with the state creating dozens of tax-free zones where businesses pay no taxes for ten years. become the next business to discover the new new york. [ male announcer ] see if your business qualifies. this morning, my question. who decides the choices we face at the ballot box? plus, is suanctuary the onl answer when washington fails? and remembering the incomparable ruby dee. but first, if hundreds of suffering children can't spur immigration reform, is there even a prayer? good morning, i'm melissa harris-perry. few things in american politics are more predictable than this. incumbents win re-election. especially congressional

incumbents in the house of representatives, which is why the political world was shocked when eric cantor was defeated on tuesday pie primary challenger david brat. a virtual unknown. an econ professor who raised just $200,000 to unseat one of the most powerful political figures in the country. not only did cantor lose, he lost big. 11 percentage points big. cantor's loss was the first time in history a house majority leader lost in a primary. immediately the political world began looking for an explanation, and one of the first explanations that has emerged for this historic defeat is about how the issue of immigration played into the campaign. it seems that immigration had a critical role in a virginia primary. virginia. not some border state, virginia. i mean the last time virginia was anything like a border state was during the civil war in the 1860s when it bordered the union and the confederacy. when i grew up in virginia in the '70s and '80s, the immigrants we learned about were

the jamestown settlers of the 17th century. but now in 2014, immigration politics became part of virginia politics, in a big way. last year there was eric cantor, seemingly supporting a pathway to citizenship for undocumented children. >> one of the great founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents. and it is time to provide an opportunity for legal residents and citizenship for those who are brought to this country as children and who know no other home. >> so, see, that moment right there, cantor's underreso far assed but savvy challenger david brat used that position to attack. meaning more people would mean lower wages for working virginia citizens. cantor countered. his campaign saying conservative

cantor is stopping the plan to give illegal aliens amnesty. but it was the seventh district primary voters who stopped cantor's plan to return to congress next year. the question of whether immigration affected cantor's campaign drew this response. cantor's problem wasn't his position on immigration reform, it was his lack of a position. graham wrote and passed a bill and is winning big. the graham is republican senator lindsey graham of south carolina who ran on immigration, faced a tough primary and still won. now, as a political scientist, i'm wary of analysis offered too swiftly in the wake of an election. it simply is going to take us more time to disentangle the complicated factors that caused tuesday's electoral outcome. but let me suggest this. figuring out whether cantor lost because of his stance on immigration is less consequential than determining what happens now to the ongoing stalemate in the national effort to bring about immigration reform.

with cantor on his way out, will it take a miracle to get this done? for some, a miracle seems to be precisely what they need. last week we reported on a story that has only grown this week, the on going situation in nogales, arizona, where nearly 1,000 migrant children are being sheltered and are just now getting something like adequate supplies. many of them unable to bathe and sleeping on foil blankets on plastic cots during their first days there. nearly 25,000 immigrants are being housed in 13 private prisons commissioned by the bureau of federal prisons across this country and are, quote, subjected to shocking abuse and mistreatment and discriminated by policies that impede family contact and exclude them from rehabilitative programs. but an act of god to resurrect immigration reform may not be that much of a reach as religious leaders have been

among those most vocally calling attention. last fall pastors met with president obama in the oval office to press the issue of immigration shortly after house speaker john boehner said that there would be no immigration reform in 2013. and speaker boehner kept true to his word. so in february catholic and evangelical leaders sent an open letter to congress saying each day we witness the human tragedies created by our current system, including the separation of families and the violation of human dignity. common sense fixes to our immigration policies are long overdue. as a nation founded on the principles of the rule of law and centrality of family, we can no longer delay fixing this system. religious leaders followed that letter up with several meetings with white house leaders in washington, d.c., to urge a move forward on immigration reform. in april, roman catholic leaders traveled to the border, celebrated mass and offered

communion to the people on the mexico side. now, there are those who see eric cantor's loss as a possible win for speaker boehner and are pushing him forward on immigration reform. one faith leader writes, but now that cantor is gone and with him his threat, we hope that john boehner will be free to act, to do what his head and heart tells him is the right thing to do on immigration. bible, badges and business have all been pressing republicans to pass comprehensive immigration reform as both a moral and economic issue, one in the true spirit of america's embrace of immigrants and one is how the gospel is at stake in how we welcome the stranger. i'm pleased to be joined by jim wallace, the president and founder of a national christian organization committed to faith in action for social justice and also the author of the "uncommon good." how the gospel brings hope to a world divided, which is in bookstores now. jim, is immigration a moral

issue? >> i love the way yukon trafted conventional politics with needing a miracle and act of god. as you know, the heart of faith is to love god, and then right away, immediately to love your neighbor as yourself. in matthew 25, jesus says how you treat the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the immigrant, those who are sick and in prison is how you treat me. soy van g y van gel evangelicale how we treat 11 million undocumented people is how we treat christ himself. we brought the gospel to the congress. this is not only a moral issue, it's a faith imperative for us. how we treat the stranger is a

matter of faith. >> the other thing that faith is, the notion of the heart of faith, is the ability to believe in things for which we do not currently have empirical evidence. it's part of why the faith conversation can be a difficult one. at the moment, do you see any empirical evidence that we are going to get immigration reform? are we really simply having to step out on faith here? >> eric cantor lost probably more because he was a character from "the house of cards" than the congresspeople wanted him to be. >> although the lead person in "house of cards" would never failed to have spend time in the district, he would have been there. >> most who voted were for immigration reform. gop pollsters show that most americans are for this, most republicans, most democrats, independents. we've won the policy debate. most of the country knows it's a broken system. it's breaking up families, separating kids from their mom and dad, it's bad for the

economy. and yet a small vocal minority is controlling the situation. so this conventional political wisdom is a sickness in politics. and what's at stake here, i think, is a fundamental fear. what i love about your show is america is on this show. so my most important speech on immigration recently came to my son's fifth grade class. so here they are and i'm explaining immigration, the system history and why we have people living in the shadows that are being abused and families suffering. they said why don't we fix this? why don't congress fix this? i said well, they say they're afraid. what are they afraid of? i looked at my son's fifth grade class, african-american, latino, asian american, native american, white, somalis, australian, i said they're afraid of you. they're afraid that you represent the future of america and they don't think it's going to work. how's it working? they said, oh, it's great. it's really cool. i said so how do we convince

america this is really cool? that's at the heart of this. the fear of a different kind of america. >> and so it seems to me that -- so i have a great deal of comfort with someone saying our faith leads us to care for the stranger, to care for the widowed and orphaned, that we have a responsibility across ideological lines to bound together. but i have less comfort, for example, with the u.s. conference of bishops going in and saying we have a faith claim that says we should not have to provide birth control. so explain to me the difference. if i'm watching right now and i don't align myself with a faith, why should i feel comfortable with a faith community engaging on the question of immigration if i don't feel comfortable with a faith community, for example, engaging on other things with which i don't agree. >> the faith has to endorse principles. when we endorse candidates i think we're in trouble or a

piece of legislation. what are our principles. on this issue we're saying every child -- every imgranting is a child of god and these are people in the shadows. they're being abused. they can't go to the doctor, they can't go to the police. they're frightened. the scripture convinces us and our churches are full of these people. these are our brothers and sisters. it's not them and us, it's we now. for me i was in an orchard a couple years ago and a mother told me how her 9-year-old daughter went front door every night to welcome her dad home. then he got deported. and she still goes to the door every night at 5:00. >> looking for dad. >> to welcome her dad home. when i heard that, my son was 9. i just thought how would my son feel. we're being converted by the scriptures welcoming the stranger, but also the stories. so this isn't for us partisan political. we'll support any kind of bill. they have to fix and heal a

broken system here and that for us is a moral imperative. >> i appreciate that distinction about the raising of principles. stick with us because we'll go deeper into some of these stories and the sense of urgency that is part of this. stay right there. coming up, you know him as huck where fr "scandal." he'll join us to talk about his powerful film in support of immigration reform. up next, an update on the hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children in know galnog arizona. don't miss it. that's been called the benchmark of its class. really, guys, i thought... it also has more rear legroom than other midsize sedans. and the volkswagen passat has a lower starting price than... much better. vo: hurry in and get 0% apr for 60 months on 2014 passat gasoline models plus a $1000 contract bonus.

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the story we brought you last week with hundreds of unaccompanied minors being shipped to a detention center in nogales, arizona, is far from over. the dire conditions at the facility are slowly starting to improve as the children are now being provided with catered

food, on-site showers and vaccinations. joining me now from the border in mission, texas, with the latest on this developing story is nbc news correspondent mark potter. mark, you've been reporting on this continuing issue of border children in nogales and elsewhere. bring me up to date on the latest. >> reporter: well, the latest is that the flow continues. it is a 24/7 phenomenon here on the border, particularly here in south texas, the area known as the rio grande valley from brownsville up to lake zapata. we're here in the middle of that near mcallen and people are pouring across this border, most of them from central america, day by day, hour by hour. in fact this morning as our crew was arriving to set up for this broadcast, we saw a group coming in. this is a county park right here and we saw a group at the top of this road walking up, unescorted. they are 17 people from el salvador. mostly women and children, a couple of young men. they were walking. they said they had been in mexico for nine days. they came from small villages in

el salvador. they were escaping violence there. they actually thought they were still in mexico until we told them, no, you're in the united states. when they learned that, they just sat down and waited for the authorities to arrive. that's something that we see here all the time. this is a smuggling operation. all these people are being smuggled in. they're being paid for one way or the other. so you've got the mix of a humanitarian issue and smuggling issue and they are just pouring in here day by day. >> mark, that mix of a smuggling issue and humanitarian issue, it feels like even as i watch the images that you captured of people crossing the border that it's a little bit of a rorschach test. that you what you see there, whether what you see is an emerging humanitarian crisis or what you see are law breakers depends a lot of where you standard idea idea logically. it's a political issue for so many people but it's a gray issue. these are people, they're

hurting and they're claiming that they're coming up because of violence in their country. a lot of coming now because there's an organized effort to bring them in. we are hearing they are being told on television around the town squares, everywhere, now is the time to come to the united states. this is the time to come in. you'll have a chance to stay and they are paying a lot of money to do that. so there's a mix of all those things you were talking about. it's not just one phenomenon, it's all come together. that's why we have the surge. >> nbc's mark potter in mission, texas, thank you for setting the table for us. we'll dig into some of that complexity with the table when we come back. coming up, an msnbc original report. the man living in sanctuary and unable to step outside of a church for nearly a month for fear of having his family ripped apart. stay with us. ♪ [ male announcer ] we don't sit idle wondering how we're going to build a better truck. we get out there and walk a mile,

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humanitarian crisis, which is why faith leaders are imploring the president and congress to help them. the leaders of the national latino evangelical coalition had this to say yesterday. we stand ready to assist the government with the overwhelming demand for humanitarian aid. the growing concern around thousands of unaccompanied minors has a ready response in linguistically capable and culturally compatible community ready to help. at the table jim wallace, president and founder, alia, judy peno and reverend sam cruz. so we were just talking about those images that we saw from mark potter and the fact that they do constitute a kind of ideological rorschach test. what you see when you are looking at those border crossings. >> that's right. mr. potter is absolutely correct, are they illegal immigrants or are they refugees? it depends where you stand on the fence. but the truth is that our border

is porous. they are able to get in. that is a problem because we were told that the border was secure. and that's what we're seeing. that's the big strug thael we're seeing on capitol hill to actually reach some kind of consensus on what to do. once they're here, what do you do with them? i'm an immigrant myself and i know the desperation my parents felt when they were trying to leave cuba. and so i feel for these people, especially when you have children involved. obviously the conditions that we're seeing playing out are not optimal. but it is definitely a sign of the times that it's time to act. that our immigration system is broken. >> so this issue of it being time to act, this sense of urgency, i wonder if that's in part what the faith or multiple faith communities in this caseworking together despite ideological differences is that we cannot wait for another election psych sglel i definitely think that it's time for the faith community, especially the christians, to go

back to our prophetic conditions and demand that something happen. that something happen that takes care of all these people who are being humiliated and dehumanized. we know that the republicans are not going to do anything about this, but also president obama, who i voted for twice, has continued to ask us to have patience and patience. six years have gone by and he has the power to take executive action. i think that that's where the community of faith has to challenge him. >> it's interesting, because part of what you said there when you talk about the prophetic tradition is you move us beyond a sort of -- i think sometimes when we think about religious traditions in the u.s., it's kind of a prayerful but removed idea. but when you invoke liberation theology of south and central america and of african-american traditions, that's a lot more urgent. it sometimes has been connected with issues like civil

disobedience, with demands even on those who are friends, right, political friends and allies. >> gabriel salgero who wrote that statement are presenting and said let us help. the reason we're involved in immigration reform as a policy issue is because we're involved on the streets in our conga congregations. these families and these kids, they're ours. we can't help these people until we fix the system. here's what i hear from republicans. we will pass this. no one is saying it will never pass, just not now. >> is that because of president obama? >> when they say not now, they use lots of excuses. what they're saying is we're willing to tolerate the suffering that will occur today, tomorrow and the next day. you're right. we're saying whatever your excuses are, cantor, obama, no more excuses. this is a moral imperative now

because of what's happening to people. put people ahead of politics and finally decide this now, which means just make a vote. >> the president also is not sort of describing the fierce urgency of now in this moment. it was initially suggested that part of the angst has to do with shifting demographics within the u.s., this idea that we are a browning or tanning nation in a certain way. and i guess i wonder, though, because there isn't any reason to think that immigrant communities as a broad definition are going to be all democratic voters. we would expect among latino communities something like 60-40 voting. and when we start broader ning th -- broadening that out, it wouldn't be necessarily democratic voters you're bringing into the system. >> the future of our party depends on us doing something by 2016 but this election cycle, 2014, there are very few

republicans who face a challenge from their primaries when more voters come out on their anti-stance on immigration reform. to the point with the religious communities, there was a study that came out this week from brookings that found support not just for immigration reform but one that includes a pathway to citizenship is very strong among all religious communities except white, protestant, evangelical christians. so it makes you wonder how this rhetoric is affecting these communities. >> do they overlap with the south? it's one thing to have an identity community or faith community but when it overlaps with a geographic -- still to come, the terrific actor who plays huck on "scandal" will join us live to talk about his new project aimed at supporting immigration. also the story of a man living under his church's

protection to prevent his family from being torn apart. first, take a look at the humanitarian toll, the lack immigration reform is taking on families in this scene called "the stranger." >> can we go to the library? i say okay, let's go. but i don't know if i'm coming back. >> it is a constant fear of not knowing if she's all right while she's driving. >> carolina, the little one, she says, mom, i have bad dreams and people take me somewhere else. i say why? because you're not here anymore with us. and a razor that understands my sensitive skin. new venus embrace sensitive. more than a strip. an entire ribbon of gliding gels surround 5 comfort-coated blades for less irritation. venus embrace sensitive. a perfect match for sensitive skin.

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of his community but he's an undocumented immigrant. when in 2011 he was stopped by highway patrol, a long legal battle began, one which culminated in may with a deportation order. we discussed daniel's story with allison harrington of the south side presbyterian church which was providing daniel with sanctuary. but we wanted to know more. so msnbc.com reporter amanda sekuma filed this original report. >> dear mr. president obama, my name is carlos. i am an eighth grader at challenger middle school. i ask you to please close my dad's case so that he can stay in the united states. >> reporter: carlos' worst fear came true three years ago when his father, daniel, was pulled over by highway patrol. no ticket was issued, but like many undocumented immigrants, daniel was caught up with the border patrol's dragnet.

with nowhere else to go, daniel turned to the church. ♪ >> we're standing here in front of southside presbyterian church here in tucson, arizona, where they're leading a movement to offer sanctuary to undocumented immigrants who are under threat of deportation. daniel has been holed up here inside of the church since may 13th when federal agents issued a final order of deportation against him. daniel, if you had a chance to talk to president obama, what would you say to him? [ speaking spanish ] >> it's not good enough to say we won't come to the church and drag him out. we should hope that that would never be an option for officers of the united states.

daniel is an integral member of the tucson community. he's one of us. he deserves to stay. our community would be outraged if law enforcement officials came into the sanctuary of the church to arrest daniel. >> reporter: southside presbyterian has a history of offering sanctuary to immigrants. the church spawned a nationwide movement in the '80s taking central american refugees who were fleeing from violence in their home country. >> right here at southside presbyterian church we are in the birth place of the sanctuary movement so it's part of our legacy that we would offer hospitality to someone who is in fear of being separated from their family. >> reporter: the room where daniel has been living was reverend harrington's old office. for nearly a month the cramped space became a makeshift bedroom for daniel, his son carlos and his wife, carla. >> so have you and your mom lived here this entire time too? >> not me. i go to my grandma's sometimes

to clean house, check on it. >> this is such a small space. carla, what are you most afraid of? [ speaking spanish ] >> reporter: the family's regular home is along the outskirts of tucson, across town where border patrol towns are known to frequent street corners. their house sits on a dusty path nestled in between the homes of carlos' extended family. for the last three weeks, their home has been empty. >> what does family mean to you? [ speaking spanish ] >> joining me now is msnbc.com

reporter amanda sekuma. nice to have you, amanda. >> thank you, hi. >> i understand there's been a major development in daniel's story, even while you were out there in tucson. tell us what happened next. >> yes. just hours after we met with daniel at southside presbyterian, we referred word that i.c.e. had granted him a one-year renewable stay of deportation. what this means is that he's able to seek employment and provide for his family. and there is a joyous reunion. we met with them after they found out word and it was absolutely fantastic. they were so excited. and he was going back to seek his old job. now if he's ever pulled over again for a minor traffic infraction, he's able to present some sort of permit for them. >> that is obviously like the best kind of father's day gift. but as i talked with reverend harrington about it a couple of weeks ago, it feels like the starfish story, you're throwing one back. is there a way in which this is a larger movement or is this just this one church.

>> no, this is not an isolated position here. there's actually a huge movement that's been growing in the religious community to prolong this legacy of the sanctuary movement. and it's happening in many different ways across the country. we're seeing in chicago, for example, there's a mother who sought sanctuary for over a year in order to keep united with her 8-year-old son at the time. and we're seeing many different ways in philadelphia, for example, they're working to separate the cooperation between local law enforcement and immigration officials in order to keep their families together, in order to keep their communities and congregations together. >> jim, is this the answer to what faith communities can do while they are trying to get the government to act? >> i know and love southside church. i've been there before. they have been doing what pope francis just said we should do. he said we must protect the children of god, especially the most vulnerable. and so, indeed, that's what we're doing all over the country and that's what's brought us

into this. we sent up a tent outside the capital to fast during december. a congresswoman came one day, she was on one side of me, a mother on the other side. the mother talked about being separated from her 10-year-old daughter. the congresswoman began to cry because she had a 10-year-old daughter too. two women stood and embraced and they went. i said congresswoman, how can we get this to happen across the street. she said, jim, there are so many layers between this tent and the congress. how do we get these stories in front of them. that's what we're doing in the faith community. >> jim, thank you for being here this morning. amanda, thank you so much for bringing us the story of daniel and his family and a little good father's day news for us. there's more of amanda's reporting online at msnbc.com. we'll be right back with more on the issue of immigration. ♪ don't stop now, come on mony ♪ come on, yeah ♪ i say yeah ♪ yeah ♪ yeah ♪ yeah ♪ yeah ♪ yeah

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origin, no or yes, with a request to get specific with country of origin. then it asks what is person one's race. you notice none of these include hispanic, latino or spanish unless you choose to write it under some other race. so why am i bringing this up? the pew research center reported findings that showed that millions of americans counted in the 2000 census changed their racial or ethnic identity from one census to the next. the group doing so the most, hispanics and latinos. an estimated net 1.2 million americans of the 35 million americans identified in 2000 of hispanic, latino or spanish origin changed their race from some other race to white. we have known one can be white and latino or black and latino or white or black or latino. our question today is whether these self-identifications have political meaning and

consequence. joining the table is hector guzman who is a professor at the school of public affairs. what should we make of this? is this just us attempting to map a complicated world identity onto the binary that is america? >> i think that we've been struggling whether it's the question or whether it's the people or whether it's the way we look at race. i think there's a little bit of everything going on, but the emphasis has been on the people. as if the people changed, that suggested there's more assimilation. it's a question that is imprecise and has changed from time to time. it's a question that has involved many different groups at different points in time and we're struggling with where latinos fit in this binary. many latinos rather than marking white or black or some other race, the census was confused about it and they were claiming that latinos were confused about race when in fact latinos were very clear that when you use the american binary, they don't

necessarily feel like they fit anywhere in the main categories now. when you look at latinos in some of the countries of origin, there is colorism, there's race, there's racism and a history of anti-blackness in many countries and that translates in the american reality of race also in interesting ways. >> this is the reason i want to inject this in the conversation just briefly is because you hear a lot of this common wisdom is the republican party is setting itself up as a party that will not tan well with america. and yet these data suggest well, but maybe america will shift its very understanding of race. >> i don't know. i have a very interesting perspective when it comes to this study. i think a lot of latinos -- there's a struggle between latino and hispanic, let's start there. a lot of latinos or hispanics correlate being white with being

anglo or american. ten years later, now you're assimilated and now you feel american. i'm white. that's my perspective. >> is the achievement of whiteness -- and that's an odd way to put it but the achievement of whiteness, the choice of whiteness, is that a political -- so part of what i'm hearing you it's mapped on from one's country of origin but it's a political reality. to achieve americanness is in part to achieve whiteness. >> i think that it probably doesn't even mean that much in the sense that in puerto rico the majority of people when there's a census, they declare themselves as white. when they do the census analysis here once they have moved to the mainland, 50% declare themselves as black when they understand what white means in the united states context. so white means something very different. and it's unfortunate that the article in "the new york times," such a prestigious paper, had

some shoddy reporting because i think in my cynical perspective, it's a white projection -- a projection of white anxiety because they want to whitewash latinos to make us the new model minority. >> that's real eat key part. there is demographic change going on in this country. there were 14 million in 1980, 50 million now, projected anywhere between 100 and 150 million in 2050. one in four americans are going to be latino. part of what the study suggests is the anxiety about that. as if sometimes latinos being white is going to save america from being a minority problem. let's start there, it's not a problem. the country is going to change. let's embrace it as opposed to fighting it and let's understand people's identity in very complex ways. >> hang on for just a second. coming up, you know him, huck

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the effort for comprehensive immigration reform is getting a big boost from one of the world's wealthiest tech titans, facebook founder mark zuckerberg. here's launching a group that launched a new cape ad campaign tuesday. two ads from the group forward or fwb.us. they are also supporting welcome.us, a group putting out psas in june's immigrant heritage month. there are five short videos directed by celebrities such as roxie diaz, naya riviera from glee and as part of this project, huck, guillermo diaz,

directed his own welcome.us short "valley of the undocumented." here's a clip. >> in the valley of the undocumented we fear the mornings before the sun rises when our moms go to work on rich homes, hold our mothers long, long time at the door. scared that this will be the day they will be ripped from us unjustly because they were taking a break from serving the rich to make a white prom corsage for our sister. >> joining us is actor and director guillermo diaz. so nice to have you here. >> hi. >> tell us a little about "the valley of the undocumented." it's very powerful. why was it important for you? >> you know, i was asked to do this piece. they came to me with this idea. and, you know, my parents are cuban, they're immigrants as well. i was just really passionate about it. you know, when we were -- we filmed all these different families. and to go into their homes and

see how much they were like our families, like people like we're lucky enough to be born in this country and not go through the struggles that these families are going through. it was so moving and i had never really sort of like seen it up close and seen how hard working and how passionate and how patriotic these families were, and how much i think they deserve to be here. you know, i feel like some of them were more hard working and excited about, you know, making a difference in their lives and making a better life for their children and for themselves more than people who were born here and have been here forever. >> look, we're obviously on the eve of father's day, but your piece is very much framed as the dreams of our mothers and what our mothers want for us and from us and that fear of losing one's mother. why was that aspect of it important to you? >> you know, it's the mothers, i

think, that kind of pulls at all our heart strings, right? when you think of your mom, and some of these dreamers were in the early 20s and even younger. i put myself in that position. i can't imagine being that age and having the possibility that my mother could be, you know, ripped away from me and moved to another country and then you're just kind of left there. i think, you know, it was a way to show people, you know, this is a possibility. this could happen. and look who it's happening to, to these women. women and men, you know, mothers and fathers that are here working so hard and making a living and going to work every day and their children are doing wonderfully. i mean they're all in school. the families that we went to. a couple of the girls are premed from one of the families and they're just involved in all these extracurricular

activities. they're prospering and doing so well. so the thought of them being, you know, separated from their families, it's devastating. it's sad, it's scary. so we just kind of wanted to shine a light on that and show had world what is happening and what can happen. >> it occurs to me that as you're talking a couple of times you talked about basically empathy, right? getting to know people, humanizing that experience so folks aren't just strangers or sort of pawns in a policy debate but are actual folks to us. and obviously this is one important part of it. do you have other ideas about how we can build that sense of empathy across communities so we do know one another's stories? >> yeah, i think we're in a time and an age where we have all this social media. i think people just talking about the subject, just bringing it up and posting different stories and, you know, these psas, hopefully that will start to make a difference and people will kind of see themselves in

these stories and think, you know, this is something that's really moving me or that i want to help with. maybe it will get some young people in school and college that want to sort of come out and help and do something, volunteer. hopefully all of that will make a difference. >> guillermo, i almost hate to do this because we have been on a very serious topic this entire hour, but nerdland will not let me rest unless i ask this final question. it's a silly one. but are you aware that we in nerdland are massively obsessed with "scandal." we spend an hour on our friday morning meeting discussing the show. we await kerry washington's every tweet and -- >> i heard a little bird told me that you guys are big fans. that's awesome. >> we are big fans and we appreciate guillermo that both you and kerry very much in the tradition of ruby dee, who we

lost this week, are showing how artists can be engaged in the meaningful issues of our time. >> good, good. it's my pleasure. >> thank you to guillermo diaz in los angeles. thank you for joining us. also thank you here in new york to hector cordero-guzman and reverend sam cruz. professor, i'm actually hoping that you will also be willing to write a piece about this for our mhp show site. even what we talked about in the break, i'd like to be able to share more. coming up, what eric cantor's loss tells us about the democratic process and remembering ruby dee and her ground-breaking role as an actor and activist. there is, as always, more nerdland at the top of the hour. unlimited cash back. let that phrase sit with you for a second. unlimited. as in, no limits on your hard-earned cash back.

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we begin this hour with the chaos engulfing iraq and growing concern about how the united states should respond. the sunni insurgent group known as the islamic state of iraq in syria or isis is sweeping across baghdad after seizing control of several major cities from iraq's shiite major government. before leaving friday president obama said the u.s. is weighing its options but made clear that putting boots on the ground is not one of them. >> we will not be sending u.s. troops back into combat in iraq, but i have asked my national security team to prepare a range of other options that could help support iraq security forces. the united states is not simply going to involve itself in a military action in the absence of a political plan by the iraqis that gives us some assurance that they're prepared to work together. >> nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engle filed this report this morning from iraq.

>> reporter: we are now in the city of kirkuk. this is the oil-rich capital of the north, home to about 15% of all of iraq's known oil reserves. all of the different factions in this country have long wanted to control kirkuk. until a few days ago there were iraqi troops here, but now this city and the oil fields are being controlled by kurdish militias, by the kurdish fighters. the dynamics in this country are shifting and changing as isis militants continue to march on baghdad. iraq's second biggest city, mosul, is now under islamic sharia law. militants from the al qaeda offshoot isis decreed all women must veil, outlawed freedom of religion and banned other armed groups from entering the city. mosul was one of the first cities occupied by u.s. troops a decade ago. american officials said democracy would then spread from here. not this. and the men the united states

trained to fight the isis assau assault, they're still surrendering. with no army protection, hundreds of thousands of civilians are leaving mosul. this family, all 12 of them, walked 20 miles to escape mosul. now this tent is their home. omar blames the u.s.-backed shiite prime minister, saying he alienated all sunnis in the country, made them feel second class. volunteers and atid workers are building tents as fast as they can. there has been a massive wave of people fleeing their homes. the fear is just the beginning. kathy robinson says the displaced, hundreds of thousands need food and shelter. >> it's dusty, it's hot, there's nowhere to stay, there's nowhere to go. >> reporter: but this conflict may have changed. the shiite majority awoke. in the holy city of karbala,

volunteers signed up for a new war. shiite clerics called the faithful to arms. and promised those who died fighting isis, a place in paradise. there is concern all over the world about what is happening here in iraq, so much so that today iran's president said his country would consider working with the united states to fight terrorism in iraq. richard engle, nbc news, kirkuk, northern iraq. >> that was nbc's richard engle in iraq. we turn now back to politics at home and the political surprise of the year thus far. house majority leader eric cantor's loss of his re-election bid on tuesday. what was really shocking was how he lost his seat. he lost it in a primary. primaries are supposed to benefit establishment benefits. cantor is the establishment candidate. as majority leader and a potential future speaker, he basically is the establishment walking around. was the establishment -- no, the majority leader -- no majority

leader had ever lost a primary before cantor. where you might actually anticipate this kind of total upset is at a convention or a caucus where the number of people who show up is very, very small and more dominated by the party's most activist idea logically driven members. 65,022 people voted in tuesday's primary for virginia's seventh district seat. that's less than 14% of the districts's registered voters. but at the nominating convention that virginia republicans hold for statewide races, just 2700 delegates participated this year. those delegates easily supported the establishment candidate for senate, ed gillespie, a former chairman who will be the gop challenger to mark warner in december's election. remember when i told you conventions are right for fringe candidates? virginia republicans learned their lesson from 2013 when e.w. jackson won the nomination for

lieutenant governor, beating out six other candidates in a convention ballots lasting nearly ten hours. between 8,000 and 10,000 delegates voted in that convention, still a fraction of those who voted in the seventh district primary this week. that is how the republican nomination for lieutenant governor went to a man who says things like this. >> planned parenthood has been far more lethal to black lives than the kkk ever was. and the democrat party and their black civil rights allies are partners in this genocide. >> uh-huh. the convention is also how super conservative gubernatorial candidate ken cuccinelli easily won his spot at the top of the ticket, and that was no accident. party insiders had fought tooth and nail over whether to nominate by convention or by primary in the governor's race. former lieutenant governor bill balling had been plan a run for the governor's mansion for years. he had carefully worked within the state party to set up a primary for the 2013 race where he would have had a much better chance of securing the

nomination than in a convention. in 2011 the state party switched but the right wing saw the same opportunity to bend the rules in their favor. so when several supporters of cuccinelli were elected they held a do-over of the vote. they fought to keep the primary intact and so did eric cantor fearing the same kind of upset that this week swept him from office. but the party voted to hold a convention, a vote that would hold the nomination for cuccinelli. if you can't win the game, change the rules. joining me now is john rally, media consultant, elahe and judy pino, national sportsperson at the libre initiative. so conventions or primaries as the best way to get a truly representative nominee? >> well, as you can see with

cantor, nothing is set in stone, right? so i think it really goes back to the power of the people. if the people feel that you're a flawed candidate, they're not going to vote for you and that's what we saw here. cantor knneglected his base to certain extent and they came out and let him know that. i don't think whether primaries or conventions really made a difference in this case, as you saw. >> so it upturned some of our initial expectations. i love the idea of democracy as being the power of the people and i'm still such an optimist for the capacity of populist movements. but on the other hand the rules of the game do matter in terms of who we even then get to choose. our choices are set up for us. i wonder if there's something that we learned from this cantor moment about how primaries operate or how conventions operate to get us the sort of candidates that we want in general elections. >> first we have to establish there's a huge difference between a primary voter, a

republican primary and general election or voter. in virginia, you can vote for a republican candidate in the primary regardless of your party identification. >> in fact some people initially thought that the democrats had come out, voted in the primary in order to get cantor out and there's not much evidence of that. >> no, there isn't. that's an important point to make. i think the big takeaway from this race is that even in a primary where establishment candidates thought that they would be better off and they would be safer, even then you can upset in a populist, grassroots sort of movement. so i think that's going to put the scare in a lot of establishment candidates who thought if we control it, if we go to primary or even conservatives, it gives them hope that even if we don't have conventions where it's more limited involvement we can still upset such an establishment candidate who spent $5 million to brat's, david brat's, $120,000. >> so it does feel particularly for insiders, folks who are campaign strategists, going into a midterm and then a

presidential election year, studying the rules of the game is the job of strategists, right? it is in some ways an argument about why hillary clinton didn't win the primary -- the nomination for the democrats was that maybe they hadn't quite figured out that winner-take-all system and the proportional representation of the votes and conventions versus primaries. so if you are running candidates right now, what do you take away from the cantor loss? what is the rule of the game story that you would take away? >> there are a lot of takeaways. will rogers had a saying a long time ago you run for office in one of two ways. you either run unopposed or you run scared. political elections are brutally final. it's obvious that cantor was very focused on his national footprint as opposed to the footprint he had in the district. and he's kind of -- he was living, thriving and ascending by the tea party sword and now he's died by the tea party sword, at least in the short term. >> but if you are eric cantor, you're the second most powerful republican, and you are running

against an econ professor from randolph-macon with $120,000, aren't you basically running unopposed? i get why he would think he was running unopposed. >> and a 44-point lead in the polls. but i think there were a lot of mistakes. number one, you didn't engage the grassroots. number two, you spent a million dollars kind of elevating your opponent, who nobody knew about until -- you know, until you mentioned him in your ad. >> that's what i'm wondering. is the biggest story that we learn here that when you say your opponent's name over and over again, you give them a certain level of credibility? >> i don't know if that's as much. i think the -- cantor was in the national media as well advancing a lot of different things which almost ended up being millions of dollars of advertising against him stirring up the base. i think we have to differentiate between democratic primaries and republican primaries. one things we have going on is establishment conservatives are con founded by how to deal with

the tea party and the war that's going on within the republican primaries right now. >> and it's also interesting to note that in this race these large tea party national organizations stayed out of it. they weren't funding brat. i mean he did have a platform that laura ingram, conservative talk show host, had, but they stayed out of it so this was really a grassroots movement. this wasn't funded by some outside group. >> on the one hand i hear you all saying grassroots. part of what i wanted to do is draw attention to just how few people voted. certainly more than in a convention, but how should i understand if i'm a virginia voter, how should i understand the context in which such a small proportion of people make this choice and now i no longer get to vote for eric cantor if i wanted to? >> it was a very small proportion, as you mentioned, but turnout actually increased this year as opposed to the last primary. so if we're talking 65,000 people, that's still a very small number if we're talking about power of the people. who are these people? it's not the entire district.

>> but there's something to the said to the notion that over 700,000 people in that district, only 65,000 showed up to vote. what if they were overconfident, just as cantor was overconfident. the truth of the matter, you can't be overcasonfident. >> stick with me because i want to think a little more about this and the ways in which money played a surprising role here. you couldn't just buy this election. it turns out the more you spent, the more likely you were to lose. more when we come back. spokesperson: the volkswagen passat is heads above the competition, but we're not in the business of naming names. the fact is, it comes standard with an engine that's been called the benchmark of its class. really, guys, i thought... it also has more rear legroom than other midsize sedans. and the volkswagen passat has a lower starting price than... much better. vo: hurry in and get

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sometimes we simplify electoral politics down to thinking whoever spends the most wins, and often it's true.

but it's not always true. look again at house majority leader eric cantor's surprise loss to college professor dave brat in the primary this week. cantor spent more than $5 million ahead of the primary. as of may 21st, brat had spent just $123,000. now, you may have seen some politicos having fun with the numbers breakdown. for example, that cantor spent more at steak houses than brat spent on his campaign. a more telling breakdown is to ask how much candidate spent per vote. cantor spent about $173.92 per vote. brat spent about $3.40 per vote. $3.40. that's a good deal on a vote. so to cantor's $173.92 to brat's $3.40, let's figure out why it is that if you spent more, you got less. joining us now from washington, d.c., to explain just why this happened is kyle kondick, the managing editor of the news letter sabado's chris crystal b.

thank you for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> i love that this is going to be the ballots of college professors. i basically am more into this race as a result, but tell me how in the world does this happen? how does cantor lose? >> i think there's a combination of factors and i think the panel touched on a lot of them. i think primarily eric cantor neglected his district. the fact that he's house majority leader, i kind of wonder if some of these politicians who are in high-ranking office in the house or the senate, i kind of wonder if -- i think those positions used to be positions that the voters wanted because they knew that those people could bring back pork to the districts and, you know, as the profile of the member is raised, the profile of the district of the state is. but in recent years we've seen really high-ranking members either do poorly in elections or loose. tom daschle, the senate minority leader, lost in 2004.

harry reid, barely won in 2010. mitch mcconnell of kentucky, the senator minority leader, has a very tough race this time. of course now we have the house majority leader losing a primary for the first time ever. i just wonder if voters don't really care about that kind of seniority any more and i think they used to. >> i love that you bring up this institutional question of the death of earmarks potentially meaning the death of why it would be meaningful to have that national leadership, because this is a kind of one off historic moment, maybe it's just about cantor but it led me right back to political science 101 and thinking about gary jacobson and how he talks about what congressmen do, how they run for re-election. on the one hand you have his insight that spending more for incumbents actually makes them more likely to lose because an incumbent who spends more is obviously facing a real challenger. so jacobson tells us for incumbents, votes and victories decline as the level of spending

rises. but also they used to bring home the bacon. if there's no bacon left to bring home, what is the thing that you can frank out to your constituents. >> the thing that you can do for your constituents is basically do the basic constituent services stuff that members of congress do. people are always asking congressmen for help with one small thing or another. one of the things that i think sort of trickled out after this election was that a lot of people voted against cantor because they tried calling the office for some small reason and never got a call back and that sort of thing. to the point about the spending of money, i do think the point raised by the panel that eric cantor probably raised the profile of dave brat by naming brat in campaign ads, i think that's probably right. in fact this is not just something that happened in this race. a member of congress, a freshman, was telling me a couple of weeks ago that he actually thanked the leader of the other party for running ads in his district because he thought it helped get his name i.d. out even though it was negative. >> i want to come back to you,

john, because there's a sore loser law basically in virginia that keeps cantor from being able to run in the generals. but earlier today on my colleague, steve kornacki's show "up" michael steele suggested another role for which cantor might run. i want to play that and then ask you what you think about this. >> the what next is always the big play in washington, what do you do next. with the upcoming presidential election there's a lot of interest in eric cantor serving as national chairman of the rnc, republican national committee. >> if you were advising cantor, would you suggest that? >> well, it's interesting. he's got probably three choices. something like the rnc, come back and try to beat the professor or the democrat that wins that seat or go into lobbying and try to make a million dollars in the next couple years. >> i think you can make a million dollars in a couple weeks in lobbying. >> that's probably not a bad move for him. i think if he wants to be back in office, to try to become a senator or congressman again being the rnc chair is probably not the best path for that. so i think he's done a lot of soul searching.

you know, he's done a lot of looking in the mirror in the last couple days, i'm sure. >> yeah, and i also wanted to touch on another point with constituent services. there was another primary that same day down in south carolina, lindsey graham, we talk about the role immigration reform played in cantor's race. you can't find a more pro immigration reform than lindsey graham and he is excellent at constituent services. he knew what he was doing. he basically took a position on immigration reform but he knew how to campaign in his district for sure. >> i also am wondering, this is part of my interest is whether or not south carolina has more of an interest in having a national profile than virginia. there's a way where south carolina is under that guys of the southern backward state and so part of what they're doing is saying, no, that's not who we are. look at our growing economy, look at our national leadership. i just wonder if that sort of national versus local might play differently. >> i think it's much more about the personalities. these races are matchups and i

think lindsey graham probably had done a lot better job over time saying close to his electorate and being connected and cantor was much more focused on this leadership track of flying around the country, meddling in tea party primaries on his path to becoming speaker of the house. >> stay with me and kyle stay with us because i do want to ask you about brat next. now that he's done this thing, what happens for him. is he ready for the primetime of this big race when we come back. and i get a lot in return with ink plus from chase. like 50,000 bonus points when i spent $5,000 in the first 3 months after i opened my account. and i earn 5 times the rewards on internet, phone services and at office supply stores. with ink plus i can choose how to redeem my points. travel, gift cards, even cash back. and my rewards points won't expire. so you can make owning a business even more rewarding. ink from chase. so you can.

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can you start tomorrow? tomorrow we're booked solid. we close on the house tomorrow. tomorrow we go live... it's a day full of promise. and often, that day arrives by train. big day today? even bigger one tomorrow. csx. how tomorrow moves. college professor david brat and on "the daily rundown" after his primary victory over house majority leader eric cantor. here's his exchange with my colleague, chuck todd. >> let me ask you a foreign policy question. arming the syrian rebels. would you do -- would you be in favor of that with the u.s. military helping to arm the moderate syrian rebels? >> hey, chuck, i thought we were just going to chat about the

celebratory aspect. i'd love to go through all this but my mind -- >> i understand that. >> i love all the policy questions, i'm happy to do them but i just wanted to talk about the victory here and i wanted to thank everybody. >> so there's my colleague chuck todd going i'm going to get the sound bite of you saying this about the syrian rebels. he's like hmm-mm, not today, no you won't. do you think that evidence is that he's really ready for primetime or if he's not. >> if he wasn't ready to answer this question, i don't know. i can't tell you that. but i do know that he got elected by the people in that district. the district got a lot more conservative throughout the -- since the last election and so i think that that contributed to him winning the election. is he ready? we'll see if he's ready. >> kyle, let me ask you because we were talking about lindsey graham and that he was able to take a strong stance and survive

because of skpit yaconstituency. i know some college professors, they're smart people. are we maybe downplaying that he was in fact a pretty strong challenger? >> so i think the key thing for brat is, is he going to make any really big mistakes and so far he has knonot done that. >> that was his moment. chuck todd could have akinned him and he's like, no, you're not going to akin me. >> he looks a little weak in that segment but that's not enough to look really bad in a district that mitt romney got 57% in and is o'probably would like to vote for a republican in the general election. as to graham, i wanted to make a point that we were talking about how lindsey graham survived on a day that eric cantor didn't. one thing going for graham is that he had a big field of opponents, all of whom were fairly weak. i think that if one of south carolina's members of congress,

house members or tea partiers had run against him, they probably could have forced him into a runoff. graham got 56%. you needed 50 to clear the runoff threshold and then maybe he would have been in real trouble. i think the quality of the opposition helps explain graham's victory more than anything else. >> more than graham himself. in part the opposition, we talked about this previously but i want to come back to this and that is that david brat was running but he was running with at least a little bit of national profile provided by laura ingram. i want to listen to what she was saying and that this was actually about a national trend. let's listen to her. >> because we're slowly losing her country. >> amen. >> because the establishment has had its way for election cycle after election cycle. have kicked the electorate to the curb. sold out our values, misrepresented our views, looked down upon the very people who send them to office. >> so that's not an argument

against the democratic party, right? that is an argument against the republican establishment. do you think that even though the vast majority of incumbents are winning their primaries that there really is that kind of sent meant that could shift the american political system? >> i think there certainly is that sentiment and you can see that in congress as for people angling to see who's going to be the next majority leader. the person out in front is kevin mccarthy, he's currently the whip. i was speaking with some more conservative house members this week who were really upset that the result of this election, eric cantor's defeat, would potentially result in another establishment person being the house majority whip who is potentially even more to the left on immigration reform than eric cantor was. so there's definitely this sentiment not just out in the country but in the congress itself that they are very frustrated with leadership. and the most shocking thing about all of this is that at least for a lot of members, eric

cantor is the person who would put john boehner in check. he would come back from the white house with a deal and eric cantor would say no, no, no, and this is the person who lost his seat. >> is john boehner happy that eric cantor lost? >> i think there are lots of laws of unintended consequences here on both sides. to have the tea party majority leader get tea party primaried and the democratic thing that's going on here, i don't know you should be so happy. you're going to have republicans at the legislative, senate and congressional level even more afraid if that's possible of their tea party shadow in these primaries. if we've got gridlock now, i can't imagine it's going to get even better now. if this guy can be taken out at a tae party challenge, anybody could be. >> are democrats happy about this? i just thought cable news was happy there was a political story. because it's not clear to me that there is a -- that either boehner or the left should be

pleased with this outcome in some way. >> it may be bad for everyone really. if you care about advancing any agenda, especially a tough one like on immigration or, god forbid, passing a budget next time. >> i guess the one group it's good for is college professors. because either an economist or a sociologist is going to the house of representatives. kyle kondik, thank you so much. we'll obviously be watching this race very closely and hope you'll join us again. >> thank you. >> thank you to you all. coming up, remembering ruby dee. she was an extraordinary actor an activist. but first, my letter of the week. predicting the future is a pretty difficult thing to do. but, manufacturing in the united states means advanced technology. we learned that technology allows us to be craft oriented.

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seeing the world in reverse, and i loved every minute of it. but then you grow up and there's no going back. but it's okay, it's just a new kind of adventure. and really, who wants to look backwards when you can look forward? last week the ohio house of representatives held its first hearing on house bill 351. a bill that would ban ohio women from using insurance of any kind to cover an abortion. the bill makes no exceptions for cases of rape, incest or when

pregnancy threatens a mother's life. it would only allow women to insurance to endic topic pregnancies, cases where the embryo implants outside of the uterus. it would prevent public employees or those or medicaid to use insurance coverage to pay for certain contraceptives and the ohio legislator who sponsored the bill has a question about one in particular. dear ohio state representative john becker. it's me, melissa. now, your bill broadly defines abortion to include, quote, drugs or devices used to prevent the implantation of a pert liesed ovum. in your testimony during last week's hearing, you said you didn't intend for birth control pills to be included in that definition. i'm not exactly sure how you make the distinction, because according to the american college of obstetricians and jien kol gynecologists, you know,

doctors, the pill can impede the fertilized egg from attaching to the uterine wall. i am not saying that to give you any incentive for banning insurance coverage of birth control pills too, but just to point out the tip of the iceberg of what you don't know about the very health choices you are trying to restrict with your legislation. because you also went on to defend urban of intrauterine devices commonly known as iuds based on your belief that they fit into your scientifically specious definition of an abortion. you seem to think it was perfectly reasonable to justify, codify your belief into law by saying, quote, this is just a personal view. i'm not a medical doctor. well, i'm going to give you some credit there. at least you know enough to admit that you're not a doctor. and yet you insist on playing one in the ohio assembly, because you are using your power as an elected official to insert your personal views right in the middle of women's private medical decisions. and the very least you could do when making laws to constrain

women's health choices is to get your facts straight about women's health. please allow me to enlighten you because i'm not a medical doctor either, but i do have the sense to read and research the facts. for starters, no matter what your personal views are, an iud is not equivalent to an abortion just because you say it is. an iud is a device that when used as a form of long-term contraception is most often used to prevent the sperm from reaching an egg. of the two different kinds of iuds, just one of them is used to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg and neither of those scientifically qualify as an abortion. more importantly, by banning iuds from insurance coverage, you are preventing women from accessing what according to the cdc is one of the safest and most effective methods of contraception. what's more, by blocking coverage for women on medicaid, you are taking away a critical family planning option from women who are most at risk for

unintended pregnancy and least able to afford the cost of their reproductive health care. when you propose a bill that could reduce a procedure that could potentially save a woman's life to whether or not she can afford to pay for it, you're doing something much worse than just playing doctor. you're playing with women's lives. sincerely, melissa. what does an apron have to do with car insurance? an apron is hard work. an apron is pride in what you do. an apron is not quitting until you've made something a little better. what does an apron have to do with car insurance? for us, everything. that's keeping you from the healthcare you deserve. at humana, we believe if healthcare changes,

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including regions with the highest recorded rates of rape like north america and southern africa. in liberia in december 2012 a young teen named olivia zena died from an infection and extensive injuries she sustained when she was raped at the age of 7. olivia's story was not an isolated one. when she was checked into jfk hospital in liberia, she was one of several girls to be treated for sexual assault. in fact according to a 2011 report by doctors without borders, 92% of girls and women being treated for rape in liberia facilities were under the age of 18. many women and girls don't even report that they were sexually assaulted because of shame and from threats from their perpetrator. olivia's story is detailed in small, small thing, the olivia zena story, a documentary that premiered in new york city last week. >> some of them threaten the children so much that if you say it, i will kill you, i'll kill

your mother, i'll kill your father. and it remains in the child's mind. they would never even say the correct name. >> joining me now are jessica vale and nika offenbach. i was saying in the commercial break how difficult i found this film to watch but realizing that olivia's lived experience was so much worse, that i at least owed it to her to bear witness. what more can we do beyond bearing witness in this moment? >> well, i think like you said, one of the first things people need to do is actually be willing to watch it and learn about her story and talk about her story. you know, i think past that there's some action that needs to happen in liberia for prevent these things from happening further. >> it's a very complicated problem to prevent sexual assault against women and also

children. but the solution to the issue in liberia has to be hiliberians. so if people want to get involved and do things, there's a number of organizations you can find through our website who are working on the ground. one is heal.org, which is actually trying to build a dna lab to process evidence and help educate people to collect evidence. the other is more than me, which is currently building a boarding school for young girls. >> so i want to pause on what you said about collecting evidence because i think this is important for folks who haven't seen the film, that one of the things that you highlight in the film is the difficulty of what we think of as -- what we think of as traditional here but nontraditional police services in actually collecting any data and in fact having any evidence. and so then all of these odd gender dynamics come into play about who is believed and understood. i want to watch olivia's mother here talking about that issue. >> does your family still believe the rape was a lie?

that happened to olivia? [ speaking foreign language ] >> i'm a woman and it's a girl who has been assaulted and so our voices are insufficient in this case. >> right. and one thing also that we realized through making the film is that bendu was also raped in the conflict. i remember when we first heard that, i couldn't even believe that. the amount of children this has happened to. to have bendu deny it or not come forward because of the pressure from her family and then to admit to us that she had also been through the same thing. >> i both couldn't believe it and absolutely could believe it when i saw that, both because we know the ways in which rape is used against women in war as a tool of war, but also because one need not go as far as liberia to see the

intergenerational consequences of silence around rape and sexual assault. it is -- it is a truth right here. >> yeah, and i think -- i mean i think that's what really resonates with people when they see olivia's story. there's a commonality in it. when rape is used as a tool of war, it becomes embedded in society as a norm. and i think that's kind of what we're seeing ten years on in liberia and that's the issue that needs to be addressed there. but it just comes down to gender politics around the world. we have the same thing here to varying degrees in the u.s. the difference is we have a functioning legal system. we have a medical system. we have infrastructure to communicate and offices to communicate to help address the issue and in liberia those doesn't exist. >> i felt one of the bravest and most difficult choices it seems that you all made as filmmakers was the point at which you decide to trigger to figure out something about the perpetrators. as compelling and difficult as

olivia's story is, i think we want to identify with -- we can see and love the victim, but trying to understand the perpetrators of these kinds of crimes. so tell me what you learned when you asked the men about their acts of violence. >> it was so important for us to understand where they were coming from. it was very easy to point the finger and say, well, these men are evil, they're doing these terrible things to our women, but there's reasons for it. and, you know, one of them is because of all of the decades of civil war. rape was used as a weapon to terrorize villages, to assert power, and a lot of these men now, in fact most of them, there's 85% unemployment there, are left without any counseling. a lot of them are suffering. and we talked to the one ex-combatant who said that he beats his wife, he gets flashbacks in the middle of the night, nightmares, but there's really nothing that he can do. there's no one for him to talk

to. >> i mean i just -- when you say that sentence, there are reasons for it, you don't in the film suggest that the reasons are based on the behavior of victims in any way but that there is -- it is the violence and the posttraumatic stress and the -- as you said, the cultural contributions of violence towards women and girls. i want to just very quickly listen to an elder in the community saying that what he needed was proof. just so we have a sense of how that language works. [ speaking foreign language ] >> so they are waiting for proof since last october, but we have been at that point in the documentary seeing the brokenness of this its girl's body. and i kept thinking what more proof could you possibly need. >> right, except that they believe that her injuries were the result of witchcraft, and

they believe that very strongly. and they were very willing to talk to us. you know, we walked in. we made friends with the entire family. they sat down and said, sure, we'll talk about this because we don't think that it happened. >> thank you so much for the film. like i said, it's very difficult and yet extremely important to watch. i appreciate we think a lot about sexual assaults here in the u.s. but also continuing to think about the vulnerability of women and girls globealglobally. i thank you for your work. the documentary again is "small, small thing" and you should watch it so you know what all of that is about. go to the website smallsmallthing.com to see how you can buy a dvd or watch the film online. up next, we will remember ruby dee. hey. i'm ted and this is rudy.

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see how fast your internet can be. switch now and add voice and tv for $34.90. comcast business built for business. last night, theaters on broadway dimmed their lights in honor of a performer who passed away this week. award-winning actor and activist ruby dee died wednesday night at the age of 91 surrounded by loved ones at her home in new

rochelle, new york. broadway's tribute was fitting for the performer who first launched her career as actor on the stage. her list of credits spans more than 60 years including classics like the glass menagerie and the best known works of william shiks spear in which she became the first african-american woman to have lead rolls at the shakespeare festival. thee initiated the role of ruth younger in the premier of the american theater classic "a raisin in the sun." beyond her work on stage, her legacy as a performer reached the widest audiences through her work on screen when she repriced her role in a raisin in this sun two years later it was in an america where complex fully realized portrayals of african-americans on screen were few and far between. and dee's performances on film and television particularly during the turbulent '50s and

'60s when african-americans were struggling ftorek nigs revealed the dignity and humanity of black life. she appeared in more than 50 films including a role in "american gangster"ing that at age 85 earned her an academy award nomination for best supporting actress. an emmy, a grammy and two screen actors guilds awards. even her prolific acting resume represents only part of her life's work because her artistry stands alongside a life along commitment of fighting injustice that brought her to fighting apartheid in south africa to a 1999 arrest outside of new york police headquarters while protesting the shoot ago of amadou diallo. throughout all of it, she never stopped playing one of the defining roles of her life, a

co-star in an epic love story that spanned six decades alongside her husband, actor, writer and director ossie davis who passed away in 2005. over the course of their 57 years of marriage, deand davis were not only partners in love but also and activism. it seems fitting that the couple to shares billing in 11 plays and five meres were brought together by their love of theater when they met on broadway in 1945 and shared the honors and recognition of their talent when they jointly received the national medal of arts and kennedy center honors in 2004. the two stood together throughout their long years of activism including serving together as masters of ceremonies at the 1963 march on washington and suing in federal court to ensure voting rights. both dee and davis viewed their work as an extension of their work as performers.

said dee in 2006, "we use the arts as part of our struggle." for six decades these twos american icons shared with us their life, their love, artistry and dedication to justice. and they have left an unforgettable legacy that will no doubtful fill the hope ruby dee shared when asked by npr host michelle martin in twun how she wanted to be remembered. i'd like to be remembered in those little flashes of moments that we remember each other that pick us up from some moments of despair. that's how i'd like to be remembered in the recollection to make the moment more bearable if not enjoyable. we did remember you, ruby dee. and that's our show for today. thanks to you at home for watching. i'm going to see you again tomorrow morning 10:00 a.m. eastern. we'll have a conversation on the world's most famous car chase or car follow. you remember it. 20 years later, what have we learned since. right now it's time for a

preview of "weekends with alex witt." >> spirited conversation. >> spirited conversation about o.j. >> wow. >> you got a little rhythm to your voice here. what is that? >> it's, t.j. >> all right. melissa, it's been a long morning for you. good to see you. thank you so much. hey there, i'm t.j. holmes. a lot to get into the. get you caught up on all that's going on including what's happening in iraq. still fighting there, still thousands of americans in that country and especially in baghdad. a live report about the dangers we're facing. also a 911 call that potentially saved a lot of lives. one alert driver saw what could be just one part of a much bigger problem across this country. and another problem. look at that. look at that. can you avoid what's about to happen here? what to do with the house that's on edge. we will tell you what the owners decided to do. don't go anywhere, folks. i'm right back. replace your laptop?

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