joshua dubois, president barack obama's long time spiritual adviser as well as director of the white house office on faith-based and neighborhood partnerships. he left the white house this year to become the weekly religion and values columnist for "the daily beast" and "newsweek" and founders and ceo of values partnership, a new social enterprise connecting the faith community with private, public, and not for profit institutions to create private impact important public good. very importantly, the author of the "newsweek" cover story, "the fight for black men." thank you for being here. >> thank you for having us. >> joshua, why this story now? >> i wanted to retell the story that quite frankly we thought we already knew. we had vague general notions

about these young men and boys in our inner cities. either we thought they needed to get together and show more responsibility, or we thought the government needed to invest in them more. our analysis really stopped there. we had forgotten about the beauty of their stories, the complexity of their history and the opportunity we have as a nation if we invest in them as well. so i wanted to get bought stories and bring complexity to where black men are as a group in this country. >> so i appreciate that project but i'm always a little nervous when it comes from "newsweek," which is part of why we showed those images. joshua's piece in part really puts incarceration at the center of the story that he's telling. your text, "the ugly side of beautiful" which i'm about two-thirds through. i was trying to finish this morning. in part suggests that, yes, incarceration is shaping but not definitive of black men's

experience. >> it's not definitive but certainly has an impact. that's the duality we're dealing with. how is it i can have the same educational background as president obama and as mother says he ended up in the white house, i ended up in the jailhouse. that's what we're wrestling with. four times as many brothers incarcerated as inside africa under apartheid. at the same time we have the bess and worst as al sharpton says in the article as well. that's the com pleplexity of th problem and duality we're dealing with now. >> numbers are tough. when we look at percentages, african-american men, one in 15 incarcerated which is dramatically different than latino males 1 in 36 and white men 1 in 106. if i'm watching and not starting from the assumption that this criminalization is occurring to black men, if i look at that, i say, well, brothers should stop committing crimes. they are in jail because they

apparently are criminals. >> there's two ways of looking at this, right. one is just the simple fact we know that the drug war is what's driving this. we know african-american men are not using drugs disproportionately. black americans in general are using drugs in the same proportion as whites are but being drastically overincarcerated because of it. lets take it outside look at america as a cohesive society. this country cannot afford to have 1 in 15 black men incarcerated, not if we have this idea we're going to be globally competitive and remain globally competitive. >> i thought incarceration of black bodies was good for some economies. i want to push you on this idea we can't afford it. when we say, all right, we're all in this together, except that there are real economic interests associated from the beginning, from the period of slavery that takes the labor of black men and turns it into the wealth of the nation to the farms all the way to this moment. it must be good for someone's economy or it wouldn't exist. >> the economic version of a

sugar high. people have made a lot of money oncarcerating black bodies. that's not an industry that will produce returns. if you're talking global competitiveness, leading in software, technology, what we're bringing to the table is leading in incarceration. there's no future that can be built on this. >> the other thing, it's breaking state and federal budgets now. there's an economic art on the other side. in fact, a number of republican governors are now coming to the stable because their incarceration costs are through the roof. that's why governor diehl working on justice reform because we can't afford to incarcerate black men like they are now. >> in communities where you have mass incarceration, the economic development that is lost in those neighborhoods and the spill out effect. there's been all these studies about the way in which mass incarceration impacts health care in a neighborhood, the way

it impacts jobs in a neighborhood, the way it impacts schools in a neighborhood. it has this massive spillover effect that costs taxpayers a whole lot of money and is a loss of opportunity. also stepping back from all of that, back to this idea, i think one of the things we struggle with around the conversation about black men is the need to either have people be exceptional or be criminals. >> yes. >> and that we can't -- actually from president obama on down to the most allow down black man on the planet has victories and every one of them -- every one us, everybody at this table has our good days and bad days, good choices as well as bad choices. that's true as well as the fact there's been a system built since slavery. that's a hard thing for people who hear, slavery. as soon as you use slavery. >> complaining. >> a system that has been built since slavery. you trace their specific choices. you just got through laying them

out. there are more that go all the way through 2012 decisions, 2013 decisions. choices made that specifically in policy in 2012 to lead to mass incarceration of black men. and so both things are true. >> your point is well taken. as we come back from the break, i want to talk about this idea on the one hand i do want to talk fundamentally about the problems, issues, especially the issue of incarceration. i want to back up from it because it does lead us to this weird place where we're thinking about let me show you michael jordan and president obama, which are very particular formulations of black manhood or let me tell you this story and then we miss everything else in between. then everyone else has to be encountered, are you president obama or the low down black man. that's what we're thinking about. surprising and unscripted moment from president obama and the black men of america. wait a sec!

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whatever successive achieved, whatever positions of leadership i have held have depended less on ivy league degrees or s.a.t. scores or gpas and instead been due to that sense of connection and empathy, the special obligation i felt as a black man like you to help those who need it most, people who didn't have the opportunities that i had, because there but for the grace of god go i. i might have been in their shoes. i might have been in prison. i might have been unemployed. i might not have been able to support a family. and that motivates me. >> that was president barack obama speaking to the young men of the all male historically

black college of morehouse. joshua dubois writes in his story that was an unscripted moment, a genuine ad lib from the president. my favorite part of your piece is you have that inside knowledge. he's not on script, goes off script of why is that moment so important. >> i thought it was a tremendous bridge of empathy for him and our country connecting the leader of the free world to men facing extraordinary challenges. men who, as the president said, are in jail. he said, i could have been in jail. for the president of the united states to say that, we all could say that. some point of connection, not just white folks but every american facing these challenges with unique history, responsibility as well. we should be able to plug into their experiences. i think that's what the president did in a speech there. >> it was an interesting contrast to george w. bush when he would give commencement addresses. he would make a joke about being

a c student. the possibilities of mediocrity as a wealthy white man who comes from a certain kind of legacy, you could nonetheless end up in the white house. really different sort of narrative what we hear from the president here. despite all of the things that i am, i still might not have ended up here, because as a black man i might have been targeted by this environment i find myself. >> if i didn't have the supports around me was a key point of his. if i didn't have people there for me across this journey to lift me up, open new doors, opportunities, i could have ended up in these same places so many thousands and millions of black men areneding up. >> i just want to point out interestingly joe gibbs, a student who graduated from morehouse may 19th who heard that was just murdered this week in atlanta. at least as far as it's being reported right now, was murdered in what looks like an anonymous

shooting. and it was certainly an underlining to what the president was saying there. but it still felt, and i think a lot of people critiqued this. you guys can fix this. you can contribute to fixing it but i still want the larger things that make this possible. >> also, mr. president, you can fix this. >> he is the president. >> and i -- listening to the speech, i was moved by that piece of it and some of those really genuine connections with the black male experience but i was also deeply frustrated because i think back to if you go back to lbj's speeches to howard in which we laid out the idea of equity and why black people -- black men, specifically, but black people -- are experiencing the problems barack obama can articulate. it's because of the system we created. in that speech -- in lbj's speech going back to '65 is where he laid out, here is what government is going to do. this is what we can do.

yes, as individuals we all have to take responsibilities for our lives. kai wright has to take responsibility for his life. government can take responsibility for the fact unemployment rate has been double since they have been counting it, since it's been counted it, all the way through. and we can talk about that on any numbers of indicators. so there are things that policy can do. i was deeply disappointed in that speech not to hear the president talk about here is what we can do to make this journey, to support you in this journey. >> that's when we come to the issue of political realities. there are two things here. one is the boost we get from the profound empathy the president is able to express. this is an experience. he's not lecturing from the outside. he knows what it's like to grow up without a father and make yourself into the president of the united states. that's an extraordinary testimony. at the same time the very political reality that allowed lbj, who was working with a

congress that was much more compliant than the one the president is working with, this is not simply to make an excuse for president obama, i think he could be more active especially on the level of executive order but this is the complicated nature of this. if i could add one last thing, i think the president was actually pandering. some things we found people were upset he was lecturing or controlling the black community, i thought he was actually pandering -- >> to the black community, not white folks. >> all african-americans have our moments where we're frustrated with ourselves. he was in essence saying i'm enough of one of you to recognize i get frustrated to. that was a point he pointed out a connection not cajoling or looking down. >> when he goes to connect it's with those conservative values. throughout his presidency when he seeks to connect with black america -- >> he also has an ease with black cultural references and world view that just is.

i don't think it's performative, part of the pleasure of having the obamas in the white house is watching the performance of a black family in the white house and recognition at a certain point that was a punch line. black president was a punch line. you knew all the jokes that came before and after it. living through the reality of it is a kind of double consciousness but a pleasurable one. >> i think we have to be careful not to focus on cultural references and tenor of a certain speech and instead look where the administration is looking to invest its energy. if you asked 100 people what the most effective turnaround is for low in come communities 90 would say the harlem community and the work he's doing there. the president has modelled that through the promise neighborhoods, arne duncan, the proven turnaround strategy surrounding people with care and support but congress isn't doing what they need to be doing.

>> we've got to go to break. that's the moment that distresses me. i want us to get to that on the one hand, yes. i always feel agents deflated when i hear that, what we do is put programming inside of a structure that is itself so stacked against. so yes, i want the programming but i also would like to decriminalize. >> we have to do both. >> when we come back i want to play a little game of black man free association, say a word, see what you say. up next, realities of being african-american man in america even when you're the king of the ballers. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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love that guy tim duncan. an epic game seven. they won the team title. whatever your allegiance may be, it was a great game. what struck me was what nba lebron james said, "for me, i can't worry about everybody says about me. i'm lebron james from achron, ohio, from the inner city. i'm not even supposed to be here. it speaks volume about what young men think about their possibility. did that moment resonate. >> i wanted to screen, lebron, you are supposed to be there. i apologize that as a society we've communicated to you that you're not supposed to be there, not supposed to break through barriers, achieve the highest of heights. he is supposed to be there. that's what i want to say. >> i kind of took it differently. growing up, a lot of us had this

message from our parents, you are not supposed to succeed. this is not built for you to succeed. you have to know that getting started. everything you have to do have to be exceptional. some of us managed to be exceptional. i think that's an important way to understand the big picture of black men is some of us have managed to be exceptional. we are, in fact, exceptional. >> i wonder a little about -- on the one hand i felt that, i felt that moment from him. i also wonder about the extent to which we create just survival as the narrative. if i talk to my adolescent nephew and say, what's your goal for the year, he's like, i just want to make it to 18. on the one hand that's a reflection of his reality, particularly living on the south side of chicago. on the other side it doesn't allow him to reach for excellence where he say i'm just going to survive it. >> i've been at some-of- so many

of these where they are celebrating 21, 25, celebrating making it that far. that speaks to the crisis on our watch. we talk about the prison system and its impact on that feeling, i think we can't ignore those numbers are constantly recycled in the media, the numbers dead before 25, incarcerated before 25. that's why lebron can say that and it can make sense because we've heard that over and over again. >> i understood that in very personal terms. yeah, i'm jal oni cobb. i went to public schools. very many of my peers were incarcerated, one of my friends shot and killed. i'm not supposed to be the professor at the university of connecticut. what you're saying implicit in that. none of those things were accidental, happenstance. we exist in a society whether by public policy or public opinion, whatever the channels are, these are outcomes that are

anticipated and not inadvertent. i thought there was a very good explanation of what is going on in the community growing up in. don't judge that community by me, judge that community by what happens most of the team. >> black man free association game. i'm going to say a word, one of you jump in. >> fathers. >> absent. >> us. >> we got absent, we got us, we got awesome. >> where are you coming from awesome. >> willie cobb taught me the most important things i needed to know. >> you said absent. >> my father wasn't there, passed away incarcerated in carolina. fully processed how that impacted me but absence is serum one of the ways it has. >> interesting it's your personal narrative that gives you the free association. >> it's one of the things i'm committed to doing better than my dad did. >> which is what we hear from president obama often as well.

hip-hop. >> global. >> beautiful. >> revolution. >> why revolution? >> because i think the capacity is there, it's been comeco-opte. around the world people see it as resistance, a chance for radical change. >> mine is frustrated. >> we're of a age. we have a critique of new hip-hop. that might be being old. sexuality. >> fun. >> we love kai. >> beautiful. >> beautiful. >> grappling. >> i think the black community is grappling with lgtb equality and be progressive on many issues and conservative on others. >> let me ask one last one. sagging pants. >> please stop. >> also --

>> respectability. >> also fun. >> consciousness. pick up their pants. >> what's wrong with people having their pants sagging. >> look, this came up -- >> drawers have to be clean. >> put effort into looking good. >> i'm sorry. this came out of the prisons. brothers not being able to wear belts because people were worried they would commit suicide. i can't justify -- >> fashion came from a lot of crazy places. that's fashion. >> rebellion against social -- >> that's how i read it. i'm surprised to get the respectability response electric you all. maybe the old hip-hop dad. coming up black men are doing it for themselves. how they are trying to make a difference for the whole community. that's next. [ dad ] ah! lily...

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the body of work that we do is really based on keeping young black males alive and really getting these young brothers to understand you can grow up in tough neighborhoods but you don't necessarily have to become the neighborhood. we want to reduce the likelihood young men will go to jail, we have to begin to teach young men critical life skills and leadership development. >> that was david miller of the urban leadership institute speaking as part of the open society foundation's black male achievement program illustrating african-american men are working to make a difference, the difference, for themselves. so lets go to this question of what difference brothers themselves make. this is what the president was, in fact, asking of the morehouse graduates. one of the thing that distresses me the most is this says more

black men currently incarcerated than were slaves. it is factually accurate and misleading. makes me feel like we're getting to a place where we don't feel like we have a way of changing things. >> i think the problem is this. that may be technically true. there are also more african-american homeowners than there were people enslaved at the end of the civil war. during the 2012 election, triple the number of black people voted in that election as people who were enslaved. also more black people who have college degrees than there are those enslaved. >> more people. >> our population is 9.8 times larger than it was during the time of slavery. all these things are much larger. when we make those comparisons it opens us up to the idea nothing has changed since slavery, we've made no problem. it's kind of like strengths, opportunities, threats things organizations do. in black america we only talk about weaknesses and threats. if you don't talk about strength

and power you lose -- >> the power is it draws attention to the fact we were once called savages, to be a slave. we've now been called criminal to be incarcerated. that's the connection that's deeper than just sort of the raw numbers thrown out there. >> part of what i want to do on the solutions piece, you have a law degree from harvard, for goodness sake. when i first met you, my first connection was through spoken word performance, which means you're meeting young people in the classroom. you are doing work around law and policy, also doing cultural work. when you think about solution, solutions that may have to come before we get the laws changed, structure changed, what do those solutions black men bring to the table themselves look like? >> i think for one the litigation strategies have always been part of a broader social movement i see the work in the arts and culture as being

part of the movement to push policy strategies through the conscious and awareness of the public. the work i'm doing is finding out how to link folks incarcerated to the conversation. too often we're not including folks who have the experience, lived the experience of being incarcerated. >> we talk about them. >> exactly, not at the table. that's what i'm doing, getting folks in the conversation, groups. the only brooklyn think tank formed by formerly incarcerated professionals. devine prior going from ged to phd, becoming experts on their experience and what's happening across the country to build this abolition movement we need today, we had in the 1800s. >> it's an extraordinarily exciting time, probably one of the most exciting times for black male achievement, not just invest in challenges but invest in thriving black men in this

country. one big umbrella for black male achievement open society conglomeration of organizations working in this space. joe jones, centerpiece of the "newsweek" piece, one organization, center in baltimore reframing the way we train young men to participate in the workforce. there's some beautiful things going on in this country but now is the time to put our shoulder on it and push it forward. >> just an elemental way, our both and strategy is important. we as individuals and as communities in our personal responsibility piece, i think, need to celebrate our strengths and our opportunities, right? celebrate our sagging pants. celebrate our culture and the things that are positive instead of constantly engaging ourselves and being engaged around our deficits. that's us. that's the piece we can do. we also need to hold policymakers accountable for the

problem with history is it's easy to end up with these sort of stats but we also have to remember that it all connects. so the incarceration rates we have today connect back to the incarceration rates we had yesterday which connect back to all the of the choices we made during the actual jim crow, all of the economic choices that carved black men out, connect back to black codes, connect back to slavery. it's not about now versus then, it's about the continuum and what policymakers can do to interrupt the continuum. both, policymakers interrupt continuum, us celebrating ourselves. >> and high-quality public education that doesn't, in fact, sort of take us out of it but allows us to, in fact, for free, as a result of our contributions to society as citizens educate children when they are poor. imagine that. everybody hang out with me here.

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north carolina's moral monday protest marched on this week as demonstrators staged their seventh protest in eight weeks. according to our nbc affiliatiat wncn in raleigh, between 400 and 500 people have been arrested thus far. as we've covered extensively in nerdland, nonviolent protests aimed to push back against dramatic rightward shift the state of carolina government is currently doing, led by new governor. this week it was the governor's budget director making news in

all the wrong ways. meet art pope said budget director and conservative multimillionaire, whose think tank has set up a database of moral monday protesters. a database that includes ages, race, employment, and even a column that a little whether or not that protester has an issue with his or her voter registration. the pope think tank has a multiple choice pick the protester game, a game featuring head shots of protesters with identifying questions. all right. so we were meant to have chris crumb here with us. we're having a little trouble with the technicals on having chris from carolina. i want to pull out from the panel, i've been making this claim what's going on in north carolina, these weekly protests, are sort of the new social movement and we may be missing it because it's happening in north carolina. we're saying, this isn't national politics so we don't need to cover it. guys, north carolina is a critically important state. >> it had long been a buttress

of progressive policymaking in the south on a whole host of issues. that has changed as a result of the 2012 elections. elections have consequences. two picture points, one negative and one positive. state politics matter deeply to people's lives. it's very easy to engage only at the national level, for everybody ranging from national news media on down to activists. state politics matter deeply and you're seeing that in the behavior. you're seeing that in the remarkable movement that's pushing back. i think at color lines we've been over the last few years covering a lot -- in racial justice, this is one example. you can go across movements, the dream act is a really great example of these strong grassroots movements truly making change. they don't get noticed.

they are really making change. >> dream act required people to out themselves with a status of being an undocumented person, a status that could have very real consequences. jelani, part of what i'm appalled, the pope bought this uses these realities to get all this money into location elections. they get into the local offices, redraw districts in 2010. now he has been put into government by the governor for whom he was the primary person. now he's the budget director. it's funded exclusively by him. here are citizens going to tell their government what they are displeased with and he puts their names, phone numbers, addresses and mug shots -- does that not sound exactly like -- as much as we don't want to say things haven't changed but

exactly what they did in the jim crow south. >> this is how the movement in birmingham and bessemer emerged in the civil rights era. the naacp was effectively shut out of the south during the early portion of the civil rights movement because state by state by state they passed -- these legislatures passed laws saying any national organization that operated within a state had to divulge their membership. what it allowed hem to do is what art pope is doing with the website, who are the naacp members in alabama, mississippi. you had to rely on grassroots activism because the naacp had been pushed so far to the margins. i think this is more pernicious because it's attacking inherently north carolinian grassroots tactics where it is. >> it is appalling. i'm so sorry we're not having chris. you know, nerdland i'm not leaving this north carolina

story. we will have more on moral mondays. i want to thank jelani and kai and joshua, not only for being here but pulling together for a fast segment on north carolina. bryon will be back later. coming up, a major change in the battle against obesity, changing attitudes towards weight then and now. that's up next. in parks across the country, families are coming together to play, stay active, and enjoy the outdoors. and for the last four summers, coca-cola has asked america to choose its favorite park through our coca-cola parks contest.

winning parks can receive a grant of up to $100,000. part of our goal to inspire more than three million people to rediscover the joy of being active this summer. see the difference all of us can make... together. the act of soaring across an ocean in a three-hundred-ton rocket doesn't raise as much as an eyebrow for these veterans of the sky. however, seeing this little beauty over international waters is enough to bring a traveler to tears. we're putting the wonder back into air travel, one innovation at a time. the new american is arriving.

this week with one sweeping pronouncement the country's largest group of doctors issued a single diagnoses to 85 million adults. the american medical association dropped the news on those living with obesity that they now also have something else, a disease. still unclear exactly how the organization's recognition of obesity as a disease will make a difference for those living with it. what's almost certain is the medical pursuit of less weight will translate to the medical

industry's wait loss will be more money. it's an old business. national obsession with weight has been big business for, well, as long as there's been show business. >> hey, hey, hey, fat albert. >> more than 40 years ago introduced to this rotund hero of the hood whose creator bill cosby was one of the original creators against fat shaming. last year he talked to atlantic magazine about his did he picasso of fat albert skag, quote, he was invented by me, a fat person in the '60s was someone giggling, lacking of any kind of strength to take charge. more than two decades after cosby's character represented on the television for the team i'm fat and i'm awesome, he got a sister in the struggle when another unapologetically fat character and on the screens.

roseann barr introduced us to her alter ego roseann conner, mother, wife, friend, worker, and overweight american. when she dared us not to worship her as a domestic goddess and working class heroine, we did making her the most watched show in 1990. it isn't fat acceptance, the struggling, sweating, succeeding, and, yes, sometimes failing to trim the fact that kept us watching and spending. the weight loss industry would never be the same again after its two titans came stepping in. one, a native new orleansans, short shorts wearing, curly hair actuality ral music icon. more than three decades and counting, richard simmons has taken the gospel of fitness everywhere. according to a statement of dr. oz has helped humanity lose more

than 3 million pounds. as good as richard simmons managed to look in his tiny, shiny shorts no one did more for lee tards than jane fonda. fonda almost single handedly launched the fitness craze when she released her jane fonda workout video in 1982. it went on to become the top grossing video of all time and made the then new technology like the vcr into a permanent fixture in american homes. watching how we moved to shed the points -- the pounds has been almost as riveting as how we and what we eat. before he passed away in 2011 at 96 years young jack had us believing he found the fountain of youth pouring forth from a juicer spout. we believed secrets of being skinny could be found between two pieces of bread when jarrod dropped more than 200 pounds on a diet of subway sandwiches.

no one more identifiable with the struggle, triumph and shame of weight loss than oprah winfrey. in the nearly 30 years she's been on televisions we've watched her negotiate her relationship with food and her own body. she has quite literally put her personal weight battles right on the front page, which helped prime us with the hunger to consume more entertainment featuring people trying to consume less. because we haven't been able to get enough through 14 seasons of obese contestants vying for victory, less body fat and a cash prize on the biggest loser. up next why declaring obesity a disease might not necessarily mean those trying to lose the weight will be the biggest winners. back with more nerdland at the top of the hour. is like hammering. riding against the wind. uphill. every day. we make money on saddles and tubes.

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are proven to be effective pain relievers tylenol works by blocking pain signals to your brain bayer back & body's dual action formula includes aspirin, which blocks pain at the site. try the power of bayer back & body. try the power and didn't know where to start. a contractor before at angie's list, you'll find reviews on everything from home repair to healthcare written by people just like you. no company can pay to be on angie's list, so you can trust what you're reading. angie's list is like having thousands of close neighbors, where i can go ask for personal recommendations. that's the idea. before you have any work done, check angie's list. find out why more than two million members count on angie's list. angie's list -- reviews you can trust. i love you, angie. sorry, honey. welcome back. i'm melissa harris-perry. this morning we're taking a

closer look at the american medical association's vote this week to classify obesity as a disease. like so much of our conversation about health care policy, this one revolves around money. the ama's decision does not carry any legal weight but could encourage more health insurers to cover treatments that directly address or prevent obesity. as it is most spending on obesity, about $150 billion a year goes to treat obesity related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. the doctors who make up the american medical association also want to be paid for discussing weight loss, nutrition and risk factors with their patients and managing obesity as a chronic condition, even when the patients don't have another illness such as diabetes. the ama also hopes classifying obesity as a disease will help direct funds to research and cures and finding prevention programs. the pharmaceutical industry could get huge profit boost as a result of this if the move leads to quicker approvals for weight loss drugs and more insurance coverage of those drugs.

the majority of americans believe obesity is a serious issue. look at that, 81%. we don't agree on anything at 81%. somehow americans believe it is a serious problem and something must be done. it does make you wonder about the impact of defining more than a third of the country as sick. joining me now are dr. patrice harris, a member of the ama board of trustees and the chief of bariatric surgery at new york's presbyterian hospital. the blogger behind black girl's guide to weight loss and jonathan, director of the center for medicine, health, society at vanderbilt university. so nice too far you here. >> nice to be here. >> lets start with why the decision to make obesity and define it as a disease. >> thank you for having me, melissa. one in three adults are obese in this country. the rate of childhood obesity

has tripled over the last couple of decades. so the a mulch a believes this policy will elevate obesity to the level that will raise awareness, call more attention to the disease, and actually change the way the medical community tackles this complex issue. >> let me push a little bit on this. if one in three americans is struggling with obesity, it almost makes me less likely to believe it's a disease and more likely to feel like either it's a norm and not a diseased or pathological state. or if you look at the speed of the rate of change how quickly so many more americans have become so much heavier, that it can't possibly be pathology in our bodies. our bodies don't change that fast. it must be our structural environment. >> complex factors lead to obesity, environmental, genetic, behavior. these all lead to obesity.

no one size all approach. certainly the human toll, human suffering and cost of obesity and obesity-related illnesses is high in this country. >> what difference will it make to you as a bariatric surgeon to have obesity defined as a disease? >> i think not all patients overweight are surgical candidates, but i think there's a percentage of people that have very significant obesity that are surgical candidates and now are going through a process which is very difficult to get, to have weight loss surgery. it's really hard, because this is the only disease where you have to sort of prove it's not your fault. i think you sort of hit the nail on the head. this is a disease that is rampantly increasing. this is a disease -- this the first time in the history of humanity we have an epidemic that's not of infectious origin.

it's much more than will power and people's fault. i'm not sure we understand entirely. >> jonathan. >> i'm sensitive and supportive of the arguments that classifying this as a disease will allow more people to get reimbursement for treatments and i think that's a very important side effect of this. i'm quite concerned about classifying this as a disease for two reasons. one is that the definition of what obesity is is incredibly slippery. we often use this thing called body mass index. >> bmi, i have one on my iphone. it's horrible, isn't it? >> the thing is by that definition, a lot of times people who meet criteria for overweight are incredibly healthy. people with a lower bmi can have a lot of medical issues people relate to. in the absence of a standard definition of what a disease is, i think obesity is open to all kinds of judgments in a certain diagnostic way. we know from history obesity is not just a disease by itself,

it's linked to concerns about race, gender. i think without the standard definition that makes it more difficult. the second issue, we know that obesity is linked to a series of social, structural issues. obesity is linked to poverty, socioeconomic status. i think in a way this is an open call for ama not so much to take two diet pills and call me in the morning but address structural issues. >> the reason, right, that we're word about obesity because it's co-morbid, moves along with other things we know are diseases, diabetes, arthritis, other kinds of things. the thing that moves along with obesity is poverty. the thing co-morbid with obesity is poverty. my little question, why not label poverty as a disease. erica giving me no. then there's just drinks and water and run around. >> it's so frustrating, but in

my mind i look at this from the standpoint of now they have to do research. when it comes to preventive care. when you go to your doctor and your doctor says, you know what, you're gaining weight over the course of these past few years what's going on. when you tell the doctor what's going on. okay. is the doctor equipped with enough information to help you navigate that the doctors more often than not what i hear from my readership, they deal with a lot of fat prejudice from their doctors. a lot of what doctors are equipped with now is their own personal experience. if you have a doctor that gets up at 4:00 and runs seven miles every day and you can barely get up to go to your job, that doesn't help you. if your doctor says eat less, move more, eat less of what, move how? >> honestly, come to doctors here, i find your blog more useful as a space for thinking about weight loss than any conversation i've ever had with a physician.

granted i've never had a conversation with a bariatric surgeon. it does feel a little like the medical profession is behind the curve in a useful way of talking to people about managing their weight. >> i think erika is right and we want this classification to spur more research, more research on prevention and more research on what are the effective ways doctors and patients can communicate about this and we'll be able to talk about obesity as a disease in and of itself, not just the medical complications, not wait until it gets so far along it's so much more difficult to treat. >> why would we want to do that? in other words, why would we want to pathologyize fat itself. if it equals disease or thick it suggests thin equals healthy. that's obviously patently false. >> it's not only about that this fat tissue is there. this fat tissue is pretty metabolically active. for different races and for

different people, it has a different degree of being active. so this is actually a metabolic disease where obesity is almost a symptom of metabolic disease. >> explain that a little bit. break that down. you say metabolic, my first thought is metabolism, speeding it up or slowing it down. >> people think obese people have slow metabolism. the opposite is often true. obese people burn more calories than thin people. when you start to accumulate a lot of certain tissue, your body reacts to that almost like an inflammation. you're sort of primed for certain cardiac disease. you're primed for the squel, a. every half back in the nfl is obese by nfl standards. >> because they are so muscular. >> they are so muscular. they have 5, 7 body fat.

it's not a good indicator. we're working on that. i think the ama decision will stimulate research into how we can define obesity better. and again, from the surgical perspective, it's not everybody who is over weight. it's not 20 pounds overweight that becomes a surgical indication. the doctors, per se, we're not going to deal with this entirely by ourselves. this is multi-disciplinary. nutritionists, dietitians. >> the kind of research we end up getting is pharmaceutical research. the sort of payoff structure on the back he said is less about how to eat fruit, right, and more about how to take this pill? >> no, absolutely. in a way, i mean, this is -- i think this is an open moment of opportunity. on one hand i think it's a challenge for ama. we know from medicalization that defining something as a disease brings a new level of stigma. what's the mechanism for

addressing the stigma. just large in our country, no more recess in our schools, many low in come areas don't have grocery stores. this is a structural issue as much as anything else. >> when we come back, i want to talk about structure and stigma and evil media. in part we talk about coca-cola and they say, don't blame us if you're fat. we make water, too. [ ship horn blows ] no, no, no! stop! humans. one day we're coming up with the theory of relativity, the next... not so much. but that's okay -- you're covered with great ideas like optional better car replacement from liberty mutual insurance. total your car and we give you the money to buy one a model year newer. learn about it at libertymutual.com. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what's your policy?

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we're talking about the american medical association's new classification of obesity as a disease of the one of the major factors contributing to the u.s. obesity epidemic is the consumption of sugary beverages like soda.

that prompted many anti-obesity advocates to target the industry. don't go talking to coca-cola. >> across our portfolio of 650 beverages, we offer 180 low and no calorie choices. most of our p beverages have low calories versions. ocross our industry in the u.s. by 22%. >> wow, seriously. my question, does classifying obesity as a disease let coca-cola off the hook for their role in the epidemic? >> no. these people drive me nuts. it's so dishonest. drinking calories is a quick and efficient way to drink all the calories you eat in one day. some people go to their jobs and hit the vending machine three times a day. it's happening me get through the day, i need caffeine.

you just drank 800 calories. you eat breakfast, lunch, dinner. at the end of the day you're wondering why you gain weight. >> if we have a classification of disease as opposed to -- i keep thinking of obesity as an environmental justice issue. right? so when you have low wages in the country and you have high poverty and then you have people in circumstances where they have multiple jobs that make it difficult to cook nutritious foods and have farm subsidies that make available lots of highly sugary processed foods and community disinvestment that keeps you from having des ept sidewalks or safe neighborhoods to walk in, a pharma industry -- wait a minute. this is environmental justice issue. this isn't cancer. the disease in us. we're the bulimics on the sugar high. i just wonder -- on the one hand i want to address what you said, the way in which people suffer. on the other hand, i don't want us to go to an individual

pathologizing than a structural one. >> the ama has policy around the multi-solutions to obesity. it is about recreation and school and getting folks to have safe, livable communities where they can exercise and walk and increase in recreational centers. affirm ma also committed to improving health outcomes. we're embarking on a new initiative working with the ymca and other community organizations to decrease the incidence of diabetes. it does take a community approach, an approach on federal, state, local lefrvels solve the problem. >> i've been giving doctors a hard time. the media is bad. we have this practice across television. if you are doing a story on obesity, we do this roll, you can go get it from the archives.

you might notice none of the people have heads or faces. the assumption is no one would want to be identified being fat because it's so stigmatizing. >> my former colleague wrote a big "fat rights." she calls this headless fatty. they never show the head. doesn't make what's in your head. we're laden with cultural stigmas of obesity that reinforce this idea it's a problem of will. getting back to the industries, seriously, coke is an issue but look at the changing size of -- in the 1950s, a movie popcorn was 170 calories, now it's like 83 big macs, the hershey bar has grown, the first paula deen scandal before this was about eat fatty foods, sorry, i'm being funded by diabetes

medicine. the industry is huge and a major part. >> your point about the movies, one of my producers went to see a movie last night and had to stage a revolution to get a child size popcorn and soda, which is the only sort of human size one. it feels like to me that environment where we both shame people -- can you imagine if all black people on television were headless because we didn't want to show them because it's so shameless to be black. we shame people who are fat, seem to have anger about it, then we label it as a disease. in other words, i'm not sure if i want people to lose weight or i want us to get over it. >> if i could say something about the stigma because i'm a psychiatrist by training. for many years people thought men tallilness was like a satanic possession. we're able to understand it's biological factors, it reduces the stigma. i think this approach with obesity is going to reduce the

stigma. it's not about blaming the victim, it's multifaceted. >> no other disease do you have to prove you're not at fault in order to get treatment. >> and it's very, very significant. i think the other point is that we're all living in the same environment, and yet not everybody is obese. >> we don't all live in the same environment. you don't. if you live in a neighborhood with sidewalks and high-quality grocery stores and parents who stay home and schools that have p.e. and you can afford to pack lunch every day, that is a different environment than people who don't have those things. >> not everybody in any of those environments is mutually exclusive they are not all obese or all are. lots of people in disadvantaged environments or advantaged environments, taste the positive way. lots of people who live in countries, the middle east, for example, where everybody is well to do. their obesity is a huge problem there in the middle east, for

example. so i'm not sure it's all related to that. i think we need to look at the people that aren't obese in particular environments and take home from them what the difference is, what the positive input on those people is. again, i think by making it a disease you take away the -- nobody is obese on purpose. nobody is obese on purpose. just like no one has cardiac disease on purpose. i'm sure there's some people that are but it's a minority. >> i think that, you know - this is probably what has a lot of people iffy about this conversation is the fact when we make statements like we all live in the same environment, yeah, there are people who live in some environments where some people are obese and some people are not. just like lots of differ things contribute to obesity, lots of different things contribute to thinness. there are lots of people in this country that have eating disorders and we think they are thin but they need help, too. that's probably the struggle

with embracing obesity being considered a disease we don't know what contributes to sizes. that's why i'm support of all this, because i feel like the research will bear it out. >> you lost 130? >> 170. >> how much as you were making -- i read the blog a lot. when you were making big changes. i know there were moments with a start, false starts, how much changing environmental factors for you and how much just behavioral. >> you know what, there's so, so much. for me i had to get over a binge eating disorder. for me the emotional standpoint, financial standpoint. over the course of the blog, it's been going on four years. i eventually got married. now it's not single parent in come, it's two-parent in come family. it's not me taking my daughter in a stroller walking to the grocery store putting them in a duffel bag and walking them home. i can call a cab if i need to,

go to whole foods. money matters. when i'm in new york i have sidewalks. when i go back to indiana, i don't. how am i going to run, i have to compete with a tractor-trailer. a lot of these things contribute to the ability to maintain a certain size and we have to study that. >> this one is not going away. a fan of my blog, it's my best friend on the planet blair to loves your blog. so nice to have you sitting at the table to me. thank you to you all. up next, oh, paula deen. [ female announcer ] it's simple physics...

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for a body in motion. normally in any given week, there are so many people up to shenanigans that have us saying, wow, seriously. they are all fighting for contention in our segment. this week, every time we found ourselves in shock and awe over what that someone did, that someone was the same person. you know who it is, y'all, paula

deen. wow, seriously? now, we thought we'd had our fill of delicious drama from television's number one pusher of all things artery clogging back when we found out that first ugly truth. you remember, that while she was stuffing us full of fatty food, she was stuffing her pockets as a spokesperson for a diabetes drugmaker and keeping quiet for three years about her own diabetes. a little questionable integrity among friends. when paula was still showing us southern style love with delicious no calorie home cooked meals, only as it turns out paula thought those meals at her brother's wedding would have been better served in another kind of traditional southern style, by slaves, or at least black men playing the role of slaves. this is some of what was revealed in a deposition from a $1.2 million lawsuit against paula and her brother bubba. a former employee alleging squel squall and racial discrimination

at dean deen's company. when asked by an attorney about her inspiration for good old plantation style weddings, deen recalled a restaurant where all the servers were middle aged black men wearing what deen described as a beautiful white jacket and black bowtie saying, quote, i've seen pictures. the pictures i've seen that restaurant represented a certain era in america. after the civil war, during the civil war, before the civil war. it was black men. it was black women. i would say slafrs. nothing creates like voluntary servitude. not the only institution she dropped, dropping n bombs on black people was a beloved favorite up until it fell out of fashion, that is. when asked whether she had used the word, paula replied, yes, of course, but that's not a word we use as time has gone on. all of that and more from the deposition left paula at the end of the week saying another word,

sorry. one video with a direct apology to her family, friends, and fans, but curiously not the people she most directly offended and two others apologizing to matt lauer who was visibly annoyed after deen bailed on what should have been an exclusive mea culpa institute. >> matt, i'm so sorry, i was physically in no shape to come in and talk with you. the last 48 hours have been very, very -- >> so it ultimately ended with paula's goose getting cooked when the food network took her contract off the table and her shows off the air. a network standing up to one of its biggest stars? add that to the tally of paula related news that made us go, wow, seriously? up next the provocative documentary that could change everything you think you know about our justice system. peoplee and we help them find a policy that works for them. huh? also... we've been working on something very special.

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this year is the 50th anniversary of the landmark decision gideon v. wainright which gives any criminal defendant who can't afford an attorney a right to a lawyer at no cost. clarence was arrested and convicted of stealing soda, a few dollars from a pool hall. he representatived himself at trial. after he appealed his decision, the supreme court then ruled that the right to counsel in a criminal case is a fundamental right of the american justice system. more than 12 million arrested in the u.s. each year and a majority of them, a majority of them, are represented by one of the 15,000 public defenders in this country. but with the justice system that is strained to the breaking point, how is it possible for these public defenders to do their jobs. the new documentary, gideon's army which premiers july 1st looks into that question. >> this is the way it really works. you go to jail. you're charged with an offense

based on what a police officer thinks you did. they set a bond. if you're poor and you can't make the bond, you don't get out. so you sit and you sit and you sit. >> joining me here in nerdland is the film's director don porter and two public defenders from the film, travis williams and brand alexander. also with us is poet and prison activist bryon baines. nice to have you here. don, let me start with you. why, obviously we're at 50 years after gideon, but why this film now? >> i actually started making the film after meeting a mentor and trainer in atlanta. so i actually started making the film not thinking about the gideon anniversary. so it's a really happy accident but it's a perfect one because i think people are now talking about the fact that america, as you mentioned, arrests more

people, imprisons more people, we're definitely number one in the world with 2.3 people in prison, 80% of people who go through the criminal justice system are represented by public defenders yet very few people know what they do. >> not only don't know. to the extent they do know, obvious have a derogatory image of public defenders, they are bad lawyers, couldn't get another job, don't do a good job for their clients. >> i think that's a common miss perception. i was a lawyer. i was in private practice in washington, d.c. i didn't know what public defenders do. i think of myself as a socially aware, conscious person. when i saw these young lawyers talking about the constitution and people's rights and freedoms, it changed my life. i felt compelled to show people what i was seeing, also show people life through their eyes. the question they get all the time, how can you represent those people. that's what i sought to answer,

is to follow them. >> actually exactly, travis, i was so moved by your response sort of in who you are at how you represent your clients to this question. lets take a moment and see one more piece from the film. >> the judge is going to tell you had the state fails to prove their case. it is your duty, you must acquit. that's the beauty of this system. it's set up to give people the presumption of innocence, to give them an opportunity to not just be heard but hold the state accountable. you want to take my liberty, you've got to do it right. and if you don't, acquit. >> honestly, i came away from you in this film thinking i don't know if i ever met anybody who loves america and the constitution more. >> ah. >> seriously, the sense of we

must do this because this is who we are as a country. that is why you -- it's intense work. >> well, my love for america is deep. i mean, i really do believe this is the greatest country on the planet, greatest nation around. but it mean nothing if we don't have people to stand up and force it to act right. essentially when something works well in the criminal justice tem, it's because 12 jurors, set of warriors, a judge, somebody forced the system to work and cooperate and live up to the high ideals etched out in the constitution and other documents which mean nothing without the force of public defenders, without the force of strong advocates behind him. >> here you are standing in court in that moment and making an impassioned plea not only about your particular client but what our constitution is, what our justice system is.

but how many clients are you typically managing at a time? >> anywhere between 100 to 120 or so. but my numbers are -- they fluctuate because i handle serious felony offenses, rape, child molestation, my numbers fluctuate. usually about 100. >> you said you were in the private sector, how many clients would you have at a time? >> one. four. if i was really busy, i was juggling four things and unhappy about it. that was one of the things that stunned me. these guys represent 100 people. in miami the lawyers were representing 500 felonies and 250 misdemeanors at one time. i would say to people, i don't know what your day is like but i don't know if you have 750 families looking to you, you're the only thing between them and prison. it's really stunning. >> that emotional piece, brandy, you were standing over here and i smiled, it's brandy, because

i've been watching -- i watched the film. i became so invested in your clients that at a certain point i had to turn the film off because i was so scared about what the outcome was going to be. i'm just watching it. talk about that level of emotional investment you clearly have for your clients rainfall i always say i don't think you can do this work without being empathetic. i fet at one point i was losing empathy. i think don did a good job displaying my feeling for that and battle. i struggle with continuing to do this work and losing the empathy i knew i needed in order to represent my clients. so the emotional side is something i feel like we need because i don't believe you can adequately do your job as a public defender without at least sympathizing but definitely empathizing with the client. >> that can be tough. the client i was rooting for was

one we're pretty certain was not guilty. you have to deal with folks who admitted to you they are, in fact, guilty of horrendous crimes when you have to do your job. why valuable for you to be defending someone. i think for folks who don't quite get the system, wait a minute, part of your job is to defend people who did armed robbery or sexual assault or any of these sorts of things. >> i think it goes back to the constitution. they are entitled to adequate representation whether they did it or not. the prosecutor's job was to prove beyond the exclusion of every reasonable doubt the crime was committed. if they can't do that the law and constitution requires my clients are found not guilty. i know that's very difficult for people to under because you don't want rapists walking the street. you don't want people who murder other folks walking the streets. but if we -- it's a slippery slope. if we say we're going to put everybody in jail just because we know that they did something

and not because we have any evidence, we just know because they said that they did, so we're going to put them in jail because they said they did it. people confess all the time wrongly. just because you tell me you did it, i'm still going to hold the state to their burden. they still need to prove beyond the exclusion of every doubt. >> i begin to hate all the little d.a.s. you've got it so easy. you can build your political careers. i don't really hate d.a.s, i was just having an emotion about that. at this point, a lot of us are thinking about trayvon case and where our interests lie on that question. there's more on this issue 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.

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the day building a play set begins with a surprise twinge of back pain... and a choice. take up to 4 advil in a day or 2 aleve for all day relief. [ male announcer ] that's handy. ♪ >> he is a kid. he's facing a lot of time. if he's found guilty, it will break him mentally and emotionally. he'll be broken.

i can't fathom. i cannot fathom turning around to his mother after a jury has said guilty. >> that was another scene from the documentary, gideon's army, a film that follows the life of three public defenders to challenge the assumptions of the u.s. justice system. the woman featured in that scene is one of my guests, brandy alexander who makes sure there's a lot of emotion in the work they do. not just personal emotion. poverty is a regular part of this. i kept thinking this was debtors' prison. you had folks who could have had these other alternative but because they didn't have $3,000 in bail they couldn't do it. also then your poverty. that scene of you sitting there with the stack of student loans. i mean, how do you do this work when it's really so poorly paid? >> that's a good question. >> still trying to figure that out. >> i think this is what i'm supposed to be doing at this

stage in my life. if i don't do it, i may turn it over to someone who doesn't care as much. i believe that the vast majority of public defenders are good attorneys. and i've seen it personally. and i know that most people doing what we do do it because they love it and they believe in the justice system. even though it's not functioning like it should right now, we have faith we're going to be responsible for making it work the way that it should. i continue to do it, even though i can't pay my bills most of the time and i'm poor and sally may is knocking down mimi door. i believe in my people, the system, the united states justice disem. >> how many graduates of harvard law are clamoring to be public defenders. >> not many. >> the film is powerful and

important because it shows the work the public defenders do in a heroic light. you're really doing heroic work that needs to be done. huge resources stacked against, $74 billion prison industrial complex with everyone from victoria's secret to starbucks invested in that labor. to say it's a job that should be done. i personally had bad experiences with public defenders whose work you're often cleaning up, trying to fix. it's a story that needs to be told. everybody needs to see the film. it's a story that's not been told quite enough. >> travis, one of the challenges you have with your clients regularly, whether or not to plead versus taking it to trial. what are the key factors that go into making that decision for you? >> when i'm giving my advice about how to proceed or how to move forward in a particular

case, i'm trying to minimize potential damage or lessen the penalty or something. it's so many circumstances we may have a good case but it's not worth the risk of this potential sentence. the judge may give you this, a mandatory minimum in this situation. it's not worth the potential for a bad outcome. so i'm just trying to do what i can to get the best outcome. usually that doesn't mean go to trial. usually that means to negotiate something that the client can live with. for example, if you're convicted of trafficking in georgia, it's a mandatory minimum fine of $250,000. who has $250,000 to pay on a fine over the course of some years? so it's an incentive right then, i've got to get trafficking off the table so we're not dealing with this. >> mandatory minimums felt like such a big part of this. the attorneys and the bench were

constantly constrained by if we give this kind of conviction, this is what's going to happen, no matter what other sorts of arguments we make. how much of the work these public defenders are doing are constrained over these laws over the past decade. >> it's an excellent point. it's one of the great societal issues we should be talking about. it's not just the work of the public defenders but also the work of judges. why do we have judges if we're going to tell them if you're convicted in georgia, convicted of armed robbery, no matter the amount. to travis's client was accused of stealing $96 which he allegedly split among four people. he's facing 10 years in prison, first time offender with a separate amount of jail time for the weapon. so we're really looking at 14 years. in georgia, though, you can get life for armed robbery. >> for $96. >> from $1. i had a client who was charged with stealing a beer, who was also facing a tremendous -- one

beer. >> this is like stories from an era we think of like debtors prison, for the least in fraction. >> another thing to think of, 0% of the people going through the justice system represented by public defenders, 0% are poor. 95% of the poor people are going to jail or becoming felons. that is outrageous. that is disenfranchising a whole host of people which has then ripple effects on your political system. it's something affecting our entire democracy. >> bank of america steals from its home owners by not giving them mortgages they absolutely had a right to, but none of them go to jail, even though that can be hundreds of thousands of dollars, put family out street

but from $1 you can get life. >> bankrupt america, disrupt our entire economy and not go to jail and get a great bonus but if you steel a beer in georgia you go to prison for life. >> that makes it clear. we didn't for life. >> we didn't get back around to george zimmerman and trayvon martin. there's an aspect of the justice system operatesing that is tough. when we're on one side or the other, when we think we know or -- but it only operates when both sites have the counsel. my sister has been a public defender for more than 20 years. i am inspired by the work of public defenders and i am inspired by travis and brandy and making this film and thank you for hanging around with us. thanks to don and to travis, brandy, reanne. up next, why the blogosphere is

losing the most important voice it has. through all of our energy operations, we invest more in the u.s. than any other place in the world. in fact, we've invested over $55 billion here in the last five years - making bp america's largest energy investor. our commitment has never been stronger. accomplishing even little things can become major victories. i'm phil mickelson, pro golfer. when i was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis, my rheumatologist prescribed enbrel for my pain and stiffness, and to help stop joint damage. [ male announcer ] enbrel may lower your ability to fight infections. serious, sometimes fatal events including infections, tuberculosis, lymphoma, other cancers, nervous system and blood disorders, and allergic reactions have occurred. before starting enbrel, your doctor should test you for tuberculosis and discuss whether you've been to a region where certain fungal infections are common. you should not start enbrel

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for this week's footnote i'm bidding a favorite tonight farewell to my favorite coffee shop, pam's house blend. pam spaulding has decided to close the blog pam's house blend. launched in 2004, phb is one of the first online opinion sources that i read on a daily basis. pam is based in durham, north carolina. as an african-american lesbian living in the south during the gay baiting re-election campaign of george w. bush, in 2004 she just needed a place to vent, but what started out as a personal online journal of frustration became one of the most innovative and inclusive spaces in the digital world. pam and her fellow bloggers reported the news and commented on the maddening developments of national politics, but they always did so through their own distinctive lens. pam and her co-blog ger

withstood the identity of race and identity reminding us that gay is not just an urban experience. of course there is autumn sandine who is the first transgender blogger on a side. pam and her house blend won many awards and in 2008 she was only one of six african-american b g bloggers credentialed. early this week she announced she will no longer produce pam's house blend. suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, she no longer has the stamina to blog during all the hours that would be reserved for sleeping. we asked pam what she wants to be the legacy of the house blend and she said, i really do wish that we could get more lgbt people of color blogging about politics and their rights. maybe it's the gliend of politi

politics. maybe it's that politics is depressing, i'm not sure, but it's so necessary. and voices from the south are necessary. pam, you are a true citizen journalist. i will continue to check out your personal posts about your favorite band, journey, but i will miss your daily house blend. rest and take care of yourself, you certainly have earned it. but if you are out there and you have a voice that needs to be heard and a perspective that should be shared, maybe now is the time to take up the banner that pam has held aloft for so long. that's our show for today. thanks to you at home for watching. i'm going to see you next saturday at 10:00 a.m. eastern when hopefully the court will finally rule and we are going to talk about whatever it is they have done to our country as a result. now it's time for a preview of weekend with alex bit. it is maura and her fabulous haircut sitting in today. >> thank you so much. the edward snowden saga. the nsa leaker is on the run, but where will he finally land and is he beyond the reach of u.s. officials now? new word today on that

immigration deal in the senate. why at least one senator says it will not get bogged down again. a death defying act just hours away. we'll get a preview of one man's quest to cross the grand canyon on a high wire. we'll bring you the report. plus, "the game of thrones" takes the number one category but it's not the one the makers would like. don't go anywhere, i'll be right back. hy unless you actually eat them ♪ multigrain cheerios. also available in delicious peanut butter. healthy never tasted so sweet. ♪ ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] for dad's first job as dad. nissan tests hundreds of child seats to give you a better fit and a safer trip.

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