- communities of color have always been underrepresented in the u.s. census. that means less federal funding for schools, hospitals, libraries, and other public services for diverse communities and less representation in congress. this year, it's critical that you participate in the 2020 census. it's safe and confidential. let's make sure everyone is counted in our community. for more information, say "census 2020" into your x1 voice remote, and to participate, go to census.gov. welcome back, i'm ali velshi, and the numbers tell the story. almost 4 million more americans filed for unemployment last week for the first time. a mind boggling 30 million americans have lost their jobs in the last six weeks.

florida now has the highest number of jobless claims in the country overtaking california as the jobless claims capital of america. florida is set to begin reopening on monday which has more to do with the economics than the fact that the state continued to set new daily death toll records last week. florida is among several states set to either reopen or planning to reopen in the coming days despite still being in the throws of the pandemic. joining me now from the seasonal opening of the callingswood new jersey farmers market, it's a typical american spring saturday activity. it's got great weather. going to the farmers market, but times have changed as people are trying to get back to typical or normal. how does it look to you over there? >> reporter: good morning, ali. now, farmers markets have been considered essential businesses throughout this pandemic, and i've covered a few of them, and it always leaves you with a sense of anxiety. ultimately lot of people are around you, and it's still kind of crowded. this farm to car solution that

kolingswood is doing is a great solution to that problem. it works quite simply, actually, customers can order ahead online. they built a website for this, and then they arrive on the day of the market, which is today. it's opening day. they're expecting about a thousand orders here, people drive up and they are given a name plate with a neon sign with their name on it so vendors can see them coming and prepare their bags to deliver right to the backseat of their car or their trunk. this kind of innovation is really needed right now as the seasonal markets are coming and opening during the summer. it's a big social activity here in southern new jersey, and farmers say that the crops don't have any sense that there's a pandemic going on, so they're still growing, and they need to be sold. this market provides that opportunity. while they're loacking the norml social activity this market usually provides, south jersey is starting to see an uptick of cases as the virus has migrated south. we're just across the river from

philadelphia. a lot of customers come in from here as well. the way they've spread everything out, they've actually broken up one day of the market, typically during the summer weeks to four days. and so they're going to be looking ahead to this being the new normal throughout the summer here. ali. >> when i'm normally in philly on the weekends, the saturday morning stop is to the farmers market. it's a uniquely -- i mean, it's first feeling like spring now, and it's the 2nd of may. you're seeing a lot more people out there i would imagine? >> yeah, absolutely. they typically see thousands of people here a day on a typical summer weekend. like i said, they're expecting a thousand people in their cars just today, and that's spread out over they're now going to have four days instead of the one day at the market. clearly people looking to get out and about, rolling their windows down, enjoying the spring weather while they're doing their weekly shopping. >> good to see you my friend, maura barrett for us. there are increasing fears the pandemic is having an effect

on the nation's food supply chain. nearly 900 employees at a tyson food pork processing plant have covid-19. it's among several tyson plants now closed around the country, prompting the ceo to warn, quote, the u.s. food supply chain is breaking. >> we've got to be able to move our cattle further along in the process, and right now there's a bottleneck in our supply chain that's really causing a lot of issues and some concern for our producers. >> we do not have a food shortage in this country. we just have some slowdown in our building to deliver that product because it does require processing. it will be several months at least, before we can get some kind of stability here in these markets. >> meanwhile, businesses began applying to receive assistance funds from the latest round of ppp, the paychecks protection program that goes to small businesses. much like the first time around,

the system was plagued with technical problems, not to mention a backlog of applicants from the first round that was worth a third of the total stimulus funds. joining me now is former alaska senator mark, he's also the former mayor of anchorage and currently owns the largest grocery store north of the arctic circle. that's not a qualifier that should matter. it's just a big place. he also serves as the cochair of the alaska economic. senator, good to see you. thank you for joining us. you've got a unique perspective on this having been a mayor, having been a united states senator and a business person deal with this particular issue right now of food. tell me where you think things stand. >> you bet. thank you very much for this opportunity. it's kind of a wide range, we're in retail. we're in residential. we own a variety of businesses. but you're right, i mean, we

serve the largest -- it's a 34,000 square foot food facility above the arctic circle. we have to move 200,000 pounds of goods every single week by air right now to get product up there, and we have to manage the food supply very carefully and, you know, when you hear the news about poultry and meat and those kinds of products potentially running short, we have to prepare for that. we're kind of honestly at the end of the line literally when you think about the food supply chain, but at the early stage as you recall, a lot of paper products were in short supply. we had to re-examine how we sell those products through our store, and now we'll have to re-examine how we look at the meat products and those kind of products. now, saying that the good thing about the community is we communicate with our community on a regular basis through social media and otherwise to make sure they're aware, you know, don't hoard products. don't hoard food. buy what you need. keep the supply chain active,

and that's an important part of running a store of that magnitude in a community that, without our supply of food, would be out of most of the products they need. >> so senator, you're familiar with things that -- you know, i live in manhattan. people like me grew up thinking that food comes from the grocery store. you're intimately familiar with the food supply, and as you said, you're right at the end of the supply chain. the supply chain problems with agriculture start, in some cases, on farms. we've seen a lot of agricultural products go to waste in the last little while. then it's the processing where we're having this discussion about the meat packing plants. then it's the transportation, the distribution, and the way grocery stores operate. where are you seeing -- what are you seeing working in the food supply chain, and what are you -- what's worrying you right now? >> well, i will tell you, and again, you're right. we're touched from it. we had a region airline here about two weeks ago collapse because they could not get funding, actually, through the federal government to help support their regional airline,

and we almost lost our supply line connection to food. the first thing we look at is on a very -- on a regular basis, you know, what are the manufacturers, where are their capacities right now, and trying to measure that. second, we try to make sure the transportation components, you know, we're not worried about fuel supply and those kind of things. what we're worried about is when you move a product from the farm to the distribution center, to the ports, then you got to move it through the system, is do they have the people working there, do they have the ppe and the equipment necessary to ensure that they have the critical staff so they're not suddenly, you know, out of people working at the, you know, on the docks, for example, or at the airports. all of that is critical to the chain, but as you said earlier in our show, you know, you've got to make sure these folks, that part of the chain are tested. they have the equipment necessary. their main line, you know, hospitals are important. no question about what they need, but this whole supply line has to have the necessary equipment and protocols to ensure when that food lands in

the store, we can get it on time and be able to manage it the right way, and it's delivered safely. those are the things that make us nervous. if any one of those links disappear or get clogged for some reason, it's a multiple impact on the back end, and the customer will end up in a situation without a food supply or a component of the food supply. >> it really is like a war, supply chains matter more than most of us think, and these people who are involved in food delivery, food distribution, agriculture are, in fact, front line workers now because we depend on them for the things we need. senator, good to see you, mark begich is a former mayor of anchorage and a former united states senator. thank you, sir. small business owner april richardson joins me now. she runs several businesses including d.c. sweet potato cake. like so many small businesses around the country, she's yet to hear back about her paychecks protection program loan request.

april, thanks for joining me. tell me when you made your application and how that went. >> sure, so i applied for the ppp program april 7th. a couple of days after the program was announced, and then i did not hear back from over a week. when i did hear back, i did save like an sba number, and that sba number asked me for additional information. the email was strange. it came at 7:45 at night. if i was not paying attention, i would have thought it was spam. but i responded with the proper documents. and then we didn't hear anything back until i turned on the news and i saw that the program ran out of money, and that was, you know, tough for us because we were told so many things that if you received an sba number, then chances are that you would actually receive your funding and that we needed to, you know, wait patiently until our lender went through the process. but to date, nothing. >> and do you believe that that number, that application is in

place for the second round of ppp? you don't have to reapply under the new plan, do you? >> well, the problem is is that there is no transparency. so we don't know what to do. we've heard from sba officials that if we apply during the first round, then we shouldn't apply again. we've also heard from other, you know, governmental, you know, talking heads that we should apply to as many places as possible. we've heard from the business industry to just keep applying. at this point, i am just waiting to see what will happen, at least from that perspective. velshi, i have no confidence that the loan will come through, so it's up to us to save ourselves unfortunately. >> you actually called safeway to tell them that your business was going to fail, and they offered to help out by buying 11,000 products, but your problem is you can't staff that. you can't do that. >> that's right. we can't staff it, and you know,

the important part is that, number one, i am a minority manufacturer of baked goods, probably one of the coolest baked goods that people would ever have. but if it wasn't was for my direct relationships with my safeway district director, we would not have a lifeline, and because they care about our company and they care about our employees so deeply, they said, sure, we will place orders, even though i know that the grocery chain may not be able -- you know, may not have space on the shelf, but they told us yes. and now it's up to us to find funds in order to fulfill that order. so instead of worrying about the sba loan, we decided to focus on the purpose of our organization instead of profit, and so we turned our company into a baking ground for products to send out to nurses and doctors on the front line. if we can't, you know, profit from it, then at least we can live in the purpose of our company. >> wow. april, it is my deep and sincere hope that this all works out for

you and your staff, and i somehow believe it will, but boy, it must be hard getting up every day thinking about whether this business you've built continues. keep the faith, and we'll keep in close touch with you. april richardson is the owner of d.c. sweet potato cake and baked in baltimore. these are the real stories of what's going on in america. joe biden has now publicly denied sexual assault allegations leveled against him by a former senate staffer. coming up next, what's the media's role in investigating these claims? r what you need! [squawks] only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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former vice president joe biden after facing criticism for not responding to a sexual assault allegation made by a former staffer has now broken his silence. in a new interview with msnbc, biden categorically denied the assault. >> did you sexual assault tara reid? >> no, it is not true. i'm saying unequivocally it never, never happened, and it didn't. >> you write this, there's only one place a complaint of this kind could be, the national archives. are you confident there is nothing? >> i'm confident there's nothing. no one ever brought it to the attention of me 27 years ago. if there is a complaint, that's where it would be. that's where it'd be filed, and if it's there, put it out. i'm not going to go in and question her motive. i'm not going to attack her.

she has a right to say whatever she wants to say, but i have a right to say look at the facts. check it out. women have a right to be heard and the pressure to rigorously investigate claims they make. in every case the truth is what matters, and in this case the truth is the claims are false. >> nbc news has reached out to reid for her response to biden's interview this morning and has not heard back. right before appearing on msnbc, biden released a statement that said in part, quote, news organizations should examine and evaluate the full and growing inconsistencies in her story, end quote. this all goes back to a march 26th interview when tara reid, one of biden's former senate aides detailed an alleged 1993 sexual assault. reid says she filed a complaint with the senate at the time, but tells nbc news it didn't accuse biden of assault. biden in a new letter has asked the secretary of the senate to, quote, take or direct whatever

steps are necessary to locate and publicly release the complaint along with, quote, any and all other documents in the records that relate to the allegation, end quote. the presidential hopeful attended a virtual obama alumni fundraiser and made it clear taking his word that he didn't do it wouldn't be enough, and quote, that shouldn't be enough for anyone because we know that this sort of approach is exactly how the culture of abuse has been allowed to fester for so long. now last year, several women including reid separately accused biden of touching them in ways that made them feel uncomfortable. in line with the other allegations made against biden, reid said that biden put his hands on her shoulder and her neck making her feel uncomfortable. she did not mention the alleged 1993 assault. while biden offered no direct apology for those touching allegations, he did promise to be more mindful of the changing social norms saying, quote, the

boundaries of predicting personal space have been reset. i hear what they're saying, and i'll be much more mindful. that's my responsibility, and i'll meet it. so what happens next? joining me now is "washington post" political columnist karen tum l teen. thanks for being with us. >> thanks for having me and for being patient with my technical difficulties here. >> we're all having them these days. let's talk about this, what's the role -- you know, if we're supposed to in the media bear witness about things that are happening and then hold power to account, what's the right thing for the media to be doing in this case? >> well, there are a couple of things. the usual, which is, you know, accuracy, but i think here too, the thing that a lot of people are really struggling with is consistency. you know, there are some elements here of tara reid's account that have echoes of, you

know, what was happening with brett kavanaugh. i mean, there are friends who say that she told them about this back in the '90s, particularly compelling is the -- is the account of a roommate or a neighbor who said that she described these events. now, that's also -- these sorts of contemporaneous, you know, disclosures by this -- that's what we've seen in other cases. so i think that with that this became, i think -- there became a lot more kind of incumbent on the media to at least give tara reid a full hearing on this. and also to press for whatever biden might have that could, you know -- >> let's talk about that. because you wrote on friday

after the interview that joe biden did on "morning joe," biden deserves a presumption of innocence. his archive may indeed include nothing that is relevant, but the best way to remove a shadow of doubt is to open a window and let the light in. what does he need to say now to open that window and let the light in? >> i think -- and i wrote a column the day before that -- i think there are ways to do that that would not be essentially letting people in for a fishing expedition. we're talking about 2000 -- close to 2,000 boxes of documents in the university of delaware, the archives that have been sent there. there are a number of ways you could do this. what i suggested is perhaps sending in some sort of respected and non-biased researchers, maybe a couple of archivists, maybe a historian, maybe an academic and have them

go through these records and look for anything that might be relevant, and then to write at the end of that a report of what they found. now, that would -- like i said, it would prevent it from being a fishing expedition. it would, you know, keep the, you know, focus on the charges at hand because biden keeps saying, well, there are no personnel records in there, but i have spent many, many hours in, for instance, presidential libraries and there are lots of other kinds of records often, things like emails. i mean, perhaps memos that may have been written that spoke of how she was regarded in the office. there may be daily schedules of then senator biden that would give us an indication of whether he even had any interaction with her. there may be things that speak

to the general office. these are things that could actually be exculpatory for the former vice president. and you know, i think that among other things -- first of all, i think it's the right thing to do, and i think second of all, i think it's the politically smart thing to do. >> karen, at this juncture, by the way, the media as a whole has been criticized about how we cover these things and maybe some of the criticism is valid, but is there something that can happen, once we get to this point and someone's been accused and there has been this -- the growth in the story, is there any right answer that somebody like joe biden can give that would show that we're holding him to account and allow something to go on? >> well, i think that by kind of going the extra mile in disclosure, by -- that is a powerful statement of his faith

in his own -- in his own innocence here, so -- he is very much -- we're at this kind of hinge point in the #metoo movement, you want to give people a fair shot of proving their innocence. and i think that, you know, the reflexive reaction of a lot of biden supporters has been like, hey, look at donald trump. you know, there are more than a dozen credible accusations against him of sexual assault, and i think what that risks is making donald trump our new standard for dealing with this. >> karen, thank you for your analysis of this, karen tumulty, is a political columnist at "the washington post." i want to bring you up to speed with our latest nbc news reporting on this. nbc news has now spoken with 14 people who worked in biden's

various offices at the time, 1993, of reid's alleged assault. four of them have declined to comment. most of them have said they do not remember much about reid specifically, and none of the former staffers said they had heard any complaints about biden's behavior during their time in office. we'll continue to cover this story for you. this pandemic has proven that service workers are essential to everyday life, and it has exposed how u.s. policies have failed them. coming up next, congressman joe kennedy and the reverend william barber explain why it's time to change the definition of essential workers.

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pandemic, we've deemed those who make the sacrifice of being on the front lines of our hospitals, our grocery stores, and our warehouses essential, but if they are to survive this pandemic, more is going to be needed to be done to protect them. my next guests say that if these workers are actually essential,

then their lives are essential, too. and our government has the capacity to invest in the things that we consider essential. joining me now is congressman joe kennedy of massachusetts, and the reverend dr. william barber, co-chairman of the poor people's campaign. gentlemen, thank you to both of you. revere reverend dr. barber, you have made many points during this whole crisis that you and i have talked about, but the main one is before we had a crisis on our hands, we had a crisis on our hands of poor people. we had a crisis on our hands of 40 million people who are food insecure, somewhere up to 54 million people who live in food deserts, over 100 million people who live in what some people would describe as poverty in this country, and they have been hit harder by this crisis than most americans. >> we had 40 million people who are poor, and 62 million people work without living wages and

now we call not only nurses and doctors but those who deliver our packages, drive our buses, clean our offices, our hospitals, our janitors, they are all now called essential workers. two months ago we called them service workers, and right off the bat corporations got nearly $2 trillion, the essential workers have none of the basic essentials, guaranteed living wages, guaranteed sick leave, child care, rent forgiveness, food protection, protection of undocumented workers, and so what we have now is we have people who are giving first class service that are getting second class resources. ask you know, really, and i said this as a preacher, it's a shame, a sociological subversion of equal protection and it's a medical failure because it threatens us all. and this deal must address it or we have to say we must question america if we don't fix this issue and fix it now.

>> let's talk about the health part for a second, congressman. the reverend has said tieing coverage to employment has always been foolish but in a pandemic that requires us to shut down our economy in response, it is madness, which is true because it's not just that we are giving them second class treatment. people who do not have health care or can't afford to stay at home, but in fact, it is a public health issue. at this point there are more and more americans who are prepared to look at something that looks a little bit more like universal health care. and you have proposed something called the medicare crisis program act to expand medicare and medicaid eligibility during the crisis. >> yeah, so first off, thanks for having me and thanks for shining a light on what is a critically important moment in our country. there hasn't been a more eloquent and more dedicated moral force for justice in this country than reverend barber on these issues, and so always an honor for me to join with him in trying to push our country to

live up to our values. and what is, i think, so critically important to know in this moment is that if there's a lesson to take from covid-19, it's that your health and my health are linked. you are not going to stop a pandemic if you treat other people and say, hey, it is okay for this pandemic to spread unabated in your community because it's going to spread to me. it's not just the right thing to do, it's not just the moral thing to do. it is the smart thing to do and it is, in fact, the selfish thing to do. so for god sake at this moment, let's do what we need to do to make sure everybody gets access not just to coverage but to treatment. let's make sure that we treat people with the humanity and dignity they deserve, particularly those that are allowing and enabling society to scrape through in some semblance of functionality, and that's what this bill does, but that's what the overall culture for medicare for all is about. it's about recognizing that common humanity and recognizing our right to health care. >> the two of you have written

an op-ed in "the washington post," dr. barber, i'm going to read a little bit of it. it says we need hazard pay for these essential workers. we need a living wage for all. we need guaranteed sick days, paid family leave, universal child care and public transit worthy of the most powerful country in the developed world. we need a nationwide moratorium on evictions and foreclosures immediately, and looking forward, we need to reconfigure the policies that have kept so much housing unaffordable. it's strange, reverend barber, because those are not weird and outlandish things, and they certainly are not weird and outlandish things in almost every other developed country in the world, most of which are not nearly as wealthy as the united states, and yet, everything you suggest there seems like it may be out of reach right now. now, you've got a rally, i believe, the poor people's assembly in march on washington on june 20th. is that going to be an in-person rally? i think what you're trying to do is put pressure on people to say this is an urgent matter now.

do you think that's going to happen in real life, or is that going to be virtual? >> well, it's going to be virtual, but let me tell you the first thing we're doing. we're telling people right now to stay in place, stay alive, and organize and don't believe the lies. we're building a campaign for people to organize while they're staying at home. we're planning to put a hundred thousand calls into congress, both sides of the aisle to the speaker and to the senate leader, but on june 20th, 2020, we're talking about bringing together poor and low income people, essential workers from all over the country, story after story after story pushing that story and also the agenda that must change. we're going to also have people like jane fonda and the former vice president gore, and young people from sunrise, and the hip-hop coalition, and on and on. i could go 45 coordinating committees from around this country. we have to put pressure. here's the issue, we have too many people in power right now, political power, who are too comfortable with other people's death, and we cannot stand for

this. this is not some extremism. what it represents is fundamental establishment of justice, fundamental protection of all of our lives, and if we cannot do this now when people are dying, it is shameful. it is lethal if we don't deal with these issues now. that's why poor and low income people and essential workers are saying on june 20th virtually, we will not be silent anymore. wi we cannot be silent anymore. this is not about left and right. it's not about democrat versus republican. it is literally about life and death. >> what can you do, congressman kennedy, to get some of these -- to bring some of these ideas to fruition. is there an openness? there's certainly an openness among americans in general to address some of these inequity issues in a house that's been broken for a while. can you do it in the house for which you work? >> i think we not only can, we need to.

keep this in mind if you will, through the '60s and '70s, the vietnam war sparked a moral reckoning with our country and with our government. we have lost more people in the past two months than the nation lost during the vietnam war. in two months, and they have been disproportionately lower income, disproportionately people of color. the impacts of this have been the same lessons of that vietnam war that sparked an entire protest movement for a generation. that's the type of movement that we need. i think i thi with that momentum, we can do these things. if there was ever a lesson from this crisis, it is that our futures are linked, and we cannot go back to normal when that normal allowed this to happen. we have the ability now, and i think the understanding now to make these investments and understand that the piece that reverend barber and i just articulated, all of those values are already true for a segment

of our population. right? for folks that have means, they're not worried about a mortgage payment. they're not worried about working from home. they're not worried about child care, but for the folks that enable us to function, they are. and so it is just a fundamental question of fairness after we've gone through a crisis that has exposed the ways, the fractures, and fizz sures, i think with dr. barber's voice, the reverend's voice and the power of the movement he's leading i have no doubt we can make some progress here. >> and you know, ali -- >> yeah, go ahead, reverend. >> and you know, one of the things we're doing on june the 20th, we're going to have coal miners from kentucky joining with people from the mississippi delta. they're going to be white, they're black. we're going to have people from the apache nation. we'll have people from carolina to california. we're talking about bringing together people like jess box who's in alabama, who's a low

wage worker fighting to survive without health care, and linda nicholson from ohio and juan torres, and holly herbert who's a nursing aide, holly henry who's a nurse's aide being forced to work without protective gear every day, and she's saying she's been put in a situation of facing mass murder. these voices and faces must be heard, and we need the politicians to move now. i'm saying the house ought to pass the right -- let him say it to the american public and say it to american's faces, put the deal on the table that will take care of all of our people. >> gentlemen, thank you for the fight that you were fighting in the name of americans as reverend dr. barber said, there are too many people in power that are too comfortable with other people's deaths. massachusetts congressman joe kennedy and reverend william barber, the president of repairers of the breach and co-chairman of the poor people's campaign. the worst economic data we have ever seen.

that's the stark warning from the federal reserve. america's economic free fall is going to get much worse a lot faster. what's the best plan of action. we'll talk about that next. what's the best plan of action we'll talk about that next the gillette skinguard it has a guard between the blades that helps protect skin. the gillette skinguard. we hope you find our digital solutions helpful to bank safely from home. deposit a check with your phone or tablet. check balances, pay bills, transfer money and more. send money to people you know and trust with zelle. stay safe. stay home. together, we'll get through this. pnc bank in these challenging times, we need each other more than ever. we may be apart, but we're not alone. use aarp community connections

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the administration, congress, and the federal reserve have spent weeks attempting to help buoy the economy as we faced one of the biggest economic down turns in america's history. federal reserve chairman jay powell says second quarter data will likely be some of the worst we've ever seen. >> we're going to see economic data for the second quarter that's worse than any data we've seen for the economy, they're a direct consequence of the disease and the measures we're taking to protect ourselves from it. >> the chairman of the federal reserve has vowed to take aggressive action on the economy, but ultimately the decision-making time line comes down to the virus. with me is the chief economist

economic dwierz and former pimco ceo, good morning, thank you for being with us. you write in a bloomberg piece that quote, it's too early to say whether having stumbled into a stop go stop pattern the process ends up causing more human misery and volatility or instead after a rough start produces a healthy and sustainable economic recovery. that will depend on durable medical solutions and better economic relief measures. everyone needs to learn from the data, adapt their mind-set, and course correct their behavior to avoid the former and achieve the latter. tell us how we do that. what does that change look like? because there are millions of people who just want to know what the future looks like and what they can do to make it safer for them. >> so first and foremost, thank you for having me on. it involves involving our relief measures. less wall street, more main street, less corporation, more people. second, to draw the lesson from not just a war against the depression in 2008, '9, but any

war. it's not enough to win the war, you have to secure the peace. we have to look forward to a future that will involve lower productivity and higher depth, and we can do something about this now. so start formulating measures that ensure that more americans go back to work and remain as productive, and then thirdly, realize that we are very interdependent, you heard it, that we can no longer assume that you can be good house in a bad neighborhood. if the neighborhood is challenged, the house will be challenged. >> let's talk about what you think because one of the advantages that i always have in talking to you is that you look at things globally. what's working? what are the basic things that allow governments to get money to people as opposed to just corporations? what are the mechanisms that are working that we might want to do more of here in the united states? >> so first and foremost, better safety nets.

it turns out that our safety nets have huge holes and that has massive consequences not only for those who fall through and they're tragic consequences. go out and look at what's happening at food banks to get a feel for what 30 million people losing jobs really means, and then the second element that's important is learn from germany. learn from the uk where we have seen more collective responsibility to ensure that we can stop short-term problems from becoming long-term problems. ali, i keep on saying, this is not an engineering problem. the engineering solutions are out there. this is a willingness issue, and a recognition issue, and the more we advance on those last two issues, the more we can minimize what is already massive damage to the economy that results in massive pain and human suffering. >> you said to the -- to yahoo finance that you believe we're going to have the worst

recession since the great depression, and it's going to make 2008, 2009 look like a flesh wound. when, do you have some sense of when we get back to normal in terms of employment, wages, and normal life? or is it just too early to tell? >> so first, if you want to know where you're going, you better nowhere you ar know where you are. we are going to have a gdp contraction in the second quarter somewhere between 30 to 40%. we can go as high as 40%. those are incredible, astounding numbers that tell you there's real damage to the economy. we're going to see an unemployment rate somewhere between 20 to 25%. that is near the great depression level, and we have gotten there in two months. this is a massive shock to the economy, and if we're not careful, we're not going to bounce back quickly. we're going to bounce back very slowly. so it's easy to draw a baseline

even if you assume good health progress skpr progress, and we're making really encouraging advances on health, but if we don't take policies now, the economic recover is going to be very anemic, and we can't afford that. >> thank you for your time, the former ceo of pimco. donald trump is ordering meat processing plants to stay open, but are these facilities safe? you're watching "velshi" on msnbc. along with support, chantix is proven to help you quit. with chantix you can keep smoking at first and ease into quitting so when the day arrives, you'll be more ready to kiss cigarettes goodbye. when you try to quit smoking, with or without chantix, you may have nicotine withdrawal symptoms. stop chantix and get help right away if you have changes in behavior or thinking, aggression, hostility, depressed mood, suicidal thoughts or actions, seizures, new or worse heart or blood vessel problems, sleepwalking,

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growing concern about the health andg safety of essentia workers at maeat processing plants, a report shows nearly 5,000 workersws at 150 meat and poultry m processing facilities across the united states f test positive for covid-19.ve the staggering statistics coming justs days after president tru signed anay executive order to keep the plants open. joining me is mark perone, united food and commercial workers international presidentt mark, thank you forer joining u. you represent a lot of meat processing workers in food across the country. there are, in fact, a lot of workers who are not unionized and not protected by the union, and nthey have no voice in this issue. >> that's correct. that's about -- we represent about 80% of the beef and 80% of

pork in this country, and some did where's somewhere in the vicinity of 25 percent of poultry. we are concerned about the reopening. we believe that especially plants that had large outbreaks, ift you try to reopen too soon you're goingop to end up with, u know, basically creating the same thing to happen again. in other words, more people are going to get infected, and we're going to have another closure. you cannot operate plants with only 20% of the workers inside. it's just not feasible. it causes backups and at the range level and everywhere else. we need testing, sick pay, if in fact people are off work because of it. we need social distancing. we need safety standards, quite frankly, that are uniform from plant to plant. that's the point that you made about the nonunion plants. they're not nearly as aggressive as the ones that have been represented by the ufcw.

we need enhanced ppe. what i mean by that is layering of the ppe, whether or not it's the partitions, shields, as well as masks. masks that will work inside these plants. and some of the normal n95 masks in some parts of the plant won't work. you're goingon to need a much me aggressive mask in there, ali. >> are you t in response to the president's order to keep these plants going, are you getting some feedback on the request that's you're making for simple things like personal protective equipment, rapid testing, enforceable rule and sick leave? >> well, we've done letters to the white house, to the coronavirus task force, as well as to vice president pence. we have not received word back from them about whether or not they're goingba to do those ite for us or not. we keep hearing that rapid testing and current testing is

coming, but it hasn't -- we haven't seen it yet. >> sir, thank you for joining me. mark perone, head of the united food and workers international representing a majority of the food, meat processing workers in america. thank you for joining g me. that does it for me. i'll be back at 7:00 p.m. eastern. coming up nextt on "a.m. joy," discussion of the plight of americans who have to make a choice between their paychecks and their lives. thank you for watching. s. thank you for watching these days staying connected is more important than ever.

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today i was working next to a guy and we kept bumping into each other. and like my first worry was what if he has the virus and he keeps bumping into me and like it's going to -- you know, going to come to me, and then i'm going to bring it home, and then like all my roommates, my son, everybody's going to get it. >> good morning, and welcome to "a.m. joy." as of this morning, there are more than a million confirmed cases of coronavirus in the united states. just take that in for a moment. and the death toll reached a grim milestone this week. the nearly 65,000 dead has surpassed the number of americans killed in the vietnam war. we have yet to see an adequate number of test swabs or protective equipment or ventilators in many hot spots around the country.