tv Melissa Harris- Perry MSNBC March 7, 2015 7:00am-9:01am PST
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good morning, i'm melissa harris-perry live in selma, alabama. today is the 50th anniversary of bloody sunday. >> today we want the world to know that we are presenting our bodies as living witnesses and testimonies to the truth as we see it. >> we're marching today to dramatize to the nation dramatize to the world the hundreds and thousands of citizens denied the right to vote. >> this is one of the greatest moments that has ever occurred in the history of our nation.
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>> good morning, we have a special program for you today. melissa will be live all morning long from selma, alabama, in front of the historic brown chapel church. melissa? >> thank you for sitting in in new york. the church behind me was the staging ground in 1965 for civil rights activists who first gathered here before heading over to the bridge just six blocks away. it would lead to historic change for our nation. today 50 years later i'm going to be joined by some of the people who were there on that day including diane nash. dorian back to you. >> president obama will be speaking at the bridge later today. the president will be joined by george w bush along with a congressional delegation a number that's being called historic. the first family will walk across the bridge in their own tribute to the events of 50 years ago.
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the official bridge crossing marking the anniversary, takes place tomorrow afternoon. msnbc will bring you live coverage of the events throughout the weekend. first, 50 years ago selma was at the center of an emotionally charged campaign. have been taking place across the state. when jimmy lee jackson was shot by police during a protest and died of his wounds soon after, leaders decided to stage a march from selma to the capital. they only made it as far as the bridge before state troopers attacked firing tear gas. the incident became known as bloody sunday and pushed president johnson to sign the powerful voting rights act of 1965. that essential piece of johnson's civil rights agenda was weakened in 2013 when the supreme court declared section 4 unconstitutional. it detailed which states must
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receive federal approval to change their voting procedures. all of the sate states on the list had a history of racial discrimination. since section 4 was knocked down, numerous states have gone on to pass laws, eliminate same-day voter registration and more all moves that disenfranchise minority voters. while this weekend's events are a commemoration of the civil rights actions of 1965, so too are the modern day call to action to bring attention to the fact that in 20 a 15 the very thing fought for on that bridge 50 years ago is still coming under assault. the unobstructed right to vote. i'm joined by associate professor of african-american literature at princeton and the director of the center for research and black culture. but right now we're going back to selma, alabama, and melissa harris-perry who is joined live by claire mccaskill.
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>> senator mccaskill, thank you for joining us. i know you're part of a historic delegation here particularly for democrats who are here in selma today, why is it necessary to be here? >> first of all, it's important to celebrate a pivotal moment in our history, which bloody sunday was in terms of our country really standing for what our constitutional principles said. secondly, our voting rights are under attack again. in my state the missouri legislature has passed legislation to make it more difficult to vote. making sure that it is easy to express your opinion about the government in. the united states of america. you have to remain vigilant. and obviously, i'm very focused on the report that came out from the department of justice on ferguson this week because that represents another bat thal we have to fight for equal justice under the law. >> this moment is burned into
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our memory and history for two key reasons. one is about that struggle for the vote, but that has been a long struggle here in selma. it's really about that misuse of police power and kind of the whole country looking at it and saying this is obscene. this is not american this is not what we stand for. and although the individual officer in ferguson was not found culpable for federal charges, nonetheless, that report suggests that there's a set of patterns and practices in that police department which are similarly the sort of thing that this should not be america. who should be responsible for addressing that? >> we all are. it's bigger than ferguson. in my family i have three african-american stepsons and when my husband when they turned 16 years old, he had to take them to the police department and tell them where they lived and to quit pulling them over because they were african-american in a majority white neighborhood. so our family understands this.
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and everyone should read these reports. it is easy i think, to get cynical, but you have to read both reports and understand that there's work to be done. we still have police departments in. missouri and across this country that don't understand that community policing and being of the community is is how we get to true public safety. not assuming that someone is guilty of something because of the color of their skin. >> clearly, part of it is that issue around policing but. part of how that policing starts to happen is because you have these cities where you have majority african-americans, but then all of the council or majority of the council or significant portion of the the elected officials do not come from those communities. that ties back to the vote. >> we have to get more african-americans running for office at the local level. city councils, mayors gov governors, we also have to do a
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much better job recruiting young african-americans who frankly don't like the police why would they want to be a policeman? we have to do a better job of bringing them into careers in law enforcement so these communities, the policing reflects the way the community looks. that will also help. there's so much work to be done. if you read the report, you realize that it is not juch one thing, it is dozens of things that we have to be working on. and all of us in missouri particularly are going to be paying close attention. >> let me ask you a question about the historic moment here. 50 years later an african-american president an african-american attorney general, quite likely our next attorney general being an african-american woman. how do we balance that notion of progress that we can stand here that things are so different and feel so similar? >> we should feel very good. it was an uplifting moment when barack obama was elected president of the united states because it symbolized that our
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country had passed over a bridge. but on the other side of the bridge, there's still a lot of problems. and the president knows that. i thought his speech yesterday was very good. i particularly liked his quote, we have to have the ability to see the best in people including law enforcement and work with them. we can't get cynical about the institutional problems that are out there because the people in selma weren't. they hoped they could change things. >> that issue about what it means to be able to keep going forward when you keep getting pushed back does feel like a critical lesson, but it also feels like why are we still learning that lesson when folks sacrificed so much? >> that's the saddest thing and frankly the most frightening thing about attack on voters right. we cannot have come this far to begin arbitrary barriers for people casting their votes.
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everyone needs to be vigilant about this. 2016 is going to be a big election. i hope we have lots of african-american candidates. >> can this congress get a new formula? >> we're going to try. >> senator mccaskill thank you so much. dorian back to you. we're going to have much more from the ground in selma. let's hear from you in new york. >> i want to bring into this discussion our panel and ask you to take us back for a minute. we're going to be talking about the modern fight for civil rights, but i want to go back to selma and the 1960s. i want you to paint a scene of what that was like. melissa said this in the beginning. the heart of that battle at the bridge was over voting rights. talk to us and set the scene for us about what else was at stake. >> we know in dallas county that 15,000 african-american voters only about 1% were registered. we also know that the coordinating committee has been
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organized around voting drives. going back to the 1930s people like lafayette and others had been committed to voter clinics where they were educating sharecroppers about the importance of voting just like clark was doing at the high lander school in tennessee. there was an entire generational infrastructure in place before we got to 1964-1965 when the selma campaign started to kick off. what's relevant in the weeks leading to bloody sunday was the everyday repeated courthouse encounters. hundreds of people going every single day. that's not captured in the images that we see. every single day really beginning in january when dr. king came down on january 2nd. also young people, so many young people hundreds arrested they were taken to forced camps. sometimes with cattle prods pushing them along because there were not enough jails to keep all these people.
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that's the context. >> yolanda, how was the movement trying to change the system that was just described and what was the fight against racial discrimination about in that moment? >> it was about a number of things. i think we often look back in the '60s and think it begin there is. but we can go back 150 years prior to that and african-americans have consistently been trying to basically shake loose their chains. so at the moment that we're seeing whether it's selma or ferguson, folks are trying to get free. e folks are trying to fundamentally be considered equal citizens of this country. i essentially see this as people trying to change not only legislation, voting rights but people are also working about a heart condition. you have to change how people are perceiveing other people. how they are looking at them, whether or not they can feel that they are, in fact, equal to them. so there's a heart condition that's a part of this change as well as the legislative and political piece. those all go hand in hand.
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that's why the churches were fundamental to this movement. >> everyone stay with me. we'll have much more from selma when we come back including where we are 50 years later economically speaking. ah... (boy) i'm here! i'm here! (cop) too late. i was gone for five minutes! ugh! move it. you're killing me. you know what, dad? i'm good. (dad) it may be quite a while before he's ready, but our subaru legacy will be waiting for him. (vo) the longest-lasting midsize sedan in its class. the twenty-fifteen subaru legacy. it's not just a sedan. it's a subaru. discover card. hey! so i'm looking at my bill and my fico® credit score's on here. we give you your fico® score each month for free! awesomesauce! wow! the only person i know that says that is...lisa? julie?! at discover, we treat you like you'd treat you. get the it card and see your fico® credit score. now? can i at least put my shoes on?
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50 years since the historic events in selma, alabama, one clear impact of the march can be seen in politics. the signing of the voting rights act of 1965 leads over time to an america with its first black president in barack obama which leads to an america with its first black attorney general in eric holder. to a once selma, alabama, to the selma of today with a black mayor, black police chief and black congressional representative. what the gains do not
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necessarily translate into is economic opportunity. in selma, half a century after bloody sunday, the population is more than 80% black. and 41% of people in the city live below the poverty line. selma, 50 years since a march is a city still striving for economic parody and justice. tre main lee has been reporting on the state of the city and he joins me now. too often selma is reduced to a bridge a clash and a march. talk to me about the conditions in the city today. >> reporter: that's right, it's kind of appropriate that the bridge is the symbol here. protesters are trying to cross that bridge for progress but 50 years later, there hasn't been much of an economic bridge from those days. we're here at brown chapel, surrounded by housing projects. this community still deals with levels of crime, drugs, little access to quality education, not
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many jobs. so while there's such a symbolism here in this community that the people here and people who came here from all over the country who fought for voting rights for african-americans still 50 years later folks are still dealing with so many issues issues. the city council is majority black. the mayor is an african-american. the police chief is african-american. but even with that there's still tension. recently there was a shooting of an elderly black man sparking uproar in the community. we have the same black lives matter protests that we saw all over the country here in selma. we're half a century removed from the battle days, but thingings aren't that easy here in selma. places are still struggling economically. >> do you think the citizens view the economic disparities the way black citizens viewed the political disparities 50 years ago?
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>> reporter: i think it's a little different because you have the opportunity. you can sit next to a white man and have a cheeseburger. when you talk about the housing discrimination, that's as bad as it ever was. it doesn't take much to walk around the community and see that while we're so far removed from those days where we couldn't enjoy the same social space, we're not enjoying the same economic spaces. >> thank you. the economic inequality is indicative of a larger national trend trend. job numbers from the show a gain of 295,000 jobs for the month of february and national unemployment falling to a seven-year low of 5.5%. but for african-americans nationwide, the unemployment level remains at 10.4%. now one group is proposing a
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novel strategy to tackle that disparity head on. in a new report out this week the center for popular democracy em ploers the fed to implement reforms that focus specifically an boosting african-american employment. our panel is still here. and joining me is the author of the report of the center for popular democracy. thank you for being here. the first question is simply why focus on the fed? >> so obviously, there are a number of agencies that could make policy change that would impact discrimination, but fundamentally if we're not at a full employment economy, if there are too many workers looking for the few jobs that are around we're not going to be able to get to the racial parody that we need. full employment means that there's wage growth that matches productivity. it means that there are enough
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jobs for the workers who are looking for jobs and it means that workers are in a position to bargain not just to raise the floor, but to raise the bar for working conditions for their communities. >> let me ask you this. the fed has a lot of responsibilities in terms of monetary policy, but does focusing on keeping rates low risk that could hurt african-americans like the housing bubble did? >> so we're not at a place where there's great inflation right now. there's not a reason to slow the economy. right now african-americans are still struggling as other groups are seeing their wealth stabilize after the losses of the great recession, african-americans are still experiencing wealth decreases. african-americans, as you saw earlier, african-american unemployment rates are still above the national unemployment rate at the height of the great recession. in black america across the country, we're still in a
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recession. >> i know you wanted to get in o on this. >> i wanted to add that the circumstances are even bleaker than that because we know by research done by others that our current population surveys in other ways in which we know who is working and not working don't account for people who are incarcerated. therefore, the gap. s that you have describe ued in this report are further exacerbated in the real world because it doesn't account for those not currently able to work. >> it doesn't account for the people who are left out of the unemployment numbers because they have been discouraged by the horrible labor conditions. >> you advocate for some specific institutional reforms. tell us about what these reforms are and how you think they will help african-american employment specifically? >> first and foremost is that the federal reserve needs to prioritize full employment over stemming inflation.
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we're not in a place of inflation risk and that will make sure that employers don't have the luxury of discriminating prankly because there won't be enough workers for them to arbitrarily cut people out of the labor market. the second is that the fed boards of directors need to be much more representative. currently there are 108 directors of the regional level on the federal reserve. only two seats are held by representatives of worker organizations by labor union representatives. 87% of those seats are filled by bank and corporate leaders. they have a very different perspective on wage growth. for them it's labor costs. . that's inflation as opposed to wage growth which drives the economy. >> so much more to say on the fed. in the meantime, thank you very much. up next, back to melissa harris-perry and selma, alabama, with the passtor of brown chapel church. ♪ okay, you ready to go? i gotta go dad!
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church behind me brown chapel was the staging ground in 1965 for civil rights activists who first gathered here before marching over to the bridge just six blocks away. for a march that would lead to historic change for our nation. and with me now brown chapel church pastor who has been so gracious to allow us to bring you this program live from his church grounds this morning. pastor let me start by asking. you have been here a relatively short period. you've been a pastor for a long time, but just two years here. what does it mean to pastor this historic church? >> it means i've got to be connected enough to god and to people that i can help this church to be what people need it
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to be right now and what god needs it to be also. that's the only reason all these people are here is because 50 years ago, this church this congregation was to other people what they needed a church to be and what god needed a church to be in this community. >> talk to me a little bit about that. i think it's easy for people outside of selma to get stuck in a selma of five decades ago. what does this community need that this your congregation to this church and community of kmurges can bring? >> it needs to express its faith in explicit ways that deal directly with the challenges of life the issues of life and show how that faith in god is directly applicable to those issues. people were here strat
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strategying. and there were people from all faith walks who believe god had a plan for their lives that was greater than what legalized enforcement of racial supremacy had imposed upon them and they were willing to put their lives on the line and we're here now because they were on the right side of history. >> that's such an important point that churches weren't just buildings. they were places of faith and faith motivated action. you're on your way to the edmond pet tus bridge. we don't want to hold you longer, but we're so grateful for allowing us to stand in this historic space today. thank you to the pastor of brown chapel church. and up next the stunning department of justice report on
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ferguson ferguson, missouri. we will dig into it much deeper and ask about its implications when we come back. who errs who spends himself in a worthy cause and who, if he fails at least fails, while daring greatly sfx: background city noise ♪ imagine if razors could move up and down, and all around. hugging tight, swirling left and turning right. behold, new venus swirl. the only razor with five contour blades and a flexiball. to contour to your tricky places, bones, bends and all. smooth and steady, going this way and that. bumps and grooves, curvy and flat. for skin as flawless as flawless can be. new venus swirl, try it and see.
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the justice department confirmed what residents of ferguson, missouri have long claimed, that the ferguson police department routinely disregards the rights of the people it is supposed to protect, especially those who are african-american. the department of justice found while african-americans make up only 67% of ferguson's population, 85% of people pulled over 90% of people issued tickets and 93% of people arrested were african-american. 88% of physical force was used against african-americans. and when police dogs have been ordered to bite they have bitten african-americans exclusively including an unarmed 16-year-old boy suspected of stealing a car who was dragged from his closet by his legs by a police dog and tased three times while the dog was still biting
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him. >> our view of the evidence found no alternative explanation for the disproportionate impact on african-american residents other than implicit and explicit racial bias. no other basis. >> still with me is our panel. and melissa harris-perry is joining us from selma. and also joy reid. good morning, it's hard for me to understand the doj report outside of the context of selma and this anniversary of 50 years. can you help us understand how we should read this report released this week? >> i think there are two aspects of selma then and selma now that are connected in this report, which is a report that's very hard to read. so certainly we must remember
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that part of what sparked the mass actions here in selma because there have been long-term community organizing building actions going on on the ground here in selma for years prior to those kind of final mass demonstrations that led to the edmund pettus bridge 50 years ago today. part of what sparked it was the police kill inging of jimmy lee jackson, who was an unarmed young african-american man who was at that moment also trying to protect his mother. so very similarly in ferguson what we see is the shooting death by a police officer of a young african-american man and then as a result of those protests an uncovering to look beneath that single injustice and see an entire set of patterns and practice of injustice. the selma of today where 80% of people living here are
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african-american, 40% of people living here are people living in poverty. and perhaps the most stunning thing for me that i saw out of that ferguson report is how those police are actually supporting the government on the backs of poor people through their ticketing processes. >> i'm glad that you mentioned that because i think what people kind of truncate the ferguson report to mean is that the police are taking actions that are extra constitutional or unconstitutional or violate the rights of citizens. not about the police in ferguson. it was about the entire municipal system. it was a three-part system that involved the police department the city itself that had laid down markers of how much revenue they hope to procure from these tickets and you had the municipal courts that operate in conjunction with the police department. that's another tie back to selma. .
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it's not that the police on their own unleashed anger and rage and violence. it's an entire system. the ferguson, you can only call it a scheme which was to raise additional revenue for the city by accessively ticketing citizens and targeting african-americans for that system. >> dorian i want to bring in you and the panel as well. >> thank you, melissa and joy. i want to take a step back and ask a big question that is why are the police at the heart of so many key moments in civil rights history? >> because they are on the front lines of racial and social control of america. by that i mean poor people. when we're talking about the african-american experience, there's no moment in u.s. history where police officers were not on the front lines of regulating freedom and opportunity in this country. absolute fact. let me connect you back to selma because it's fascinating in the report they u point out that not only do they have systemic bias
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and racism and city officials generating revenue, but it's also true they smartly -- this is innovation this is efficiency at its best. they said we're going to charge people with as many citations as possible and make sure they are mu nis pl because we don't want to send them into the state system because we'll loose revenue. in the state of alabama, county regulator regulators, county officials competed with state officials as to whether black people would be charged to serve on the chain gang, which would serve the needs of the county versus leases to serve the needs of the state. they also had proverse incentive incentives in alabama running up through the days in selma where the sheriffs were incentivized along with law enforcement and deputies to be paid based on how much activity they engaged in arresting people.
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so history has crashed into the present in terms of what's going on in ferguson. >> let me ask you about the three ferguson employees who sent racist e-mails who were fired or resigned and that includes a top court clerk. is that enough? >> it's not only not enough it's almost ludicrous. so we have an unarmed teenage boy who is dead and the person responsible for his death has not, in fact, faced any consequences consequences. someone forwards an e-mail and he is fired. frankly the entire department needs to be dismantled. ferguson is no worse or any better than any municipalities in the u.s. unless we are thinking about how we can systemically change from the top to the bottom then firing one or two people won't address the institutional racism that is obviously there's a breeding ground right there. >> i want to go back to melissa
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in selma. >> dorian i want to underline what yolanda is saying there. i think it's so easy for us to imagine that the most critical question of racism is just a negative e-mail or some utterance that an individual says and if we keep doing that, we're going to keep putting these band-aids on this hemorrhaging problem. the moment on the bridge is not about the individual police officers making bad or racially bias decisions. it's about a system and the moment in ferguson is certainly for the brown family about the enormous loss of their child. but it's about so much more than that. now we know about the patterns and practices. they are not about single individual bad ak r tos. they are about a system. >> everyone, stay with us. we have so much more with us from selma, alabama after the
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break. president obama will speak at the edmund pettus bridge this afternoon. we have a preview, next. if you're running a business legalzoom has your back. over the last 10 years we've helped one million business owners get started. visit legalzoom today for the legal help you need to start and run your business. legalzoom. legal help is here.
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in about four hours president obama is expected to speak at at brij brij. he's expected to pay tribute to the civil rights legends who were there today as well as honoring the countless american heroes whose names are in the history books. msnbc will bring you live coverage o of the president's remarks and after the speech the president will be joined by michelle obama and their daughters as he walks across the bridge. during a stop at a south carolina college friday president obama explained why selma is still relevant to the young younger generation. >> selma is now. selma is about the courage of ordinary people doing extraordinary things because they believe they can change the country, they can shape our nation's destiny. selma is about each of us asking ourselves what we can do to make
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america better. and historically it's been young people like you who helped lead that march. >> for more on the president's speech, let's go back to melissa harris-perry in selma, alabama. what are you hoping to hear from the president today? >> you know it's a fascinating moment to be standing here in selma. when this president who in many ways launched had his presidential campaign here. his initial announcement that he was going to run for the presidency happened in illinois but it was less than a month later that he stood here and really talked about himself as a bridge, thinking of himself as part of a joshua generation which was going to lead this nation into a different place. here he is now with only two years left in what will be his second term as the first african-american president. he's got to make not only selma relevant from some past moment but to really try to think about
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what his own legacy is in the context of being this bridge. and i think what i would love to hear, what i will hope to hear from the president is a recognition that, again, that moment on the edmund pettus bridge is a moment in a very long struggle. it is not the struggle itself. it's just the thing, the catalyst, when we can stand here it gives us a day to mark, but there are decades, decades of struggle and a lot of it failure in those moments before you have success. . and that whatever his own presidency is a bridge has been will also have many, many years of hard work before the thing that really changes the nation can occur. >> you mentioned just a second ago about the president's legacy and him thinking about that legacy. talk to me about the optics of the speech and the decision by the president to be at the bridge itself. >> i mean, this is important. previously when he spoke years ago when he was first kicking
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off his first campaign he was here at the church. to stand on the bridge is to do many different things. we know there's a local movement attempting to change the name of the bridge. edmund pettus was in the kkk and was clearly against racial equality. that's why crossing a bridge named pr him was in and of itself was a symbol 50 years ago to move away from that particular history. so now to be in a space for the president at that place he's both marking what was and what potentially could be. >> thank you, melissa. coming up, that city's current police chief and. that's up next. be sure to stick with msnbc throughout the weekend for live reports of the events.
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as one of the nation's leading experts in extremism and editor in chief of the southern poverty law centers journal the intelligence report they aid the efforts to identify and curtail bigotry motivated crimes. the kind of crimes that marked selma 50 years ago. as chief of the selma police department it includes the bridge which hundreds of o protesters tried to cross in 19 1965. when they met with the brutality of local police. . this january the bridge served as a gathering place for black lives matter protesters. why their lay on the asphalt or raise their hands in the air to bring attention to the shooting deaths of several young black men at the hands of police officers. the chief joins me now. it's been 50 years since that
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march. what does it mean to be in the position that you're in given the history of this particular place? >> words can't explain. it's just such a feeling that knowing 50 years ago this would have never happened. and to think that those people that died were beaten and treated the way they were treated led the way pr me to be here. and i'm truly grateful for that opportunity. >> does the realities of that historic selma relationship if we can call it that between police and protesters between police and the community continue to mar the relationship between police and community is like now or is it truly a fundamentally different relationship? >> there is a fundamentally different relationship but there's some lingering aspects of it not just in selma but all over. the reason why is because whether we like it or not,
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police departments across this country during that time we were the vanguard pr those laws that segregated, that kept us down. and we are the foot soldiers back here in 65. we still have people all over the country that went through that. so they are still there. my grandmother, all those things linger because of what police did back then. now it's a totally different situation. we pushed to be much more transparent in what we do. we are more into community policing. we connect more with the public and we create programs with the public. because that was a past that we're not trying to repeat. >> i'm reminded that we can stand here and honor those protesters who pushed back against kind of these forces of racism and of inequality in that moment and they are still alive,
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so too are many of those individuals and many of those ideas that were the ideas of inequality. what do we see based on your da data and research on the kind of contemporary view points around bigotry and the violence around it it? >> i think that clearly there is an enormous amount of bigotry and in particular anti-black bigotry in the country still. and the polls show that. we're in such a different place in terms of the relationship of that kind of real power. back in the day 50 years ago, we're talking about police departments that r were essentially run by clansmen and that's just not true anymore. we have also seen looking at it historically, there were 4 million clansmen. today there might be 4,000 scattered. >> does that mean when we look at something like the ferguson report where we see patterns and practices of racial inequality
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but not sort of people standing there and saying i am a member of a white supremacist organization, that although we see these inequalities that we think about how we combat them fundamentally differently? >> i think it is a a difference. i think the fergusons of the world, that is where racism needs the road today and it's bad. it's absolutely bad, but it's a different kind of situation. last year of a case in florida where a couple of police officers were exposed as having been supposedly involved in the clan. and those two were fired immediately. they opened a huge review of the cases in order to look at what cases they had fouled up. but it's a huge problem. i would say that relationships between police and community is the new civil rights movement in many ways. >> do you feel like you have the sufficient -- clearly the
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oversight of the federal government is what we're talking about in ferguson, but do local police forces have sufficient support from state and federal authorities to do better to make those relationships different, to do the community policing? >> not really and i say that because of funding issues. and i try to tell my officers that when we have congress that wants to cut funding and not fund budget it has a great effect on us. when the funding got cut, that is key. it's so unfortunate. i have been policing 30 years. every time a budget gets tight, they want to cut training because of the misconception of training. but what they don't realize is those few thousand dollars in training can save them millions of dollars in lawsuits.
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if we spent more time in training and got more money from our state partners and more money from the federal government, a lot of this that we're seeing now would disappear. now we still have a portion of our population in america that have an ugly side to it. they have an ugly racist side to it. and that's what we have. but we have a responsibility to call it like it is, to make sure that law enforcement do what we're supposed to do. i have a child. i have two children, i have a son and a daughter. and my son is 6 feet. >> we're trying to make a nation that is safe for your children for my children regardless of race in those spaces. thank you to the both of you. stay right there. we'll have much more in the next
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hour live from selma, including activists from the civil rights movement who continue to be activists today. diane nash and bob moses. plus a look at moral mondays and the movement building that continues in this nation, when we come back. ♪ i think about my early 20s and i think that i actually missed an opportunity there to experiment and fail and experiment and fail you know i really admire my mother despite what people said she bought me a sewing machine and she let me play with dolls. she really dared to let me be different. i consistently focus on the fact that we're young and i wanted them to understand that we're here to make a difference for the country. well the funny thing about risk is that i don't really consider it a risk. if you get out there too far it looks like a big risk but when you're inside it... more than anything else, ...it doesn't even feel like a risk. i will honestly admit this. to me i start thinking when i was young, what are definitions of good? what will you do to be a good person in the world? and it always boiled down to...
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♪music resumes♪ music stops ♪music resumes♪ [announcer] purina pro plan's bioavailable formulas deliver optimal nutrient absorption. [whistle] purina pro plan. nutrition that performs. welcome back melissa harris-perry is in selma, alabama this morning and we'll be checking in with her in a few moments as we continue a special edition marking the anniversary of the march in selma. it became known as bloody sunday. the national attention given to the shear brutality of that day helped to usher into law the
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1965 voting rights act. president obama will be in selma today where a large crowds are already beginning to gather opinion he's commemorating the anniversary with a speech at at edmund pettus bridge. we'll bring you that speech live and have extensive coverage tomorrow of the 50th anniversary of the bridge crossing expected to be attended this year by thousands of people. this morning i am joined in studio by yolanda pierce from princeton and kalil mohammed director of search for black culture. i want to ask you both. we've been talking here at the table about this weekend as a celebration of what was achieved because of the march across the bridge, but it's also a call to action for activists today. tell me about that. >> so i want us to resist the language of celebration. i think it's perfectly fine we're kmemcommemorated.
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we have to look at our past, but a celebration sometimes allows people to think the work has already been done. this is a commemoration, an anniversary, but there's so much more we need to do. we don't want to get caught up in nostalgia and think we have crossed that bridge and are at our destination. i want us to recognize given the report about ferguson that we have so long of a way to go. this is a moment of mourning that even as there are modern civil rights activists crossing their own bridges, we have to stop and recognize that fact as well. we commemorate, we recognize, but there's so much work to do that i don't think we can celebrate right now. >> unless we're celebrating resistance disobedience and a call to action on the part of the federal government to actually change the balance of power where police officers run over the citizens that they are
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there to protect and serve. that is in many ways, the lesson of selma. the lesson of selma was precisely that you had had to use all available human resources, people power, to challenge authority at every level of society. i hope that the president himself steps outside of his official position and recognizes that can't be rhetoric about people being inspired. they could help to exacerbate inequality. they could be inspired to become lawyers and defend corporations that systemically in some cases create structures that are polluting environments or are not actually as we heard earlier from the center of democracy encouraging full employment. so there's a lot at stake in terms of the lessons that we take from this moment in selma. i also want to add that the story of selma as a metaphor for america does match ferguson as a metaphor for america because the systemic abuse that we see
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coming out of ferguson through the doj report is matched around the country, whether we look at the percentage of whites serving on police forces over african-american residents, whether we look at the racism that exists in the mouths of officers. 20 officers were disciplined for referring to black people as animals just a few years ago. we also know that mettic us are driving policing. so outside of miami, we know that people there, the entire population was essentially systemically subject to racial profiling just like in the case of new york. >> and as we'll learn later on reasons for ferguson police department. right now we're going back to selma, alabama and melissa harris-perry who joins us live from the staging ground for the 1965 march. she's joined by two pivotal figures, diane nash and bob moses. >> dorian bob moses here with
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me led the effort to register black voters in mississippi during the early 1960 rz. he was the lead organizer of the freedom summer project, a push to register black mississippiens to become voters. the project's white and black volunteers were met with violence and three were killed during the summer of 1964. diane nash was the lead strategist behind the sit-ins. she played a critical role in organizing the selma marches and walked the last few blocks with dr. king. thanks to both of you for being here today. diane, i felt like i know so much about the strategy that you crafted here, but i learned something about a role you played here that i was hoping you would chat with us about. the reverend james reid did not
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die immediately but fought help for quite some time. you were part of that. can you talk to me about that experience? >> yes, i was in the office and reverend reid and a couple of his friends came over and said that they had just been attacked and i called the ambulance and i remember he didn't want to get on the stretcher. he was saying i'm all right, i'm all right, so everybody insisted that he did and that's what i remember. >> that idea of people who were willing to give their lives, i think it's hard even for those of us who have been engaged in continuing struggle, even for young people who are engaged and continue to struggle, to have a sense to what it meant to put your lives on the line to believe it was possible you might lose them in that moment. can you give us a sense of what that context was emotionally like? >> it's really hard to do when you're not in the moment.
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so often you have ideas about what i do if and what have you, but you really don't know until you're faced with it. but i know that we knew that we either would have to do whatever is necessary to eliminate segregation to get the right to vote or whatever, or we'd have to tolerate not being able to vote. and blacks at that time had had it up to here with segregation and discrimination and many were willing to do whatever was necessary. i know people lost their lives. this is a wonderful occasion and certainly something to celebrate, but it's also solemn and sacred. people had their lives taken from them. but in addition there were so many sacrifices made that many people don't know about. i know of families of 17
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children. the parent went down to the courthouse to try to register to vote. someone at the courthouse would call the plantation owner and say, your mary is down here trying to vote. by the time mary got back they had no place to live u and no job. and they knew that would happen because it had happened so many times before and they still did it because that's how important it was. >> and in fact bob, i'm thinking about, again, media depictions that give us these moments. the moments of the edmund pettus bridge but can't give for us the organizing in places like selma as well as places like in mississippi. talk to me a little bit about how the work happened in the context to build that willingness of people to put so much on the line. >> so i think basically there were a few young people who came
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out of the sit-in movement who decided they really didn't want to live in the country unless they could change it. and so it was 24/7 it was not anymore about a career or even family, but it was about doing the work to change the country. but it was work that was done outside of the media. so it was work that laid the groundwork for the big media events. >> is that work going on now? so for me part of what i don't want us to lose in a moment of commemoration is the idea that the struggle continues. not just for the big events, although those are important, but for that kind of ongoing organization building. >> so one thing you can think that what we were able to do was get. jim crow out of three distinct areas of american livefe. is so we got it out of public
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accommodations, the right to vote, although that's being challenged now again, and we got it out of the national democratic party structure. we did not get it out of education. so one of the big issues is whether or not the country is going to decide to have a constitutional right for an education in had this country. and we also need an affirmative constitutional right to vote. what we have now is a negative right. we are a country that lurches back and forth and we're lurching backwards now. >> i want to clarify for viewers in case they don't know. when you talk about the negative right, it's the right to vote that say it cannot be abridged by a state. what would it mean? what kind of work to move towards saying we need a constitutional affirmative right to vote that says people have at their core as citizens an affirmative right to vote. >> reflecting back to your last
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question, it is not possible to have a mass demonstration or movement without that door to door organizing and door to door organization. that's what it would take at this point. really organizing. i see young people now in the a few years ago in the occupy movement and now in the hands up movement and i say they are on the right track. we citizens of the country had better not leave what needs to be done up to elected officials because they will not do it. citizens need to take the interest of this country into. our own hands, learn how to use nonviolence and do it. i like to say suppose we had waited for elected officials to desegregate lunch counters.
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we'd be waiting right now. and if citizens don't do what needs to be done 50 years from now it won't get done. >> is there something either one of you would like to hear from the president today from the foot of the edmund pettus bridge? >> i'd like to hear him speak out about education. we can do all we want about voting and everything else but if we don't provide an education for every child in this country, that's what thigh need for 21st century citizenship, then we'll be just sending them to the criminal justice system. so we do not have in this country an education system which is dedicated to educating every child. so i'd like to hear him speak out about that. >> thank you so much for joining me today. thank you to diane nash and bob moses. much more from selma this morning, stay with us.
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in addition to police practices, the ferguson report addresses the municipal court, which hands down the fines and fees for the city to eager to collect. the report tells chilling stories about the court's idea of due process. the judge who runs the court confirmed that, quote, it's not uncommon for him to add charges and assess additional fines when a defendant challenges the citation that brought the defendant into court. in 2013 alone the court issued more than 9,000 arrest warrants to people who had missed court appearances or a payment on a fine. more than 9,000 warrants in a
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city of 21,000 people. people who are jailed and cannot post bond are eld for up to 72 hours. but the kourlt doesn't keep track of time served. when asked why, one member of the court staff told investigators it's only three days any way. joining me from st. louis, missouri, is thomas harvey, co-founder of city defenders. good morning. mr. harvey. i want to ask you, was any of this surprising to you? >> no, it's not surprising to me and more importantly it's not surprising to the community and the clients we have represented for years who told us for the last five years since we have been in business that they are being racially profiled they are being stopped because they are black, they are being ticketed, they are being fined, they are being arrested they are being thrown in jail and held for ransom until family members come up with money to buy their freedom.
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it's not just that they are being racially profiled. it's racial profiling that's funding the towns that they live in. there's a a very serious revenue incentive there when you have a town of 21,000 people that budgets perspectively collect 2 2.7 million in fines and fees from their municipal courts. and i would say this is not just about ferguson. it would be a mistake to focus the attention solely on ferguson. >> i want you to say more about that in terms of what you know of the region. are these abuses limited to ferguson or how widespread are they? >> i mean let's not pretend. this is a region wide problem, it's an american problem, frankly. this is happening in georgia, it's happening in mississippi, it's happening in alabama, it's happening in california. we have effectively criminalized being black and being poor in
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america and the reason the courts can get away with that and the policing can go on in that fashion is because unfortunately in america we don't listen to what poor people tell us and what communities of color tell us. that's got to change, and i would hope we won't continue to look at the doj report just about ferguson. we substitute whatever name of the town we live in and take seriously the allegations that are made there. >> when you read the report and listening to mr. harvey, this is stunning, really stunning. i want to ask you how do we get to this place where revenue generation trumps public safety? >> profit has always been more important than personhood in this country. the note of black people as commodities has been a key driver of revenue. all of this makes good economic sense. this is sound economic policy. we don't want to admit it we don't want to talk about it that way, but corporate metrics that
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have infused our public lives, it shapes our education policies and best practices determine who gets money to educate children. it's affected higher education. people have to now or are at least to proposed to produce report cards on whether college students have jobs or not. it's our time because somewhere, someone figured out if we corporatetize the way we treat each other we can save more money for rich people and poor people will disqualify themselves from the full fruits of their humanity. >> thomas let many ask you what more needs to be done in terms of follow-up to this department of justice report? >> well we can't wait for the department of justice to issue 102-page report or for an unarmed black man to be killed by police. we ought to start with just reframing this conversation. why should a system that exists that's produced these results,
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why should that system continue to exist? we should abolish the system substitute with professional courts. we should have full-time judges and prosecutors and move there. we can consolidate police departments as well. >> thanks very much to thomas harvey of the art city defenders in st. louis, missouri. still to come, more on modern movements. william barber will join us live. do you have something for pain? i have bayer aspirin. i'm not having a heart attack, it's my back. i mean bayer back & body. it works great for pain. bayer back & body provides effective
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geico is proud to have served the military for over 75 years! roger that. captain's waiting to give you a tour of the wisconsin now. could've parked a little bit closer... it's gonna be dark by the time i get there. geico. proudly serving the military for over 75 years. as illustrated in the film "selma", dr. king enlisted help from the white house after an unflinched alabama governor deployed state police to block a civil rights protest leading to the violent clash on the edmund pettus bridge. less than two years before that terrible day, governor wallace blocked the schoolhouse door at the university of alabama to. stop two black students from enrolled. for 50 years wallace's daughter says she's lived in the shadow of that door but has come out
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from under the weight of her father's troubled legacy. joining me now is tremain lee. you had a chance to sit down with wallace's daughter. how did it affect her? >> reporter: one of the most astounding political figures in the era. . she's lived with the weight of her family's legacy. when i sat down with her, she expressed it's time for her to move on. here's her story. >> a lot of it was driven by racism. >> the so-called civil rights bill -- >> and because that was the times. >> if you are a segregationist as i am in my state, i believe that it is in the best interest of both races in alabama to have a separate education and social order. >> that's just the way it was.
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>> the way it was was the way of her father, the late george wallace jr. wallace like many politicians was steadfast in his segregation segregationist views. to his refusals to allow black students to enroll in the university of alabama, wallace blocking the schoolhouse door to keep the students out. in 1965 wallace ordered. state troopers to stop voters from crossing the edmund pettus bridge. the standoff portrayed in "selma" ends with police attacking protesters. >> i thought it was unbelievable that those troopers would advance on those people that just wanted to march peacefully for the right to vote.
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i had been living in that legacy under that schoolhouse door for a very long time. i wanted something very different for my children. >> so as an adult she stepped out from the shadows of her father legacy and spooeks out for racial equality and voted for president obama in 2008. >> he inspired me to change and find my own voice. i talked to my children about it and i said this is what i want to do, but i've been here for so long that your mother is a little bit afraid. >> progress has gloss. ed over the bad old days and despite wallace's tainted legacy, it's a complicated one. wallace apologized for the pain and hurt he heaped upon the shoulders of black folks.
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in his final run for governor he swept into office with 90% of the black vote. >> he reflected back on his politics and realized the pain and suffering he had caused others others. >> this year as selma marks the anniversary, the governor's daughter will mark how her family's story has evolved. she'll stand side by side on the capital with congressman john lewis, who was nearly killed on that terrible sunday so many years ago. >> it will be one of my proudest moments when i march across the bridge with him in 2009 i told him that i had crossed many bridges in my life and i'll cross many more. but the most important bridge i will ever cross in my lifetime is the one i crossed with him in 2009, and that's the edmund pettus bridge. . >> the symbolism of that day
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cannot be overstated. now behind me the congressional delegation is meeting here at brown chapel, where some of the original organizers of the protest began. so a few hours away she will join john lewis and commemorate this very special weekend. >> did she tell you what kind of legacy she hopes to leave for her two children? >> she poke of wanting it leave the legacy for her children and grandchildren of openness of freedom and of justice. things that were denied so many people under her father's tenure as governor. she she has hopes to create the kind of world that everyone. had hoped for. >> thank you. the president is expected to fly to selma shortly. here's a live picture from andrews air force base. a look ahead to the president's speech, stay tuned. ♪ [ piano background music begins ] ♪ when i was on wall street i felt trapped in that i was investing in a health care industry that i didn't believe in. for years i really struggled
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the two u.s. senators are opposing the nomination of loretta lynch to become the next attorney general. two senators say they won't vote for lynch because she would continue a federal lawsuit against the state of north carolina over its new voter restrictions. while tillis was headed to state legislature sparked the progressive movement known as moral mondays. mass act of civil disobedience where 1,000 people have been arrested. the north carolina progressive movement continues to fight. there was a march on raleigh last month that drew thousands of people and there are renewed demands including the confirmation of carolina native loretta lynch. with me is the president of the north carolina naacp state conference board, a national
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board member of the naacp and leader of the moral monday movement. reverend barber i'm so glad you're here. talk to me because part of what moral mondays is an idea we're in a long civil rights struggle. it didn't end at the foot of the edmund pettus bridge. >> they had had campaigns and we're in the middle of a campaign. 80,000 people last year, but more than 200 actions in local community. we have two senators that are openly saying they don't want an overly qualified black woman because of her position on voting. the fact is since shelby north carolina has passed the first and the worst voter suppression bill since then. and the precursor of what will happen if we don't return preclearance. >> i spoke with diane and bob and say said we need a federal, national, constitutional amendment that's a positive,
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proactive right to vote. is that on the moral mondays agenda. >> for instance in north carolina our black and republican legislature put something in there but it's not federal. we need that in our federal constitution. the first step is we need to restore section 4. and the problem right now is there's a bill but if that bill was passed today, we are in selma, selma, alabama would not be covered as preclearance. north carolina would not be covered. south carolina, where the confederate flag would not be covered. >> what does the bill do? what does it do to leave these areas not under preclearance? >> it says that you have to have five violation and one of them has to be statewide. so you could have 99 counties but as long as you didn't have one of them, it leaves out voter i.d. it says that all of the cases have to be adjudicated through
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the court and it does not count consent decrees, which you know as a lawyer were some of the ways. >> it raises the bar so high. >> it would be a fix that would actually be broken. to think about day one in 1965 coverage for nine states and some impartial. we would come out with only four states covered. that's why we believe we have to have boots on the ground massive action because you can't negotiate until you fight. >> so how do you do that? i was talking with bob moses and diane nash earlier. part of why moral mondays has been so successful is showing, dem dem deming that people understand what their interests are and will show up across parties, across racial groups, across what seemed to be desperate interests but saying no more. >> you have come to a place where it's about our moral
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center. voting rights, television the key of our democracy. we have seen republicans, democrats, black and whites come together. but the other thing, selma we didn't change washington, d.c. from d.c. down. we changed it from selma up. we believe we neat state-based fusion movements that right now. that's why moral monday has spread to about 12 other states. we're going back in a major way to push particularly. you're concerned about criminal justice reform, you have to be concerned about voting rights. education, voting rights. this is selma. we say north carolina is selma today. and the nation -- if you want to see what they will do how far they will go look at this bill that was crafted by tom thilillis. now that the headache has been removed.
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that's what they said. the preclearance that was won because of a death. another republican optist said if this bill hurts blacks so be it. just like these two senators have said on camera. we oppose this nominee because of voting. we need a massive movement from the states that once again will change washington, d.c. we cannot have less that what we want. >> thank you so much i'm so excited to see you here. up next, a look ahead to the president's speech. coming up later here today in selma. and a quick programming note don't miss our coverage of the annual crossing of the edmund pettus bridge live from selma tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. eastern. if you have moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis like me and you're talking to your rheumatologist about a biologic... this is humira.
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as we have been reporting throughout the show, later this morning president obama will address those who have come here to selma to mark the 50th anniversary of the selma to montgomery campaign which led to passage of the voting rights act and to call on the nation to renew efforts to create fair u and equal access to the ballot. the president is expected to depart shortly and travel to selma aboard air force one. you're looking now at live video from moments ago of the president at andrew air force base. it's not the first time the president has used an appearance in selma to practice the principle of looking to one's history in order to chart a course for the future. his first public address here in selma came less than a month after announcing his decision to seek the presidency. it would be a year before democrats would begin casting ballots just beginning to take shape between him and then
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senator clinton. and use the opportunity to define his own place within the legacy of the long civil rights movement. the metaphor he chose was biblical defining himself as part of the joshua generation. >> i'm here because y'all sacrificed for me. i stand on the shoulders of the moses generation. as great as moses was, despite all that he did, leading a people out of bondage, he didn't cross over the river to see the promised land. god told him your job is done. you'll see it, but you won't go there. we're going to leave it to the joshua generation to make sure it happens. >> the joshua framework situated the young presidential hopeful as not only an inheriter of the
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accomplishments of the civil rights movement. it allowed him to lay claim to the unfinished work. to invoke the promised land in selma is not only a bibly call reference, but a nod to the final public address who assured the night before his assassination he was allowed to go to the mountain top and see the promised land and though he might not live to see the nation achieve this vision of beloved community he assured us that we would some day arrive. in selma in 2007 president obama intimated that his candidacy might represent the moment when the nation would come out of the wilderness, cross the river jordan and lay claim to an inheritance promised by king but bought with the blood of selma's foot soldiers. with only two years left in his administration, president obama
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returns to selma, to this it place where he accepted a charge to lead the nation past its old divisions. and in a time when it seemed that even the youngest among us are still baring the brute force of injustice, what might he say today on this day that can renew the nation's faith that hope is not misguided and that change is still possible. >> when we have our doubts and our fears just like joshua did, when the road looks too long and seems like we may lose our way, remember what these people did on that bridge. keep in had your heart the prayer of that journey, the prayer that god. gave to joshua. >> with me here this morning in a very cold selma, alabama is msnbc's joy reid. we were coming to alabama and thought let's just put on
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outfits. >> i was sleeveless. it's great to be here. >> we'll be joined soon here in selma by the president. he's in such a different place now than at that moment. what are the things now that can lead us towards a new space? >> it's interesting because i love the fact that you went back and unfolded the way that he associated himself with selma the first time he was here. you know he had this really sort of really tender relationship with a lot of the seminal figures of the civil rights movement. but he took the time to push a wheelchair across edmund pettus bridge. he had a lovely relationship with dorothy height and one of the first people to get behind his candidacy. the president has had this great sense of the weight of history on him as the first black president, which is discordant with the way he talks about race, which is in a limited way. so i would expect that when he comes back here to selma again
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that he will touch on the history and focus on the history and try to bring us forward to what it meant. i can't imagine he won't mention the fact that it is a bit ironic we're fighting over the voting rights act again, the fruits of the labor and blood, sweat and tears here in selma. i would expect him to touch on that. but this is a president that has not confronted the racial aspects of the history of this country in an overt way. but he will try to make a historical sweep between what happened 50 years ago and the fight today. >> and in 2007 when he's here, he represents youth in this very important way. he's the young young presidential hopeful. i know folks on camera can't see, but we have a group of young people who are over in our eyesight under this tree here by brown chapel. and i keep thinking now he is not the youngest person. he is handing it off to another generation. and i guess part of what i'm
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wondering is whether or not at the end of this presidency as we're moving forward, at the end of holders time in the department of justice, with loretta lynch assuming a mantle of leadership, whether or not there's something that a post joshua generation ought to be up to. >> he's gone from representing the hopes and dreams of john lewis and that generation to being this lbj figure who has to try u to hold together the gains of the civil rights movement. i think it's really great that there were so many young people here who got to meet diane nash. they got to meet robert moses. that connection is important, but yet when we were talking with some of the young people doing activism now, they get it. they completely understand the connection and the umbilical cord that binds them to these movements in the 1960s. i think that activism is nowhere near dead. the question is can government
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respond the way government was able to respond back then? >> let me throw it up to you in new york and to your guests at the table if they want to jump in on this as well. >> so what tone do you think the president will strike today given what both melissa and joy have said? >> i think he will be what he always has been. i think he walks a very fine. line. i think he's very conscious of not actually speaking in terms of hard hitting analysis on race. but i would hope my fantasy is that because he loves to employ biblical language maybe he will do that today and some of that will include the notion of doing justice. and if we can talk about justice and the ways in which justice manifests itself as a moral ethic of this country, so then he can bring in the ferguson report, then he can talk about what black lives matter is about. so i do hope if he eninvokes
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anything this idea of justice, the work hasn't ended, the work began, but the work continues. the struggle continues. >> and very continues. >> bloody sunday seemed to have made the challenge for that second reconstruction so clear. and thinking about trying to create the same urgency today for what we might call a third reconstruction, what must the president do or say? >> he must affirm what has already been said, that we face challenges as steep and as intransigent as they faced 50 years ago and that this is not a time to see one's own individual success whether you're the chief of police as a black person of some town in america or even as the president as a sign of progress, that in fact across the country, there is absolute necessity for protecting people's rights to live and to vote. and he has to set that agenda going forward. >> thank you both. msnbc will have live coverage of
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president obama's speech at the edmund pettus bridge later this afternoon. more from selma next. it's just you and your honey. the setting is perfect. but then erectile dysfunction happens again. you know what? plenty of guys have this issue not just getting an erection but keeping it. well, viagra helps guys with ed get and keep an erection. ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take viagra if you take nitrates for chest pain; it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. side effects include headache, flushing, upset stomach and abnormal vision. to avoid long-term injury, seek immediate medical help for an erection lasting more than four hours. stop taking viagra and call your doctor right away if you experience a sudden decrease or loss in vision or hearing. ask your doctor if... ...viagra is right for you.
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we're back on "melissa harris-perry." we're back in selma, alabama. this is not just about news media and activists and contemporary elected officials, this is really about people and the folks who are here. talk to me where are you from from selma? >> i'm from macon, georgia. >> why was it important for you to be here today? >> because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. i won't be here in the next 50 years definitely. and the first african-american president speaking from the edmund pettus bridge and i'm a sixth-generation ame.
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i feel like i'm on hallowed ground. and my two favorite chicks are here. >> let's talk to some of these kids that are here. and we have young people that are here. what's your name? >> samuel. >> why is it important to be here? >> because it can teach all the young kids a lesson of how hard it was for us african-americans to struggle and live. >> all right. excellent. why are you here? >> because it's my opportunity to come here and so they can teach us about how they used to struggle back then and everything and the love and support and everything that they're doing now. >> excellent. >> that's right. our future is standing right here. all of this is what the march was for. this is what those activists struggled and bled and died for. and that is our show for today. but we are going to be back tomorrow morning live in selma at 10:00 a.m. eastern as part of msnbc's continuing coverage of selma, 50 years later. dorian? >> thanks, melissa.
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have fun down there. thanks so much to you and to our guests. we'll see you back here at 10:00 a.m. eastern for another special edition of "melissa harris-perry." be sure to watch msnbc's extended coverage of the annual march starting at 3:00 p.m. tomorrow. and msnbc will have live coverage this average of president obama's speech at the edmund pettus bridge. up next msnbc's ronan farrell is the host of a "seven days of genius" special. e i was selfish and wanted one for myself, which i did. its because i had, had a passion. my whole life i wanted to teach myself to build computers. i wanted to build these things for free. i just wanted to do it for the world and you know when you want something, that's what you do the best. ♪ ♪
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i interviewed lots of people in my life to see if they remembered it the same as i did or what they had to contribute. one of the people was paul mccartney. i told him what it was like working with jerry and this discussion about whether you had to be messed up to be a genius. and going there and going to the dark places. and he said, i had that same experience with john. of course he did. >> with john lennon? >> yes. >> i did this thing, which is either genius or stupid i'll sit and make metrics about people's careers. one of them was i charted out bob dylan's career based on the "y" axis was chart position and the "x" axis was years and releases. it goes like this. it's a great image. we should all
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