we are in a state of emergency. black people are dying in a state of emergency. we cannot look at this as an isolated incident. the reason why buildings are burning are not just for our brother, george floyd. we're -- they're burning down because people here in minnesota are saying to people in new york, to people in california, to people in memphis, to people all across this nation enough is enough. >> good morning. and welcome do a.m. joy. as americans continue to grapple with a deadly pandemic that's killed more than 103,000 people and counting, one third of the virus deaths on earth, and left more than 40 million people

unemployed we find ourgselves being forced to look away from the virus and back once again to the other virus us that are still inflicting this country. the sickness of racism and cruelty. whether in the faculties of the coronavirus to kill black and brown people at a disproportionate rate or to continue to cry out that black lives matter. in the murder of george floyd. floyd died following a fatal encounter with four police officers. video of the arrest taken by a 17-year-old girl, a bystander, shows an officer pinning floyd's neck to the ground with his knee for exactly eight minutes and 46 seconds while floyd pleaded for his life and repeatedly told the officers, i can't breathe. early echoing the last words of eric garner in new york in 2014.

derek chauvin, the officer seen kneeling on floyd's neck in that video and in a second video that emerged this week was officially charged with third degree murder and manslaughter on friday. but that arrest failed to calm the protests which extended to a fourth day and night in minneapolis and spread across the country. in new york, in atlanta, in louisville, kentucky, and in cities all around the u.s. with the anger extending beyond the taking of george floyd's life, to include the killing of ahmaud arbery t georgia man shot to death while he was jogging in his own neighborhood after being pursued by three armed white men in two cars, all of whom have now been arrested. and breonna taylor, the emt who was gunned down by police in her

very own home after they burst into the wrong apartment after midnight. the anger that you're seeing in america right now is raw and it is real and it comes from a place of deep frustration and pain and exasperation that is decades and decades old. on friday, the floyd family acknowledged the arrest of officer chauvin as a welcome but overt overdue step to the road to justice and they are still calling for the arrests of the other officers involved. protests are expected to continue az cross the country today including a rally being led by al sharpton this afternoon in new york. but the trauma of again, watching two unarmed black men die on tape along with consuming several additional accounts of police brutality against african americans all over america just this month served as a somber

reminder that even when everything stops for a global pandemic, this doesn't stop. this thing that has corrupted this country since its founding, this killing and this cruelty takes no breaks, not ever. joining me now is benjamin crump, attorney for the family of george floyd and ahmaud arbery and i'm going to not go first to my long time friend, ben. i'm going to go to keith ellison first. this is your state. it is just one state that is in turmoil right now. do you believe that the arrest and charges against this one officer, officer chauvin and eel read just a little built of what they are and this is cut one from my producers and this is the complaint against eric chauvin. the defendant had his knee on mr. floyd 8 minutes and 36 seconds in total.

police are trained that this type of restraint with a subject is in a prone position is inherently dangerous. it was a defrayed indifference to him. i'm going to hold on. governor tim walls is holding a press conference right now. let's go to that and we'll come back. >> with foex bent on destroying property with no regard for safety of minnesotans and certainly no desire to make a statement other than wanting destruction and chaos. i want to thank the minnesotans who abided by the curfew. i want to thank our responders who are out there protecting our cities as they were taking incoming fire, improvised explosive device vices as and a controlled group of folks bent on adapting their tactics to make it as difficult as possible

to maintain that order. my mission has been very clear to the folks in minnesota in conjunction with mayor of minneapolis, mayor carter of st. paul is protection of citizen and property is our top priority and maintaining and restoring civil order on the streets. i think what's really important to recognize is the tactics and approach that we have taken have evolved and need to evolve the same way. with a sensitivity to the legitimate rage and anger that came after what the world witnessed in the murder of george floyd and was manifested in a very healthy gathering of community to memorialize that on tuesday night was still present to a certain degree on wednesday. by thursday it was nearly gone

and last night is a mockery of pretending this is about george floyd's death or inequities or historical traumas to our communities of color. because our communities of color were out front fighting hand in hand to save businesses that took generations to build. infrastructure and nonprofits that have served the struggling community were torn down and burned by people with no regard for what went into that. so let's be very clear, the situation in minneapolis is no longer in any way about the murder of george floyd. it is about attacking civil society instilling fear and disrupting our great cities. with that being the case, as we indicated last night, our tactics again is to try and reduce loss of life, to do what we can to restore order.

we mobilized the largest mobilization of national guard that were in the field lastnigh. we pulled in state patrol and state assets to augment minneapolis and st. paul's force. as i told people who are listening, this is not an infinite number of people that we can pull. the minnesota state patrol is a highly trained, highly organized force that when every single one of them is up and operating is at about 700. you can't operate all the time on that. the same thing with the minnesota national guard. and of course, the cities. so as you saw this expand across the united states and you start to see whether it be domestic terrorism, whether it be side logical extremist to fan the group or whether it be international destabilization of how our country works, those

the secretary of defense es per and with the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff extensively to update on the situation, receive their situation report as they're seeing it across the country and to suggest courses of action of going forward. in consultation with the mayors and the resources they have and just to be very clear, as you witness this, whether it be new york or denver or louisville or las vegas, there is no mayor in america that has the resources to push back on an organized attempt to destabilize civil society with no regard for life or property. so in consultation as a group and as we sit this morning i'm authorizing and talking to general jensen to fully mobilizmobilize the minnesota national guard. an action that has never been take in the history of the minnesota national guard. we will pull in assets as we have been doing and for those wondering where are the fire

trucks, where are the police that are out there, the situation was so broad and the tactics were so bent on causing destruction that every single person we had mobilized again, the largest in state history last evening was engaged in that. by this afternoon our hope is to exponentially have that force out there to use all other resources in the state and our partnerships of sister cities across there and counties to help us and i have made initial calls and will be speaking with the governors of adjacent states who will be providing significant support through their national guards. the message is clear, minnesota. we had a tragedy on monday night. we understand the work that we need to do and the generational pain that went into what happened with george floyd and that murder. but at this point in time nothing we do to address those inequities, nothing we do to

provide justice to george floyd and his family that i spoke with last evening, none of those things matter to any of these people who are out there firing upon national guard, burning businesses of our communities, and making intent on disrupting any semblance of civil life. so in partnership with the mayors and the team that is here, throughout the day today there will be peaceful protests that were previously scheduled. they will be large as anticipated. and today will be an expression of that grief of the loss of george floyd. there will be legitimate exercising of first amendment rights. every single person in this room will put all of these resources we're talking about to protect their right to do that. to protect their right to gather as community. i will continue to stress because it seems a lifetime ago.

we are still in the middle of a pandemic and passed 1,000 deaths yesterday. we still have hospitals on the verge of being overrun with covid-19. the folks that are gathering out there and if you watch on tuesday and wednesday, social distancing masks, the masks worn last night were worn to disguise. the mask worn by people there were to cause confusion and take advantage of the situation but the rest of us need to maintain that. for minnesotans wondering about the safety and concern everyone in this room is up all night. the nightmare of these people starting fires that can jump and arson. at this point in time it is nothing short of a blessing that we have not had someone killed in an innocent bystander in this. that situation can be expected to deteriorate further with these people. as you're going to hear from commissioner harrington, they are adapting, they are receiving

information together, they are being fed by professionals in this, and professional tactics, in urban warfare, those types of things are happening with these people and they -- again, as i said, they are getting what they want. they are getting on tv, they are seeing the images. they have the governor of minnesota standing up here at 2:30 at night talking about how we're moving things around and they're getting what they wish. but today they're going to get what they wish. they are going to have an overwhelming force of safety, security and peace that the citizens of minnesota and our surrounding neighbors are going to provide to that. they are going to see a coordination to the best of our ability to make sure that this stops and it ends. that is going to happen and i'm speaking with governors across the country who are in the same situation trading information. many cities are aware, we were on wednesday night and they're expecting to be where we were on thursday night. and that is a situation that must end. so minnesotans, this is a

challenging time. our great cities of minneapolis and st. paul are under assault by people who do not share our values, who do not value life in the work that went into this and certainly are not here to honor george floyd and they need to -- they need to see today that that line will stop and that order needs to be restored. with that i want to welcome up mayor jacob frey, the minneapolis mayor and someone who from the beginning saw this before any mayor in the country and requested national guard support earlier than any mayor in the country and now this situation is requesting the next step of full mobilization. mayor frey. >> thank you, governor. the show of force tonight has got to be about safety, security, peace and order.

our minneapolis residents are scared and rightfully so. we've seen long-term institutional businesses overridden. we've seen community institutions set on fire and i want to be very, very clear. the people that are doing this are not minneapolis residents. they are coming in largely from outside of the city, from outside of the region to prey on everything that we have built over the last several decades. the dynamic has changed over the last several days. if you looked at tuesday, it was largely peaceful protests, the vast majority peaceful. the vast majority of people from our city with a small group of people looking to have intentional disturbance. gradually that shift was made and we saw more and more people coming from outside of the city. we saw more and more people

looking to cause violence in our communities and i have to say it is not acceptable. if you're concerned, i get it. if you have family members or friends that are even considering protesting, this is no longer about protesting. this is no longer about verbal expression. this is about violence and we need to make sure that it stops. we're in the middle of a pandemic right now. we have two crisis that are sandwiched on top of one another. in order to make sure that we continue to have the necessary community institutions, we need to make sure that our businesses are protected, that they are safe and that they are secure. so too are minneapolis residents. we are with you. we will be mobilizing the

largest force that has ever come forward in the state of minnesota history to help. we understand that you're concerned. we want to be there for you. thank you. >> thank you, mayor. mayor carter. >> thank you, mayor frey. thank you. what we're experiencing right now is one of the most heart breaking weeks in american history, certainly in minnesota history. we woke up at the beginning of this week to, as we all know, a disgusting, disturbing video of mr. george floyd being wrongfully killed. he was unarmed, he was not aggressive, he begged for his life, he called for his mom and

bystanders screamed, this man is dying. and over the course of a 10-minute video, we see the life squeezed out of mr. floyd. anger over his death is understandable. sadness, pain, heart ache, frustration is legitimate. we have in our community right now an enormous number of people of all ages of all races, of all backgrounds who agree that mr. floyd should still be alive. we have in our community an enormous number of people of all ages of all races of all backgrounds, of all neighborhoods who are looking to see not only one, but four, all

four of the officers involved in his death be fully held accountable. we have an enormous number of people in our community who are heart broken by the fact that the name george floyd does not stand alone in history, but that it joins a too long and too rapidly growing list of names of unarmed, unaggressive african american men who have lost their lives wrongfully at the hands of law enforcement and the frustration that time and time again we've seen no one held accountable. we have an enor mus amount of legitimate frustration of people ask when? how long will it take? people who ask how egregious does it have to be?

people ask how blatant -- how well documented does it have to be for someone to be held accountable for george floyd's murder? that frustration, that pain is real and it's legitimate. and to all the people in our community who believe what i just said, who whole heartedly need the world to hear that mr. floyd should be alive, that someone should be held accountable and that we as a community, we as a culture, we as a society must do everything we can imagine to keep this from happening again, we stand with you. i stand with you. there are many, many ways for us to work together in a constructive manner that build our communities, that empowers our communities to speak up with a loud voice. the world is listening. there are opportunities for us to do that in a constructive manner.

unfortunately, there are also those among us who would seek to use this moment, who would seek to use his death as an excuse, as a cover to agitate for the destruction of those same communities that have been most traumatized by george floyd's death. those same communities that have been most traumatized by the dual crisis of a covid-19 pandemic and an economic crisis that we're facing right now, those same communities are being retraumatized right now. as our black owned barbershop, as our immigrant owned restaurants, our family owned businesses are damaged and destroyed night after night.

this must stop. i know mayor frey, myself whole heartedly support the right of people to protest, the right of free speech for people to say what they believe about the world, to speak up and say and participate in making this world a better place, that right to speak stops at destruction of lives, destruction of property, destruction of livelihood. in st. paul last night and across our twin cities a curfew went into effect. because we had a relative stillness in st. paul we didn't make an enormous number of arrests, but every single person we arrested last night i'm told was from out of state.

what we are seeing right now is a group are not from here. as i talk to my friends who have been in this movement for a very long time who wake up in this movement every day and i ask them what they're seeing, what they're feeling, what they're saying to a person, i hear them say we don't know these folks. we don't know these folks who are inkrietding violence. we don't know these folks that were first in to break a window. and those folks who are agitating and inciting are taking advantage of the pain, of the hurt, of the frustration of the anger of the very real and legitimate sad rns that so many of our community members feel to advocate for the destruction of

our communities. i i echo the governor's statements in that our police officers, our firefighters are facing something they've never seen before. that alone will be very, very difficult to address. one thing that i've learned about the world, about minnesota and certainly about st. paul is every time ugliness raises its head in our community the beauty of community, that beautiful spirit that paul well stone once spoke about when he said we all do better when we all do better arises across the twin cities yesterday, across st. paul yesterday we saw countless neighbors show up for each other. we saw people show up with a broom and a bucket, a rag to clean and just work together.

they weren't cleaning their cousin's store or their uncle's store. they were just coming to help each other, to clean up our city. over the last couple of months, thanks to the fact that we in minnesota have a governor who took strong action early to protect minnesotans in this pandemic crisis, we showed that togetherness by staying home. >> i want to take a very quick break from this press conference to bring in keith ellison who is the attorney general of minnesota. i want to quickly ask you, all three of the men who have spoken so far this morning, the governor, jacob frey who is the minneapolis mayor, mayor melvin carter who we're going to go back to in just a moment have all said that the people they're seeing sparking violence, setting fires seem to be people coming from outside of the community out of state. mayor melvin carter said every single person arrested last night was from outside of the state and governor walls said he

is now consulting with the department of homeland security about possible even foreign interventions into the state. what's your reaction to that? my reaction is that a few days ago there was a man dressed in all black, he was a caucasian person. he had a gas mask, black gloves an umbrella. it was not raining, and he was smashing windows and apparently throwing incindiary devices into businesses that had nothing to do with the tragedy around mr. floyd. and so people protesters photographed this. the video is existing and you can see it about they confronted him, who are you and he just walked away. that led me to believe that there is real legitimate evidence that this is a very serious operation being done to

tarnish the legitimate protest that is going on. we need an investigation on who these people are and their identity and i will just say as i close, when jamar clark protest was going on, a group of white supremacists went on facebook announcing they were going to attack the protest, did so, but -- and then shot people. they were caught and then they were prosecuted and you know that this type of thing happens when planned. we have no reason to believe it's not happening now. it needs to be a separate and independent investigation. >> so is what you're saying to be very clear that you believe that people are infiltrating these legitimate protests that are about the death, the killing of george floyd and they're using them to attack protesters and attack businesses. governor walls said to tear down businesses in the black community that have taken decades to build. do you believe this is an organized operation against the

protesters and against the city of minneapolis and against the state? >> i have every -- and against civil society. i have every reason to believe that the facts exist to launch that investigation and i will say this. the people who would go out on the street to protest for justice for mr. floyd are not going to burn down the historic social justice advocacy groups that are -- for the native american community. the vegan restaurant, that's not what they're going to do. they're not going to leave the south side of minneapolis, come all the way to the north side and attack the only grocery store that low income african americans use all the time for food and as well as the walgreens. it doesn't make sense at all. this violence is widespread. the people appear very well organized. they are pictures of these folks. we need to identify them and

hold them accountable and prosecute them and we need to remember the jamar clark case where organized white supremacists were caught and criminally prosecuted for attacking the protest. i think there's ample reason for us to investigate that and i absolutely urge that we do and i think that that is a critical factor of what's going on here. they want the people looking at minneapolis to believe that this is just minneapolis people acting up. it's not true. i'm not saying that no one from the protest did anything that they shouldn't have done. i'm saying that the greater bulk of the violence and the arson is being done by external forces in my belief and i believe we should investigate that and find evidence to prove that. >> attorney general keith ellison for the state of minnesota. thank you so much for your time this morning. that is very big and very important news and i think we need to have a larger discussion about that across the country.

let's go back to the press conference and this is now john harrington and he is the commissioner of the minnesota department of public safety. >> a group that is throwing batteries, firing and attacking firefighters, ems law enforcement, sheriff's department and national guardsmen as to provide safety in our community, we have watched these groups grow both in brazenness and we've watched them also grow in challenging approaches that we have had to adapt to. we have watched them take on efforts where there were literally 5,000 trashing the building and then when confronted, running back under

the cover of darkness to residential areas. we have watched them try and destroy downtowns. whether it was a preventive measure or simply patch the holes that they had punctured into the buildings that support and the anchors of our downtown areas. we are adapting to their tactics we have made more arrests virtually every day and we have focused on the area of protest, where this is not a demonstration while that we will always and i repeat always respect everyone's first amendment rights, those rights stop the end of a molotov

cocktail thrown into an open business. those rights stop at the point that you loot the liquor store in the neighborhood. those rights stop when you loot the gas station the little mom and pop gas station in a neighborhood. minnesota's national guard are gearing up. we're getting bigger and we are changing our approach because this is intolerable and we are coming to stop it. i don't wan want anyone to make any mistakes about that. we will make sure that those folks that come out today that want to mourn mr. floyd's passing, that their rights are in fact protected. that these rioters are in fact, trampling on those rights by

making it too dangerous for good people to speak their minds. and we cannot as a community, we cannot as minnesotans, we cannot, as members of the twin cities community, tolerate that. so you can expect to see law enforcement, the national guard, state, county and local in lock step tonight preventing, responding, rescuing and repelling attacks on our businesses, on our personal safety, under the personal liberties of the twin cities area. at this time we'd introduce general jensen, then minnesota

national guard. >> i don't think i could speak with any more passion than the four gentlemen that just spoke in front of me, so what i will do is just give you a quick update on the last 48 hours of the minnesota national guard's participation in this operation. 24 hours ago we had approximately 400 guardsmen on state active duty in support of the governor's executive order. as mentioned, by the governor yesterday we reached a peak that the minnesota national guard had never been at before. over 700 soldiers and airmen mobilized in support of the governor's executive order. and while it was the largest mobilization and as commissioner harrington described, the largest law enforcement

operation in minnesota's history, it was not enough. early yesterday we began mobilizing additional soldiers. and we expected and we expect by noon to have 2,500 soldiers and airmen mobilized and in support of the governor's executive order. but that's not enough. the governor just announced the full mobilization of the minnesota national guard for the first time since world war ii. what does that mean? it means we're all in. we are all in with the two mayors to my left, their citizens, their communities that they represent and we're all in to the two law enforcement professionals to my right supporting them to ensure we

bring stability and peace back to our two great cities. but even that's not enough. as governor walls just laid out, we had a conversation with secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and we are requesting national level resources to come to the state. to make -- keep contributions to the operation that commissioner harrington has laid out. so to our two mayors and to our two law enforcement professionals and to you governor, the minnesota national guard is all in. >> thank you, governor. i don't intend on rehashing the ground that has been covered by all the folks up here saying the

important things they said but i do stand here as chief of the minnesota state patrol to say that we have done something that we've never done in the history of our organization all the way back to 1929 in terms of the mobilization of our state troopers from all across minnesota that have come to the metro area to do whatever we can to get back to what we believe in as an organization and as a minnesota state patrol that we reflect our core values of respect, integrity, courage, honor and excellence. that's who we are and that's who we believe minnesotans are too and our job is to get out there in the middle of the mission that we're confronted with right now to stop the criminal behavior that we have been seeing and to prevent the criminal behavior that we regretfully anticipate we will see tonight and into the near future. we're working as hard as we can because i've heard from plenty of minnesotans that they don't like what they see, they don't

think that what is going on represents who we are in minnesota, and they want to help. so we need your support, we need your prayers. and we need your thoughts as we work as hard as we possibly can to get minnesota out of this current situation and stabilized so we can move forward and make the state what we believe it should be, one that is safe for every single person who lives or visits this wonderful state. thank you. >> thank you, colonel. before i take questions i'd just like to -- i think you got an assessment of what's on the ground. i am certainly not going to make light of the seriousness of where we're at. for those who are wondering if we were timid or something happened, i think you need to understand, even going in to last night this was the largest force and exhausted much of what we had going into that.

the professionalism and the tactics were by the book. one of the things is, when you're a force of good and law & order you play by the rules. when you are bent on destruction and harm and chaos you don't have to do that. and it makes it very, very difficult. and i think it's important to note too that this call and the call up of the guard and the attempt to do this is only going to make it more difficult tonight. the people listening do not see this as a deterrent. they are not somehow searching their soul and deciding that this was stupid and destructive and wrong of what they did. this is the challenge they were looking for. the call will go out to join and the call will be there to try and break the back of civil society and put it forward. so i'm not telling you and trying to make this any lighter. this is going to be very difficult. and to set expectations, they will slip away and they will

start fires. they will do that. no matter how many people we have on the ground with where they were at, our goal is to decimate that force as quickly as possible they have. it's to protect life, property and restore that order, but they will bring everything that they have to this. so i think it is very clear and i would make that statement, and it will use social media, they will do whatever they want to do, our expectation is to have the curfew in place, our expectation is to restore order it will be a dangerous situation on the streets tonight. we will do everything in our power to restore that order that minnesotans expect, that minnesotans demand, but as each of these folks said it is going to take all of us. i am grateful to our neighbors, our fellow americans who are helping and who are sending

prayers and thoughts to the fellow governors. i am grateful to the president and the administration for continuing to be on the line and offer and provide assistance when needed. and i'm most grateful to minnesotans. we built this state, we built the north star. everything that we believe in, these people are trying to destroy. so if you are on the streets tonight, it is very clear, you are not with us, you do not share our values and we will use the full strength of goodness and right shoeousness to make s this ends. with thatty eel be able to answer any questions. >> can you be more specific about the numbers? i don't think you're saying 10,000 people have come in from out of state or that every bit of violence has come in from people outside the state so where did that sort of cross over from earlier demonstrations to what's going on onow and again, what kind of numbers are

you talking about and what can we share. >> y'all let these folks -- it's a good question. peter's question is about how do we know this. as i said earlier in the week this is not about saying oh, this isn't us, it's everybody from everywhere else. we understand that the catalyst for this was minnesotans and minnesotans' inability to deal with inequality, inequities and quite honestly the racism that has persisted. i am not denying that. but what we're at right now and we're trying to get numbers on this and i will try and what i'm asking the media to help us on, we're going to start releasing who some of these people are and they'll be able to start tracing that history of where they're at and what they're doing on the dark web and how they're organizing but i'm not trying to say that. i think our best estimate i heard is about 20% is what we think are minnesotans and about 80% are outside. so i'm not trying to deflect in any way, i'm not trying to say

there aren't minnesotans amongst this group. we know we have folks that may not be there too. the vast majority right now and i think the difference is and this is where mayor carter, mayor frey spoke on this. our solidarity are with people with what happened to george floyd must be fixed. we'll get more data. peter, you want to follow up on that? all right. yes, sir. >> who are these people and what's happening right now in terms of you going after them? >> yeah. john, you want to talk about that? >> as we begun making arrests, we have begun analyzing the data of who we have arrested and begun actually doing what you would think almost very similar to our covid. it's contact tracing. who are they associated with?

who -- what platforms are they advocating for? and we have seen things like white supremist organizers who have posted things on platforms about coming to minnesota. we are checking to see do the folks that we have made arrests on and that we have information, are they connected to those platforms. we have seen flyers about protests where folks have talked about they're going to get their loot on tonight and we're checking to see, are they part of an organized criminal organization? and if so, what is that organization and how is that -- how are they organized? we have been working with both our state, our county, our local and our federal partners to start looking around and is this organized crime? is this an organized cell of terror? where are the -- where do these folks -- where's the linkage is what we're doing and so we are in the process right now of

building that information network, building that intel effort so that we can link these folks together, figure out what the organizations that have created this and then understand how do we go after them legally? that is absolutely part and parcel of our mission. we are in fact public safety and we recognize that there are legal issues that are involved here but we are not going to tolerate the violence and the destruction that they're using as a cover for the other illegal activity. >> you said you're going to release names? you're going to release information? how will that happen, what form? >> i expect we'll be able to release some of the names of those folks that have been arrested and some of the background information that we have pulled together and we hope to be able to do that today. >> i think putting that to the media too is the help on that

and the -- the frustration we feel about who are they, why do they do this and it was one of the things i've asked them to get this out clearly. next question, please. >> can you talk more about your conversation with secretary esper this morning and what we might expect from federal military assistance? >> this is the second conversation in 24 hours. i was joined on that call by our leadership team, general jensen being the lead with military affairs. we're looking at what are the resources they have. is there signal intelligence we can get from them? are there things we can provide us and talking about the mechanisms that we use in the national guard. i think it's really important again for folks to think about the uniqueness of our nation of protecting civil liberties is to make sure that civilian control of the military and especially inside the united states is carried out by civilians, by citizen soldiers, by national guard. this goes back to 1804 and when we redid the act in 2007 i was

the lead author of in 2007 so i understand very clearly the militarization of a civilian population is a deep concern. that's why we're accessing and they're help us access all these assets through the national guard and our surrounding states. they're also able to provide what they're seeing. they have obviously there nsa and others massive support to see who these operators are. as you saw this and it's been 48 hours playing out, thinking about this, the wars that we fought to protect our nation, the war on terrorism, all that, over the last 72 hours these people have brought more destruction and more terror to minnesota than anybody in our history. that's who we're up against. when you see them out there wearing a t-shirt or a baseball hat and walking down, that is not who they are. that is not who this is. and so i think it's very clear to change your mind set as we're changing ours and keeping that line again of the respect for peaceful protesting, it

hasmorphed over the last 48 hours to something very different. >> the curfew did little to stop the destruction that happened last night. you're talking about how the motto of law enforcement that you have here and yet we have crews out all night. we didn't see law enforcement till well after 11:00. >> it's the sheer numbers. this has never -- there were more law enforcement and they were actively engaged like no time in the 90-year history of that. that's how big this was. one of the thing it is about a curfew is, much like i continue to say, civil society is not maintained just by laws in the threat of punishments. it's maintained by the sense of a social compact that we share the same values. the curfew gives us a legal authority to make the arrests and start separating that. i believe in setting the expectations on this, what

you've seen in previous nights i think will be dwarfed by what you see tonight. you will be swept up in this. we will do the best but think about the logistics of arresting someone, in a force who wants to break the line and under the tactics that we use, if we draw into a crowd with a molotov cocktail, they're surrounding these folks. they're trying to escalate a situation where deadly force is used and chaos ensues. the national guard support earlier than anybody in the country. national guard was mobilized at a level unseen in minnesota history by wednesday morning. the forces on the ground last night are dwarfing anything we saw from riots going back in minnesota history. so you're seeing the sheer numbers of where the protesters are at and that is our job and what we're doing today to pull

in all these resources. but just to be very clear, those who say federalize and bring them in, you're talking about 400 people under that scenario and also fundamentally changing how we go about policing and stt balance. so if it were the case, throw everything at this, send out 100,000 people and go out and arrest every one of these people, that's the situation you would see on the streets. so there has to be tactical, with the support, we have to get the help with the public to making sure if you are not involved in this and what i would ask today is, if you know where these people are sleeping today, let us know and we will execute warrants. let us know if there's someone that's there to do this. if you know someone was protesting, help us. help us. call that in. tell us who they were. they're not from minneapolis but they're staying down here, they're coming in. next question. yes. >>. >> a couple of questions. how many arrests have

so far and do you -- how would you go about enforcing the curfew, putting law enforcement in harm's way in a situation like that? >> i'll answer this for the commissioner before he comes up here. again, being as transparent as possible. i'm speaking to minnesotans about articulating a plan. some of this is going to be the tactics that we use. these folks are very smart. they will adjust and adapt. we changed in two nights. they changed with us. i'll let john talk about the number of arrests and maybe the basic techniques you're seeing. >> on the st. paul side, as best and these are all -- we had 20 arrests on the st. paul side. over half of those were for burglary and when we talk about burglary, you can think about the grocery stores and those walgreens and all of the liquor stores and the pharmacies that have been broken into. as you look at all the plywood

up and about, they were significant numbers for burglary and then there was about a third of that total was for curfew violations in addition to that. on the minneapolis side, i believe there was, once again, close to 20, i think between 15 and 20 there. once again, much of that was for curfew violations and/or for destruction of property. so that's the numbers we have so far. we recognize that that's only essentially st. paul and minneapolis. we really need to get hennepin county booking numbers, ramsey county booking numbers. as there were firebombings done throughout the area. we have to tap into washington, dakota, anoka county also. they had also crimes committed in their jurisdictions. >> after 8:00 tonight, anyone is

aiding and abetting and providing cover for those folks, are you telling legitimate protesters to not help provide cover? >> peter, i didn't catch the second part of your question there. >> are you telling folks in your city that they are providing cover for this activity when they are out after curfew and that they should stop doing that? >> yes. by being out tonight, you are most definitely helping those who seek to wrong our city. let me be clear about this curfew. you know, the people in our city, the residents of minneapolis, they are not abiding by the curfew because they don't want to get arrested. they're abiding by the curfew because they understand that it's the right thing to do for our city. londoners during world war i and world war ii didn't turn off their lights because the

government told them to. they recognized it was the right thing to do for their city and country. that's the same thing we're seeing right here. let me be clear about the numbers that we've seen. you know, early on, there were so many questions about why don't we just arrest our way out of this. on wednesday and thursday. and why don't we have an officer placed in each and every business. if we were to place an officer at all of the businesses that we were seen getting attacked and looted, it would be one officer facing, in some instances 100 people coming in. if they were to arrest one, the other 99 walk right by. we certainly don't want to incite addition al violence by triggering some form of force. this became a difficult situation that was not about planning or strategy, but about math. i want to be very clear. we did not have the numbers

early on. this was about math. on wednesday afternoon i called the governor as soon as i heard from our chief arradondo and requested assistance from the national guard. we are appreciative to have those resources. we definitely need the numbers because we can't do it alone and now that we do have a very concerted and unified contingent right now and so tonight, yes, most definitely abide by the curfew. we'll need everybody complying. >> if i could have -- >> respond to that. >> sure. >> yes. thank you. i think we've all made the distinction that there are people who are seeking to peacefully protest and there are other people who are agitators, seeking to agitate and incite violence. the problem that we're hearing from a lot of our friends in the movement here in minnesota for a very long time is that you have

somebody who will go forward and break a window or try to start a fire or something and as the governor mentioned, then go run back behind the people who are trying to peacefully protest and use them essentially as human shields. so i hear people saying, the curfew didn't work to stop the incidents to happen last night. to be clear, i don't think there's an expectation that people who are here from out of town to incite violence are going to say oh, shoot, we can't go out there because the mayor implemented an 8:00 curfew. what that is designed to do is separate those well-meaning community members who are heartbroken, who are feeling legitimate anger and sadness and ask them as the mayor just said to stay home. stay out of that so that we can separate who are the people in our community hurting, who need to be able to peacefully express

their first amendment rights from who are the people in the community look to go break a window or start a fire or create destruction in our communities. i would echo what the mayor said, by virtue of being out in that space, by virtue of being a part of the crowd that the people would hope to destroy our communities can hide in that, yes, would be aiding those who are attempting to destroy our communities. that's the purpose of the curfew. >> thank you. >> we will gather at noon. i would ask this -- we'll gather at noon -- one second, please. we'll gather at noon with civil rights leaders, members of this movement. folks who understand this clearly and have them speak to you, too, about this very questionment i'm sorry. please go ahead. >> one follow-up question. very important. when you talk about full mobilization, how many national guard troops are you willing to access, have you asked for? can we get specific? >> this might be a distinction

on when you're in the guard and when you're ready to deploy. >> we have approximately 13,200 minnesota guardsmen now. all are not qualified to be fully mobilized. they haven't conducted basic training or military occupational skill training. but when the governor tasked me this morning with full mobilization, his expectation is that every soldier and airman regardless of military job is available for this operation. so at this time i don't have a number to give you to top in as i mentioned, 13,200. the bottom end is where we are right now. 2,400. so it will be in between those two numbers as we work through this. >> thank you. >> next question. >> the citizens have offered -- federal troops to come in.

are you going to accept it? what kind of a precedent is that going to set? >> that was back to an earlier question. the president offering that. where they put their 82nd airborne and some of those on readiness. we've been consulted early. i spoke to the president himself two days ago. i have spoken twice with secretary esper and joint chief of staff chairman millie along with the guidance of general jensen about what that would look like. as i said earlier, the resources providing us in material resources, there is a mechanism with the national guard which we are relying on, which is quicker and better and much easier to do is to rely on our state partners around us to provide. they're not talking about mobilimobil mobilizing the united states army. we're talking in the neighborhood of several hundred. we can get more troops quicker than that. but that is an option put out there. it's support that goes with us.

at this time, minnesotans, we will be back here. we'll bring faith leaders to talk to you about it. we have planned demonstrations today. true demonstrations. truex pregss of grief. true calls to heal our community and work. we'll be out there and the folks that are here will be out there to support that and protect that and honor that right. but we're asking those people as soon as those are done, to disperse, to be out of the area and to not -- what the mayor said. if our out after 8:00 you are aiding and abetting these folks and make it easier for them and giving them the cover that they want. minnesotans this is an unprecedented time we're in. it may be an unprecedented time in american history. to my fellow governors experiencing this and the mayors, we stand with you as americans who value decency, who value community, who value the rule of law and we stand

together. this is an opportunity for our nation to truly become united about this. to isolate those folks who meant to bring us harm and to learn from this experience and become stronger. we'll be back with you shortly. thank you, mayors. wow. this is a very different story than i came and sat down in this chair to tell. governor tim walz of minnesota said be and i will quote him as closely as i could scribble it down. last night is a mockery of pretending it's about george floyd's death or about disparities. he said that if you are out, this is to the protesters, after 8:00 tonight during the curfew, you are aiding and abetting and giving cover to outside forces who the governor of this state, tim walz, the mayor of minneapolis, jacob frey, the

mayor of st. paul, melvin carter, the commissioner of the minnesota department of safety, john harrington, major general john a. swren senn, the adjunct general of the minnesota national guard, which will be fully deployed for the first time in 164 years as of this very shortly and colonel matthew langer, the minnesota state patrol chief, all echoing the same sentiment. that the people who are burning minneapolis, burning historic black and minority-owned businesses across that city, the people who are causing deliberate mayhem, deliberate mayhem are not people from the community, are not people protesting the murder of george floyd, that they are organized outside agitators, that they have come to this community to

burn it, to destroy it and to hide behind the legitimate protesters. one of the most remarkable things we heard in that press conference was mayor melvin carter of st. paul saying that people who were out protesting legitimately saw others who they didn't know throwing incendiary devices and then literally hiding behind legitimate protesters, using them as human shields. wow, wow, and wow. joining me now is jelani cobb. a staff writer at the new yorker. msnbc political analyst britney pat nick cunningham. phillip goff and alesia gar ga, principal at the black futures lab. i'm going to go through and let everyone comment on this. this was remarkable. it's not what i was expecting to be discussing this morning. but i want to start with alesia and brittany because the two of

you are original members of the black lives matter movement. we saw uprisings over the michael brown killing, we saw it in baltimore, saw it in new york over eric garner. what i'm hearing now is that this is something different. your thoughts alesia? >> wow. well, i have a few thoughts. number one, i think it's important for us to hear what is being said here, especially in relationship to white supremacist forces who certainly have a stake in making sure that the kind of cover of this moment, right, helps to advance an agenda. we're not unclear that minnesota, in addition to having some serious issues with law enforcement, also has serious

concerns and issues with militias and white nationalist forces. this was actually really important for me to hear and certainly i would hope, right, that there was more attention being paid to these types of forces in the very, very near future. >> brittany, the same question to you. one of the things said by this whole failings of state officials is that white nationalist groups are posting online that they are going to go to minneapolis and, quote, get their loot on. that they are openly threatening to do this. we had on the attorney general of the state, keith ellison, who talked about one particular incident that i know lots of people have seen on social media. i just want to show this video if we can. this is a video referred to by keith ellison, the attorney general and it is of a man with an umbrella, though it is not raining, wearing a gas mask,

breaking windows at a hardware store. he's followed by protesters who yell at him and continue to film him. this is what keith ellison referred to as he talked about people from outside the community coming in, remarkable statistics, the marrow owe the st. paul mayor said that all of the people arrested last night were from out of state. the governor, tim walz, said that overall of all the people as arrested, it's 80% people outside the communitiment you were involved in the marches, brittany, during the core of the black lives matter movement. is this something that you have heard of before, the idea that the marches are not the marches, that there's something being hidden inside of them from outside that is literally against the community and designed to destroy the community? >> i mean, joy, not only have i heard of this before, i see it personally. during the ferguson up rising, there were folks trying to

infiltrate and leverage our protests as cover. so there was a proportion of folks who are experienced, thoughtful, intentional black organizers certainly who are confrontational because confrontation at this moment is necessary. but there are also people who came in from the outside and when i say outside, i very specifically mean white supremacists and adjacent groups who are trying to use those protests as cover. joy, the truth of the matter is, a lot of things are true at this moment. there are absolutely people taking advantage of community protests and are embedding themselves in order to incite damage. those people are often white and have a different ulterior motive, but the people who get punished for that behavior are black. those are the folks being arrested, harmed by police during protests and being sent to jail. we're hearing this not just from the last press conference but

from black organizers who are seeing protests pop up, organized by groups they've never heard of, many formed in the last week alone. this country was founded by looting. what happened in the boston harbor was that your founding fathers looted the tea and threw it into the river. this country sit on looted land and was built with looted labor and loots black life every day. that is not to excuse the white supremacists and take advantage of the protests taking -- about systemic racism and ending systemic racism. what is true that what would set all of this too calm and actually to -- is to deal with the conditions that cause people to react in the first place instead of spending all of it time on the symptom. people are frankly tired of

america dealing with the symptoms and not the virus. >> i want to bring in -- everybody please stay. i want to keep all of these great guests. i want to bring in jim cavanaugh. terrorism analyst. we weren't expect to go book you this morning either, jim. i want to talk to you about this. this is remarkable. we've now heard from be, i think it was the commissioner of the minnesota department of safety, john harrington who said they are now going to begin contact tracing. the same kind of contact tracing that has to be done now to try to fight the covid vaccine, meaning trying to find the origins of hotspots for covid, they're now using that same technique to try to take the people that they've arrested and to trace them to see if they are using these protests to disguise illegal activity and crimes. your thoughts on all of this, jim. >> well, joy, your guests are

absolutely right. let me put this historically for just a second and then go right to the point. you know, i grew up in new jersey. my dad was a firefighter. i remember the riots in '68 after dr. king was murdered. i remember the troops in the streets. firemen killed vividly. in my 36 years in law enforcement, i served all over the country. i was in charge in birmingham. i'm a student of history. i know the history. when i hear people say outside agitators. dr. king was called an outside agitators in birmingham. because at the time he was residing in atlanta. that word is charged in american history and when people roll it out in the wrong way, law enforcement has to recognize it. that's why all law enforcement officers need to be students of history. that being said first, but in many command posts, i was a deputy commander and d.c. sniper, i can go on and on and

we would pick up information about anarchists groups, terrorist groups, neo-nazi and klansmen which i worked on my whole life, i picked up from the command posts from federal, state and local police across the country is the movement of anarchists groups and the movement, probably of white supremacist groups who are doing exactly what brittany described. they want to derail the effort of the peaceful protesters. they want to derail civil society. they want to derail any movement toward justice. they want anarchy, chaos. this is their -- this is what they live for. fires that can't be put out. governors under stress. policemen being attacked. so this is true. but it has to be kept in the right context by the commanders. i see that happening with the governor and the mayors.

i think they've got the right pulse on it. be careful about using these words outside agitators. you know, a movement, activist comes from another state because they have a passion for the justice movement. that is not an outside agitator. don't take somebody from another -- >> from what i listened to this morning and we were in that for quite a bit of time. that's not what they were saying. >> i agree. >> the governor on down. they weren't saying that. i don't think it was used that casually. people were not designed to protect themselves from covid but to disguise themselves. the anti-defamation league has discussed a thing called the bug loo. it's a silly sounding meme, it circulates online that talks about forming chaos. that there are people watching

the idea that there are sort of chaos extenders that are going around. we had our reporter who came to us live last night. i did a midnight show. he was in kentucky and said there were groups of long guns shooting at protesters. shooting at them. there were -- >> absolutely agree. absolutely agree. i i think they have it in the right context. i wanted to point it out historically. we don't mix those two up and we say those correctly. the boo'ing a loo is a white supremacist meme. all these white supremacist guys. i can take you back to the '70s. they were trying to bomb jewish temples with neo-nazis together, in groups, atf would infiltrate the groups and take the explosives apart. they constantly talked about their one death would spark the uprising, that would cause chaos and overturn the government.

then every one of these cone head bozos we would get, they would tell us that. i thought my death would spark it. even dylann roof of charleston infamy would say that. i thought this action, maybe my death would lead to this. this is a thing that's been in their brains for 50 years. it's total nonsense, of course. but whenever they see chaos, they go right to t the current word they've been using in the last few years is bug a loo. it comes from an old movie. it's inside baseball. what's law enforcement going to do here, joy? they're on the game. that's the first thing. the leadership is on it. second, intelligence is on it. federal, state and local. third, they're going to have undercover officers and agents out. they're going to see these guys. who is reporting on this guy you described breaking the window, hiding behind the -- that's other protesters. that's citizens of minneapolis

saying i came out here to protest for justice. i saw this happening. those citizens need to be on the side of the police, too. we're all in it together. i've heard a lot of quotes from dr. king this week. one of my favorites was, he said, we might have come here different boats, but we're all in the same boat now. that's the truth in minneapolis and every other american city. we're in the same boat. we've got to work with the police as good citizens to reform the police and get to a better place. we got to stop this. we can't burn down our own neighborhoods where we can't get groceries and medical care in the middle of a pandemic. i hope we get to a better place this weekend. >> well, that is a great place to bring in and please stay with us, jim. i want to bring in jorge colin a, the miami chief of police. this is an important discussion. we've seen variations in the way police have acted. the fact is, chief, that the

police have now have in their job description at this point to protect the lives and the property of the citizens of these communities at the same time to respect the first amendment rights of the lenl it mat protesters and not be abusive toward them. i want to show you some, if we can pull some of the nypd footage. we've seen rough handling of protesters in some cities. we've seen rough handling of people who were clearly actually protesting against the killing of george floyd. and at the same time, what you just heard from jim cavanaugh is that police need protesters to report people that are fake protesters, to report people that are causing mayhem. how does that balance -- how is that balance supposed to work? >> it's a delicate balance. but ultimately, it is our responsibility. i mean, these are constitutional rights. the right to assemble, the right to free speech and it's our duty to protect those rights.

obviously, you don't want a situation where someone is being physically harmed or someone's life savings are gone because they were burned down when their business was torched. but the comments that were made earlier, joy, are so critical because what happens, it's not just about derailing a peaceful protest and it isn't just about taking the focus away from where it should be, which is george floyd and the tragedy and the travesty of justice that occurred there. it's about perpetuating this divide that already exists and make it greater because when these folks come in and they do, they don't care about george floyd or any of that. they want to have confrontation and they want that divide to be even broader between the police in those communities, between white and black. that's what they're hoping for. this for them is feeding ground and they're grateful for t it's a tragedy. >> i need to show you -- if we can pull up the still of the

last few minutes of george floyd's life, the indictment against the officer says that over eight minutes he kept him pinned down, you know, the literal foot on my neck, literal pinned him down with his knee knowing he was being watched. at least two minutes of that after he was already completely nonresponsive. the over the top cruelty of the way that he treated this human being, staring right into the faces of a witness with a camera, it is easy to see why there is so much rage, because that is unusual cruelty. it is not surprising that the demonstrations have been extremely angry because of that. so how do police, people who are

angry because of that cruelty and at the same time hold back enough and be able to interact with those same people to find out who the mayhem starters are? it seems like an impossible task because there is no trust. >> well, it's not impossible. i mean, what we need to do is continue to work at it. but the first thing that needs to happen is that there needs to be a united voice from law enforcement, not community leaders. not the mayors or the governor, no. from law enforcement coming out and saying, this is horrific. open your eyes and look at what happened here. there is no excusing it. there is no well, what happened beforehand, what's his criminal history, what prompted this action. nothing justifies that. and that need to be said and it needs to be said out loud. so the officers from the leadership on down, the officers can hear that message and understand, it is your job to say, don't do that, that's unacceptable. please stop it. when the community sees that

this voice is being heard and you're being pro active on the law enforcement side, then we can start that process of starting to regain some trust. but if we don't do that and historically, we're terrible at communicating, but if we don't do that, you know, this is going to continue. it's got to start from police leadership and push down to every officer on the streets. you can't be afraid to speak up. >> yeah. i'm going to bring in my other two guests. quickly, can you tell us why is his hand in his pocket? what is that about? >> i've seen that -- no it's not a tactical thing. i think what you're seeing there, joy, it's done when -- callus. it's a certain sense of inhumanity that's exhibited there. it's difficult to understand. there is no tactical reason for him to have that position. there's no explaining it. i have spoken to many chiefs

across the country. i can't find a single person explain to me, how can that be remotely tactically correct. >> let me bring in my other guests. it's good to have a historian around. i happen to have one around. phillip, i want to go to you. this seems like an impossible situation. depraved indifference to human life. there's a reason for the anger. you have outside groups using that anger in order to foment a completely different, anti-black agenda. your thoughts. >> i want to say, george floyd's name. i want to say brianna taylor, i want to say ahmaud arbery. you're right, it's an impossible task. democracy in this moment is an impossible task. it doesn't mean we won't get it

done. we've done impossible things before. but the stakes are exactly that high. i got to say, i'm shaking a little bit right now because of the anger. this moment where we have communities who are literally bleeding out on the streets, having watched one of their own callously slowly executed on film, imagining that was going to be okay. their rage is enough of a spectacle, enough of a game to some groups of people that they'll use that to advance their own entertainment. but to imagine that it's going to be easy in the face of all of that, after the several weeks where we've seen the callous weaponization of whiteness in central park, the pro tessations of innocence, that nothing happened in georgia until the film became clear. as if we haven't been talking about this for six years, i mean 400. in the face of that, you're

asking communities to trust the law enforcement that they're protesting that they can't trust. that's incredibly difficult. chief colina, is a good man, runs a good department in the right way. he's absolutely right. we've seen an unprecedented number of chiefs, even police unions coming out and saying this is unacceptable. can't do it. but we're so late to the game to pay these debts of the way we've structured our society to be okay with this. as if we're just waking up today, like today was the first day we realized the structures are set up to do this to black people, to ignore the worth of black bodies. today. today years old we've decided that this is the day that it's not okay. so that we can start fresh. we're not fresh. we're not even close to fresh. most of the history of this country saying that black bodies are expendable. they're there for our labor, they're there for our entertainment ard our pleasure.

they're not there for themsel s themselves. we're here for some other people. so to imagine we can erect systems of trust in the face of that, it's not possible. that's exactly why these faux protests, which we've known about since the first day. i've been on the phone with chief arradondo since the first day. we've known that they're there. it's why that's so sin cli vulgar and so enraging because it's part of the piece. that system that allows that to happen, the culture that allows that to happen is the same one you see on officer chauvin's face. i don't know where you protest when the protest isn't safe. but i got to say the very premise of america is broken when the first amendment right is used to revictimize you and it's a terrifying time and

exhausting time to be black. >> yeah. more than well said. jelani, it feels like the 1921 tulsa massacre meets the legitimate riots against police brutality through the 20th century using, you know, the lenl it mat pain and anger and protests to implement and anti-black agenda is probably the most cynical and horrifying thing that you can think of. your thought. >> sure. i mean, i think that phillip goff encapsulated a lot, as well as mr. cavanaugh. from the historical rundown of this. in 1935, there was a huge uprising in harlem. it came as a result of police abuse of a young puerto rican boy. they did a commission afterward and the commission said we have

problems with policing. policing tends to ignite many other resentments, socioeconomic disparities, so on. we have a riot in 1965, they do a report. they come to basically the same conclusions that the 1935 report, all the way on the other side of the country came to. in 1967, newark, you can go to the library, the rutgers university library in newark and read that report. ten-volume report. bigger than a set of encyclopedias. can be distilled down, same thing. you have underlying socioeconomic disparities, policing becomes the spark that triggers the explosion. 1992, los angeles report, same finding. same thing. we've done this again. it's like running face forward

into a brick wall. detroit. baltimore. we go through it again and again. last year, last spring, i was in st. paul to talk at the east side freedom library, a library established by historian friend of mine, his wife, peter beth ratcliff. they created this library specifically to have a showcase of the history of social movements. it is an activists library, people from all over the different communities visit this library. while i was there, i got to have a conversation with people about all of the dynamics, all of the disparities, all of the frustrations, all of the issues that they were working on in this community. they were coming to this library in order to get the information that they needed to figure out how they could address some of the problems that were in their community. and then you have this issue of

policing which becomes a spark. now, here's why this becomes important. you saw the state in the form of derek chauvin cutting off the airway of george floyd for nearly nine minutes until he was dead. that same state is now requesting that you trust them enough to say to the people who are setting these fires in your community don't have your interests, which is true. i don't think the people are disputing this. but when you've tolerated this kind of behavior. when you saw jammar clark and all these other incidents around the country, specifically the ones in the twin cities area, when you've seen those incidents again and again and again, you cannot blame people of being skeptical about your intentions.

you cannot blame people if they don't think you have the credibility to speak what is in the best interests of the community at this point. so this is the kind of circular situation, cyclical situation that we find ourselves enmeshed in and why it's difficult and intractable to get anywhere without finding ourselves back in the place where we started. >> ooh, indeed, indeed. i want to get brittany cunningham back in. i can remember being in at curfew time in baltimore in the freddie gray uprisings. it is definitely clear, it was clear to meet at the time that at 9:00, the late great congressman elijah cummings would lead a march to march people home to saylet all go home and because people trusted him, because he was a trusted voice and trusted figure and a member of the community, lived

around the corner from penn and north, people would go. and the people who were still there after that were not talking about freddie gray anymore. they were not talking about freddie gray at all. they had a different agenda. they were out there but not -- at least overtly for freddie gray. this isn't new. but this is different. because in that case, these weren't what we're now saying are white supremacists organized to come and burn down the black businesses in baltimore. this is -- this is insidious -- it's horrifying and i want to let you as an activist who has been on the streets crying out black lives matter. what should these activists do at 8:00 tonight? >> so listen joy, i think you're absolutely right. there are white supremacists out here and there are people who are not necessarily members of the kkk or trump voters. but they are people who are

infected with the cancer of white supremacy, that is to say, that they are totally willing to sacrifice black causes and black people for their own ends, whether they sit politically on the left or right. those folks can always be found out. you can tell whether they listen to black organizers, whether or not it's like something like the late great elijah cummings or community-based activists or organizers that have been in the community for a long time. not with just the community or their resume for getting things done and changing things. i can't tell folks in these cities what to do when curfew time comes. i was out past curfew in ferguson and baltimore and baton rouge plenty of times myself. because, frankly, curfews themselves call into question whether or not these cities are truly supporting everyone's first amendment rights. here's what i will say. if you are not listening to the

people who are most affected on the ground, people living in black skin, people who have been organizing black communities, people who have been doing this work and following black people, you are not out there for me or out there for black communities, you're certainly not out there for george floyd, ahmaud arbery or brianna taylor. i certainly advise every single person, whether you stay out past curfew or not, make sure you are rooting out the folks who are not listening to the most affected, the true leaders in the situation. >> same question to you, alesia? what would you advise -- not just in minneapolis, i mean, we're talking in kentucky, we're talking in california, we're talking all over the country, these protests are everywhere. what would you advise legitimate protesters to do given the fact that there isn't a lot of trust. there isn't any trust to be

blunt with most police forces. >> i mean, to be honest, i'm having a hard time here. because i agree with phil. i think that it's important for us to be paying attention to forces that are infiltrating protests that are rightfully related to what is happening with policing. but more broadly the state of emergency that is facing black communities. i have a hard time kind of rooting myself in this narrative of legitimate protesters versus illegitimate protesters. it seems like what we're actually talking about here is the infiltration of protests by white supremacists, which is a whole different kind of thing to grapple with. so i'm just honestly sitting in -- >> i think that we can hold both things at the same time. what i know is that i worry that

this conversation will switch the focus from police reform and accountability, from how we fund law enforcement over the things that these communities have been calling for, for a very long time and that we kind of move into this narrative that really asks protesters to cooperate with the police who still have not been held accountable for the murder of george floyd or the other multiple murders that have happened in this state. so i'm just, to be fully honest, having a hard time with that. what i will say is that i trust people on the ground and that i'm here to help in any way that i can to make sure that we continue to keep this message focused. minnesota and states across the country have a lot of work to do. not just in relationship to police reform and police

accountability. but white supremacy and white nationalist organizations are not actually separate from this question. i know that in this particular state, there have been challenges, right? there have been calls and suspicions, right, that militias and police officers who are also acting with impunity wearing trump gear at protests, right, and being asked not to do that because they're supposed to be neutral citizens. you know, i just don't think that we can separate out these questions. for me, what i would want to see, aside from should you stay out after curfew or not, that's not the central question. the central question is we have a mess on our hands in relation to a system that says it's supposed to protect and serve all citizens. it does not do that. i can't stop thinking about 8 1/2 minutes with his hand in his

pocket, a man calling out for his mother on camera and people coming out to say, this isn't the only time this has happened. this is the straw that broke the camel's back. i want to know more about this officer, i want to know more about what they're involved in and what they're related to. and i also want to know more about where is the urgency, the urgency to address the fact that people have had to come out on to the streets to demand better, more, new, different accountability for the people who swear to protect and serve them. where is the outcry and outrage about how money is being sent spent and distributed in this community. where is the outrage about the tons other cases that never make these news programs? that is the conversation i want to sit ourselves in. i do hope over the next few days we're able to do that. that we're able to do more than

say protesters should join with police when, frankly, i just have to be honest, we have to deal with the question of what is happening with law enforcement in this community and that should be the central question. if we've got to talk about white supremacy and white nationalist groups in that, so be it. >> i think it is that complex. i don't think that anybody -- we'll go to the panel here. we've already seen the university of minnesota drop its contracts with the minneapolis police department following george floyd's death. the university president joan gable said that the school will no longer use mpd officers during football games and concerts. additionally, the university will not use the police department for specialized services. that was revealed on wednesday according to the hill. minneapolis public schools have also dropped their contract with the city's police department. so this police department is not

trusted by the community. it is now grappling with what do they do with people who have come in. white nationalist groups infiltrating the groups and burning the community while they're in agony. around the country, i'm going to go to jim and also to chief colina on this. >> this is a woman being thrown on the ground by new york police during a protest last night. if we can get that video up. in these communities, the police aren't trusted. so if the police are trying to deal with and investigate inf l infiltration of the protests, it's going to be difficult to do it. i guess i can't ask that question. governor cuomo is doing his press conference now. thanks everyone. thanks for being with us today. i think the new settlement community center for having us today and for all of you being here. today is saturday. day 91 of this coronavirus

pandemic. it's a hard day. it is a day of light. it is a day of darkness. it's a day where we see how far we have come in so many ways. but yet, a day where we see how far we need to go in so many ways. embattling this coronavirus, we have made great progress. the numbers today again are all good news in terms of total hospitalizations are way down, intubations are way down. the number of new covid cases walking in the door every day is also way down. so that is all good news. the number of new yorkers we lost is at an all-time low. same number as yesterday but overall, that has been tremendous, tremendous progress from where we were. our thoughts and prayers with the families we lost and i want to thank the hospital workers,

the nurses, the doctors who are just -- they've saved literally thousands of lives through this. i want to thank them all from the bottom of my heart. i want new yorkers to take note of what we have done. we, we accomplished this. this is not government action. this is we the people action. this is when new yorkers come together and new yorkers are informed and they understand the challenge and they understand the facts and the information, they did the impossible. that's what this was. five regions in upstate new york entered phase 2 of the reopening yesterday. we have a next week coming up, capital region and western new york will end their 14 days and then we have to make a decision whether or not they enter phase

2. we made that decision by reviewing the data and the numbers and not just the state officials because nobody has dealt with this pandemic before. one of the most important things in life to know is to know what you don't know, right? and know what you don't know means none of us here know about this coronavirus. we've been wrong from day one. all the experts have been wrong from day one. the projection models turned out incorrect because we were better with social distancing. we were told the virus was coming from china. really, the virus came to new york from europe. nobody told us. we had 3 million people get on flights and land in new york airports from europe. so on these decisions of reopening, i am making sure that we have the best science available and the best minds. i said from day one, we have to

reopen smart. this is not emotion. this is not politics. some people want to open. we should have never closed, right? this was just like the flu. yeah. the flu doesn't kill 100,000 people. this was not the flu. so be smart. and avoid the politics and avoid the emotion. and stay on the data. when we get to these phases of reopening, we have the best global experts. people who have worked with countries that have gone through this before, that have closed, that have reopened and then closed again because they reopened too fast. so i understand you have local officials who have opinions. i have opinions. but you know what, i'm not acting on my opinion. i'm not a public health official. i'm not a doctor. know what you don't know.

i go to global experts. this is a matter of life and death. i want to make sure i get the best advice for the people of this state. i'm not going to put anybody's life at risk unless i feel confident that we have had the best advice and that's what we do on all of these determinations. new york city is going to open on june 8th. we have work to do still. but we'll get it done by june 8th. remember, new york had the worst situation and that we've made in remarkable turn around this quickly. something we should be proud of. we'll be focusing on the hospital system. we've learned painful lessons. we came up with a new program called surge and flex in the midst of this. when it comes to hospitals, we don't really have a public hospital system. we don't really have a hospital

system. we have in the new york city area 100 private hospitals. private hospitals operate as private hospitals. they have their own mission, they have their own business interests. they operate unto themselves. that's how it's always worked. we only have about 11 public hospitals. they're in new york city operated by new york city called the h and h hospitals. but there are only 11 of them. the public hospitals cannot handle any outbreak of any size. we've learned that. we need those private hospitals operating in the way they never operated before, which is basically manage as one public health system. that's a dramatic difference from anything that happened before. on the first go-around, we had

to design the airplane as we were flying it. and the surge and flex was coming up with a management system for those private hospitals who all had acted independently. we wanted to make sure we had that refined over this next week because if we have a problem, we need all of those hospitals to work together where we can shift patients, we can share resources. that kind of coordination. the mta, the public transportation has been getting prepared, disinfecting trains like never before. but they have another week of work to do. they will be ready. and then we want to focus on the ten hotspots, the ten hotspots are those areas we've identified through testing where we're still generating new cases. and we have where the most aggressive state in the country in actually doing testing. the testing tells you where the new cases are coming from. we call them hotspots.

if you look at them, we can actually identify them by zip code. and it's a dramatic difference between the overall city situation and the situation in these zip codes. overall, city situation is about 19, 20% infection rate. some of the zip codes, you have an over 50% infection rate. just think about it. so we're targeting those zip codes as places. we want to get down that infection rate, get down the new cases in those hotspots. they tend to be in the outer boroughs. nonnew yorkers. there's a concept called out of boroughs. there is no inner borough. manhattan is the inner borough. but nobody calls it that. i'm a child of an outer borough. i'm from queens. queens, brooklyn, bronx, staten island, those are the outer

boroughs. you're not in manhattan. so you are an outer borough. those are ramifications. you look at where the hotspots are, they're in the outer. in the bronx, brooklyn, predominantly bronx. brooklyn, a little bit in queens, my old neighborhood in queens. let's focus on those zip codes over the next week. these hots spots are not coincidentally predominantly low income and minority communities. and that, again, raises the issue of disparity and inequality. we're going to be adding more testing sites in these areas. we need people to come out, get tested. find out who has the virus, who has the antibodies, who is possibly contagious. even if you're a young superhero and you think you're immune from

the virus, you can give it to someone else. you can give it to your mother, your father, your aunt, your people living in dense communities. you have many people in one housing complex. you can't socially distance in an elevator in public housing. it does not happen. so this is where the infection rate is spreading. we're going to do more ppe, more hander, more education, more communication about how important these things are. but we have to get deeper also. and we're working with northwell health, which is the largest hospital system in the state of new york to actually develop better health care connections in these communities. where you see a high death rate is where you have people with underlying illnesses. if you have diabetes, if you have hypertension, if you are immune compromised, then you're more likely to die.

that raises the question, well, why didn't we address these health disparities better. and we want to take this opportunity to do that with northwell health because we have to address the inequality in health care. if you look across this nation, po proportionately, many more died than white people. there's a disparity. but there is a disparity. there is an inequality. especially across this country. that has to be addressed. that has to be addressed. it came to light. it was exposed because of the situation. but it was there. and it has to be addressed. and there is a larger context for this conversation today, right? for 90 days we were just dealing

with the covid crisis. on the 91st day, we had the covid crisis and we have the situation in minneapolis with the racial unrest around the george floyd death. those are not disconnected situations. one looks like a public health system issue, covid, but it's getting at the inequality in health care also on a deeper level and then the george floyd situation which gets at the inequality and discrimination in the criminal justice system. they are connected. the george floyd death was not just about george floyd and we wish his family peace and they're in our thoughts and prayer, but we tend to look at these situations as individual incidents. they're not individual incidents. when you have one episode, two

episodes, maybe you can look at them as individual episodes, but when you have ten episodes, 15 episodes, you are blind or in denial if you are still treating each one like a unique situation. we have an injustice in the criminal justice system that is abhorrent. that is the truth. it doesn't make me feel good to say that. i'm a former prosecutor. we have injustice in the criminal justice system, which is the basic purveyor of justice in this society. and it's not just george floyd, you look back even at modern history in my lifetime, this started with rodney king, rodney king was 30 years ago. we suffered in this city through

abner louima and sean bell and eric garner, how many times have we seen the same situation? yes, the names change, but the color doesn't. and that is the painful reality of this situation and it's not just 30 years. it is this nation's history of discrimination and racism dating back hundreds of years. that is the honest truth, and that's what's behind this anger and frustration and i share the outrage at this fundamental injustice. i do. and that's why i say i figuratively stand with the protesters, but violence is not

the answer. it never is the answer. as a matter of fact, it is counterproductive because the violence then obscures the righteousness of the message and the mission, and you lose the point by the violence in response. and it allows people who would choose to scapegoat to point to the violence rather than the action that created the reaction. the violence allows people to talk about the violence as opposed to honestly addressing the situation that incited the violence. the violence doesn't work. martin luther king, dr. king, god rest his soul, he taught us this. he taught us this. he knew better than anyone who was speaking to us today on this

issue. returning hate for hate multiplies hate. hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. yes, outrage, yes, anger, yes, frustration, but not violence. last night we saw disturbing violent clashes amidst protests right here in new york city in brooklyn. and we all saw the video last night. i'm asking attorney general james to review the actions and procedures that were used last night because the public deserves answers and they deserve accountability. i spoke with the mayor, he wants an independent review of what happened yesterday. i agree and we agree that the attorney general is an independently elected official in the state of new york, many of the states, the attorney

general is appointed by the governor. not here, an independently elected official. she has proven herself competent and capable and being independent and we'll ask her to take a short period of time, review last night and to do a report to the public and let's see what we can learn what was done, what was done wrong because people do deserve answers. we had legislators who were at the protest, state legislators last night and there's a significant amount of concern about what actions were taken. but on the larger point, in this pandemic over the past 91 days, we have done extraordinary things. when they first talked to me about this virus, they were not sure it could be controlled. when we first talked about

socially distancing, nobody knew what that meant. nobody knew that you could even do it. but people listened. when new yorkers listened, which takes the question of people to a different level because we're new yorkers. could a government official, could a governor get up and say to 19 million people, we need to close down everything. we need to socially distance six feet, wear masks, ppe, could a community rise to that occasion? could this virus be stopped? was that curve going to continue to go up? nobody knew. and it was all dependent on what people did. what people did. what the community did. and on top of it, new york was hit the worst. we have more cases than any state. we have more cases per capita than most countries.

but because we were hit the worst, i think it brought out the best and i think our better angels won. i think our better angels responded, and i think our better angels rose to the occasion. we helped each other. we respected each other. we protected each other. we were there one for the other. people across the state volunteering to help other parts of the state. people from upstate helping downstate. people downstate helping upstate. people from across the country coming to help us, leaving their homes in other states to come here. it was really community and mutu

mutuality and all the things we hope to be manifested. it happened. we needed people to rise above themselves, to get past the pettiness, to get past the selfishness, to be bigger than themselves. and they did it. and for me, the microcosm of it, the metaphor for all of it was the frontline workers. what they did and they are modern-day heroes. i was saying to the people of this state, this is dangerous, stay home, protect yourself, protect your family and in the same breath i was saying to the frontline workers, not you, you have to go to work tomorrow morning. in the same breath. and i was saying to myself, what happens if they don't. what happens if they don't.

what happens if the frontline workers say, this is dangerous. i'm afraid. i'm going to stay home like everybody else. what would have happened? if the nurses didn't show up and the doctors didn't show up and the bus drivers didn't show up and the subway conductors didn't show up and the food delivery people didn't show up and the pharmacist didn't show up and the delivery women and men didn't show up, what would have happen fundamental there was no food on the shelves? what would have happened if there was no one in the emergency room when you showed up? you want to talk about crisis, you want to talk about pain. but these frontline workers, despite the risk, because i had to highlight the risk because i needed people to stay home so i spoke to the risk but then

despite the risk i had to ask them, my voice speaking for all of us, please help us and go to work tomorrow. please show up for work because it's your role, it's your duty, it's your obligation to us and they did. and they did. i was not comfortable asking. i will tell you the god's honest truth. i knew they were putting themselves at risk. i knew it. and i don't envy any chief executive of this nation who has to order women and men to go to war. i can't imagine how that would feel. i know how i felt having to ask our frontline workers, i need you, i need