yeah... try new alka seltzer fruit chews. they work fast on heartburn and taste awesome. these are good. told ya! i'm feeling better already. [ male announcer ] new alka seltzer fruits chews. enjoy the relief! this morning, my question. why do republicans hate mitch mcconnell so much? plus, democrats want to capture an asteroid, but republicans don't. and why they don't like larry, the very public fed chief. but first, as a survivor's hell ends, a perpetrator's is just beginning. good morning. i'm melissa harris-perry. on thursday, we all sat riveting, watching as the final chapter of a story of

unimaginable abuse and exceptional endurance unfolded inside an ohio courtroom. the names and faces of michelle knight, gina dejesus and amanda berry first captured national attention on may 6th after a dramatic rescue ended more than a decade of terror inside a cleveland house of horrors. thursday was the first time since that day that michelle knight was in the same room with the man who held her captive and tortured her for 11 years. and knight was the only one of the women who came to the hearing, where ariel castro learned his fate after pleading guilty to 937 counts, including rape, kidnapping, and aggravated assault. life in prison without parole, plus an additional 1,000-year sentence. before sentencing, castro delivered a long, rambling, horrifying statement, defending his crimes. but the most compelling moment of the hearing came when michelle knight, the first of the three women to be taken, made a statement of her own, telling the story of how she

survived against all odds, in part thanks to her friendship with one of castro's other hostages, gina dejesus. >> gina was my teammate. she never let me fall, i never let her fall. she nursed me back to health when i was dying from his abuse. my friendship with her is an unending debt, was good out of this situation. we said we would some day make it out alive and we did. >> knight also addressed castro directly. >> i spent 11 years in hell. now your hell is just beginning. i will overcome all this that happened, but you will face hell for eternity. from this moment on, i will not let you define me or affect who

i am. i will live on, you will die a little every day. >> so i want to stay in this moment for just a moment. because this moment, seeing a woman come forward to tell her story, not only of her victimization, but also her determination to survive it is remarkable for its rarity. so often, survivors of sexual assault are silenced by shame or by threats into being invisible players in their own narrative. and michelle knight's courageous act of claiming this space for herself puts her and the two women with whom she lived through this hell, right where they belong, at the center of their own story of survival. but in knight's plans for her future, i also hear something else. >> with the guidance of god, i will prevail and help others that suffered at the hands of others. i know that there is a lot of people going through hard times, but we need to reach out a hand

and hold them, and let them know that they're being heard. >> so although the circumstances of the ordeal experienced by these three women were extraordinary, the sexual violence committed against them throughout that ordeal is all too common. nearly one out of every five women are raped at some point in their lives, and what i hear in michelle knight's words is an understanding of that fact and an invitation to use her experience to embrace and support those who will never have a moment to tell their own stories. knight's choice to stand there on her story and use it as a platform puts her in good company with others, who are surviving by using their personal anguish in service of a greater good. it's what we heard last week from trayvon martin's mother, sybrina fulton, when she spoke to the national urban league's national conference. >> what is my message to you? my message to you is please use my story.

please use my tragedy. please use my broken heart to say to yourself, we cannot let this happen to anybody else's child. >> "use my story." it's the same message we heard from the newtown parents of the children killed last year at sandy hook elementary school, bringing their determination along with their broken hearts to washington, to advocate for gun reform. all of them, asking that even as we are horrified by the events that brought them to the national stage, that we also hear the message they are trying to amplify, while they are standing there in the spotlight. for michelle knight, it's a call for recognition and a response to the broader culture of sexual violence. given all that she has endured, she isn't asking for very much, simply that we listen, that we learn, and that we act. joining us now is zerlina

maxwell, a contributor to the grio.com. ooi irin carmon, and now the executive director of the service women's action network, and juan ramos, the core trainer for a call to men, executive director of community-driven solutions, who has worked as a court-appointed counselors for convicted abusers. thank you all for being here. >> thank. >> so this was a tough week in terms of this castro trial, and particularly on thursday when we were watching it. and irina, i kept thinking of you in this week, you and i are both survivors, and i was thinking about the ways in which this kind of coverage is both a trigger, but also the fact that he gets the thousand years is also, like the opposite of a trigger, somehow empowering. >> and it's the rare moment where someone who has committed sexual assault is put in prison for that. right? so that's the 3% of cases that that actually happens. so justice for this woman, it

felt so satisfying and gratifying. but also just her courage to stand up in front of everyone, because that is so important. so many survivors don't tell anyone, they don't tell anyone for a long time, or they're not believed when they finally do open up and tell someone. so being able to stand there and just have support. because what stood out to me was that she was hugging so many people in the courtroom, there were people holding her back, you know, as she spoke, and it's that community of support, that love, that, you know, surrounding her, that is so crucial when you're going through the process of surviving. >> and i wanted to, you know, i want to keep our eyes very closely on michelle knight and what she's asking us to do, but i do want to pause and listen to one statement that came out from castro, because as extraordinary as this moment is, this is the thing that felt most ordinary to me. so i want to listen for a second as ariel castro makes a claim about amanda berry's behavior since escaping from this decade of unwilling incarceration and rape. let's just listen for a moment.

>> if you've seen the youtube video, amanda this weekend, this right there itself proves that this girl did not go through no torture. that woman did not go through no torture. because if that was true, do you think she would be out there partying already or having fun? i don't think so. >> and just one more moment, he says something very similar about gina dejesus. i would like to listen to that as well. >> i seen gina in the media. she looks normal. she acts normal. a person that's been tortured does not act normal. they would act withdrawn and everything. on the contrary, i heard the opposite. she's happy, the victims are happy. >> so their survival then gets used against them by the perpetrator to say that they didn't have anything to survive. that feels common to me, even

though kcastro's particular for of evil is extraordinary. >> it feels kind of normal, because that's what, you know, the perpetrator would say, to take away from what he's done and kind of almost justifying his, you know, his actions to say, well, i didn't do nothing that bad. she's out there partying. but the reality is, some may look at this and say, this sick man is just making this wild, outlandish statement. but the reality is, he's also, he knows all too well what our society and how our communities respond to this type of violence and abuse of women. so to me, what i heard there was an appeal to us in the larger community and society and saying, hey, if i did this, would this woman be out there partying? because what happens in rape culture, what happens in sexual harassment is that women are continuously put in a position, where they have to prove their innocence before their perpetrators, you know, are found guilty of what they've done. and he's making, to me, he's making an emotional appeal to those of us, especially to those of us men out there who may say,

well, you know, he's kind of right, you know? >> right. how bad could it have been. >> it shows the outer limits of those kind of myths about rape. because this case could not be less ambiguous by the standards that society has set about rape. two of these girls were minors when they were kidnapped, they were lured under false pretenses, they were physically imprisoned with chains. there is no story that you can explain away there, unless you believe that there's some still resonance to that idea of, well, you didn't die? how much more of a perfect victim do you need to be than these three poor girls, these women, but yet he still believes there would be a resonance to that story, because it goes to deep. >> you literally must die to prove that you resisted sufficiently. this seems to me, we have policies substantiating this. we were just looking at the fact that in ohio, in fact, in 31 states, in 31 states, rapists

can sue for custody of children produced in the context of rape and/or for visitation rights, in 31 states this this country. in only one state where there's a waiting period for abortion can people who have been raped or are victims of incest even get that waived, right? but that idea of, who has to claim innocence, how much is that a part of rape culture? that you, the victim, the survivor are also the one on trial. >> i think it's a huge part of our culture. i think, you know, even in the institution in which i work, which is the military, there's still so much kind of agony and angst within the military establishment about the idea that we're being attacked wholeheartedly. that all men must be bad, all men must be rapists is and we have to launch a full-scale defense against all of these attacks when the reality is that we're dealing with a small group of extremely effective serial predators that are not being held accountable. so we kind of get paranoid, as a

culture, about, you know, and almost delusional, just like ariel castro is clearly delusional about, you know, accusations that are exaggerated and, of course, women, as juan so eloquently put, are always the ones on trial. >> we have more on this. i know it's a tough subject. i know there's a hard like ick factor to the entire thing, but i'm going to ask everyone in nerdland to stay with us, because there are thousands of other michelle knights hidden in plain sight every day and i want to us talk about that when we get back. [ male announcer ] this is betsy.

her long day of pick ups and drop offs begins with arthritis pain... and a choice. take up to 6 tylenol in a day or just 2 aleve for all day relief. all aboard. ♪

before we heard from michelle knight at ariel castro's sentencing hearing, before she was freed from his house three months ago, she was invisible. not because she hadn't been seen for more than ten years, because hardly anyone realized her

disappearance was involuntary. during their decade spent in captivity, both amanda berry and gina dejesus remained two of cleveland's most famous and recognizable missing people. but when michelle knight disappeared after leaving her cousin's house in west cleveland in 2002, her absence went mostly unnoticed. no widespread police search or breathless media reports. she vanished quietly into the clutches of a sexual predator. it's a scenario that is played out daily on america's streets. one that just made headlines this weak, when more than 100 children were rescued by the fbi in a sex trafficking sweep of more than 70 u.s. cities. that sweep resulted in the arrest of 159 traffickers. joining me now from washington, d.c. is andrea powell, executive director of fair girls, an organization dedicated to preventing the exploitation of girls worldwide. miss powell, what aspects of this story, or the castro's sort of horror story play out in your

work regularly? >> so i think one thing that's really important to point out in bringing in connection together is that sex trafficking is basically organized rape for profit. and the commonality is that just like michelle knight, young women and girls, and boys, all across the country are going through the same trauma and they're often being viewed as potentially perpetrators or that, you know, they somehow asked for it, because they're not screaming enough, because they didn't die. but the thing is that they need the same compassion and support that we are seeing across the country, for michelle knight. and i think she's a true hero, and so are these young women and girls who are standing up as survivors all across the country. >> miss powell, help me on this. i do think this is a real challenge. on the one hand, as a feminist, as a kind of sex positive feminist, i do want to leave space for the possibility that some sex workers, adult women, actually do make a choice to be engaged in sex work, as part of what they do, right?

and on the other hand, maintain the sense of the reality of what trafficking is. and as you said, organized rape for profit. how do we get really clear about that distinction and how do we work around that distinction? >> so, my organization, fair girls, is one of several agencies across the country working with survivors of sex trafficking. and i have actually never met a survivor who's come into our office who hasn't already had experiences of sexual abuse, being involved in foster care. it's not like they were standing between choices of being a doctor or being involved in so-called sex work. that's not to say that there aren't those out there who are potentially really making a viable choice, but the hundreds and thousands of victims across this country truly are victims of modern-day slavery. that's what sex trafficking is. it's the new face of slavery in america. and i think that's what's really important to point out. so it's not detracting the from anyone's agency, it's actually adding to the mission of

ensuring that young women and girls are respected, no matter what they've been through, as heroes, if they've gone through this. >> i think that's so useful. i want to come to you on this. it's one of the things that we see in this castro case, is that he was -- the police knew that this was a man who had been violent towards his own wife, right? and then this is on the backside of it. it's actually true over and over again, is that we see that there are these other acts of what we think of as domestic or private violence. and all of a sudden you see these things that are more unambiguously criminal, you know, activities. is there a way that we could start holding men accountable at those beginning stages of acting as predators, before they get to the super predator stage? >> i think there's always opportunity, where you can start early on. i think you need to start working, for example, with boys early on, to really talk to them about who they are, as young men in our communities and our society. and their relation in relation to women. i think we need to begin a process. you know, one of the things we believe, a call to me is that,

you know, our mission is really to drive men and boys toward, you know, respecting and being loving individuals, while also creating an environment where women are valued and safe. and i think that we need to show our boys, in specific, who they are in relationship to women in their communities. you know, we think the only demand respect and love for the women that are directly in our lives, without saying that i want that to also be the fact for another woman who maybe important to another man's life. it's sort of hypocritical, because i can't demand something to be done for someone i respect and love, but yet i'm also perpetrat perpetrating something that i'm kind of demonizing. we need to get on board in our community and start a conversation amongst men to not make this conversation that we have when we have a tragedy and an atrocity like the one we're having here today, but let it be a woman's conversation. >> hold for me real quick. we have to go to commercial in a moment.

andrea, i want to bring you in just one more moment wildfibefo go. what is the key thing we can do as a public. i keep thinking, what if michelle knight lives next-door to me and i don't realize it because i don't know my neighbor. what can we do, on this question of sex trafficking in our communities? >> i think the number one thing is keep your eyes open. and if you see a young girl who looks like she needs help. maybe you see that she's not in school, maybe you see that she's with older guys over and over again, reach out, talk to local authorities, or you can call the national trafficking hotline, which is 1-888-3737-888. and that number, you can call nationally and report a potential case. and even if you're wrong, you still could be saving a life. but these girls truly are victims and do need our support. and it's worth that call. it's worth asking her if she's okay. >> andrea powell, thanks so much. up next, rape culture in institutions, when the people who are supposed to protect you don't and won't. with the spark miles card from capital one,

bjorn earns unlimited rewards for his small business. take these bags to room 12 please. [ garth ] bjorn's small business earns double miles on every purchase every day. produce delivery. [ bjorn ] just put it on my spark card. [ garth ] why settle for less? ahh, oh! [ garth ] great businesses deserve unlimited rewards. here's your wake up call. [ male announcer ] get the spark business card from capital one and earn unlimited rewards. choose double miles or 2% cash back on every purchase every day. what's in your wallet? [ crows ] now where's the snooze button?

[ crows ] still doesn't feel real. our time together was... so short. well, since you had progressive's total loss coverage, we were able to replace your totaled bike with a brand-new one. the tank, the exhaust... well, she looks just like roxy! you know, i'll bet she's in a better place now. i'm sure she is. [ ethereal music plays ] [ motorcycle revving ] getting you back on a brand-new bike. now, that's progressive.

the house that ariel castro built was designed to protect himself and keep his victims silent and hidden. and in some american institutions that were designs to promote intellect freedoms, we find that this same culture of institutional self-preservation at the expense of survivors of sexual violence. on college and university campuses, where victims' concerns go unaddressed and perpetrators go unpunished, and in the u.s. military, where an epidemic of sexual assault is met with an unwillingness to protect soldiers who have been victimized and a reluctance to prosecute their cases outside the chain of command. now, anu, i just kept thinking of the many conversations that we've had about chain of command and about sexual assault in the military. no one suggesting that four-star generals are ariel castro, but that notion of like, build the house to protect the perpetrator and not the victims just felt very familiar, felt resonant in

this story. >> what you're seeing now is a huge defense that's being launched by the military style and by congress members who have very entrenched ties to the military to avoid change happening. and what you're seeing in actually the senate and the house is people are not falling along party lines, they're falling along old guard and new guard lines. so even ted cruz and rand paul on the tea party side are alaining themselves with reformers. where we have moderate democrats like claire mccaskill who are aligning themselves with the old guard establishment. there are people who to the death want to defend the military as it was. you want to ask these folks, do you want to be on the right side of history, because this is going to happen. >> it's interesting, i haven't laid the two lists over each other, but i wonder if the nsa list, the list of people who are supporting nsa's right to invade privacy are the same folks who are wanting to hold on to the chain of command. i met is there are some similarities in the sense of like, must preserve the

institutions just as they are. >> don't believe they can trust the institutions with that amount of power too. >> speaking of which, i wanted to ask you specifically, irin, about the college and university piece. there's a whole list of major colleges and universities currently under fire for not taking appropriate action against sexual assault, including amherst, berkeley, colorado boulder, dartmouth, georgetown, montana, university of north carolina chapel hill, notre dame, occidental, princeton, the naval academy, wesley and west point, william and mary, yale. all of these are schools where there are active questions about how they are managing this. what is it about this willingness to protect the perpetrators rather than believe the victims. >> the first thing is that we have always, you know, since we have had rape as a definition, said that we take it seriously, and we have had the rules on the books. i recently read that there was death penalty for rape in the early american colonies.

but when we actually have it staring us in the face, we look for reasons to excuse it away or say that this isn't that real rape. and the second thing i hear is when you go to campuses and talk to people is that oftentimes, even the victims, they say, well, i don't want to ruin his li life. so the weight of being at that institution and saying, these are the pivotal times of our life, these are good boys, you hear it in the military as well, i don't want to be that person that ruins his life. there are corrosive things that in order to keep those four walls up, there have to be lots of lies kept within them. >> amazing. and i would add tufts university to that list, my alma mater. but particularly yale is egregious, because this week they put out a report that was supposed to be the, you know, we reviewed title 9 and everything. and they were like nonconsensual sex, which is not a thing.

so i want to point that out, that's rape. nonconsensual sex is not a thing. also, i just think the idea that we don't believe victims, right? so we need a michelle knight story to actually believe like, you know, well, she's been through it, there's proof, there's chains, we can see it. steubenville, there's video, there's texts, there's tweets. then we believe the victims. no, we need to believe all victims, no matter if they're chained up or they're at a college party and they wake up and they were sexually assaulted. we need to believe victims. and that's what i think the theme throughout all of these things are. >> it's an interesting point. if you can show me the chains, then i believe that you were restrained. but if the story includes you having been drunk, then, of course, it's got to be in part your fault. and believing the victims doesn't mean that we take away the responsibility of a presumption of innocence and due process, right? but you don't necessarily begin with the belief that the victim is lying. in the context of the military, though, this chain of command thing. i mean, the idea of something like, nonconsensual sex, that's not a thing.

i keep thinking, what is it like to wake up and have to report to someone who may have been your perpetrator. that sense of being underneath an institution that is in control of you. >> well, we know, because the dod has statistics, that have told us that, that the majority of sexual assault victims in the military fear retaliation. and so if that's the baseline, then we have to create a system that does not retaliate against victims. and this legislation that senator gillibrand has introduced will resolve that system. so that there's no institutional bias. so that it's not your boss or your boss's boss -- it's nobody who is going to end up influencing your career that determines whether or not a case goes forward. it is so simple. you know, in israel, five years after they moved away from a commander-centered system, military justice system to a professionalized prosecutor-run system, reporting went up 80%. i mean, is that -- that's enough proof, isn't it? >> and it's the point that even if there aren't the chains, that the fear is a thing -- i mean, i

did not tell for years, not because there was an active threat, but that fear of reprisal and what it would mean was enough to silence people. and i wasn't even in a situation where that person had direct control over my job. zerlina, aaririn carmon, thank . we can report this morning that the home that ariel castro held these women in will, in fact, be coming down. michelle knight visited the neighborhood, she stood across the street from the home. she talked with neighbors. she said thank you to them. she is clearly an enormously magnanimous human being. but knowing that that property is going to come down strikes me as a good metaphor. let's bring the institutions down that hold people in these circumstances. how do you hold a poverty hearing without hearing from poor people? my letter of the week is next. [ male announcer ] a doctor running late for a medical convention loses his computer, exposing thousands of patient records to identity theft.

data breaches can happen that easily. we don't believe you should be a victim of someone else's mistake. we're lifelock. we constantly monitor the web so if any of your personal information is misused, we're on it. ♪ ow. [ male announcer ] call 1-800-lifelock or go to lifelock.com today. spending the day with my niece. i don't use super poligrip for hold because my dentures fit well. before those little pieces would get in between my dentures and my gum and it was uncomfortable. even well-fitting dentures let in food particles. super poligrip is zinc free. with just a few dabs, it's clinically proven to seal out more food particles so you're more comfortable and confident while you eat. so it's not about keeping my dentures in, it's about keeping the food particles out. [ charlie ] try zinc free super poligrip.

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. ♪ [ all ] who's new in the fridge! i help support bones... [ ding! ] ...the immune system... [ ding! ] ...heart health... [ ding! ] ...and muscles. [ ding! ] that can only be ensure complete! [ female announcer ] the four-in-one nutrition of ensure complete. a simple choice to help you eat right. [ major nutrition ] nutrition in charge.

last week on this show, u.s. representative barbara lee says she would ask the house budget committee chair to invite our guest, teana gaines turner to testify about anti-poverty programs. teana is a witness to hunger and a married mother of three who receives food stamps and other federal benefits to help make ends meet. but the republican chairman of the committee refused to have teana to his war on poverty hearing. thus my letter this week is to that chairman, congressman paul ryan. dear congressman ryan, it's me, melissa. look, it is a great thing that you had a hearing on poverty. that you asked whether we've made any progress on the war on poverty in the last several years. i'm glad that you had four experts on poverty programs, including our favorite nun on the bus, sister simone campbell. but you know what would have been a hell of a lot better, if you'd actually have heard from someone who is living in poverty. someone who's working and still struggling to feed and clothe her children and to afford health care.

now, here's the kind of thing you may have heard from teana, describing her life on our show in may. >> it's not just depression or stress for an adult, it's very much on the minds of young children every day, and i don't understand how people with sit and sleep knowing that there's a child somewhere, 8 years old, 4 years old, worrying about, is my mom going to eat? >> so, you had the chance to hear her, congressman ryan, but you refused. only allowing representative barbara lee to enter tianna's written comments into the record. would things have been different if she was there? would you have been able to look tianna in the eye while telling her that you care about the poor. at the start of your hearing, you said you wanted to find ways to lift people out of poverty. >> this is about improving people's lives. in this country, the condition of your birth should not determine the outcome of your life. if you work hard and play by the

rules, you can get ahead. that is something that we all believe in and that we all care about. >> fantastic rhetoric, but your budget proposals paint a very different picture. your so-called path to prosperity budget would cut $135 billion from s.n.a.p. you know, the food stamp program that feeds 22 million american households a month. let's put that in perspective. that's more than six times the amount house republicans proposed cutting in their farm bill earlier this year. even that much smaller cut, $20.5 billion to your $135 billion would be devastating to american families. according to a new study by the health impact project, the comparatively small $20.5 billion cut could result in 5.1 million people losing their food stamps, including more than 1 million children. hundreds of thousands of americans would go hungry. is that something that we can all believe in, congressman?

the study also found that the s.n.a.p. cuts in the farm bill again, a tiny fraction of the cuts you want, would increase the poverty rate. that is not exactly lifting people out of poverty. and that increase in hunger and poverty would lead directly to an increase in diseases like diabetes and heart disease in adults and asthma and cognitive impairment in children. tell me, congressman, how exactly is that improving pee i people's lives? and your plan doesn't even save money. the increase in diabetes alone would cost $15 billion in impacts to health care. and the cuts you want would be six times worse. look tianna gaines-turner in the eye and say you want to improve her life while taking away the means to feed her family. would you have been able to keep a straight face? since you refused to allow her at your poverty hearing, i'm guessing not. sincerely, melissa.

okay, a? b? b. a? that's a great choice. let me show you some faucets to go along with that. with the latest styles and guaranteed low prices, you can turn the bath you have into the bath you want. good choice. more saving. more doing. that's the power of the home depot. right now, this abbey vanity combo is a special buy. just $299.

at paul ryan's budget committee hearing on poverty this week, republican lawmakers, the same ones who have voted for ryan's safety net slashing budgets, insisted that they care about the poor and want to find the most effective ways of alleviating poverty. this led to some interesting logical contortions. take a listen to this clip of representative roger williams, representative of texas, questioning sister simone campbell on the morality of anti-poverty programs. sister simone is the executive director of the catholic social justice lobbying organization network. >> don't you think a lot of this debate is the fact that we've lost our family values, we've got single parents and so forth, and we need to get back to that. that that has a lot to do with what we're talking about? >> i practiced family law for 18 years in oakland, california, and i found, with low-income families, that the biggest cause

of family breakup was economic stressors and not being able to have enough wages. so i think the most important piece that we could do that would support families would be raise the minimum wage. it would be a significant support -- >> raise the minimum wage and not have a maximum wage like this administration is talking about. >> maximum wage, that's not a thing. williams' comments were timely. this week, fast food workers walked off their jobs and demanded a living wage of $15 an hour, more than double the current federal minimum wage. joining me, is david simmons, david cay johnston, and and bob nay, former republican congressman from ohio, and author of "sideswiped." so i want to start with you. talk to me about this idea of a $15 per hour.

i know there's a fight in congress to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. but these folks are demanding $15. talk to me about that disparity. >> as background, the federal minimum wage right now is $7.15, which is $15,000 a year for a full-time worker. it's not a living wage, it's a poverty wage, it's even below a poverty wage, depending on how big your family is. and what the workers are striking for, $15 an hour. these are workers that work for huge multi-national corporations that are making record profits. mcdonald's posted $5.5 billion in profits last year, compensated its ceo, $13.8 million last year. so all these workers are saying is, you know, we are making poverty wages, the median wage for a fast food worker is under $9 an hour. all we're asking is you share some of the enormous wealth that we are creating for you and help us, so we don't have to rely on public benefits to make ends meet. >> at this point, jamal, this point about relaying on public benefits, feels to me like if there is some way that democrats can kind of get in here in this conversation, is actually probably not going to be around

the sister simone morality ethics argument. it's going to be around the argument that if you don't raise the minimum wage, you have to keep supplying food stamps, section 8, and other government support, not so much to support the families, but to underwrite the enormous profits of mcdonald's and others. >> absolutely. i think, first of all, if you'd got people more money, they would be able to then spend more money. >> which stimulates the economy. >> which stimulates the economy. this is part of what the president has been talking about, right? you've got the people who make the bottom 80% of workers spend about 110% of what they consume. if they had more money, they would spend more money. the wealthy, we are able to -- >> save it! spend it on your kids' college 15 years from now. >> absolutely. so you've got to do that. and i've always wondered, when we had the health care argument, why democrats and progressives didn't make the argument more often, that if you can get the government to provide health care, you free corporations from having to do that, which allows them to go around the world and compete on a fair basis.

i've never understood why we haven't made that argument more forcefully. i think some of the big companies get it, but obviously it didn't work in congress. >> so let me ask a question that also emerged. we heard it in that sound bite, when the discourse from the right becomes a discourse about the morality of poor people, who are actually getting benefits. and i'm always made sort of so nervous by that idea that it's about family disillusion rather than about poverty. and sister simone is saying, poverty is part of what leads to family dissolution. i know you've both been a supporter of government benefits for the poor, but also of some testing around those benefits, things like working in order to get food stamps. talk to me about how republicans may be thinking about this issue. >> well, first of all, the relating of morality was a wrong introduction of language into that hearing. that's apples and oranges. the hearing was about people struggling, so there was no reason to bring that in. and i'm sure that the chair himself kind of grimaced to

himself. but as far as the entire argument, we had working for welfare dollars, but it has to be something that is understandably workable. a lot of people say, well, drug tests, for example, for food stamps. drug tests, corporate leaders that receive government money, which corporations do, corporate welfare, you know, they're going to spend that and have a big impact when they go under and the government has the to bail them out. so i think the arguments need to be basically on what helps people, but with some people in my party, they've made arguments and bringing in the morality in the poor. middle class people have become poor in this country. you have to remember that. >> and everyone is sort of sitting on the edge. we saw some data just this past week that it looks like we're in a situation where most american adults, at some point, are going to experience poverty. >> four out of five, according to the associated press study, which makes perfect sense with me. i've had periods in my life where, you know, there was worry about, is there enough food in the house when i was a child. and we're going to see more of

this, because what are we seeing going on in our economy? fewer jobs relative to the size of the population. we are not seeing any growth to the bottom. and one out of three workers, 51 million workers, they may be part-time, one out of 15 workers makes $15,000 a year or less. the median wage has been stuck at the same level since 1999. we're talking about 14 years with no growth in the minimum wage. and at the top we have this tremendous growth. mcdonald's put out this suggestion, you know, get a second job. >> right, exactly. >> if we would, in fact, get off the employer-based health care system and small employers should be in the forefront of this. not just big ones, because it's an enormous drag on their efficiency. we would see a lot of positive change. in fact, that alone would balance the budget. getting our health care costs in line, which we can do with a single-payer national system. >> stay with me. we have more on this topic. but i also want to tell our viewers that if you are

interested, you can hear from tianna. you can go to mhpshow.com where you can read the entire written testimony submitted by tianna gaines-turner submitted to the house committee. she wasn't allowed to speak, but she did write. a and up next, banned by the bank. the stunning reason why millions of people can't even get a checking account. having some fiber! with new phillips' fiber good gummies. they're fruity delicious! just two gummies have 4 grams of fiber! to help support regularity! i want some... [ woman ] hop on over! [ marge ] fiber the fun way, from phillips'. [ woman ] hop on over! i'to guard their manhood with trnew depend shields and guards. the discreet protection that's just for guys. now, it's your turn. get my training tips at guardyourmanhood.com

last week we told you about the growing phenomenon of prepaid payroll cards, which companies are increasingly using to pay their workers rather than checks or direct deposit. and some of those cards charge fees that can be $30 or more a month. the cards can be the best choice for workers without a bank account if their only other choice is a check cashing service. but why don't they have bank accounts? well, one of the reasons is that banks don't like providing services to low-income people

who keep low balances. a "new york times" investigation found this week that more than 1 million low-income americans are blacklisted from opening a bank account, because of minor past mistakes, like bouncing a check. so this feels to me -- i was like, okay, you've got no food stamps, no safety net, and you can't even get a checking account. >> i think it just shows that it is incredibly expensive to be poor in this country and to be working poor. no matter -- >> please say that again. please say that. >> it is incredibly expensive to be poor in this country and to be a working poor. and that is something at paul ryan's hearing, or a lot of the rhetoric around these issues, doesn't acknowledge. is that working people are working extremely hard. they are trying to find full-time hours when they can get them. they are working two jobs, as apparent the mcdonald's budget calculator suggest that they do to make ends meet. and they are not getting ahead. and every single policy that pushes them further and further down the income ladder hurts us all. because we need their consumer spending ads, jamal says, if we want to drive the economy

forward. so it's just another stupid policy that lawmakers really need to address. >> do democrats have enough oomph to take -- to say that. to take this on and to run on it in 2014 and '16? >> the real answer is probably no, because the reality is, most people who vote, when you're sitting in front of a democratic map, you're looking at the voters, prime voters. most people who vote, particularly in a midterm election, are going to be people who go to work for a living and probably who make a little bit more money when they go to work than people who make $9 an hour. so the benefit of the obama coalition, is president obama was a figure who inspired people who made a little bit less money to go out and vote, so it changed some of the math about elections. which is tougher to do in a midterm. the reality, though, is until we figure out how we handle this, we are not going to have an economy that is growing. because we just are not putting enough money in enough of the people's hands who are going to do well. if we think about what's happening with our gridlock, the average male worker makes $900 less in real terms than he did in the late 1960s.

these men, particularly middle-aged, white guys in the country, who have seen their wages stagnate, their wives have to go to work, their kids have to come back home, and no one's really talking to them about how do they make things better. and they're pissed, excuse me my language. and they are stopping action in congress -- >> so, right, but so, i was going to say, so, david, how do we get that angry white man, with the depressed wages, how do we get him to see his interest as connected to that of tianna's rather than in opposition to tianna's? >> this is all government policy, this is not economics. we have to get them to see, you know, you were better off when 35% of private workers worked in the union, because 80% of workers' wages were effectively set by union policies. the companies didn't give you health care out of the goodness of their hearts, they did it because you have some power. and that's the problem. we don't have markets for labor anymore. we have an asymmetrical situation, where all the knowledge and power is over

here, and the workers are individualized and we have flooded the market since the elimination of welfare as we knew it in 1995, with low-skilled workers, particularly single mothers. >> what about bank account ability, those? i keep trying to think coalition building. is bank accountability something that republicans could get in line with, and say, hey, this isn't even reasonable that people can't even get a bank account. >> when i was on financial institutions, the clinton administration, everybody charged the hill and said glass-steagall was 1932, it's old, you've got to get rid of it. and then of course once we got rid of it, we altered it. then dodd/frank had to come in, because something had to be done about these monsters. and the end result was there was a bailout and they didn't want transparency. there's been a whole history of this. republicans and democrats can grab this issue and do the right thing to do, which is to make this a fair and balanced system. and what's good for one is good for the other. and there can't be a level where the banks are above the people

in this process. it just can't continue. >> the quote of the hour, it is expensive to be poor in america. coming up next, i swear, asteroid politics. congress takes their fight to outer space. this is not a metaphor. this actually happened. and a major milestone for schools in the nation's capital. there is, of course, more nerdland at the top of the hour. now it's stirred.

let's get a cookie sheet. i am the ghost of cookies past. residue. so gross. well you didn't use pam, so it looks like you're "stuck" with me. that's a really good one. thank you, i'm here all week, folks. no wait...i'm here forever! ha ha ha! [ female announcer ] bargain brand cooking spray can leave annoying residue. but pam leaves up to 99% less residue. pam helps you keep it off. welcome back. i'm melissa harris-perry. a giant object hurtling through space on a collision course with our planet, headed for an impact that will be quiet literally earth shattering. it's the stuff of post apocalyptic nightmares.

but believe it or not, worrying about how to defend ourselves against an asteroid apocalypse isn't just a thing that happens in "deep impact," starring morgan friedman. why it is always a black guy is a president when the world is going to blow up? it's also the stuff of mid-summer washington politics. enter president obama and the asteroid lasso plan. he put nasa to work and came up with a solution to catch an asteroid. nothing to crazy, just a small one like a little pet asteroid, and to bring it closer to earth and figure out how to redirect if a big killer kind ever shows up, now we know how to deal with it before it destroys us. president obama is giving us our own pet rock from outer space. nasa is even giving us a video that shows us how this vacuum thing would expand out and grab the asteroid gently, moving it

gently along a safer path. what is not to love about this? well, apparently everything, according to the people in way of his plan. republicans in congress. 22 republicans overruled 17 democrats in committee and voted to ditch president obama's plan in favor of their own. the bill now awaiting a vote by the full house instructs nasa to set up a moon base with the ultimate goal of making a giant leap to mars. if we can't figure out how to redirect the asteroid, we'll get out of here and get to mars. never mind there's only enough money in the budget for one big space mission, and nasa prefers the president's plan as more economic and affordable. but it's not like economic reality is ever factored into republicans' reactions to the president's plans back here on earth. on tuesday, president obama laid out his plan to avoid another inevitable collision course, the pending implosion of america's middle class and the collapse of our already crumbling infrastructure. speaking from chattanooga, tennessee, the president offered republicans a simple quid pro

quo. >> here's the bottom line. i'm willing to work with republicans on reforming our corporate tax code, as long as we use the money from transitioning to a simpler tax system for a significant investment in creating middle class jobs. that's the deal. >> but before the president ever said those words, laying out his modest grand bargain proposal, congressional republicans had already said, no, no, no, no. no deal, no grand bargain, not even a far-fetched moon to the mars alternative plan to save the economy from doom. leaving us looking at our economic future with the same hopes as when we looked to the asteroids in the skies, doing nothing and praying that we're just going to survive the hits. christine bellantoni is joining us now, and still with us, former republican congressman bob nay, jamal simmons, and david cay johnston, author of "the fine print." okay, they can't even decide on

space. bob, is this the worst -- i mean, you were there when you guys shut it down. is this actually worse than then? >> most people think the congress is already in outer space. let's make that clear. i was part of that government shutdown. it was a little bit deferent. we had the senate under republican control and then, of course, the senate, bob dole blinked, probably to help the house too. president clinton, his numbers went down during, but came back up afterwards. he got elected. we did get some balanced budgets as gingrich, the speaker at the time points out, but this is a whole different scenario now. this is beyond dysfunctional. and there's a lot of blame to go around. the democratic side with the senate. harry reid has to run for leader of the senate, john boehner runs for speaker of the house. and that's kind of what this is about, just speaking on where i came from, the republican side, john boehner. and you have to look at his personality. he never had to count votes. he wasn't in the whip system, where he had to go out and actually get a vote and spend all the time to do it. so if you look at the flavor of gingrich, speaker hastert and

now john boehner, there's a different personal side to this. i bring that up, because people think it's about republican and democrat, it's about personalities. and the speaker has to cater to a group of people. and speaker boehner is more interested in counting votes and they need to sit down and look at the big picture. they created this fiscal cliff and sequestration, that's all hype, so they temporarily solve it and not addressing the big picture. >> i appreciate that. because i think there's a way, christina, in which those of us who are d.c. outsiders assume that it's all personal animus, but then you see pictures of them sort of being friendly with one another, and you think, how is it possible that they can agree on nothing? that so little has gotten done. >> they're saw one another's great friends. well, traditionally, divided government has actually produced a lot of compromise. you've seen, particularly in times of economic prosperity, a lot of good work come out of congress. but right now, the most common phrase you'll read, like in "the new york times," is such and such a bill, which passed this chamber, and has absolutely no

chance of passing in the house or senate. and there's all kinds of reasons with that. you could start with redistricting and the fact that so many members are safe and are only worried about primaries from their own party. but there's also this fundamental disagreement on like the basic premise of how or government is funded and how what it is supposed to do. and that clip you showed from president obama, people need to get used to it. that's the next six weeks, while congress is back home talking to their swconstituents, he'll be t there again and again saying, it's the house republicans' fault. >> this point is such an interesting one, the notion of a deep ideological divide. because it feels to me like when the asteroids have been coming towards us, whether it was -- i mean, yeah, whether it was sort of the immediate post-9/11 america or whether it was, you know, the financial collapse and the bailout, that in those moments, democrats, often to the chagrin of republicans, okay, patriot act. and if it feels like the asteroid is coming, they're

willing to make compromise but here it is coming again and it doesn't feel like republicans are willing to move off of their ideological position to make things happen. >> democrats are -- the problem that we have, we actually believe in government. we think that government ought to work. and you've got a bunch of people who are sitting in congress, who have all showed up, who don't want government to work. and they are doing everything they can with their arms crossed and they're stomping their feet and they're not going to let it happen. so it's a hard case to negotiate with somebody who in action is what they fundamentally want at the end. so anytime it doesn't work, they're happy. >> so that is a different kind of republican problem, then. >> absolutely. >> that we're facing. if the goal is not just to do government differently, but to not do government. >> and there's clearly this small group that were elected, when we were told in the 2010 elections, when the new class came in, republicans are all about jobs, jobs, jobs. about which they've passed exactly zero legislations so far. but they've always been about property. and, you know, we have single payer property for flood

insurance, for example. we have crop insurance. we have all sorts of things to protect property that republicans are in favor of -- it's actually kind of surprising that they don't appreciate the property damage. forget the human -- >> right, with an asteroid coming! >> that's true. don't make this argument on human lives, make it on property. >> that's good. >> but you know, the president hasn't -- >> stick with me, because i do want to ask about what the president can do and also, i want to be careful not to paint republicans with just one brush, because they're fighting with each other. right, many, many brushes. lindsey graham is having a very bad morning. we'll talk about why when we come back. the new guy is loaded with protein!

i'll believe it when i--- [ both ] oooooh... [ female announcer ] as you get older, protein is an important part of staying active and strong. ensure high protein... fifty percent of your daily value of protein. low fat and five grams of sugars. [ major nutrition ] ensure! nutrition in charge!

if you thought battlefield washington, d.c. was just about fighting between democrats and republicans, think again. because the infighting within the republican party is about to reach galactic proportions. not only is longtime south carolina republican senator lindsey graham facing a growing gop primary field, which includes one challenger with strong tea party ties, making her bid official today, but senate republican leader mitch mcconnell was eviscerated by erick erickson's online red state publication, which questioned whether the republican party needed to waste a safe seat on mcconnell, who is in a dead heat in his own senate race. even republican voters can't gre agree on their party's direction. according to a recent pew poll, 54% of gop voters think that gop leaders should move in a more conservative direction, and 40% in a more moderate direction, and just 5% saying, hey, it's good the way it is. but even with all the battles in the gop, it remains true that you can't beat somebody with nobody, so democrats will also

need to be sure that they've got some somebodies on the ballot. all right, mitch mcconnell, lindsey graham, these are folks who are leaders in the party and they're getting primaried. what's happening with republicans? >> well, with mcconnell's case, he is the republican leader, and he's not fielding the to senator lee's request to immediately say, sure, we'll shut the government down. so he's in a box. now, he's going to privately talk to senator lee and others to say, you know, i've got to get through my primary. but he's in a box. he either comes out and satisfies what his opponent is talking about in the primary, or he knows not to shut the government down, because they're not going to shut the government down, all right? they're not going to do it. it's a lot of smoke and mirrors. but he's in that box. so he's got to respond to that, first for his primary. then he has to get re-elected in his senate position, by his peers. so he's in an ideological box. >> miss mcconnell is very politically smart and he has made a lot of moves. they're all kind of nerdland insider stuff, like taking his former chief of staff, who's going to be at the national

senatorial committee. they are very much preparing for a tough race. he knows exactly how to run political races, and you know, leaders of their party are always challenged. look at what happened to harry reid. and he ended up surviving that. you have no idea what's going to happen, but this is a central point where the voters of kentucky aren't necessarily following the bigger picture tea party battle, they're looking at what he's doing. >> there's this poll that makes me -- it's that same pew poll that makes me kind of want to do a dance. because they ask republicans, who's the leader of your party? and the person at the top is john boehner. but he only has 10%. and if you look at all the other names, rubio, mccain, paul rand, paul ryan, they're all down there, but this is my favorite, nobody is. or, i have no idea. the vast majority end up saying either nobody is, or i don't know. and as much of a mess that seems to indicate the republican party is, i look at virginia, where you've got cuccinelli, you know, tied to mcdonnell, all of this drama, and yet he's neck and neck with mcauliffe, because apparently the virginia democratic party couldn't do any

better. and i think, well, yeah, that's a mess, but if we don't have any candidates, that's going to be how it is. >> it takes a horse to beat a horse in every single election. and it's amazing to me that we are at a place in our country where lindsey graham and successionby chapmbliss and thee people are considered to be moderates. in 2002, when they were running, and we all ran against them as the most conservative right-wingers you could possibly imagine. you know, john mccain faced this fight. he ran hard to the right in his campaign to keep from having to lose to a tea party candidate. i think, i haven't seen lindsey graham make those kind of moves yet. maybe he will over the course of next year, but that may be what it takes for him to win, meaning we lose a partner. this is bad for democracy, having lindsey graham primaried. it's actually bad for getting things done in the country. >> it's funny you say that. the news this week that the president's former campaign adviser is going over to the uk for the tory party, right, for the conservative party. so i was like, okay, wait a minute, a democrat in the u.s. is basically a conservative,

right, in the uk. they're basically -- we have no left left in this country. so, why is that that we're seeing these clear challenges on the right, but then not challenging democrats on the left. why don't we see more of that happening? >> well, you see them on the right, because you have this narrow group of very wealthy libertarians out there, who will fund anything, because -- >> 'tis the libertarian fight. >> yes, they believe in what they're doing, i think they're totally wrong, but they believe in what they're doing and they will put money into it and they're going to see to it that moderate republicans are a distinct species. as for the democrats, the reason they can't get their act together is their support structures have been destroyed. the churches have gone, the unions have gone down. so their support structures have fallen apart. >> we did have some primaries. lieberman got primaried, blanche lincoln got primaried in arkansas. we have seen this. >> and in the arlen specter phenomenon, too. he was former republican turned democrat. and i think democrats learned a little bit of that political lesson that sometimes when you

challenge someone from the left, you end up with a republican taking that seat. >> mary landrieu is my louisiana senator, and it would not be in the interest of someone interested in having a democrat to primary mary landrieu, even if you're not in agreement with many of her policies. >> but you have a democrat in the white house, too. look, you have president obama and the drones. he didn't close guantanamo. there's a lot of the left very angry with the president. however, they're not going to go out and start some type of movement on members of congress when you have a sitting democrat in the white house. it would be counterproductive. that's why they're not doing it. >> so it's interesting when you say, when you have a democrat in the white house. if, in fact, losing moderate republicans is bad for democracy, what can the white house do in this moment to help re-balance the madness going on in d.c.? >> communication. look, i served under president clinton. we used to be told, don't go to the white house, whatever you do. don't go to the white house, you'll come back reversing your vote, which i did. >> because he was so charismatic. >> i got myself on a vote i shouldn't have done on. he was charismatic but also knew how to utilize the white house.

president obama has not utilized the white house to as a great extent as he maybe should have. people say, he was only in the senate for a couple of years, and thank goodness he doesn't have that good old boy standard about him, but i think the staff and the president should have utilized the white house a little bit more. there wasn't enough trust factor. >> i think all the president has to do, and i think what his speech at amazon was about is jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. we're for jobs. and show that the republicans won't even go to get what they want in terms of corporate welfare if it involves jobs. and that's a winning strategy, i think, for 2014. >> stay with me, because i do want to talk about one of the things the president does seem to be using the white house for, and that is a whispering campaign, for larry summers as fed chair. it's getting louder and louder and i have got to try to understand why. with the spark miles card from capital one,

bjorn earns unlimited rewards for his small business. take these bags to room 12 please. [ garth ] bjorn's small business earns double miles on every purchase every day. produce delivery. [ bjorn ] just put it on my spark card. [ garth ] why settle for less? ahh, oh! [ garth ] great businesses deserve unlimited rewards. here's your wake up call. [ male announcer ] get the spark business card from capital one and earn unlimited rewards. choose double miles or 2% cash back on every purchase every day. what's in your wallet? [ crows ] now where's the snooze button?

[ crows ] a quarter million tweeters musicare tweeting.eamed. and 900 million dollars are changing hands online. that's why the internet needs a new kind of server. one that's 80% smaller. uses 89% less energy. and costs 77% less. it's called hp moonshot. and it's giving the internet the room it needs to grow. this ...is going to be big. it's time to build a better enterprise. together.

it wasn't supposed to be public, but the battle in d.c. over the next fed chair is on. progressives are up in arms about the possibility of larry summers getting the job. and they're not being shy about their opposition, with headlines like, "obama: just say no to larry summers," and "six more reasons larry summers should not be fed chair," and "stop larry summers before he messes up again," and lastly but not least, "for pity sake, let's not nominate larry summers to be the fed." as loud as progressives are being, the white house is whispering back. according to reports, president obama backed up larry summers in a closed-door meeting last wednesday with house democrats after summers was criticized by a congressman. the lesson here for democrats, you may not like larry, but president obama does, so if he's the pick, you may not have any choice but to fall into line. david, why larry summers? >> because wall street loves larry summers. he got rich off wall street and

i will assure you that if larry summers is in there, it will be one of the worst things obama has done. he will not do what needs to be done to continue regulating the banks and fulfilling the second mission of the fed. jobs. full employment. that's not larry summers' interest. and you know, janet yellen has been very right on the economy all the way along. >> and yellen has the support of a large contingent of people. we had folks writing congressman, writing in and saying, choose yellen instead, not summers. but i think that somehow gets framed as a girl issue, like, pick the girl instead of the man who said mean things about women. but my angst with summers is deregulation. >> yeah, there are different economic philosophies that are at work here. what's interesting, you're showing those clips and one of those photos is larry summers sitting in the white house. this similar criticism came up when he was deciding as to whether to put him in as one of his right-hand man for the economy during a major economic

crisis. and he totally pushed all that criticism aside and chose him and then said, this is a man who helped us through a very, very difficult time. he has a lot of confidence in summers. that's what he told senate democrats. so it's very much saying, yes, i like him, this is why i want to choose him. >> so i have occasionally been told that i have sort of obama-friendly lenses through which i see the world. and so in my obama-friendly lens, what i want to say is, no, this is deep strategy. the president is floating it so that progressives will attack it, so he can be like, larry, i tried, just can't do it. is that possible or is the president really on summers' side here? >> i think the president likes the people the president likes. if you look around the white house, he kept a small cadre of people, who from the campaign all the way through his time in the white house, who have sort of been around him the whole time. larry summers was part of the committee to save the world, right? like, he was part of that group of geithner and all the folks who came in after the crisis. he was in the clinton white house during the mexican peso crisis. and so i think the president has

probably not taken larry summers' side here. but if you get into the president's head a little bit to try to, here is a guy who has been through crisis, where in a trepidationous time in the economy, and maybe we need somebody to help steady the ship. and he has done that in the past. >> you just gave all the reasons not to, the peso crisis, the deregulation, he was all the way behind it. he's robert rubin's guy. robert rubin was secretary of treasury, screwed over every steel worker in this country. and larry summers is in that mind-set and he's being pushed by those groups of people. >> robert rubin was one of the -- >> steelworkers' jobs -- >> but let me ask this. because part of the role of the fed is psychological, even more

than so forthan what they actua do. when the fed chair speaks, markets responds. if it's someone who has all of this controversy, does that in and of itself, whether he would be technically good at it or not, does that make it harder for him to take on this role? or do you think wall street makes him so much, they're just like, whoo, larry! >> they're a bank regular later and they want a bank regulator who's their guy. with yellen, at least you will have a clearly predictable view of the world that she will promote and push. and what do we hear often? certainty. we need certainty. >> y'all be certainty. >> you get certainty with yellen. >> she feels like a little bit of the elizabeth warren cloth from which she is cut. and that's precisely -- like, as much as a president is standing up for summers now, the not doing that around elizabeth warren, and i think, again, there's inside stories around that, but it makes me nervous that there won't be a yellen appointment here. >> we don't know exactly, but indications are that he really, really likes summers for all those reasons.

but congress also really like ben bernanke for a long time. it's not exactly the best relationship now, but that's important. and larry summers doesn't have the best relationship with congress right now. during the economic crisis, there were a lot of stories about, he had these competing philosophies that he's pushing within the white house. this is a very independent job. you're not sitting in the white house meetings and doing what the president tells you to do or implementing his policies, per se. it's a really different role, and it will raise his stature if there continue to be these public fights about it. >> i've got to tell you, i have learned more about the pedestrian chair in the last two weeks than i ever thought i would learn. but it is shockingly exciting. >> and it's important. >> deeply important. david cay johnston and bob nay, thank you both so much for coming today. and up next, yes, d.c. is a mess, but there's one part of it with a really great headline. the headline you thought you'd never see coming, out of washington, d.c.'s public schools. okay, a? b? b. a?

that's a great choice. let me show you some faucets to go along with that. with the latest styles and guaranteed low prices, you can turn the bath you have into the bath you want. good choice. more saving. more doing. that's the power of the home depot. right now, this abbey vanity combo is a special buy. just $299. the beach on your tv is much closer than it appears. seize the summer with up to 50% off hotels at travelocity.

you will lose 3 sets of keys 4 cell phones 7 socks and 6 weeks of sleep but one thing you don't want to lose is any more teeth. if you wear a partial, you are almost twice as likely to lose your supporting teeth. new poligrip and polident for partials 'seal and protect' helps minimize stress, which may damage supporting teeth, by stabilizing your partial. and 'clean and protect' kills odor-causing bacteria. care for your partial. help protect your natural teeth.

public school students in the district of columbia, if you are listening, take a bow. no, really, i'll wait. take a bow. go ahead. because you've just scored higher than ever on this year's annual math and reading tests, achieving the largest single year gain in washington, d.c. since 2008. back then, this lady, michelle rhee was the chancellor of d.c.'s public schools, getting national attention and fame for her approach to school reform and for allegations of cheating on mandated testing. but rhee's notoriety became such that the washington, d.c. mayor's race in 2010 became a referendum on her tenure, a tenure that ended shortly after the current mayor, vincent gray, defeated adrian fenty in a democratic primary. rhee's successor, kaya henderson, has put in place several new reforms of her own, implementing longer school days and a new common core curriculum and mandating teacher visits to the homes of their students and with their parents, and she has gotten results.

students in all eight wards of d.c.'s public schools have improved. the reading proficiency rates and also math proficiency rates both since 2007. it's real progress in education, but is real progress completely captured by a proficiency test? critics might say that the state of urban public education can't be measured in a graph. joining me now, to talk about this, are two folks who know a lot about d.c. schools, past and present. this is alison stewart, author of the new book, "first class: the legacy of dun mar, america first black public school," for which i wrote the forward. and next to her is kaya henderson. back with us again, christina bellantoni and democratic consultant, jamal simmons. how'd you do it? >> how did we do it? >> yes. >> through a lot of hard work. i'm so proud of our young people and proud of our educators. and when we came in in 2007, we knew that the first thing that we needed to do was ensure that we had the very best teachers in

our classrooms and the very best principals leading our schools. and so we undertook a number of controversial reforms, but we have been dogged about getting, growing, and keeping the best educators. and i think this year, you're starting to see some of the results of that investment. we also, in 2010, when i became chancellor, teachers were saying to me, we're good at how you want us to teach, was let's talk about what we're teaching, because we don't have a standardized curriculum. in fact, i don't know if what i'm offering my students in ward eight is as rigorous as what we're offering our students on the tonier side of town. so we put together a common core aligned curriculum that we are now in our third year of implementation on. and it is asking -- it's demanding much more from our young people, but our educators and our young people are rising to the occasion. >>ion, i find myself in kind of a funny position with my enthusiasm about this. because in part, we spend a lot of time at this table critiquing the notion that tests really

tell us where we are. but on the other hand, i feel like, when you have success -- we do so many bad news education stories, i wanted to do a good news one. that says, when you look at these tests, you've seen some improvement, but what are the other substantiative measures that we need to have, in order to say, our schools are performing well for our kids? >> so, again, tests are not the end all to the be all, but they are an objective way for us to look across lots of states, lots of school districts, and what not. but we look at student satisfaction, we look at graduation rates. student satisfaction rates are up higher than ever before. our teacher retention rates, we were recognized by the new teacher project in their report called the irreplaceables. we find that after people fleeing d.c. public schools, we've actually staifd off that enrollment decline. and in fact, in a competitive market with charter schools,

where now some 43% of our young people are in charters, previously, for every increase in charters, it meant a decrease for d.c. public schools. that's not the case anymore. we're holding steady. so i think these are promising indicators. and this is just the beginning. >> right. and it's only -- and yet, you know, allison took us back in history. this is part of why i want to pull you in here. because in art, the very idea that we would need to be enthusiastic about proficiency tests in d.c. is surprising, because d.c. was the beginning, the kind of nascent starting point for black public education. >> yeah, i tell people, it's amazing. when people used to actually try to come to d.c., move their families to d.c. for their black children to get an excellent education. and i think a lot of the things that your administration has done, is really a lot of the back to the future kind of stuff. the sort of stuff you saw at dunbar. the idea that this school is also the home, the extended days. i can tell you at modern dunbar, i've gone in and see these kids show up for breakfast. you know, the idea that a kid

has to go to school to get breakfast is a little sad, but the idea that he can is great. and the ninth graders, it's a pre-class talking about their futures, they made them have story boards. what are you going to do in five years, where are you going to be in five years. and we saw these little girls cutting out her wedding dress. the idea that they are thinking about high school as a stepping stone, that they can plan for their future, is such a part of what old dunbar is about, it's nice to see it's going to be part of new dunbar and a part of the new d.c. school system's attitude. >> i feel there's this community-based narrative, based in the history. there are these very really new public policy positions. but there is also the politics, jamal. and the fact that schools became the basis on which a mayor's race was decided, what do you think of the politics around these kinds of decisions in d.c.? >> first of all, i have to say, it's a big honor for me, to be on the same panel with allison.

i've got to say, mtv news -- >> did you register to vote? did you rock the vote? >> but you're absolutely right. this is a big deal about politics and it's probably the most important issue we're going to face as a country. as we talked in the last segment about expanding more incomes to the middle class wab we've also got to spend these ladders to people so they continue to go up and rise into the middle class. so that means, and especially for people in disadvantaged communities, they're going to have to be focused on things, as well as truancy and attendance and parental involvement and how much creativity will these kids have and be able to, you know, exhibit that in their schools. but in washington, that wasn't what it was about. it wasn't about all these efforts to improve this. it became really about a personality contest. the last mayor, i consider him a friend. he's a really good guy. he was not the most congenial person. i think a lot of people in the city were upset that he hadn't been talking to them the way he wanted them to, as he had in the

past. i think we've gotten -- we haven't quite figured out what the real politics are around education. people want this to change. they want radical change, but they're not sure, exactly, where it should come from. >> and pause for me for just a moment. we're going to take a break, because we're going to come back and talk about change over that sweep of history. nerdland, while you're up there in the control room, let's see if you can find some vintage allison footage, so we know why we're excited to be at the table with her, when we come back.

the nation's first public high school for black students has survived since 1870. and later this month, it will move back to its original location, looking better than ever. this is what paul dunbar high school in washington, d.c. will look like this fall. housed inside a brand-new $122 million building, built next door to the original facility, where a very proud facility was

born. despite being racially segregated, the school known as dunbar would feature accomplished teachers such as carter g. woodson, who wrote the seminal work, the education of the negro, and ana cooper. graduates included charles drew, the surgeon who developed ways to process and store blood plasma and more recently, eleanor holmes norton, the district of columbia's delegate to congress. built in 2011, dunbar high had a graduation rate just over 60%, one of the ten lowest in all of washington, d.c. the history of dunbar is the subject of alison stewart's brand-new book, "first class." so all of those famous folks and also your parents. . >> my mom and dad and my grandfather graduated in 1915 from the school. >> what was the reality you first had? >> my mom was a public schoolteacher, so education in the house, education, education, education. that's the way to get ahead and create a good life for yourself and create a good life for

others. so they had phds and masters, and i did the math. they were born in 1929, they went to school in the '40s, it was segregated. so when i was working in d.c. as a journalist, i decided, i'm going to go see this high school. and when i walked in, it looked like a movie set for a sad, deteriorating high school. there were picture frames with the aline umni on the wall thate tilted and broken. and i talked to the kids and asked, do you know the history of this place, and a lot of them didn't know it. and i thought that was really sad. the people that could bear witness to this were in their 80s and 90s and it was possible that the history could disappear. so i decided to talk to them and the best interview in the world are old black people. they do not hold back. >> i want to ask you a little bit about this. part of what the text does, and it's really beautifully written, talk to us about the human capital that made dunbar so great. but i also always worry, and allison is very careful about

how she parses this in the text, but i'm also worried that someone will read a text like this and say, see, you don't need money, you don't need resources, and by the way, segregation, not such a big deal. in fact, segregation, good, because it forced us to do -- but our schools right now are incredibly segregated, when we look at the percentage of african-american students in the public schools, right around 70% in d.c., all around the country, right, huge proportions of black and brown students go to school only with black and brown kids, white kids only with white kids. how do we both capture what was good here, but also say, we need the resources? >> yeah, so, there is no doubt about the fact that we need the resources. if we're going to prepare children to be competitive in a global economy, it means that computers and technology have to be part of the way we do business. it means they have to be in state of the art facilities, it means they have to be project-based learning, where they actually get to interact with other people and what not. but the thing they liked most about first class is, it really told the story of the teachers.

dunbar was great, because its teaching force was great, its principles were great. and the thing that i think we're finally having real conversations about is who is in our classroom, teaching our children. these people were not just accomplished, they lived in the community that our young people lived in and so there were connections. they also communicated that they cared about these young people. they held them to high expectations. and i've been in far too many classrooms where the people that we are paying actually don't hold high expectations for our young people. >> so, christina, i want that. i want those people in our classrooms. i also want those people in our classrooms in unions. and part of what's happened in the teacher quality conversation in our policy is that we, at the same time we're saying we want higher teacher quality, we often have less quality circumstances for them to work in. >> it's really hard. and i have a lot of friends that are teachers, and in california where i grew up, and now i live in washington, d.c., and it is a very difficult scenario for a

teacher right now. and it's not necessarily the career you strive for anymore. but one thing that's great about d.c., i will say, is that you're seeing so much diversity in the schools now. and not just, you know, african-american students, but hispanic students, spanish-speaking schools. and you're seeing so much of that. that's helping for a vibrant city and really, your building a comeback in a way for the city. but it does create a lot of difficulty when you talk about the politics of it. >> tell me, what is the lesson we should, on the question of education reform, take away from what's happened, both in the decline and then the resurgence of dunbar. >> i think, it's one, you said human capital. it's all about -- and that's all the way around. that's about the parents, about the communities, about the teacher. other thing, we should also point out, dunbar never desegregated. it was, i think, washington legally desegregated. it never integrated. and that's another lesson we should learn. just because someone writes down a law, doesn't mean it's going to happen. you have to keep it on the ground and the grassroots level has to keep pushing to make the change happen, even after the laws are enacted.

>> alison stewart, who if you role the file footage in nerdland, has been inspiring all out ofs to make change for a really long time, which is why jamal and i are both here. we'll all be at the table with allison. alison stewart, christina bellantoni, and jamal simmons, thank you all for being here. and after the break, the woman taking ballet into war zones. you know she is our foot soldier and she's next. discover card. i asked my husband to pay our bill, and he forgot. you have the it card and it's your first time missing a payment, so there's no late fee. really? yep! so is your husband off the hook? no. he went out for milk last week and came back with a puppy. hold it. hold it. hold it. at discover, we treat you like you'd treat you. get the it card with late payment forgiveness.

what kind of image ls come to mind when you think about ballet. swans and discipline and

structure. what about genocide, corporate greed, homeless kids. our foot soldier made those connections. as a young ballerina rebecca davis longed to join a company that did ballets about history, literature and real world challenges. when she realized there wasn't one, she decided to create one herself. she founded a nonprofit dance company. for the next four years they performed several ballets on topics ranging from stories inspired by artists like van gogh to real life dramas like the enron scandal. she decided it was time for her to get directly involved. >> in 2008 i came to rwanda for the first time. i met with street kids who were hip hop dancers. i was struck at that time how

amazing it is that a kid who doesn't even have a home, who doesn't have food, doesn't have parents in this case could have this joy of life just because he dances. when i saw that huge passion, that huge love, i went back to my country and i thought maybe there's something more that we could do with dance. >> and more she did. she's now created dance programs in rwanda and bosnia with computer skills, literacy and ethic reconciliation. joining me is rebecca davis. this is extraordinary. i love that you bridge art and politics and thought. what led you to this? >> thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today. going through school i had a typical education in canada. i loved going to school.

every evening i went to ballet class and i loved that too. i kept thinking there must be way that these two things can be the same activity. when we go to the theater at night we're not watching something beautiful but we walk away and ask questions about our world today. unfortunately, it didn't seem the opportunity to really participate in something like that. that's why ended upstarting rddc. as we developed this company and these productions about social issues and history and literature we realize there's also children in other countries that can be really helped by this mechanism of dance. that's what led me to push this mission abroad. >> talk to me about working with the kids abroad. what are the stories that stuck with you? >> they're maiamazing. i expected this devastating society. i knew about the genocide and all this terrible, terrible history.

i walked there thinking i'm going to help these kids. what i realized is the kids were helping me. they have such passion, such a love of life and they have nothing. they're spending all day on the street fighting to find one meal. not three meal, one meal. they have no access to water. most of them are hiv positive. if there's a parent in the picture it's probably abusive and yet they are fighting to live. i said let's put dance on the table and let them develop their energy and creativity and confidence. how to learn, memorize, focus, concentrate. >> it feels like there's a broader lesson there. we've been talking about education reform and one of the depressing thing s the arts and dance and all of that expression has moved out of our schools as we focus on the things that can be tested. what do you think you have

learned that tells us about the need to put the arts back in our schools. dance specifically is really important because what dance does is teaches us basic cognitive skills. if i stand up and say we're going to turn around and jump and lay on the floor. that's three simple things. for kids that don't have these skills that's challenge to learn these three things. when we give it to therm in terms of movement or art they can latch on that and feel the improvement faster. that teaches them that they have the capacity to learn. for those who aren't the book learners, for those that don't study for the exams, this is another way to teach them they can develop the skills. they just need a different end point. >> i love it. you are ballet nerd and always welcome here in nerd land. thank you for the work of you and your company. >> thank you. >> rebecca davis is our foot soldier of the week. that's our show for today.

i'll see you tomorrow morning 10:00 a.m. eastern. secretary of state john kerry is looking to bring together a plan for middle east peace in nine months. it's like a peace baby and we'll see if he can deliver. here is alex witt. >> i don't know how you topped last week's foot soldier. they're all so good. thanks so much. a worldwide travel warning in effect as u.s. officials try to head off a potential attack. edward snowden is somewhere in russia after getting asylum there. i spoke to julian assange's attorney. the san diego mayor heads for intensive therapy monday and the second woman of nine joins me. i'll be right back.

"first day of my life" by bright eyes you're not just looking for a house. you're looking for a place for your life to happen.

terror warning. one person in the know stez worldwide travel alert is based oen a very specific threat. the latest from washington. congress leaves town. one of its final acts before it leaves for recess. the lawyer for julian assange. i will talk to him about edward snowden and whether the nsa leaker is safe. it's a video that went shock viral. we'll tell you why it's significant. it's high noon in the east. developing now new and alarming details on that worldwide travel alert issued by the state department. this comes after shutting down 22 u.s. embassy and consulates. it's