this morning, a question, why are two schools just nine blocks apart so very different? plus, outrage over 16 shots in 13 months. and the surprisingly simple solution to homelessness. but first, the latest on the attack at a planned parenthood clinic in colorado springs. good morning. i'm melissa harris perry.

a story that unfolded on friday in come whlorado when a shooter opened fire at a planned parent clinic in colorado strengths. an hours long standoff that left three people dead and nine inur judged. officers arrived at the clinic after gunshots were reported near the facility a little after 11:30 a.m. mountain time. police said the shots were fired by a single gunman armed with an ak-47-style weapon. they say the gunman shot at the police who responded to the scene from inside the building. police exchanged gunfire with the suspected shooter for several hours before they were able to make contact with him and he turned himself in just before 5:00 p.m. one university of colorado, colorado springs officer and two civilians were killed in the attack. five police officers and four civilians were injured and transferred to local hospitals. off certains were still securing the scene following the arrest,

investigating several items allegedly brought by the gunman into the building to determine whether or not they were explosive devices. a law enforcement source told nbc news that investigators were also trying to identify an object in the suspect's car that appeared to be a propane tank with wires attached. joining me now is nbc news correspondent leann greg. what can you tell us about the latest developments since last night? >> the nine people who were hospitalized are all in good condition this morning. the investigation is continuing. the processing of the crime scene, we're told, could take several days, and they're trying to determine a motive what caused the gunman to want to go off and start shooting inside the planned parenthood facility. that standoff lasted for five hours before he surrendered. among the dead, 44-year-old police veteran garrett swasey.

a father, two young children, a husband. also two people killed. their identities will not be released until an autopsy is performed. president obama did issue a statement today. part of it saying that we can't let this become the new normal. went on to say we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on the streets. this entire community is mourning today. there will be two separate vigils. one at the church where the law officer who was killed was a volunteer pastor. another will be held at a local university. this investigation, far from over. it will take several days, possibly even weeks. melissa. >> thank you to nbc's leann gregg inco colorado springs. dr. jonathan, director of the center for medicine, health and

society, vanderbilt university. our msnbc national reporter. and david s. cohen, law professor at drexler university and co-author of "living in the cross hairs, the untold stories of anti-abortion terrorism." david, obviously, i want to start with you. in part because, you know, we're still talking about what the motives are. almost regardless of what those motives are, this act of violence occurring in the space that is planned parenthood becomes part of a long history. tell us a little about that history. >> since 1993, there have been eight or nine, depending how you can, abortion providers who have been murpded in this country. there have been arsons. there have been clinic bombings. there have been attacks offsite. before this, the most recent abortion provider was murdered in his church on sunday morning. there has been escalation of attacks following the deceptively manipulated videos

released this summer. at leetch four arsons. several vandalisms. increased death threats. this really fits into a pattern of ananti-abortion terrorism that's been going on for decades. >> your point about these videos, and not only about the doctored videos but then of course congressman the congressional hearings that came out of it. i hate to play youtube, but i want to listen to a little bit of what you had to say there in your role as a member of congress about what those hearings were about. let's take a listen. >> this is not a legitimate congressional exercise. this is not a fact-finding hearing. this is theater. this is a charade. this is stage craft. this is nothing more than a political hit job on a women's right to choose.

which, by the way, is constitutionally protected. >> why was it important for you to make that point in that moment? >> i think it was important to make it clear those hearings were operating in a fact-free zone and the republican intent was not to uncover any wrongdoing because they were -- they should be cleared if there was no wrongdoing. those are doctored videos that were clearly put together to articulate a political point and nothing more than that. the republicans legit myselfed it by holding this hearing and now have gone even further, they've doubled down, by commencing a special committee that presumably is going to spend millions of dollars of taxpayer resources chasing down a rabbit hole and finding nothing. >> see, this feels like it matters to me, right? it is not. it is certainly not the congressional hearings are responsible for violence, right? i mean, no one wants to make that claim. what i don't want to make a claim, though, is the way we frame who our opponents are.

whether or not we see them as interlockers where we have disagreements versus defining people as baby part sellers. like, that these ideas actually end up having purchase with what we think is happening either in our opposition or support for women's choice. >> the vice president and medical director of planned parenthood of the rocky mountain, which is part of the targeted, one of the doctors who was secretly recorded by this anti-abortion group, the center for medical progress, dr dr. zeveda. colorado springs has been nicknamed the evangelical vatican. with many mega churches. the headquarters of focus on the family. a place were elected representatives have been among those leading the charge, again, in their own words, leading the

charge against planned parenthood. even without knowing anything concrete about this man's motives, we know what life has been like for the colorado springs planned parenthood. we know it's gotten more difficult, more polarized. stigma titzed as, quote, trafficking in baby parts, in particular since last summer. >> whatever the motives, i had a friend say to me, i hate when i see jonathan on your show because i know it's bad news. i know there has been a shooting. there's been another act of gun violence. indeed, here you sit. we are once again talking about this act of gun violence. feels mighty normal at this point. >> i would love to come on for a happy topic like the circus comes to town, something like that. again, a terrible tragedy happened yesterday. people were trying to relax. to enjoy their holiday. police were just trying to usher people to safety. people were bringing their mothers, their sisters, their wives, there, you know, relatives to planned .hood for

well women exams or breast cancer screenings or reproductive issues. it was a normal day. where people should be able to relax. instead, the news got dominated by an increasing form of white terrorism. in which people are literally terrorized beyond the realm of this. i know what's going to happen now, which is we're going to have a story about the mental health of the person. it's going to locate it on a particular issue. i have to say, even though i know there are many complicated issues with this person that are important to find out, that we really do need to see this as a bigger contextual problem that is an issue of women's rights. the issue of guns, as president mentioned, which is particularly assailant in colorado, a complicated gun story, and a political climate that urges people to take issues into their own hands. >> up next, how the story out of colorado springs plays into our renewed focus on the threat of terrorism.

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police have not yet determined what motivated the gunman who held a colorado planned parenthood under siege yesterday but the possibility of the clinic being targeted for violence was already enough of a concern that according to "the new york times" the building had a security room equipped with a supply of bulletproof vests. joining me, our guest, counterterrorism consultant to the u.s. government and executive director of the terror asymmetrics project. malcolm, should we be thinking of this moment as terrorism? >> absolutely. you know, we have this unfortunate habit in the united states of dividing terrorism into different categories. external, foreign terrorism, which manifests itself overseas

or in the united states, or domestic terrorism. when we use the word domestic, we discount its actual impact as political terrorism which is of course political violence meant to impact an audience outside of the immediate victims. what we've seen in colorado springs clearly meets the definition of terrorism. >> it's interesting that you say that. i was traveling, as so many other people were on this holiday weekend, and i think started in the holiday weekend with the fear coming out of the wake of paris, anxiety about, you know, travel on a flight, and while i'm sitting in the airport, this story breaks. i'm watching it and thinking, right, this is the nature of fear. is that we actually don't know where it's coming from. and yet this doesn't seem surprising in that there is -- there's a long enough history that this planned parenthood had, in fact, a safe room. >> of course. i mean, they needed a safe room. because they've been under threat for so long. but there has been in the last five to six months clearly a

documentable and quantifiable campaign against planned parenthood using terrorism. there have been four incidents of arson. arson is the single form of terrorism there is. if you compare that to what we saw in paris, this was a hostage barricade where the person confronted law enforcement and held people inside. until brought out. the only difference was it wasn't a suicide hostage barricade as we saw over in france. so people make these small differentiations but they don't really realize here in the united states we need to see this equal as foreign terrorism. the only difference is there's a question of their exact target. >> malcolm, i want to come to you on this, because we just talk the in the break about the fact that colorado has a bubble bill that allows a little bit of a safe zone, a buffer zone, for patients going into clinics, but you say that's because of the amount of danger that existed in

colorado? >> right, the only way the supreme court would uphold the buffer zone, a zone around a clinic that says no protesters, is if there's a history of problems and violence in the past in that location. and in 2000, the supreme court upheld a buffer zone around colorado clinics because of that specific history in colorado. as well as the history around the country. the supreme court didn't uphold the buffer zone in massachusetts last summer but colorado has enough of a history that it upheld the one there. >> your work is around counterterrorism. so if we're going to call this terrorism, how do we counter it? we talk about a war on terror. it doesn't look anything like how we might imagine what we'd need to do in this space. >> well, we're going to have to counter. and we do. law enforcement does counter political extremism here in the united states in the exact same way they do political extremists who are infiltrated into the united states, who may come from

a religious motivation, you know, as we saw overseas in europe. but the same methodologies have to be used. you can't differentiate between an islamic terrorist and a christian terrorist. or abortion or someone who may have differing views. the intelligence collection processes are the same. there's actually some fluidity here in the united states. using local intelligence against them. but you still have to infiltrate these groups. you still have to collect intelligence as you see fit. they are very well organized in the anti-abortion movement. ideologically, they're almost the same. that's where we see these spurts of violence. >> thank you to malcolm in philadelphia, pennsylvania. when we come back, i'm getting the receipt of the table back in and we'll talk about an eye witness attack on friday's attack. a man who came face-to-face with the gunman.

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then when he aimed right at me, i could see his face. he wasn't a young man, he was a white male, wearing tan or gray and his gun seemed small. it didn't look like and it didn't sound like an automatic weapon. he could have finished me off there. like two seconds between each thought. >> that was an eyewitness to friday's attack at the colorado strengths planned parenthood. in an interview done by the nbc affiliate koaa. what did you hear there? >> well, i mean, there's a level of kind of phfamiliarity to thi particular routine. one thing that happened in paris is there's a level of shock. people are saying, oh, my gosh, we thought of the world as a more innocent place than it is. now we see the world very differently. i think what makes me sad about the american news reporting is there's a kind of almost learned helplessness that happens here. where it's like, oh, yeah this

thing has happened again. so the news scripts are the same. the news cycles are the same. there's a rush to the buyography, there's a rush to this. even though the individual is traumatized in ways that will affect them for the rest of their lives, there's almost a familiarity to this that i think president obama is right, we need to combat. >> congressman, i wonder if in fact there's more frustration when you're an actual lawmaker. it's one thing to stand outside and say as a voter i'd like to vote on this issue, push this on the agenda. as a lawmaker to continuously see this happening. it's part of the frustration i feel like i hear in the president. >> we have to push forward. it's going to be important to combat terrorism. we have brought our public policy response by failing to identify these acts of violence for what they really are and this was an act of domestic terrorism.

what we're seeing is these acts of terrorism being committed by american citizens at a planned parenthood site, certain with a political agenda, fueled by the extremist rhetoric we've seen from some on the hill and from people all across the country as it relates to a woman's right to choose. that's problematic. one of the things it warps is our ability to deal with the fact, why did this individual have an ak-47-type weapon of mass destruction? there's no justification for that. he can't hunt deer with that. it's unnecessary. he's hunting human beings. if we get directly to the problem, what's fueling these things, hopefully as public policymakers, we can come up with an actual response. >> the daily beast reported this shooting is at least the fifth high-profile crime on a planned parenthood clinic since the release of the center of medical progress's understing videos

this july. you have reported on questions of choice, of safety, of sort of the way that this terrorism impacts how people make medical choices. are you at all believing we're about to turn a corner, that this should shift, or does this feel like we're on a pathway towards more of this? >> the kind of polarization you talked about is so evident here. even in people's immediate reactions. you know, the colleague, the co-pastor of the tragically murdered officer, referred to, quote, the abortion industry. he said the officer wouldn't have supported the abortion industry but he was there to save lives. it's admiral he was doing his job and it's tragic he was killed. let's stop and think about the fact a medical clinic performing abortions that are constitutionally protected, that nearly 1 in 3 women will have in their lifetimes, is being referred to in this tone, abortion industry. and i think the rhetoric has become very inflammatory.

people are talking about, quote, trafficking inking in baby par. so i think, again, with the supreme court about to step in on some of the restrictions on clinics, you are seeing an escalation in rhetoric. you are seeing a deep polarization around a medical procedure that remains extremely common. >> i want to go all the way back. you said at one point how important it was this officer was doing his job. i just keep thinking of how many times i've heard ferguson effect. because of protests, officers are afraid to do their job because of -- because of a youtube effect. yet this officer was killed in the line of duty in this moment. >> well, i mean, i think one of the other lessons about what happened here is that open carry laws, even though many police, sheriff departments in colorado support them, make it much harder for law enforcement to do their jobs. >> yep. >> we've had a shooting in colorado springs around halloween where someone called 911 and said there's someone with a long gun walking around and 911 almost hung up on them

because everyone -- >> that's right, we've got open carry, so can't do anything. in our next hour, i'll be joined by the former chair of plannplanned ned parenthood of america. and the continuing outrage over 16 shots in 13 months. miles. sometimes those seats cost a ridiculous number of miles... or there's a fee to use them. i know. it's so frustrating. they'd be a lot happier with the capital one venture card. and you would, too! why? it's so easy with venture. you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase, every day. just book any flight you want then use your miles to cover the cost. now, that's more like it. what's in your wallet? whfight back fastts tums smoothies starts dissolving the instant it touches your tongue and neutralizes stomach acid at the source tum, tum, tum, tum

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hundreds of people marched along chicago's high-end magnificent mile shopping district on friday, blocking the entrances to stores on the busiest shopping day of the year. to demand chicago's mayor and police chief resign over the investigation into the death of 17-year-old laquan mcdonald who was killed by police more than a year ago. charging the police officer with first degree murder in la kwan's death. it was captured on video. less than 30 seconds after

arriving on the scene where officers were responding to reports of someone breaking into cars, officer van dyke shot laquan 16 times over about 15 seconds. for most of that time, laquan was already lying on the ground as officer van dyke continued firing. promise cuters said it was only when van dyke paused to reload his gun that his partner told him to stop shooting. the video shows la kwan walking away from the officers as the shooting started, not as police originally claimed lunging at them with a knife. on tuesday, state prosecutors announced the murder charge against officer van dyke. that same day officials released video of the shooting. cook county state's attorney anita alvarez and mayor rahm emanuel both described the video in blunt terms. >> to watch a 17-year-old young man die in such a violent manner is deeply disturbing and i have absolutely no doubt this video will tear at the heart of all

chicagoans. >> it's also a violation of your conscious and it is wrong. and it was hideous. >> and yet it still took his office more than a year to file charges. state prosecutors defended the delay, saying it simply took that long to complete their investigation. into a shooting death that was caught on tape. city officials have resisted releasing the video, saying they wanted to wait until they have completed their investigations. city attorneys didn't even show the video to the board of aldermen when they voted last april to pay laquan's family $5 million over his death. a remarkable sentiment, considering his family had not even filed a lawsuit against the city. interesting timing too in that it came just days after mayor emanuel won his re-election bid. it took a freedom of information

act lawsuit and subsequent court order to get the video released. the only reason we saw the time line for officer van dyke's charge of first degree murder pushed up to this week. while she has decided to bring the charges weeks ago, she would have waited even longer been announcing them. >> while we would have preferred for the investigation to have run its full course, to complete their evaluation in its entirety, i felt compelled to announce these state charges today. >> it's important to note in the interest of public safety alvarez and other officials fear to release the video prematurely would lead to violence in the streets. we should also note laquan mcdonald's family did not want the video released, fearing it could lead to riots. even with the charges, chicago's leaders were concerned violence

would ensue. >> i understand people will be upset and will want to protest when they see this video. it is fine to be passionate. but it is essential that it remain peaceful. >> people have a right to be angry. people have a right to protest. people have a right to free speech. but they do not have a right to commit criminal acts. >> violent actions will not honor of life of laquan and do nothing to hold this defendant accountable for his action sfls protests in chicago this week were mostly peaceful. peaceful but angry. with an excieedingly rare charg of first degree murder. questions remain about the timing. and if police were subject to a different justice system than other people. it took 13 months to charge officer van dyke with murder. a video officials admit is hideous and, quote, deeply disturbing. 13 months the officer was

collecting a paycheck from the city and working desk duty. would have taken even longer if the city had not been told by a judge to release that video. dr. jonathan met zell, director of the medical society at vanderbilt university. first, i want to go live to chicago. a community organizer and director of the black youth directive. you have been involved in the protests since the release of the video. talk to me about what those protests hope to achieve. what are people demanding? >> so right now we live in a city where the chicago police department takes up 40% of the city's budget. and that amounts to about $4 million a day. and so while we continue to invest in more policing and hyper surveillance and officer's

salaries and pensions like officer van dyke who killed laquan mcdonald, we're closing public schools. we don't have quality health care, comprehensive health care in our communities. and so what we see is manifestations of systems that -- the same system that impacted the killing of tie shawn lee is the same system that impacted the killing of la kwan mcdonald. what we want is divestment from policing in chicago and investment in the futures of black people and things that actually help materially and they're not some pie in the sky idea. people want to actually work and live with dignity. >> you talk about living and working. i want to include here protesting with dignity. the discourse about violence, the conversation that there would be violence in the streets and that basically people needed to be protected from the information that this video contained. when it does appear at the moment that the violence, right,

that was occurring, was in part violence not by protesters but in this case violence that was enacted by an officer. >> absolutely. i firsthand experienced it the night the video was released. we were on streets immediately. we had what folks would consider a peaceful march. it was peace florida the police showed up and then started throwing us on the ground. my leg was injured personally. they arrested three us. and we were just marching down the street. that's just a microcosm of the violence that laquan mcdonald. when he was shot 16 time unless his body. until that officer even had a moment to reflect, i believe, could have had a moment to think about what he did when he was

taking mcdonald's life. it was also not an isolated incident. the list goes on and on. the black folks who lost their lives at the hands of police. >> omar, it feels to me like part of the -- part of the seething anger, part of the like protests and contents of the democracy are not just that this individual officer did this individual thing on this day, but then there is 13 months of elected officials paid for with tax dollars put into office by citizens in the city who seem to be engaging in a willful decision to keep accountability from occurring. >> the question of accountability is profound. this officer had 20 complaints against him in the -- about a year and a half ago, there was a settlement against him for excessive force. what you've got is a pattern of some officers being particularly

abusive. npr did an analysis of the new york city police department. 46% have zero complaints. 20% have one complaint. there's small, 1,000 officers have over 10 complaints. these particular officers are engaging in patterns of abuse that if there were accountability, we would see the police force policing themselves. >> so if the police will not police themselves, if the mayor in this case, if the aldermen are voting for a $5 million settlement, what choice do citizens have? >> we need prosecutorial accountability as well. as relates to the failure of this prosecutor during a 13-month period to bring forth an indictment when the facts seem to suggest it's clear this officer committed murder. it was on videotape. there was no justification for it. the bigger problem is the fact these insurance tents of police violence continue to occur because far too often the officers on the force raleigh around the one who committed the act of violence and, in this

particular instance, may have engaged in a cover-up that itself should be prosecuted. initially, the police union in chicago said that la kwan mcdonald lungeled at this officer with a knife. that was the story that was put into the public record by members of the chicago police department. of course, the video tell also a very different story. for 86 minutes, there was a video that was captured by a nearby burger king that appears to have been deleted by four or five officers who gathered in that burger king immediately after the shooting. where are the indictments against these officers for engaging in a cover-up? that is the type of accountability that we ultimately need to see. >> so for me, i guess the question is but why. so i think about being a professor, for example. all you have is sort of your credibility and the context of, you know, we're going to write articles and we have to be believed we're citing and we're telling the truth about our data. if there is a member of the

faculty who is committing intellectual dishonesty, typically you will see other folks rally and say no, not here, you won't, because it actually challenges our capacity to do our work. literally wonder in this context why officers don't say, you know what, if we are afraid, if we feel we are under attack, then the single best thing we can do is to purge officers who are behaving in these ways. >> decade after decade, the police culture has been just the very opposite. that's been to ignore rally around. we have to break this blue wall of silence if we're going to change or end the culture of police violence. that's what i would encourage the people in chicago and all of us to press for, that kind of prosecutorial accountability. if this county attorney can't deliver it, perhaps they should be voted out of office. >> the focus on the story of laquan and how long it took to bring charges in that case. for the family of tamir rice,

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the wait for justice continues for the family of tamir rice when he was 12 years old when he was shot by chicago police. tamer died one day later. tamer was 12. he was playing with a toy gun. to mark the one-year anniversary of his death, activists demanded the prosecutor in the case step aside and allow a special prosecutor to take over. they delivered a petition with more than 200,000 signaturings. they've accused the prosecutor of delaying the process and tainting the investigation by releasing expert reports that claim the shooting was justified. mcdidnginty was denied the

allegations. a grand jury is now reviewing the case. i want to come to you on this because one of the kind of regular things that have emerged have really been about white officers and black victims. but race as critical as it is to this feels somewhat incidentally to a broader question of policing and police relationship to community. >> that's absolutely right. i think you know this cation conversation is spot on. what this shows is a crime that quite conceivably went too long to prosecute. a white police officer shooting an african-american man who is clearly not coming towards the officers. in that sense, it's understandable that we narrate this through the kind of categories of race we have. this is somebody who may have had a racist impulse at the

moment. but i think the student that we spoke to earlier was spot on, in that this shooting is also a symptom of a much bigger problem that police violence or just relationships with the police are part of. which is sit not linked to questions of community. about how do people get their health care. how do people get their food. how do people feel their lives matter in society. i think if we just fix policing and we don't fix income inequality and we don't fix health care and we don't fix a number of other issues that, in a way, this is, you know, policing is a symptom of an issue. it's a symptom of an issue. in that regard, i think we do it a disservice if we just focus on the race of the officer or even of the victim because this is an issue about class as well. >> i want to come back to you on this issue. because i just -- i know what -- the kind of -- there will undoubtedly be a discourse about the chicago case. maybe even linked potentially to tamir rice at 12 years old.

the other chicago story is about a boy dragged basically, lured off a playground and killed by gang members. so you know that one of the conversation lines will be, well, isn't that also a form of violence that protesters ought to be engaged in trying to end. how do you and other protesters respond to that? >> it is absolutely a form of violence that we not only have to protest against, but we have to organize to make sure we get to the root causes of that issue. and so the violence that he experienced and the violence that other black children and black people have experienced in chicago and all over this country is not isolated. it's not isolated at all. it's connected to the same systems that are corrosive. via capitalism, patriarchy, just poverty, people being poor, people not having access to quality education and people not believing their life has as much value because things are taken

away from them. we have to fight for these things. it looks different. the fight looks different. protesting against mayor emanuel looks different than going towards or fighting crime within our communities. because i am not about to protest a person who i know has killed someone in the same way that i will protest mayor ram emanuel who represents a system, an institution of power, and he's accountable to a wide range of people. black folks, what we need, of course, is much more justice practices in our communities. but we also need those basic goods, those basic needs, resources that we don't have. so we can't tackle one without tackling the other. my protests of tie shawn lee's death and his killing looks different but it still exists and it's still valid. it doesn't get the cameras. you have mothers in inglewood who fight every single day. mothers in inglewood who fight every single day. you don't see them on tv.

>> yes, i was thinking about the mothers and fathers who were on a hunger strike there when the schools were being closed because they were talking about the danger of the children having to cross these lines. stick with us. don't go away. up next, on the shooting, president obama weighed in. (vo) some call it giving back. we call it share the love. during our share the love event, get a new subaru, and we'll donate $250 to those in need. bringing our total donations to over sixty-five million dollars. and bringing love where it's needed most. love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru.

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thoughts on the video of the shooting of laquan mcdonald in a facebook post on wednesday. he wrote, i was deeply disturbed by the footage. this thanksgiving, i ask everybody to keep those who suffered tragic loss in our thoughts and prayers. and to be thankful for the overwhelming majority of men and women in uniform. and i'm grateful to the people of my hometown for keeping the protests peaceful. here's the president weighing in. in part because it's chicago. in part because rahm emanuel was his chief of staff early on. but it also feels to me like there is a question about

democratic, little "d," democratic, and whether people can be certain they are policed in a way that is fair. >> i saw recently where somebody said we've moved from the age of obama to the age of ferguson. obama has become quite marginal. he's not somebody who's an important leader in these movements, in these discussions. help has be he has been part of a larger discussion. in some ways, we've moved past him as it relates to criminal justice. in some ways, the puzzle is, like, what fills this void. all this attention being focused on the issue of criminal justice in america and yet we haven't quite coalesced around issues where we can say this is what we're pushing for. one concern about saying we need thai tack this multiprong set issues, which are all real. poverty is real. health care access is real. you've got to focus people's

energy. there's good evidence that movements that focus on one issue are more successful than those that focus on a lot of issues. when we had something like bloody sunday with selma, like voting rights happened in the days, in the wake of that. >> to bring up the vra is important, which is why i'm not sure i agree we're in a post-president obama moment, but there is still extraordinary -- over the course of what we have left, having that president from this place in that space is still like this possibility of bringing to fruition some of what we've seen. >> we are the in midst of a bipartisan moment as it relates to criminal justice reform and dealing with mass incarceration in america which improportion n impacts the african-american community. will be a part of obama's legacy. it will change the course and direction for millions of african-american black men as well as their families who are

impacted by the mass incarceration phenomenon. we've got legislation moving both out of the house judiciary committee on their way to the house and senate floors with bipartisan support to deal with reforming the failed war on drugs, to rolling back mandatory minimums, making retroactive the change that was made as it relates to the disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. important things that could happen over the next several months with president obama's leadership and partnership with democrats and conservatives and republicans. >> in the nearly four years i've been hosting this show now, the number of videos i have had to watch and we've all as a country had to watch relative to the death of young people of color is painful. like, i don't really have any other word, other than to say painful and harmful. you wrote a piece about psychiatry after ferguson where you talk about healing can't be just individual, it has to be

structural. >> they are, in part, structural stories. when we individualate the stories, we saw yesterday a police officer gave his life trying to defend civilians. there are many police where i live that put their lives on the line every single day for the safety of the communities. and yet there are these bigger structural stories that surround the narratives. that we don't tell, you know, as we narrate the stories. chicago's a perfect example. there's a story about drugs. and about the cutting away drug treatment facilities. the story about the easy access of firearms. there's all these stories that make it much harder for police to do their jobs. they're putting their lives on the line in a very different way than they used to because we've cut away different kinds of services and made it easier for people to get guns. >> we've got 15 seconds. i want to give you the last word. >> so the picture you just painted of policing in america i

think how that actually shows up in the lives of black people, it doesn't match up. for every cop who -- as you referred to, sacrifices their lives for the life of another, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of young brack people whose lives are cut short because they don't have access to quality education and they're told they don't actually matter. i think we have to center the most marginalized in this story. the police, they're going to be all right. my people aren't all right. we take it very, very personally when our lives are taken. we talk about the goodness of cops. let's talk about how cops even got started in this country. and if the root of how you got started is evil and it's negative and it's visceral, than the fruit that you bear is going to be equally as violent and it's going to overshadow the so-called good acts. because mothers sacrifice their lives every day but they're also victimized and criminalized every single day. and so i just had to put that

out there. it's a very personal moment right now, it's even difficult to talk about this. >> thank you to the black youth proje project. in chicago. thank you to congressman jeffries, dr. metzl and princeton professor. the story of two schools separated by only nine blocks but operating as though they were worlds apart. i'll be joined by alexis mcgill johnson the former board chair of the planned parenthood federation of america. she's with me at the top of the hour. is not normal, it's extraordinary. you're not sure what's on the other side... but momentum pushes you forward. and it's why we're with you. 80 thousand people now... on the ground. in the air. engines on. because there is no stop in us. or you. only go.

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this is more than just a town. this is our home. and small business saturday... is more than just a day. it's our day... to shop small at the places we love... with the people we love. for stuff we can't get anywhere else. and food that tastes like home. because the money we spend here... can help keep our town growing. today is small business saturday, let's all shop small. for the neighborhood, the town, the home we love. shop small today. welcome back. i'm melissa harris perry. we're learned more this morning about the suspect taken into custody following friday's deadly attack inside a colorado springs planned parenthood. police believe he opened fire with an ak-47-style weapon. just after 11:30 a.m. mountain

time. police exchange gunfire with the alleged shooter and the standoff stretched for hours before dear turned himself in. this person was inside the clinic when the shooting began and she spoke with nbc "today" show this morning. >> i noticed people in the front were going down, saying everyone get down, and inheard gunshots. i saw the gunman. from there, had ran down the hall at the planned parenthood in the back, you know, back of the building and i tried to open different room doors. some of them were locked. i was able to get inside one room where there was two other patients that i was able to alert there was a gunman because they were unaware of it actually being a gunman on site. from there, we grabbed the table, we placed it against the door. we sat there frantic for at least up to five hours. >> one police officer and two

civilians were killed in the attack. five police officers and four civilians were injured. joining me now from colorado springs, colorado is nbc news correspondent leanne gregg. leann what are police doing now? what is happening with the investigation? >> well, melissa, this is a very large investigation. it's going to take several days to complete. they want to know what caused the gunman to go inside plan the parenthood and start firing. whether this was a targeted location or a random selection that's part of the investigation. this went on for five hours, the standoff. as you said before it was over and he surrendered, three people killed and nine injured. among the dead, 44-year-old veteran police officer garrett swasey. two civilians were killed. their identities won't be revealed until their autopsies

are performed. president obama today issued a statement regarding the shootings. he said, in part, we can't let this become the new normal. he goes on to say, we have to to something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on the streets to people who have no business wielding them. the items the gunman left at the scene have all been secured according to officials and processed. and are no longer a threat. there was some concern that he left some explosive devices in the facility and also in his car. earlier this morning, the bodies of those who were killed were removed from the crime scene. during that time, police officers lined the streets and saluted as the vehicles went by. today, there will be two separate vigils held in honor of the victims. one at a local church and another at a nearby university. melissa. >> thank you to nbc's leann

gregg in colorado springs. joining me, the form erm chair of planned parenthood federation of america and a former board member. and back with me, our guest, a law professor, and co-author of "living in the cross hairs," the untold stories of anti-abortion terrorism." 2015 has been quite a year for planned parenthood. firps t i mean, first the doctored videos. then the hearings. now the shooting. i'm wondering if the organization is feeling like -- >> oh, absolutely. we're about to celebrate our 100th year next year. the work is planning for that. in large part because we are firmly committed. we have our boots on the ground and our staff, our amazing staff, that took care of so many

inside that building in colorado. they're there to provide access for women. and particularly for women, for poor women, for many women of color. we're open for business today, you know, because that's the work we do. yes, it has been a very, very difficult year. it's been a, you know, difficult century trying to fight for women's rights. >> this is not a small point that it's been a difficult century. as tough as 2015 had been, you had a sort of big pop culture moment. just over a week ago, when shonda rhimes scandal really took on planned parenthood's discourse as a central kind of part of its show, and then you had just filed suit in texas around medicaid. so talk to me about the ways that planned parenthood plans to push back. >> i think that's what we're doing in texas. filing a suit against a state which continued to try to defund women's health, right, which

continues to try to limit access for services we are currently provided, you know, we're just not going to reimburse you for them, we're not going to offer medicaid reimbursement for you. i think what i'm seeing is culture matters, right, how we shift and normalize these conversations really matter. and shonda rhimes no accident, right, she is a board member of planned parenthood los angeles and she's taken on these issues over and over again throughout her work. the idea we can push back, we can be proactive is really ener juicing, inspiring to our supporters. that work is going to be at the forefront of what we're doing to push back. >> david, i want to let you weigh in. before this shooting, we booked you to talk because we wanted to talk about the scandal episode and sort of what it meant and i know that you actually lectured about it in your class. and then of course it's the colorado thing shifts the

discourse for us. >> yeah, i mean, it was amazing that a prime-time show showed a woman getting abortion in a very uncomplicated way. she didn't think about it for days and really worry about it. she needed an abortion. she got it. the next day, she was shown without regret. that was really wonderful. to reduce abortion stigma is a large part of what needs to be done to get us to the point where we don't have domestic terrorism. but yesterday we were reminded the context that abortion clinic workers go to every day. i mean, i think of the planned parenthood and independent abortion clinic staff who are going to work today. they knew before yesterday that they were in a risky field. but today it just -- my heart goes out to them going to work after what happened yesterday. >> i kept thinking about -- about that in the context of listening to her talk about her experience there and barricading the door. honestly, i've been sort of half paying attention while we were prepping. i just presumed shes with a

provider, she was someone who worked there, because so few people would say, i was in the planned parenthood. even if they were there for a mammogram or prescription refill. there is such stigma that, in fact, even being willing to say i have crossed the threshold. that seems to be part of this problem. >> absolutely. i think reducing stigma, all sorts of things, including abortion, including just our own sexuality, the kind of shaming that happens. i think the continuum we're seeing around this extreme rhetoric that has kind of put planned parenthood in the cross hairs is not just connected to these extreme acts of terrorism. they're the daily attacks that happen through the state legislatures. like 50% of women in america live in states that are anti-women's health. the state legislatures are going through drastic measures through the trap laws, you know, through the denial of medicaid funding in order to deny us access to women's health care.

i think it's that rhetoric through the policies, through just the daily micro aggressions that we experience as women and how we just are living our lives very normally and it will take the kind of cultural pushback to make that point. >> i wanted to bring in a doctor and aaabortion provider who wil speak out on feeling that constant violence. i know how it is. you're all set to book a flight using your airline credit card miles. and surprise! those seats sometimes cost a ridiculous number of miles,

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earlier this month, we talked to a doctor who wrote a compelling op-ed for "the washington post" about the threats and constant fear she lives with because she performs abortion. legal medical procedure. she recently found her office address and a picture of her daughter who was then an infant posted on a website accusing her of being part of, quote, the

abortion cartel. sh she wrote, i fear for the safety of my child. seeing her face on the anti-choice website made me consider that maybe she would be safer living apart from me. that my presence in her life might cause her more harm than good. while i refuse to be intimidated, this assault on my confidence as a mother has been particularly destressing. she joins me now from baltimore. it's nice to have you back. although in the circumstances maybe not such a nice way to welcome you back. >> sure. >> are you -- last time we talked, i kept saying, are you sure. are you feeling like you would want to change your path. i have to ask you that same question today. >> i think that abortion providers and my colleagues and i and the staff we work with are drawn by a sense of conscious to provide this care for patients. it doesn't matter, you know,

what type of care you need. i want women to be able to access abortion in a safe legal compassionate environment so no i'm not deterred. >> clearly the point of this work, i mean, excuse me, of this kind of violence, clearly the point of terror in these spaces is to deter physicians, to deter the young medical students from going into this work and so i guess part of what i wonder is what does it mean to have gone through all the work, all the student loans, to get through medical school, and then be facing this? not in a war zone but in your own hometown? >> right. well, i think that, you know, this is just behavior that's not tolerated in any other type of medical profession. people walking into other kind of clinics don't have to deal with protesters and harassment. i think it's unacceptable in a civil society. i hope this is a sign that the tide is turning and i hope the public outrage about this domestic terror attack helps

drive the dialogue. >> i wanted to ask you about this. as i've been reading about it, apparently part of the reason planned parenthood was in this space in this kind of mini mall, there's a u.p. vt vu.p.s., a n so they're not isolated, so there's more privacy for patients coming in, as well as presumably they're more protected in this space. and yet the idea the planned parenthood still may have been a target here. >> right, the further abortion clinic can be away from public traffic, the safe they are. if they're on private space as part of a private medical center, the more protested they are but that goes against what we were talking about. they shouldn't have to be in a protected place. because abortion should not be stigmatized the way it is. they should be safe being public about being an abortion clinic but there's not because of what happened yesterday. >> i can remember, alexis, my mom, who was working in domestic

violence work in the 1970s and '80s. and the shelters for people coming in sometimes for domestic violence were always shielded. it doesn't say shelter outside because you recognize that there's real danger. and so, you know, i look at a moment like this and go, so do we take the planned parenthood signs down? do we cower? then i also worry about the safety of providers. >> we worry about that intensively, right, our staff are very well trained around security procedures. i think it's -- all of the law enforcement officials i saw commenting on this yesterday talked about how really well trained they were that there wasn't a larger loss of life or folks who were injured. but i think it's like really the question that we should be building better barricades for women's health centers, you know, is not the right one. we have to be figuring how the why women's health is under attack in such an intense way. see seal talks all the time

about having grown up in texas that there are states now that have fewer rights for women than we had just, you know, 50, 60 years ago. so the idea we are reverting and creating these very horrible environments for our providers, it's really, really horrible. but i agree with what the doctor said. the health care professionals. you feel like you're walking into a movement when you walk into planned parenthood because you know they're there for their patients, no matter what. >> doctor, did you and your colleagues -- i presume like the rest of us, you have e-mail lists and -- did you all a activate yesterday? what kinds of things were you saying? >> i think we act out of concern and support for one another and the recognition we're here for our patients. the important thing to remember is no matter what happened in colorado springs yesterday, hundreds of clinics across the

country are open today and ready to take care of patients with compassion and with empathy and with that mission focus that we've always had. >> that's kind of the central claim of strarnt terrorism, right, is you stand up the next day and you don't allow the fear to overtake. >> right. >> i want to thank you, too, dr. diane, here in new york, thank you to alexis and david. two schools, just nine blocks between them, but they seem to be worlds apart. this is more than just a town. this is our home. and small business saturday... is more than just a day. it's our day... to shop small at the places we love... with the people we love. for stuff we can't get anywhere else. and food that tastes like home. because the money we spend here...

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and 10 grams of protein to help maintain muscle. all with a great taste. i don't plan on slowing down any time soon. stay strong. stay active with boost. now try new boost® compact and 100 calories. this is a tale of two schools. two public schools here in new york city. just nine blocks apart. one is on west 61st street. okay, that's manhattan's upper west side. home to many high-end luxury buildings and several more under construction. there's even an mhp show producer living within these

nine blocks. we've had a front row seat on the way these nine blocks have become the very center of an education controversy. the issue at stake, which student will be assigned to which school. a new york-style microcosm of an enormous and emotional issue facing families across the country. in our family here in new york city, one of the schools is ps 199. it's a k-to-5 public elementary school where they rate higher than the citywide average in readinged an math. students at ps-199 don't just do better than the city average, they trounce it. 87% of third through fifth graders score. and 74% score a three or four on the state english exam. at ps-199, 66% of the students are white.

their parents have means. the pta budget is in the hundreds of thousands. okay. now let's take a look at the school just nine blocks south. that school is ps-191. it's a pre-k to eighth grade public school that serves many students living in a nearby public housing development. here, just more than one-tenths of student pass the state reading and math test. 47% of the students are latino and 37% are african-american. 77% are eligible for free lunch. compared with just 7% over at the other school, ps-199. two schools, nine blocks apart. but, there were merely 100 kindergarten students on the waiting list at ps-199, making it the longest wait list in new york city this year. at ps-191, there are empty seats. seeking to address the imbalance this september, the new york city education department unveiled a proposal to redraw

the school zones. that means that many zoned for the higher performing school will not be transferred to the zone for the lower performing school. outraging parents whose children might be affected by the change. the outrage intensified after ps 191 was labeled as, quote, persistently dangerous. for a school having a high rate of violence. over a two-year period. remember, this is an elementary and middle school. it serves children from pre-k to eighth grade. in the wake of parent at outrage, the proposal has been dropped. several other plans have been proposed. none enjoy a consensus. the education department is waiting until 2016 to introduce a new solution. families are wondering where will the kids go to school and whether they should stay or move or hope for the best or prepare for something else. for the rest, this tale of two cities elicits larger social questions. what do we mean when we say a

school is good or bad? and what does it mean to accept such different outcomes for children who, after all are all neighbors. tim watkins, treasury and zoning chair of third district. the elected body responsible for voting on zone lines. andrew chu, the father of a 3-year-old, part of a group of parents work to resolve the reser rezoning challenge in the south end of the upper west side. the president of ps-191. that's the school that is the lower performing school. and prudence carter, professor of education and sociology at stanford university, author of stubborn roots, race, culture and inequality in u.s. and south african schools. is ps-191 a bad school that parents should be worried about sending their kids to? >> no, absolutely not, i don't think so. otherwise, i wouldn't be there.

i would not send my child there. >> why do you think therefore there's such outrage about the possibility that students currently zoned for 199, the higher performing school, may, in fact, have to go instead to 191? >> think it is because we have the designation. people are afraid to send them there, because we have been stamped with that disignition. i also think they are worried because we have low scores, low test scores. i think there are many factors that are counting. i mean, we are across from the housing project. i think that worries a lot people. yes, i think that is a big, big factor. >> so you have a 3-year-old. >> yes. >> these are personal decisions. >> yes. >> but they're also structural. they're also about a whole city and a whole country. >> definitely. >> so talk to me about what it means to be a parent of a

3-year-old facing these choices. >> yeah, i think, you know, one thing that maybe we can, you know -- i personally can empathize with is while a lot of parents have these concerns around test scores, you know, in the case of 191, perception of safety, i think, you know, at least there can be some possible common ground and that's, you know, parents are making these decisions because in their mind they're trying to do what's best for their child. i can empathize with that. i might not necessarily agree with their rationals or methodologies or the decisions they make. i think at least finding that common ground is something we can kind of build a foundation, you know, from and kind of build from that. >> so i like this idea of common ground. but, kim, i have to say, you know, we put this show together in a kind of collective process every week. and rarely has it gotten more just like on fire than when we started having these

conversations. people have many feelings about the question of where their children and other people's children will go to school. you know, you're in many ways in charge of or part of the group in charge of making those decisions. what constitutions a fair or just set of decisions about school zoning? >> well, one we're strugglinging with, we talk about with the largest council throughout the process. the one thing that is the most stunning about this entire -- this entire story is that the upper west side has had this real estate boom. a complete real estate boom. thousands of new units being built over the last five years. not a single new elementary school seat has been added since 2010. the department of education is supposed to add 12 elementary school seats for every 100 units it builds. and we have simply not seen

this. >> yet maybe the claim will be we don't need it because nine blocks away there's a school with empty seats. >> well, you might say that, but there aren't enough seats. even if the school were filled. if ps-191 were completely at capacity, we would still be shy. several hundred seats that we're talking about for the southern district of new york. >> so my social sciences self, my kind of racial justice social sciences self on one side and my parent of young children self on the other side, right. we know that test scores are not necessarily about educational quality. they tend to really be about a proxy -- if you put your 5-year-old at a school nine blocks away, that they're never going to get into prince tol, harvard, yale, right? >> absolutely. there are a couple of things

here. we know test scores are highly correlated with socioeconomic status. you can actually see that from some of the research now. i think the thing that we've done is we've backed ourtzs in a corner because we live in this area where it's that one number, that test score. >> i love this word. test ocracy. >> it became very big since the passage of no child left behind. we backed ourselves in a corner as a country because that is the one metric we use to determine what academic excellence is for children. when groups are designated as not high test performing groups they become stigmatized as anti-achievement. i'm in the same position. i have a kid. i want my kid to go to the best school in the country. i also know as a researcher that there are a lot more, a lot more indicators of what school

engagement, school quality can mean. i think it's time to open our minds about what those things are. >> we're going to stay right on this topic. i know ya'll at home are having all the feelings. we're going to talk about it more. the only way to get better is to challenge yourself,

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that's why there's coricidin® hbp. it relieves cold symptoms without raising blood pressure. so look for powerful cold medicine with a heart. coricidin® hbp. the upper west side of manhattan. one of the schools being defined as persistently dangerous, which to me is difficult to understand, given that it serves 4-year-olds to 13-year-olds. >> well, it's a good question. we are still trying to answer that question. the department of education did not help us. the community wanted to ask questions.

say a couple of kids are fighting in the highway. one pubumps his or her head. unless the information is taken properly with the right stress seventy, it get transferred. there's always the escalation up. unless the individual who is going through each of these individual steps, and there's several people involved the incident can become a violent incident. >> right, but we know that kind of designation is likely to happen, we know that from other kinds of data -- >> we know that black and brown children are much more likely to

be suspended or expelled for the kinds of things we would see as every day bad behavior. these little kids get adultfied very early on, from 5 years old, even earlier, pre-k. yet this is the upper west side, right. we are not talking about the first district of, you know, some location where people are not interested in school integration. i would presume most say they value it as part of what's important to them. >> yes, i think so, coming back to this concept of common ground, is understand that parents, we got to this point not necessarily by intent but there's something underlying this. part of that is how we define excellent. i think, you know, the comment

on testi okokracy is for lack o better metric, for a lack of a better definition. until we have that discussion, a lot will play out exactly as we've seen. >> i keep trying to argue what we actually need to do is redefine what constitutes a quality school or good school. as you go on realtor.com or whatever to buy a house or look for an apartment it will have the rating of the school. what if we shifted so the rating of the school included the level of racial diversity. where more racial diversity -- what if it wasn't just test scores? what are the things you value at your school? >> that i value at ps-191, i value the racial diversity at our school highly.

i value, i mean, we havecurricu. what i don't value is we have to raise money in order to get the same programs that the other schools have. so, for example, ps-199. we have to raise money in order to get extra assistance into classrooms. we have to raise money to get chess programs. we have to raise money to get all these extra activities. that is what i find to be the great equality. >> we are going to come to that issue as soon as we come back. i want to talk about the money part of this story. you want i fix this mess? a mess? i don't think -- what's that? snapshot from progressive. plug it in, and you can save on car insurance based on your good driving. you sell to me? no, it's free. you want to try? i try this if you try... not this. okay.

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nearly 100 children for kindergarten waited at a spot at a school where 98% of students scored proficient or above in the state science exam. at the second school, ps-191, it serves many students who live in a nearby public housing development and is predominantly black and latino. this school has too many empty seats. the test scores are mostly lower than the citywide average. the parents of teacher organization for ps-199 raised more than $800,000 in one year. over the years, such hefty pta budgets have financed a science and technology teacher, visits from a chef and extras like automatic toilet flushers and bed bug detection in every classroom. p ps-191's parent teacher organization raised $24,000 last year. it has announced it is trying to

raise $35,000 for a library. so this leads me to ask, are there public schools? i mean, at the point at which one school -- we talk about funding, but then you have an $800,000 parent benefit accruing to one and a $24,000 parent benefit accruing to the other. are there really public schools? >> that's a good question. my family and i, we made the unconscionable decision about getting an apartment without figuring out where our kid was going to school later. we live in harlem and we send our kid down to ps-166. she went to kindergarten at ps-191. we love the school. i think when seeing the amount of money that we have been asked to donate to the new school relative to the expectation at ps-191 was an eye opener. it is a significant amount of money, regardless of where you are on the income spectrum.

but you're weighing it against private school in new york city which can cost up to $60,000. >> yeah, i was making this point the other day that, you know, because folks were saying again in our heated meeting, those are rich parents. i was like, well, i don't know, because manhattan is this weird space where, like, what would make you 1% every other place makes you completely in the middle of the road in a place like the upper west side. these are lots of dollars but these dollars don't go far in a place like manhattan so people aren't opting into $45,000 or $60,000 private school zbllgs right, right. i think, yeah, it makes the stakes that much higher i think in new york in particular that, you know, the cost of a private school, it's not an easy option. frankly for a lot of family also in the city, it's not an option at all. and, you know, whether fortunately or not, i think that's one of the reasons why people are attracted to 199. because in their mind, they see

the quality of, you know,/quote/unquote the public school for a private school price more or less. >> go ahead. >> i wanted -- i just want to -- if there was one thing i wish that we could do, it would be to convince parents of relative privilege that their children will actually thrive potentially more in an environment where all of the other children around them are not ho -- there is actually cognitive brain connection, social, emotional power to going to school with people different than you. >> and research shop oicearch s. the more innovative it can become. we have research on that. >> and mostly for the privileged kids. >> i mean, i think the thing that really, really gets me down as a researcher, having been in

scores and scores of schools, is that it's such a narrow understanding of what it means to have quality education. i think we have to get back to that. just because a school has high test scores or is private or quasiprivate does not make it an excellent school in my book. goodness and excellence is multidimensional today in a society with the demographics we have. you can have teachers who can teach their subject matter. if you can't have the sophistication to transcend social lines to teach all kids that subject matter it calls into question just how exemplary you are as a teacher, as far as i'm concerned, given what i've seen. i've seen kids from these backgrounds in school also with less resources thrive. they go on to college. and they go on to do wonderful things in the world. but they interehave teachers wh invested in being very dynamic with the population. >> i hope you all get a zoning solution that not only does good things for individual families but maybe provides a model for

rethinking what we mean by a good school. i want to say thank you to kim watkins, to andrew chu, to kasha reeve and thank you for sitting with me. up next, the surprisingly straight forward solution to homelessness in houston, texas. is more than just a day. it's our day... to shop small at the places we love... with the people we love. for stuff we can't get anywhere else. and food that tastes like home. because the money we spend here... can help keep our town growing. today is small business saturday, let's all shop small. for the neighborhood, the town, the home we love. shop small today. no tellin' how much i'm gellin'. you gellin'? you gellin'? i'm like magellan, i'm so gellin'. quit yellin' we're gellin'. riigghhttt. dr. scholl's massaging gel insoles are so soft they make any shoe feel outrageously comfortable.

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>> while many of us are enjoying the comforts of home, a nonprofit in houston, texas, is making real progress to ending chronic homelessness in their city by the end of the year. the way home provides housing and wrap around services to people like paul who was homeless for 30 years. and now, at the age of 660, he has a place to call his own. video journalist nathan willis produced this story for msnbc's "shift." >> it cost more to walk past a

homeless person than it does to provide housing for them. we determined that our homeless population was going to cost us about $100 million annually in jail, emergency room, transportation. >> and so it is the right thing to do, and fiscally and compassionately, if these folks are not helped, they will die. >> i will take my key, and stick it in here. and unlock my door and open my door and walk on in. and say, this is all mine. you know, whereas i couldn't do this a year ago. you know what i am saying, i couldn't do none of this here a year ago. >> we became very good at helping people to manage their homelessness. we could get you a meal and

shelter and not thinking about tomorrow or the next day. >> as we looked at the data, we started to see things in aggregate as a system and not individual programming in the success of one agency may have, we started to recognize that the only way that we were going to be able to support people is with the housing first model. >> the words for me to use to describe this is euphoric, and amazing. and surprising. and scary as hell. >> chronic homelessness is a technical definition of an individual on the streets for a long time and has serious health, mental health and

substance abuse issues that keep that individual from getting off of the streets without significant support. >> i'm 60 years old, man. do you know this is the second apartment i ever had in my life in my name, and that is nothing to be, nothing to be proud of. by the same token, it is something to be proud of. >> come into housing no matter the condition, and then once you are in safe stable housing, it is easier for the person to begin to make decisions about life changes. there's an integrated service package that includes behavioral health, physical health, case management, someone who can really help access benefits that many of the people are eligible for, but just can't get through

the paperwork. >> so those supports are intensive and include what we call the integrative care teams. we have doctors, e behavioral health specialist, and caseworks and nurses and a variety of peer supports. they function in a team to the wrap around that individual to the access those services as that individual needs those services. an end of chronic homelessness is not taking somebody who has been on the street as long time, and housing them, but it is building a system that ensures that it will never happen again. that is what we are aiming for. >> i mean, i have money. for the time being, it is mine. i have a dollar. that, i'm total grateful for. it is a hell of a feeling. >> something to think about this thanksgiving weekend. for more stories like this, head to msnbc.com/originals.

one more note. as we enter the holiday season, many families are going to be looking for ways to give back. on tuesday de scember 1st, msnb is celebrating #giving tuesday a a global day dedicated to giving back. to learn more go to giving tuesday.msnbc.com. i will see you tomorrow at 10:00 a.m., and tomorrow on the mhp show we will look at the issue of race to college campus, and from a junior college to harvard and princeton. hello, alex. >> yes, we will look forward to that show tomorrow. meanwhile, at the top of the hour, we will talk about the motives of a gunman who opens fire at a planned parenthood clinic in colorado. and we will hear from the woman who came face-to-face with the

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goodday and welcome to "weekends with alex witt." it is remaining a mystery, the motive for the killing spree at a colorado planned parenthood clinic. it is under investigation. meanwhile, take a listen. >> they were trying to find the gunman shooting back, and you could hear the shots. thereer were a few gun bullets that entered into the room. >> the harrowing account of one survivor. i spoke to e her, and you will hear the rest of the story as she looked directly at the killer. >> the road home may be a long and difficult one. we will tell you about the treacherous weather in parts of the country. no