ask your doctor about once-a-day xarelto®. no regular blood monitoring; no known dietary restrictions. for information and savings options download the xarelto® patient center app, call 1-888-xarelto, or visit goxarelto.com this morning my question, should judges impose the death penalty when juries do not? and we return to ferguson, as the city awaits a grand jury decision. plus, a first look at a new report on the criminal justice system. but first, it looks like the president is about to keep one of his biggest promises. good morning i'm melissa harris-perry. we are entering the final two years of the obama presidency. and even as pundits begin to

pontificate about who will occupy the white house next, the president and the public will begin to take account of president obama's legacy. will he be remembered as a good president? an effective one? did this president keep his promises? did he do or at least try to do in office what he said he would do while campaigning? now my favorite obama campaign promise fulfillment is this one. >> sasha and malia, i love you both more than you can imagine. and you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the white house. >> by april, we'd all met bo. sure it's a bit silly, but it's also a reminder of how few campaign promises can be full fided so easily and clearly. the president promised the girls a dog, they got a dog. score one for president dad. but, don't you have the sneaking suspicion that if adopting bo had required an act of congress,

the first daughters might still be waiting? and most presidential promise keeping does require some level of cooperation from the congress. the president has worked to make progress on the more substantive promises of his election. economic recovery, now it's been slow, unsteady and unfelt by many, but economic indicators are clearly strengthening under his leadership. health care reform. this president did what no other democrat who promised compromisive reform was able to do. he passed and signed the affordable care act. but this kept promise has been subjected to partisan attack at every moment since its passage. and is now being challenged again in the supreme court. guantanamo bay, well, that's still open. the v.a. still a mess. we left iraq. and increasingly more soldiers are going back. promises can be hard to keep. especially when you don't have much help. and that is one way that we could tell the story of comprehensive immigration reform. the president first made the

promise as a candidate in the spring of 2008. telling univision, quote, i cannot guarantee that it's going to be in the first 100 days. but what i can guarantee is that we will have, in the first year, an immigration bill that i strongly support, and that i'm promoting. and i want to move that forward as quickly as possible. to this day, no such bill has made it to president obama's desk. meanwhile, the removal of noncriminal, unauthorized immigrants has topped 200,000. per year. all but one of the years of the obama administration. the president did score a win with activists and immigrant families when he authorized the deferred action for childhood arrivals or daca. an initiative in the summer of 2012. but then after seeing this past june that he would seek out options for executive action to be taken by the end of the summer in september that plan was delayed until after the november elections. according to nbc news the president promised that he would use his executive action to

change the broken system before 2015 if washington lawmakers didn't act. so, it was a relief of sorts to hear the issue of immigration as one of the first things addressed on the day after a wave of republican election-day victories. >> before the end of the year, we're going to take whatever lawful actions that i can take, that i believe will improve the functioning of our immigration system, that will allow us to surge zishl resources to the border, where i think the vast majority of americans have the deepest concern. if they want to get a bill done, whether it's during the lame duck or next year, i'm eager to see what they have to offer. but what i'm not going to do is just wait. >> then this week an outline of his plan emerged in a "new york times" report published thursday. the highlights, a broad overhaul of the nation's immigration enforcement system that will protect up to 5 million unauthorized immigrants from the threat of deportation, and

provide many of them with work permits. order changes that will significantly refocus the activities of the government's 12,000 immigration agents. and will allow many parents of children who are american citizsi citizens or legal residents to obtain legal work documents and no longer worry about being discovered and separated from their families and sent away. according to the "times" report, the president is on the precipice of fulfilling another promise. one that could be a cornerstone of his legacy. and he could be prepared to do it this week. we know republicans are gearing up for a fight on this issue. they are already questioning the president's legal authority to take such action. what ultimate challenge they issue and whether it will succeed remains to be seen. but okay. the time has come. here we go. joining me now, maria hinojosa host of the pbs series america by the numbers and latino usa. adam cox, professor of law at nyu.

khalil muhammad who is director of the schomberg center for research and black culture and alina das associate professor of clinical law and co-director of the clinical rights clinic at nyu school of law. maria, let me start with you. just based on what the president is outlining, if he were, in fact to take this executive action and it were to become our policy, is it strong policy? is it robust? is it the kind of reform that activists have been asking for years? >> okay, well that's the $64,000 question, right? we don't know. there has been a lot of, as you pointed out, promises. and we don't know. there are a lot of trial balloons that are coming out. the article in "the new york times" saying it could be as much as this, or it could be as little as this. i think, melissa, as a journalist in the community, what i'm hearing is, how excited can we get? we've been here before. what does this really mean? there is no permanent resolution to this so here we are, you

know, and i started as a journalist in 1985. here we are telling basically the same story although in 1986 immigration reform. so we don't know. and we don't know when it's going to happen. i mean are we sitting here and then, you know, next week they'll say, not going to happen, sorry. we'll have to wait until when? so there's a lot of prepization out there right now. >> and this issue, feels to me, has been -- this is part of why i wanted to frame it around the question of campaign promises, because it certainly has been part of what communities who were active in getting this president elected twice have -- have discussed with him, as we understood that this was going to be your position, we know that you have an obstructionist congress but we need you to do something. do you feel like we're on the precipice of that something finally happening now six years in? >> well, the reports that we're hearing are promising. but you have to put the politics aside. and that's what we're hoping that president obama will do. i mean, if you look at this as a good government issue he should

be trying to extend deferred action to as many of the 12 million or so undocumented immigrants who are living in this country as he possibly can. because while it's congress' role to come up with a long-term legislative solution, he has the job of figuring out what to do with the families who are here. and while he's been trying to deport as many of them as he can i don't think anyone is seriously arguing that it would be morally accessible or politically feasible at this point to deport everyone who is here. and the families who are here, it's people should agree on all sides of the issue. bring them out of the shadows. allow them to register with the government. give them work authorization so employers don't exploit them. put everyone on a level playing field, allow families to stay intact and then congress has to do its job of coming up with a long-term solution. >> so when you when you sort of phrase the political and sort of trying to think through what the political questions are the fact that the political questions keep getting framed as legal questions whether or not the president is legally constitutionally allowed to take this action but adam, in fact,

in the sense that there's been immigration reform in the past couple of decades it really has been primarily through executive action. >> that's absolutely right. that's the way in which the politics of this issue have become really deeply entangled with the misleading notion of what is lawful for the president to do when it comes to imgags policy. as maria said we don't know exactly what this policy is going to be so it's difficult to talk specifically about the legalities right now. if we look at what the president's already done, we think about daca, the legal challenges to that program have been somewhat perplexing but basically boils down to two arguments. the first argument is that the president lacks the authority to decline to deport a person who is identified and is otherwise deportable. now that's just -- that's a terribly misguided argument. the administration going back as far as the late 19th century, immigration policy first, you know, broke onto the scene and the federal government first adopted restrictive immigration laws, have always understood

that discretion is a critical part of the system. >> mm-hmm. >> now the only argument they made other than that the president has no discretion is that he's exercised his discretion too aggressively. >> mm-hmm. >> and with daca for example, that also seems like an argument that misses the mark. because if we go back to the clinton administration, or the reagan administration, or any earlier administration that confronted a similar situation like the one we have now where a huge fraction of people who live in the country are formally deportable. half the noncitizens, this is the most important figure to know, half of the noncitizens who live in the united states today are here without legal authorization. when that's the reality, it's not just that executive discretion is permissible. it's that it's inevitable. >> on exactly that point, when we come back i want to hear the president talking about talking just this morning in australia about the absolute necessity as you framed it, and i want to ask you a little bit about this

question of discretion, because there's at least at currently in the proposal some high skilled versus low skilled marriages about what sorts of immigrants will be allowed to stay. so, more on that when we come back but first, i want to update you on some breaking news from overnight. a video purportedly released by the militant group isis indicates the death of another american aid worker. peter kassig. the u.s. government is investigating the video's authenticity. kassig changed his name to abdul rahman after converting to islam. he was capital urded by isis last year while doing humanitarian work in syria. if confirmed, he would be the fifth western hostage killed by isis. we'll continue to follow developments on this story. stay with msnbc for the latest. we're going to be right back. (receptionist) gunderman group.

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house speaker john boehner had already warned president obama, don't take executive action. if you do you're poisoning the well. now he's promising a fight. here he is talking to our own luke russert on thursday. >> there's talk among some of your conference that any bill to fund the government must have language in it that would prohibit the president from moving executive order pertaining to immigration. do you support that language? >> the president is threatening to take unilateral action on immigration. even though in the past he's made clear he didn't believe he had the constitutional responsibility or authority to do that. and i'll just say this. we're going to fight the president tooth and nail if he continues down this path. this is the wrong way to govern. >> so the house speaker is very clear there. but i also want to listen to the president briefly from this morning in australia and what he had to say about his sense of the necessity of moving forward.

>> i can't wait in perpetuity when i have authorities that at least for the next two years can improve the system. i would be derelict in my duties if i did not try to improve the system that everybody acknowledges is broken. >> so everybody acknowledges the system is broken. questions about how it will move forward. but as we're looking at some of what's coming out, there's a kind of carve out here around high-skilled immigrants who will be allowed to stay and a sense that somehow contributions made by people who are engineers are quite different than contributions made by people who are laborers. and i wonder about how that then has ethnic racial nation of origin effect on what our immigration system looks like. >> right. well this is cornerstone to the unique peculiarities of this moment around the immigration debate. for much of the 20th century, immigration was an engine of economic transformation and

change. our industrial might could not have been built if it were not for the importation of european immigrants. our railroads could not have been built if it were not for the importation -- a consensual importation of chinese immigrants. even the 1965 immigration act which we now are celebrating in the coming months of 50 years has been transformative to our high tech industries and our capacity to get the best and brightest from around the world here. so clearly, when we talk about immigration, we talk about undocumented workers, and we talk about people who don't belong here we're talking about people from south of the border. we're talking about central american people, we're talking about people who are presumptively criminal and disease carriers. so in the midst of the ebola crisis we heard some of the most insane rhetoric about who these people were. so we have ee lieded the distinctions between our history of immigration, and this debate about those people. so we are to applaud the president for essentially putting his mouth where his office is at this moment. and we hope, of course, going forward, that he is going to level the playing field.

that this is not just about engineers, but this is about the families who are here predominantly because in the southwest, farming industry still rely fundamentally on immigrant labor. >> and somehow this economic part of it keeps getting lost in the -- even the president in his talk about a surge to the border, and it still ends up with an lawful lot of border security as part of the narrative. >> so here's some interesting numbers for you, melissa. and this is from ucla. the cost of detaining a mexican, if you will, you know, detaining an immigrant, in the 1980s was about -- 1991, it was about $1,000. to find someone, process, not even process and deport. not even deport. it's actually a return. now, it costs us as a taxpayers, we are paying about $29,000 per person who is being held, apprehended processed, now check so those are our tax dollars.

>> and we're losing the contributions -- the economic contributions of the labor. >> if there is like massive immigration reform, massive, which i'm very skeptical about. but if there were according to a ucla study, again, the economic impact to the united states would be $1.5 trillion in economic benefit over the next ten years. so we don't hear this. we don't hear these numbers about what basically out there in the world people saying wow, if this happened, perhaps all of our personal economy would go up. >> because then what happens when you cite those numbers i can just hear the other side which is but these folks are criminals and they make our communities unsafe. but you also have data, there are data that suggest that that is also not accurate. >> yeah, and the signature piece of obama's immigration enforcement strategy has been this program called secure communities which we've heard about over the last several months. that program the government claims is designed to kick out the worst of the worst in order to, as the program's monitor suggests, make communities more secure. to reduce crime.

but in a recent study that myself and a colleague at the university of chicago conducted, a four-year study of the program, shows that, in fact, it had no reduction in crime rates in communities. so actually has no secure communities didn't make communities any more secure. and if you want to get back to the issue that khalil mentioned, the other fact we know about secure communities, it was rolled out around the country on a county by county basis. so one other thing tom and i tried to do was reverse engineer the target, so which communities were targeted first. if you're targeting crime you might have thought they would have gone where crime was high. >> mm-hmm. >> it turns out crime rates didn't predict where the rollout occurred. you want to guess what predicted it best? >> the percentage of latinos in the community? >> exactly. >> i va little bit more i want to talk about with you all. everybody hold tight i want to come back there's a couple more pieces i want to get to on this question if we had immigration reform what is it we want it to look like.

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i want to take a listen to a portion of the saturday night live skit from last night. >> we ask you not to move on immigration without us, and the first thing you do is say you're going to move -- the first thing! >> okay so you're telling me plubs are going to pass an immigration bill? that's your -- that's one of your first acts a bill of immigration. >> absolutely, yes, it is a huge priority. >> really? >> definitely. >> okay. okay. now we're having fun. >> sometimes it's easier to tell the hard truths in comedy. >> -- an entire electorate. and you know what, melissa, we're talking politics. we're talking legal strategy. we're talking studies. but out there in the community, there is a real sense of these are our lives, people's lives in the balance. and so we're -- we have a lot of

hard numbers about what this might mean but i think that kind of humor, i get it. you know, i hadn't seen it i'm laughing. but then i'm like, oh, my god they're laughing at what's being called the most important electorate. and they're like ha, ha, ha. >> you know, precisely that sense that the parties are that the that folks are captured that there isn't some alternative, if both parties are not moving, then what options do you have, as i was watching that, thinking to myself wait a minute, there's another thing that's going to happen. and that is that the president's attorney general nominee, loretta lynch, is going to come forward in this senate now which will now likely be led by mcconnell. do you think that the question of the constitutional capacity of the president to do this without this legal and lawful will actually end up impacting the ag's confirmation and nomination? >> i think it's entirely possible. people in the republican party have been using every tool in their arsenal to basically do nothing other than point fingers, and to impede government. i mean, americans are tired of

the do-nothing congress. the republican party that was in control of the house, before the midterm elections, had over a rear to bring the senate bill -- >> are you sure they're tired of it? they returned it. they increased it. they made it more likely that that there will be this kind of gridlock. >> i actually do think we have to keep the big context here. so under the republican administration of george bush, and under the governorship of jeb bush, there was a lot of, and we talked about this, compassionate talk about immigration reform. >> ronald reagan -- >> those politics are going to return to the white house in 2016 in the context of the presidential election and this congress is going to be poised to take credit for it and to prepare the electorate between 2014 and 2016 to have a different conversation. so in terms of the politics of obstructionism, they're still playing out in this midterm election because it's about what credit does obama give for change. >> versus the idea that they want to be able to hold him to have that change narrative. thank you so maria hinojosa, adam cox, and to alina das.

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go power! yayyyy! any day now a grand jury in st. louis will announce its decision about whether to bring charges against officer darren wilson for the shooting death of unarmed 18-year-old michael brown. in anticipation of the public response that is expected to follow in the wake of the decision, st. louis area police have planned a series of preparations. on tuesday, missouri governor jay nixon laid out the details of the police mobilization effort. >> officers from the missouri state highway patrol, st. louis county police, and st. louis city police will operate as a unified command to protect the public. the national guard has been and will continue to be part of our contingency planning. the guard will be available when we determine it is necessary to

support local law enforcement but simply we must and will be fully prepared. over the last two months more than 1,000 law enforcement officers have gone through more than 5,000 hours of specialized training. with an emphasis on protecting the constitutional rights of peaceful demonstrator. >> as part of the training to understand the rights of protesters. st. louis county police and state troopers received a constitutional refresher course on the first, fourth, and 14th amendments. a spokesman for the st. louis county police department told mother jones each officer will carry a laminated card with these amendments listed. police have also been learning how to engage peacefully with the protesters. the associated press reported that more than 350 st. louis officers have been trained in civil disobedience tactics and law enforcement leaders in missouri have been going throughout ferguson to churches, schools and businesses to engage the community and try to ease

some of the tension and distrust between the people and the police. reportedly the st. louis county police department has also spent more than $170,000 since august to stock up on tear gas, ammunition, and riot gear. and governor nixon made clear that while the police will be prepared for peace, they will also be ready in case there is violen violence. >> these measures are not being taken because we are convinced that violence will occur, but because we have a responsibility to prepare for any contingency. this coordinated effort will be guided by our core principles. keeping the public safe while allowing people to speak. this is america. people have a right to express their views, and grievances. but they do not have the right to put their fellow citizens or their property at risk. >> joining me now, jasmine rand a civil rights attorney working with parks, the firm representing michael brown's

family. mark es claxton director of the black law enforcement alliance and retired nypd detective. khalil muhammad director of the schomberg center for research in black culture and a blogger and professor of journalism at nyu and co-author of innovating women the changing face of technology. but first i also want to go to ferguson where msnbc reporter has been following all the latest developments leading up to the anticipated grand jury's decision. trem any we've been hearing a lot about the police readiness efforts, are they visible on the ground if you're a member of the community and just walking around can you see what the police are doing? >> good morning, melissa. not just yet. walking around is kind of a literal and figurative kind of chill in the air. there hasn't been much activity. but folks downtown st. louis homeland security vehicles amassing down by the federal building down there. besides that there hasn't been much of a see or a feel or hear on the ground here. >> give me a sense of what

you're hearing from the community members about how these readiness efforts are kind of affecting the perspective, both of what to expect from the grand jury announcement, but also sort of what's to expect from police in the wake of the announcement? >> that's the thing. so as police are you know going through trainings about nonbiased policing, as you mentioned, captain ron johnson of the missouri state highway patrol visiting schools along with other elected officials trying to bridge that gap. when you talk to folks on the ground, particularly veteran protesters that have been here from the beginning that gulf of mistrust and distrust is still as wide as ever. the amassing 6 weapons, a couple hundred thousand dollars in riot gear between the st. louis city and the county police, is disconcerting, because they fear that there may be a return of the kind of violence they saw infligted by the police or mostly peaceful protesters might return in the wake of protests in lieu of the decision. >> stay with us trymaine. i do want to come to you, officer clapton, about sort of

how police officers might be feeling this moment we talk i lot about how the community might be feeling but as you know we're hearing laminated cards with constitutional amendments to remind you of that you know we're in america and people have a right to assemble and to speak. but also, riot gear and tear gas. what do you suspect most officers may be sort of thinking about in this moment? >> i'm sure there's a tremendous amount of anxiety, apprehension, fear, concern. let me just say this. i think it's very interesting when people talk about retraining police officers for -- you know, in regard to the constitution. the constitution hasn't changed. >> mm-hmm. >> the constitution hasn't been altered. so that indicates to me that these same police officers weren't trained or familiar with the constitution, handout cards, and how to interact with the public. i mean what is it that they learned in whatever academy they attended, and i'm also so happy that governor jay nixon realized where he is in america. all of a sudden he realizes he's

in america as opposed to where we were before, in ferguson a couple months ago. >> when he was striking a tone about, about, i'll never forget that saturday when he came out and side the curfew and the sense that that was almost like drawing a line in the sand. you know we're talking about the communities we're talking about police. i also want to talk a little bit about the family for whom this anticipated grand jury decision is a far more personal question, one of the big questions of justice. but there's a very personal one. on msnbc.com mike brown's cousin a family spokesperson told us the police are getting ready for war, they should be getting ready for a trial. that to me means they've already made their decision. we still feel terrible right now we feel the same way we felt when mike was lying dead in the middle of the street for four and a half hours. how traumatizing is the wait and then the kind of this idea that just it feels like with this kind of readiness it feels like

although i don't even know whether the police would know whether or not it's true like preparing for a grand jury -- >> i think that the family is certainly bracing themselves in that same arena, as well. i think that we're very skeptical whether or not an indictment is going to come down obviously the family is still praying that this grand jury will indict the killer of their son. but everybody is skeptical at the moment and i think what the family hopes is that no matter what the decision is, that the people will be peaceful but more importantly as we've been discussing this morning, that the law enforcement will remember that we have to uphold these people's constitutional rights. we don't want to see additional police brutality in response to a grand jury, if they don't indict. so we want people's right to peacefully assemble and people's right to freedom of expression to be upheld. >> mm-hmm. now i have a question for you, trymaine it kind of involves you, as well. we talk about the police readying up and starting to feel like something bad is going to happen on the back end but the reality is that msnbc said that trimaine, there are other reporters there from all of the

major networks, are we also even in our presence as media even in the way that we are anticipating this, are we also basically putting on our sort of journalism right you know expecting that something bad and and therefore camera ready and camera worthy will happen. >> yes. but, if you think about the civil rights era, it was the please ens of journalists who recorded people being knocked down by fire hoses and chewed up by dogs that persuaded not only northern but southern americans that the constitution was broken in effect if not in documents. and so, hopefully this will be a big waste of money for msnbc and trymaine who is an incredible journalist will be like, well, yeah, you know, coming home, thanks for listening. but, you this is part of the job of what we do as journalists. is to witness. and if there's nothing to witness, i think a lot of people

will be happy but if there is something to witness journalists have to be there. >> trymaine when you're talking to folks on the ground are they responding to you as a journalist as part of this presence that was there in august when it was hot and now you're back and it's cold sort of what are you hearing from folks about the media presence? >> i mean, on one hand, folks even in the worst of the days appreciated the media coverage because they felt if we weren't there could you imagine how bad it would be. there were moments when i can remember seeing police descend nothing crowds of protesters and behind them, i'd say cameras bobbing behind them. and you have to wonder you know, what role are we playing in fuelling this? are people starting to show out and show off a little bit for the camera? and also even now, are we adding to the hysteria? every time i talk to someone, are you ready? do you think there will be violence? are you concerned for your own safety? it kind of adds to this kind of whirlwind of anxiety that's been consuming this place for rm 100 days. but again i think largely as she mentioned, you know, during the civil rights era you know when

you saw those dogs attacking you knows the police attack being folks with the dogs and america can sit back and say wow this is america. so i think our role here is doing the same thing, this is america. this is the process. these you know sometimes we talk about the family and you look into a mother's eyes and their son or daughter leave home and never return. you know, this is all this kind of weighty emotional stuff we're dealing with. our presence is translating that into the homes of america. trymaine lee, in ferguson, thank you. up next, president obama is going to weigh in and i'm going to get a history lessen. that's right. it's just that i'm worried about you know "hidden things..." ok, why's that? no hidden fees, from the bank where no branches equals great rates.

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to connect you even 35,000 feet over the ocean. ♪ that's...wifi friendly. ♪ that's...wifi friendly. so ally bank really has no hidden fethat's right. accounts? it's just that i'm worried about you know "hidden things..." ok, why's that? no hidden fees, from the bank where no branches equals great rates. missouri police aren't the only ones anticipating potential for violence after the grand jury decides whether or not to indict officer darren wilson. president obama privately expressed a real concern about the potential for violence in ferguson. the report describes a meeting the day after the midterm elections between the president

and a group of civil rights leaders during which the president urged the leaders to help keep the peace. while ensuring protesters free speech rights. just a little part i wanted to come to you on historically, i'm legitimately confused about the fact that i felt like we had some collective understanding that the militarized response of the police was its own separate problem over and against the question of officer wilson, and the shooting death of michael brown, and yet that seems to be a lesson that wasn't learned and so i'm wondering how many other times in our history have we not learned that lesson? >> so let me say on that point it seems to me that what -- what the militarization problem showed us that we had not picked up on is that policing becomes the prove gags for individuals who are expressing their rights. seems to me when governor jay nixon is giving that speech just a couple of days ago he's speaking to an electorate that told him that we will not stand for the criminals in ferguson

disrespecting our community. so i don't hear it as neutral language around an america that we all support. i hear him speaking to an electorate that said that those hoodlums that were out there before shall not be able to rise again because they're not legitimate protesters. now, to the history of militarization technologies of repression have changed oefsh time. so one of the early inventions in the early labor movements when socialists and anarchists got together in new york city for example the technologies at that time were agents provocateurs as part of red and gloom squads who did the kind of surveillance work that our modern technology does so they could get ahead, identify the leaders and use violence in a targeted impactful way. that whole militarization moved across the 20th century to an ironic development. by the time we get to the 1990s in a place like new york city around police brutality protests not unlike when we happened in

ferguson, amadou diallo, shawn bell, rudolph giuliani, they actually learned part of the lesson of new york city's history, which was to show incredible restwrant. to literally be crowd and parade control for these major protest movements that had roiled new york city throughout the 1980s and 1990s. >> so i want to come to you on that as a law enforcement officer sort of what that means to that to like purposely position the police in this different way as as though they're the helpers of the protesters. and you know, i just want to listen very quickly to captain ron johnson speaking to high school students where he, he offers us some advice and come to you on that. >> if you ever stop and you think it's just because then you take that ticket, don't tear the next jury off don't yell don't scream but you take it off to your parents. you take that and they need to go to that police department and tell them with you what has happened.

but don't just take it if you think you have done nothing wrong. >> so here he is offering advice, but still not quite giving accountability for the way the police are doing that wrong. >> i think that you know i have to be honest did it i think and i've said it here i think captain johnson has done some positive things, and sort of certain skill sets that are advantageous to the community. however, i'm afraid that much of what he is engaged in now, and since the riots, has been a lot of public relation s stunts. with no substance behind it. no ability to really change the direct and flow of the law enforcement agency that he's supposed to be in charge of in a certain sense. that's not slight on captain johnson. that's just it is what it is. and i think in a larger scale we're talking about whether it be the militarization of police agencies, whether it be high incarceration rates. i think people are having the problem kind of identifying what

we're talking about. we're talking about really significant revolutionary justice reform from police, to prosecution, to laws, et cetera. that's what we're really talking about. >> toy right there. that's exactly the kind of reform we're going to talk about when we come back and i want to talk about the actual case officer brown wilson and michael brown are related to that larger protest revolution that you're talking about when we come back. ] ♪don't stop now come on mony♪ ♪come on yeah ♪i say yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪'cause you make me feel like a pony♪ ♪so good ♪like your pony ♪so good ♪ride the pony the sentra, with bose audio and nissanconnect technology. spread your joy. nissan. innovation that excites. [singing] ♪mony mony because it helps me skip the bad stuff. i'm good. that's what i like to call, the meta effect.

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on thursday the parents of michael brown returned home after a week-long trip to geneva where they traveled at the invitation of the united nations to testify before the u.n. committee against torture. >> we came here to the u.n. to get justice for our son. i think that it couldn't be a better place that we could fight it. >> their international appeal for justice was not only over the shooting death of their son but also to bring worldwide attention to police aggression

against american communities of color. that call for systemic justice has galvanized the movement that coalesced around michael brown's death and it has remained a key focus of protesters as they prepare to respond after the grand jury makes its decision. at least 600 people have received training in nonviolent civil disobedience from a group of experienced organizers. potential protesters learned strategies for how to remain calm and engage peacefully during an encounter with police. joining me now from ferguson is one of those instructors, who in those training sessions who has also been an activist and been arrested twice during the protest. the reverend from the fellowship of reconciliation also the pastor for formation and justice at the first baptist church in jamaica plain so nice to see you reverend. tell me about this ongoing movement happening in ferguson and sort of what happened after the cameras left. >> oh, good morning, dear sister and thank you for having us.

well, we are engaging in the rich add tradition that gave us eight-hour work days that gives us the opportunity to break the opportunity to break the back of american apartheid through nonviolent civil disobedience. since the largest amount of media have left we have remained committed to building infrastructure to support the work of young people by providing them the skills necessary and requisite as a part of deep preparation and that i got while we are angry we are all angry at this moment and police brutality nationally but that anger is tampered by a deep, abiding love. >> stay with us, i want to come to you because this is both a case illegal case but this is also this opportunity for a much broader activism. >> and i'm so glad that we're having this discussion at this table today and this is the exact type of progress that our nation needs. because as a civil rights attorney, i can't just be working in the context of a courtroom. we talked earlier today about the influence of the media. and the necessity of the media

in forwarding the movement, capturing these movements, helping us, assisting us to uphold people's human rights. and you referred earlier about officers being helpers of protesters and that's what we need to see in this nation because we all have constitutionally guaranteed rights. these officers have to be trained not to just quiet protesters, but to allow protesters voices to be heard. >> mm-hmm. so, let me then go back to you on that. we're hearing about how the police are revving up, now i know something about the kind of training that you have been doing with activists on the ground. is there a sense of optimism that police may behave differently this time than what we saw a few months ago? >> well, given the fact that they have purchased several hundred thousand dollars of weaponry to police american citizens engaging in the first amendment rights, it seems the case that the police will be engaging in various forms of provocation. so this is why we've attempted

to do as much as we can to train young leaders, and activists, and a broader community. it's been a broad, multiracial, mul multigenerational group of folks who have come out for these trainings over the past few months and so, we are prepared a lot less than the and we want to protect ourselves of course and people to be protected in terms of their attack by police but more about raising the more drama that there are mike browns all over america and that a new generation of leadership has emerged and they will not bow down. >> one last very briefly question. what if there is an indictment? we've been talking about if there's not. what if there is an indictment. what happens to the energy -- >> we refocus oz a movement. we will still be in the streets. because of the malcolm x grassroots movement reports every 28 hours. some black or brown body is slain by a state agent or vigilante and so this is as about mike brown but it's about the mike browns of america, and

so we will still take to the streets because the ferguson police department and broader st. louis county policing agents in the context of this local struggle have proven themselves to be deeply corrupt, whether it be provide issuing too many tickets, whether it be continued police brutality and profiling of black people in this region and so, mike brown's blood has washed away the veneer of the status quo and we cannot go back to the way things were. >> thank you, reverend, in ferguson, missouri. and here in new york to jasmine rand and marcus clapton i hope you will be back once we do in fact have a decision about whether or not there's an indictment. still to come this morning, bryan stephenson is returning. we just had him last week but he's back at the mhp show to explain what judicial override is and how one man's life hangs in the balance. plus former "new york times"

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well, knowing gives you confidence. start building your confident retirement today. welcome back. i'm melissa harris-perry. this is kenneth who's been on death row in north carolina for 22 years. he was convicted in 1992 of robbing, murdering and attempting to rape a white store clerk. an all-white jury convicted him and recommended the death sentence. jeers later his lawyers discovered that one of those jurors had purposely concealed the fact that his mother, the juror's mother, had been murdered. and that he believed that man, he used the "n" word, routinely raped white women for bragging rights. a story this morning, reporter ken armstrong writes as claims of juror bias go the evidence could hardly have been stronger

but the final appeal was never heard rouse's lawyers had just one year after his initial state appeal to petition for a last resort hearing in federal court. they missed the deadline by a single day. under the constitution, prisoners in america have the right to challenge their sentences, including the death penalty. that constitutionally guaranteed right is known as habeas corpus. in 1996, democratic president bill clinton signed a law that limited that right. the anti-terrorism and effective death penalty act of 1996 set a one-year deadline on federal habeas appeals. those convicted had one year from when their state appeal concluded to file the claim in federal court. since then according to an investigation by the marshal project the deadline has been missed in 80 death penalty cases. courts have agreed to extend the deadline in just a third of those cases. the lawyers for three death row inmates missed the deadline by just one day. of the death row inmates who

filed habeas petitions after the deadlines, 16 have been executed. joining me now is bill keller longtime executive editor of "the new york times" and now editor in chief of the marshal project and ken armstrong the highest winning reporter who is also a staff writer for the marshal project. i want to start with this policy itself. help me to understand what the sort of narrative about why it was important to set a one-year time limits on the right for these appeals. >> well, what congress wanted to do was streamline death penalty appeals. there was this feeling at the time that it was taking too long to actually carry out executions. so in 1996, they went ahead and set a one-year statute of limitations for federal habeas corpus petitions. but what congress did was they essentially created a hurdle without also providing the means to clear it. so the hurdle is the one-year statute of limitations. what they didn't account for was

the provision of competent counsel to make sure that deadline was met. so what you had is attorneys who filed petitions in the wrong court, or who filed petitions without paying the proper filing fee. or who made an array of other mistakes that had tragic consequences in these particular cases. >> it it feels in part because when we do death penalty cases in media we tend to do kind of the higher profile ones where there is in fact competent council and we maybe all have in our mounds like atticus finch going into the courthouse and being so god at what he does but some of what this piece outlines is that you know attorneys may be even of goodwill just often kind of don't know what they're doing and a year just doesn't seem like enough time. >> that's right. and habeas corpus is an incredibly challenging area of law. as you're saying a lot of times these attorneys are well meaning. they just don't have the experience and the background to do this type of work. one of the attorneys we wrote about is in indiana. and she tried hard to get -- we

read this two volume set of habeas corpus practice. we attends a week-long seminar on capital litigation but the very back end of the case she makes a crucial mistake and drops the petition in the mail rather than having it delivered by fedex or delivering it to a person at the courthouse. as a result the petition arrived one day late and her client's petition was dismiss without ever being reviewed on the merits. so bill, i think part of -- part of what's so stunning about the piece to me, and why i say the democratic president bill clinton is the person who signed this, i think we hear often we talk a lot on this show about this great desire for something to get done. let's just get something done. let's make compromises, who cares about partisanship, let's move something through. but this policy is emblematic of a democratic president working with a republican congress to do something but then the the you sort of feel like i wish they'd have done nothing right as opposed to making a compromise that vulnerability communities

have to bear. >> right. and we're also accustomed to thinking the tough on crime commercials the willie horton kind of tactic of going after your opponent as being primarily a conservative republican phenomenon. but, in fact, bill clinton signed this bill quite willingly, knowing what was in it and two years earlier he signed the 1994 crime act which set out the prison building binge and had a few other residual effects like cutting off pell grants to inmates who wanted to better themselves so they could have a job when they got out of prison. you know, it's -- it's scary being a liberal who supports criminal justice reform. the environment tends to encourage them to keep their heads down. >> and yet the environment has changed so dramatically. i mean this is part of what's put it out the crime rate has dropped pretty substantially since 1996 when we first saw this. support for the death penalty has dropped although it remains 55% or something a majority but it's substantially down from

'96. is this now a moment when the kind of reporting that we're seeing here can actually put these questions back on an agenda as we move into the 2016 presidential election cycle? >> we're betting the answer to that question is yes. and i think there are encouraging signs. there is a rare patch of common ground between right and left on some aspects of criminal justice reform, especially the sort of easy stuff. a sentencing of low-level nonviolent drug offenders for example. so there is some potential to make some movement. motivated in part by the fact that it costs a lot of money to incarcerate 2.2 million people. but also, i mean, the some conservatives are moving in this direction, motivated -- >> in rand paul's case i think it's just part of his blanket suspicion that big government but there's also an evangelical, christian, moral conservative wing that has gained influence

within the party. >> and yet at the at the crux of this still though are questions of race so when you talk about the kind of you know some of the easy stuff we're increasingly seeing actions, the supply of legal marijuana is becoming part of the easy stuff and and and the prohibition there but part of what i want to talk about when we come back is the way in which race is at the at the crux of all of this and then talk a little bit more about the question of marshall project and diversity in the newsroom. >> sure. >> we're going to take a short brake. the report that we are discussing is online now at the themarshallproject.org. it's also running as a two-day series in "the washington post." when we come back we're going to talk more about these fundamental questions but first, the latest on the breaking news from overnight. a video purportedly released by the militant group isis claims to prove an american aid worker peter kassig has been beheaded. the u.s. government is investigating the video's authenticity. kassig was doing humanitarian work in syria when he was captured by isis last year. he changed his name to abdul

rahman after converting to islam. if the new video is authenticated he would be the fifth western hostage and the third american killed by isis. kassig's parents while awaiting official confirmation issued this statement. the family respectfully asks that the news media avoid playing into the hostage takers hands and refrain from publishing or broadcasting photographs or videos distributed by the hostage takers. we prefer our son is written about and remembered for his important work, and the love he shared with friends and family, not the manner the hostage takers would use to manipulate americans and further their cause. stay with msnbc throughout the day for the latest on this story. we'll be right back. ♪don't stop now come on mony♪ ♪come on yeah ♪i say yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪'cause you make me feel like a pony♪ ♪so good ♪like your pony ♪so good ♪ride the pony the sentra, with bose audio and nissanconnect technology.

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child: ...but anyone can help a foster child. we've been talking about the work of the marshall project, a nonprofit news start-up that officially launched this weekend with the mission to report on

criminal justice issues. amongst several other recent new start-ups the marshall project has been criticize for a lack of racial diversity among its staff. in march the national association of black journalists posted an open letter to the marshall project and three other start-ups, fox, 538 and first list media with that very critique. they wrote many of us wondered aloud if this entrepreneurship might include new and more effective approaches to achieving diversity in newsroom staffing and coverage. our excitement has turned to concern as the parade of recent hires hardly reflects a commitment. we're going to give the editor in chief of the marshall project a chance to respond to some of these questions. and also at the table khalil muhammad, director of the schomberg center for research in black culture, and professioner of journalism at nyu and a blogger. i wanted to talk to you again as a member of nabj this has been a central question the marshall project is named for thurgood

marsha marshall. this first piece is a smart piece around questions in part of race, 42% of death row inmates are african-american, and a disproportionate share of the male prison population is african-american. talking about diversity in the newsroom at the marshall project. >> well, let me start by talking a little bit about diversity in the newsroom at large. we have a special obligation i think we've taken our name in honor of thurgood marshall. and we're dealing with a system where that is disproportionately african-american. 40% of the inmates in our overstuffed prisons are african-american. african-americans are disproportionately represented among the victims of crime. they are disproportionately represented in some elements of the power structure. the correctional officers union of new york city is two-thirds african-american. >> yep. >> so obviously it's a great value not just to go out and talk to african-americans in this field, but to have some

people on staff who wake up in the morning, who when they read about ferguson, get it. maybe quicker than somebody who's white and get it at a more verse ral level. of our 25 employees, five are african-american, of our eight staff writers, two are african-american. is that enough? i mean, i don't know what enough is. but i think that number will grow over time. you know, there is a kind of basic conceit of journalism that we're all generalists and anybody can report on anything you don't have to be a doctor to write about cancer. >> right. >> you don't have to be a catholic to write about the vatic vatican. >> mm-hmm. >> and there's some truth in that and we have you know connections of african-american experts in criminal justice i could list you a whole honor role of them some of them are on our advisory board -- >> so our guest in the next -- >> but that's not enough. i mean, you know, each person

brings a little something extra to the job having grown up african-american in a big urban setting. corey johnson brings something extra having grown up an african-american man in georgia. that's not why we hired them. we hired simone because she's a street smart reporter who knows how to cover cops and gangs. we hired corey johnson because he's one of the sharpest investigative reporters i know. he did a great series on involuntary sterilization in california prisons. but they do bring a little something extra to the table. because of what they know and who they are, and who will talk to them. >> just is a lot of the work has been around -- asking so what difference does difference make in the newsroom? >> well i'm actually completing a 20th anniversary edition of a book i wrote called don't believe the hype, which is about race and the media as it pertains to african-americans. and it came out of my experiences as being a young 20-something reporter at

"newsweek," and for example the central park jogger case unfolded and one of the things i said to my older white peers was regardless of whether these men are innocent or guilty, the way that we're portraying them is not a way that we would portray a white kid who committed a crime. and now we know that they were innocent but regardless of whether they were innocent or guilty, when i brought up questions about our coverage in the "newsweek" newsroom i was viewed as all things of being anti-feminist. i think you have to have i mean what i see now making a hard switch to money is that the funding is going to predominantly white founder of tech oriented media start-ups who may or may not include diversity in the hiring. i see it -- >> kind of beyond marshall project. >> beyond marshall project i think it's a money question. and what i see very often is both foundation funding and for profit funding. whether it's first look media don't really take a first look

at people of color as entrepreneurs. there are plenty of digital entrepreneurs, or media entrepreneurs of color, but the book that i last came out with, called innovative women, for example, shows that for-profit tech companies with women on the board do 35% better than for-profit tech companies without women on the board, and yet it's a struggle still to get women on the board. so it's a money issue, and it's also a question of can you tolerate internal dissent? because if you bring in people of different races, and different classes, different ethnicities, and different national origins, you will fight in the newsroom. >> do you have a tolerance to fight? that produces good journalism. >> it's interesting that that idea of of that that there's on the one hand and there's i appreciate what you said about we hire people who are great reporters right it's not identity alone is insufficient, on on either side at the same time i'm sitting here thinking as an academic a little bit because of these same questions

emerge around faculty right so, and both you know so we diversify our students without diversifying our faculty for example. pipeline almost always comes up as part of it and again the question of just as reporters are trying to report on a complex series of stories faculty trying to research and do research around complicated social issues that have overwhelming impact on communities of color, two of my favorite one of my favorite researchers of african-american history is done by nonafrican-american historians and yet i still want to make a claim for the value of identity within that. >> sure, well i teach as well and one of the things we always wrestle with is who is this book written for? who is the audience? because we can imagine that someone picking up a newspaper, reading a blog or even reading a scholarly monograph represents a universal possibility that the author cannot alcohol. that the author has an audience in mind. the journalist has an audience in mind. so when you wrestle with those difficult questions about how do you characterize humanity? how do you characterize cultural habits and context? how do you get into those messy

spaces that aren't obvious to the reader the fit is, this person reading the book makes a huge difference in how you tell your story. >> oh, yeah. who is the marshall project for? >> the marshall project is for i hope a universal voting audience. i mean because our aim is to raise the the level of understanding and the sense of urgency about what we see as a broken system. i don't think of our audience in terms of black and white, or coastal, or flyover states, i think we want everybody >> as the author of this piece did you have an audience member in mind? >> what i hoped we would do is speak to everyone about an issue that affects all of us universally. when you were talking about how race is at the core so much of this. when you opened up the segment you talked about the kenneth rouse case. race figured dominantly in that because not only did that one juror fail to disclose that his family history provided him with a bias. he said that he was colored by

bigotry. you know, he provided an affidavit admitting that he was prejudiced. >> mm-hmm. >> and that that may have affected his deliberations in that case. and he wound up with an all-white jury. so race does figure time and again these cases and we need to make sure that we account for that in our reporting. >> we're going to talk even more about the way in which race figures in the criminal justice in our next segment. but i want to thank right now bill keller and ken armstrong of the marshall project. we're going to stick around a little bit longer. up next we are bringing bryan stephenson in from alabama to explain why judges are discarding the intentions of juries and imposing death sentences. ♪ let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together ♪ ♪ i've got some real estate here in my bag ♪ ♪ it took me four days to hitch-hike from saginaw ♪

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for you to start your business, protect your family, and launch your dreams. at legalzoom.com we put the law on your side. capital punishment is legal in 32 of our united states. but in three of those states the executions can be ordered by judge, despite a jury's sentence of life in prison. it's called a judge override. and in one particular state, alabama, the practice is under

intense scrutiny for its routineness. according to the equal justice initiative judges in alabama have overridden jury verdicts 111 times since 1976. 36 people in alabama's death row right now were sentenced to die by a single judge's override of a jury. alabama has the nation's highest per capita death sentencing rate. this week the new yorker published an in-depth report on the controversy titled double jeopardy. in the report an interview of a retired state supreme court justice who once chose to override as jury as a circuit judge but is now openly opposed to the practice. in one of his dissents before leaving the bench, justice douglas johnston wrote quote in assigning no weight nor binding effect to a life in imprisonment recommendation by a jury alabama law reduces to a sham the role of the jury in sentencing and allows baseless, disparate sentencing of defendants in capital cases. joining me now from montgomery,

alabama is bryan stephenson, founder and executive director of the equal justice initiative. and author of a new book just mercy. he is also the lawyer for this man, chanel jackson who is facing the first execution in spite of a jury's unanimous vote for life in prison. it's nice to have you back, but i am -- could not believe this article. help me to understand what is going on in alabama in particular where not only do you not have to have a unanimous jury, but that a judge could simply override if it's a unanimous jury on the other side? >> yeah, it's pretty outrageous. and initially judge override was introduced in the late '70s as a tool to allow judges to reverse death sentences to life when they thought people had been unfairly sentenced because of some bias. what it's turned into, instead, is the opposite. it's frequently used to change life verdicts to death, what distinguishes alabama is that unlike florida, and delaware,

which are the only two states that have overrides, alabama has no restriction. it doesn't have a standard that requires these judges to only do this in the rashest of cases. and right now about 21% of our death row are a result of these judge overrides, there have been over 100 people condemned to death despite the fact that the jury felt like life was the appropriate punishment. >> okay. so i want to talk a little bit also about the possible ticks here. we talked about the politics in that 1996 decision to to reduce the the time for habeas corpus. in this case, in alabama, judges are elected. they have no public funding. the money for campaigns is unlimited. and i could not believe this, lawyers can give money to judges who will be hearing their cases, and judges can give money to other judges who are going to review their cases and decisions? >> it completely compromised the integrity of the courts in my

view. yes. we've spent millions of dollars in the state electing different judges who often campaign on their commitment to impose the death penalty. these overrides go up in election year. 30% of the death sentences in 1998, which was an election year, were judge overrides. and these judges use the death penalty as a brand. as a way of expressing to the community that i'm the kind of person you should vote for. and i do think it puts us in a very perilous position. you need a judiciary that has autonomy. that has integrity. that can sometimes say to the majority of people in the state, this is wrong. this is unfair. this is unequal. even if the majority of the people think otherwise. that's how we protect the rights of the disfavored. it's how we protect the rights of minorities. it's how we protect the rights of people whose rights are often easily violated. >> what does any of this or all of this have to do with race? >> well, we frequently see overrides in cases where the vick films are white, about 75%

of the cases where these judge overrides have taken place have taken place in white victim cases, even though 65% of all murder victims in the state of alabama are african-american. and so i do think it's a way of expressing which cases matter. we want the legitimacy of the jury to tell us if death is the appropriate punishment. because they represent the community. but when the jury says no, death is not the appropriate punishment, we want the political ability to kind of override that. and you see that playing out in these cases where you have white victims. race of the victim is the greatest predictor of who gets the death penalty in this state and many other states in america. >> thank you so much for being willing to join us again. thank you for your work there in alabama, particularly on your clients case. your client could become the first person to die despite unanimous decision by the jury that he should not. >> thank you. >> when we come back, we're going to go back to the ground

in ferguson, missouri, to find out how the community there is preparing emotionally for the news to come. kicks in on car stereo] ♪don't stop now come on mony♪ ♪come on yeah ♪i say yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪'cause you make me feel like a pony♪ ♪so good ♪like your pony ♪so good ♪ride the pony the sentra, with bose audio and nissanconnect technology. spread your joy. nissan. innovation that excites. [singing] ♪mony mony bonjour. comment ce va? bonjour. comment ce va? due cappuccini, per favore. domo... arigato? arigato united flies to more destinations than any other airline. namaste. over 5100 daily flights to nearly 60 countries. namaste. plus, over 230 us cities. dessert? pee-can pie. pecan? yeah. okay. in any language, that's...gateway to the world friendly.

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start building your confident retirement today. last week we brought you a story of pointergate. it revolved around this picture of minneapolis mayor betsy hodges posing with get out the vote volunteer gordon. on november 6th, minneapolis local abc affiliate kstp reported mayor hodges has posed for a picture with a convicted felon and that both were flashing gang signs. they went on to quote retired and current police officers who concluded the mayor hodges was undermining policing efforts by flashing the known gang sign. remember the known gang sign was two people pointing at one another. which the internet found to be kind of hilarious, prompting a flood of sarcastic responses from everyone from babies to religious and political leaders pointing. last week we asked nobel gordon if it was his intention to

signal gang affiliation when he posed with the mayor. and he said this. >> not at all. it was just a blessing to be with the mayor and i was putting pictures up, want everybody to see the progress i'm making out here. >> this week kstp doubled down on the story running a follow-up piece defending the gang sign claims. the instagram account the station points out contains other pictures of gordon pointing and quote posing with what appears to be a gun. the account also has pictures of clothing, selfies of all sorts and lots and lots of food. on that same day mayor hodges addressed the controversy in a blog post on her website. it was clear, compelling, and a point by point message point one it is not realistic to go through all of life without pointing, so quote, i'm not going to stop pointing. point two, as mayor her job is to meet with the public and she's not going to run a criminal records check on everyone she meets. in fact the mayor asserts,

quote, fwrangly if i did know that someone had a criminal past, it wouldn't prevent me from talking with that person. point three, it seems to her like maybe the head of the police union is asking the mayor not to stand next to young african-american men because of the stereotypes associated with those young men. so which the mayor responded by explaining this about stereotyping. it blunts the humanity of the person making the judgment and creates unnecessary separation between two people in the world where more rather than less human connection is needed for us to move forward as a community. which brought mayor hodges to her fourth point. i am uncounted in my commitment to making sure that police community relationships are as strong as they can be. i am undaunted in my desire to support and develop police officers who serve respectfully and collaboratively every day to keep people safe and make all our neighborhoods stronger. i am an undaunted in my plans to

increase accountability for consistent bad actors in the police department. well done mayor hodges. keep pointing the way to a more responsive and inclusive community policing. in fact, the issue of community policing is particularly timely right now, as the country awaits a decision from the grand jury, considering whether to indict officer darren wilson for the shooting death of unarmed teenager michael brown in ferguson, missouri. that decision is expected any day now and police are preparing to respond to any protest that follow that decision. the activists are also mobilizing including those who will help tend the emotional health of the community. for more now on how ferguson residents are preparing emotionally, for whatever comes next, we're joined by dr. marva robinson president of the st. louis association of black psychologists. since the beginning of this conflict you've been focusing on issues of pain and hurt and trauma in this community.

can you tell us what people are feeling in advance of the potential indictment announcement? >> well, one of the things that we have to definitely keep in mind is that the holidays are upon us. and so thanksgiving and christmas holidays are not always cheerful for everyone. in psychology we tend to see an increase in patients because people are reminded of their own personal losses. family members that are not here around this time of the year. children, parents that are no longer here to have that turkey dinner with them. and so, it's a huge burden right now. because people are dealing in trying to struggle through their own personal life. their own personal losses. you know, on top of that. dealing with the potential social and injustice on top of that. and so there's a lot of frustration, a lot of overwhelming feelings that people are really struggling with trying to just function their day-to-day lives. and planning and preparing for what may come. i think a lot of the anxieties have increased because you kind

of see a lot of the militarization that is going on. a lot of rumors about the national guard coming in in advance. and so, it kind of heightens the fear of everyone that maybe they're preparing for the worst, and so that's in a sense heightens the anxieties of everyone on the ground. especially those protesters and activists on the ground. >> don't go away, khalil i want to come to you on this, and part of the reason i wanted to talk about the minneapolis story in connection with this, is because we can see what leadership looks like when it refuses to be undaunted and to be inclusive. and it feels so different than what we're hearing from leadership out of ferguson right now. at least in the sense of people feeling like they are full citizens. >> betsy hodges is an amazing leader in her community but also for the nation. i can't imagine at this time any other mayor being willing to take the kind of political courage that she has demonstrated in this moment and say, if we are a nation of second chances, then i have to

be in community with everyone. and if we are a nation that is committed to justice, then people who are making good on the promise of a better life should be supported, and should be in community. i want to point out two things quickly. the article of the new yorker about double jeopardy, the judge in the case who overwrote said something in an article about how he made the decision based on the prior record, the juvenile record that had been sealed that the jury was not able to see when they when they chose to sentence him to life. he said, well, sometimes you just have to put them down. because in his mind, jackson's life was disposable. that he had forfeited his right to humanity in the same way that the spirit that betsy hodges is pushing back against is this notion that this is a discardable life. no longer counts. and i would submit to you that that was the same spirit that hung over the context of michael brown's willing. >> and the -- so i'm on exactly

that point marva i want to come back to you, because whatever happens in the indictment, that question of whether or not young people in ferguson feel that their political -- that their community their religious their their police leaders think that their lives are disposable, or think that their lives are valuable and meaningful, and worthy of investment. >> exactly. i recently listened to the history of ferguson from someone who grew up in ferguson generations back. and it was interesting to me to discover that not less than 74 years ago that ferguson had sundown laws. where the chief of police at that time said that the sun would never set on the back of a black man. and so it's that spirit of that history that kind of still looms itself now where you have a community feeling as if they are still invisible, and still not allowed to move and progress and have the same liberties as their

other fellow residents and citizens. >> i know you're planning multiple days of having some community services open. after the the announcement? >> there are several clergy, there are several agencies that are planning to open following the announcement. i know the association of black psychologists definitely plans to be a part of several different teams and staff at well spring united methodist church to be able to offer services as best as we can to those that are willing to accept them. >> dr. marva robinson, you have been joining us since the beginning, let me just say from all of us who have come to respect your work so much please also take care of yourself. i know it can be hard to do the self-care as an activist and we just want to make sure that you are surrounded and and cared for as well in a in a time that can be quite difficult. >> thank you. i appreciate that. >> dr. marva robinson in ferguson, missouri. here in new york i want to say thank you to khalil mohammed and faria thank you for spending

time with me this morning. up next if you don't know this his think you need to know this history. there is a new book about nazis here in america. i make a lot of purchases for my business. 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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♪ nationwide is on your side ♪ mmm mmm mmm mm mmm mm mmmmmm on the heels of this year's midterm election there is news this week of some bipartisan consensus in washington. lawmakers from both sides of 9 aisle have come together to support a bill that would stop allowing nazi war criminals to collect social security benefits. because of a legal loophole some nazis who came here after world war ii and were kicked out of the country years ago are still receiving government benefits today. now taking a stand against government benefits for nazi war criminals seems like a pretty low bar for bipartisanship. even for this congress. obviously no one in the government would ever think it's okay to support nazis. right? well, actually, for many years after the second world war, the u.s. government did just that. programs run by the cia, fbi,

and u.s. military, actively recruited, supported, and protected former nazis who had committed war crimes and other atrocities. these individuals were sought out for their scientific knowledge and strategic intelligence that government officials thought would be useful in fighting the brewing cold war. over the years, these nazis ingratiated themselves in communities across the country. some of them even becoming government officials and minor celebrities. joining knee now is the pulitzer prize winning reporter who compiled the stories of these men and detailed the u.s. government's role in adishing them. eric lichtblau who is author of the new book "the nazis next door: how america became a safe haven for hitler's men." this book is profoundly distressing in part because it made me realize how much i misunderstand the story of the liberation of the concentration camps, the story of who america was in the context of world war ii. what is it that about the story that we tell ourselves that is actually wrong?

>> well, i think there's a lot of mythology surrounding the end of the war. first of all, we think a lot of the nazis fleeing to argentina, to latin america. there were thousands who got in to the united states. at least 10,000 or more. some of them were actively recruited by the united states government. either as scientists or spies, informants. and we also think wrongly that the survivors who outlasted hitler's regime soon were welcome to new homes, to hot showers, to warm meals. in fact, thousands and thousands of 9 survivors were still left in the same concentration camps behind barbed wire, under armed guard, some being bunked with nazi p.o.w.s. so there's this horrible, cruel irony to the fact that it was so difficult for the survivors to get out of the concentration camps, and it was so easy for the nazis to get in to america.

>> and i just want to name it. because of anti-semitism among american military leadership, i wanted to look at this quote that you uncovered by general george patton responding to truman in a special -- to truman's special emissary earl harrison who was appalled by how patton was managing the prisoner camps and writes harrison and his ilk believe that the displaced person is a human being which he is not and this applies particularly to the jews who are lower than animals. again patton is held up as a kind of hero and reading those words from him was painful. >> yeah, this is a war hero. bill o'reilly has a best-selling book about him defying him now, but this is someone who was rabidly anti-semitic and his anti-semitism affected the operations much these displaced person camps for months. these people were living under unbearable circumstances, even after the allies had won the war and defeated the nazis.

>> now i want to talk a little bit about why all of these thousands of nazis were welcomed here into the u.s. -- knowledge and capacity here in the u.s. in the context of the cold wars. tell us a little more about that. >> yeah, it all had to do with the cold war. the scientists we brought over about 1600 scientists in what was known as as operation and rocket engineers, doctors, scientists of all varieties who basically were intended to replicate the success that hitler had with the rockets and the official policy was that these were not considered quote/unquote hardened nazis. these weren't hard core nazis because we didn't want to let them in. but in fact many of them had direct ties to the worst atrocities, experimentation, prison camps, to slave labor sites where thousands of hitler's rockets were built. these are people who were directly involved in those

atrocities. and were brought over by the united states. and then you also had hundreds of others who were spies for the cia. these were people without any technological experience per se but were seen as good anti-soviet assets, informants, et cetera. and they had even more blood on their hands, if you will, in terms of their involvement in nazi atrocities and the great irony there i think is they weren't even good spies. a lot of them turned out to be thieves and embezzlers, and a few were even soviet double agents. we gave aid and comfort to our former enemies in the hopes that they would help us win the cold war, and when it came to the spies they really didn't. >> so, whenever we find these sort of difficult moments in history and this was perhaps one of the most stunning, i'm always left with the question, so what do we do with this legacy? what do we do with knowing that some of the things that we value like having made it to the moon were actually made possible by the the horrendous and immoral

decision to allow nazis here in this country and to wipe clean their past and to support . what do we do with that legacy. what is next step for us? >> well, i think the first step is recognizing this is part of our history. and i don't think we've done that in the decades since the war. i think this is, as you suggest, a shameful and little known chapter in american history. and we should own up to that. you know, i know sometimes when i've been talking about the book the last few days, people have talked about a truth commission. i know that's an idea would have any traction. but i think there is an acknowledgment and recognition that we've been lacking. and we need to sort of demythologyize what happened after the war. and germany and europe. >> in washington, d.c., thank you.

the book, again, is called "the nazis next door." up next, it's been a tough hour, and we're going to lighten it up a little bit. we're going to bring you a little bit of history, with a little more fun. your pocket right now? i have $40, $21. could something that small make an impact on something as big as your retirement? i don't think so. well if you start putting that towards your retirement every week and let it grow over time, for twenty to thirty years, that retirement challenge might not seem so big after all. ♪ sweet charmin!!!softness... take a closer look at charmin ultra soft and you'll love what you see. not only can you use less, but you can actually see the softness in our comfort cushions. we all go. why not enjoy the go with charmin ultra soft? when you think aarp, then you don't know "aarp."

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on this day in 1952, one of the most famous and constant comic strip pranks made the debut. lucy pulling the football away from charlie brown as he's about to kick it. lucy initially says she yanked the ball because she was afraid charlie brown's shoes were too dirty. and then she holds the ball again, only to have charlie brown trip over it because lucy holds it so tightly. over the years, lucy offered a variety of reasons for why she can't let her little round-headed friend kick that football. in one strip, she blamed a muscle spasm. in the 1971 strip, she cited women's lib.

the reason behind it changed over time, but one thing never did. charlie brown no matter what experience teaches him, no matter how many times lucy promises this time will be different, charlie brown never gets to kick the football. it's become a metaphor for anyone who has ever held out hope for something only to have it snatched away at the last moment. for anyone who has wanted to scream, good grief! after a betrayal of trust. and, of course, a metaphor for the game of politics. in 2011, nancy pelosi invoked the famous prank while criticizing republicans over a social security payroll tax plan. >> i'm not playing charlie brown to lucy. they have pulled this football every single time. we're not going to let them misleading innocent people. >> in 2012, mitch mcconnell criticizes democrats over their budget proposals.

>> they've been playing lucy with the football with the american people for months. they're running out the clock. moving the goal post. >> lucy's football prank has entertained readers for more than half a century. when asked why he never let charlie brown kick the football, peanuts creator charles schultz replied, you can't create humor out of happiness. but over the years, he's managed to create a lot of happiness and humor with the epic football trick published on this day in 1952. that's our show for today. i'll see you next saturday, 10:00 a.m. eastern. right now, it's time for "weekends with alex witt." >> great trip down memory lane. thank you so much. well, hundreds of thousands of dollars in pot up for grabs, and the highest bidder, the biggest of its kind in america. the remarkable scene of a small boy saving a girl in the middle of a fire fight. now we've learned the whole

story. also, how a well-known poem played a role in a new sweeping film about saving humanity. i'll talk to the actor who recited that poem. don't go anywhere, i'll be right back. all around the world the dedicated people of united airlines ♪ are there to support you. ♪ that's got your back friendly. ♪

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♪ the little things that you do for me ♪ go to facebook.com dawnsaveswildlife. it's happened again. another apparent victim of isis. i will talk to someone who knew this american. will the smog ever lift? the president headed back to the u.s. with a deal in hand to stop climate change. how far does it go? a first of its kind auction that brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars. we're going to tell you why this pot sale was so significant. he's supposed to be the one delivering the gifts. instead, he's doing the exact opposite. why are cops on his trail? hey there, everyone, it's high noon in the east, 9:00 a.m. out west, welcome to weekends with alex witt. a video