floyd was not the first one. but he should be the last. >> as the world prepares to bury george floyd, demonstrators remain vigilant, protesting for a 12th straight night. will police forces soon step up and heed the calls against the rampant brutalizing of black americans? two chiefs of police will try to answer that question. plus, right now, the country is consumed with protests, and before that, the coronavirus pandemic. we'll break down new polling numbers that indicate just how grim the american outlook really

is. and we'll hear from the daughter of one of the most influential leaders of the civil right movement. what malcolm x's message would be to demonstrators today. >> tell him how you feel. tell him what kind of hell you have been catching, and let him know if he's not ready to clean his house up, he shouldn't have a house. >> "velshi" starts now. >> good morning. it is sunday, june 7th. we sbrhave breaking news this morning. bill de blasio has announced an end to the city-wide curfew effective immediately. yesterday and last night, we saw the very best of our city. tomorrow, we take the first big step to restart. meanwhile, across the country, the calls to fix the broken policing culture are growing

louder. >> police take a knee in solidarity! >> it's so long to stand on, how could you stand on someone's neck for almost ten minutes? sorry. i just don't understand how someone can do that who is supposed to protect us. >> when that man walked away, no charges, no accountability, i said you don't know what you have done. you have just given these people free reign to kill. we're going to fight for reform. we're going to fight for policy change. >> but as millions take a stand against systemic racism and police brutality, those very officers are fighting back. new videos emerging overnight from minneapolis show aggressive tactics as police appear once again to tear gas protesters. but violence has been taking place for weeks. people are angry. they should be.

our system's policing culture is broken. and with protesters getting attacked with pepper spray and rubber bullets, enough is finally enough. some leaders have defended police actions saying there are some bad apples, but when what we're seeing around the country, that is becoming harder to believe. take what's happening in buffalo, for example, and a warning. this video is disturbing. two police officers charged with assault yesterday after shoving a 75-year-old protester to the ground. the man is in stable but critical condition, according to his attorney. and along with 57 riot police resigning in support of the charged officers yesterday, these police cheered on the two officers as they left the courthouse. those officers have pleaded not guilty. as our national security analyst frank figliuzzi puts it, one incompetent cop is a concern, 57 is a culture. as we look forward to this week, the former officer who kneeled on george floyd's neck for

nearly nine minutes will make his first court appearance tomorrow. while george floyd was flown to houston last night as the town prepared for monday and tuesday's memorial services. let's get right to gilani cobb, a staff writer at the new yorker and a professor at columbia university and also a political analyst for msnbc. good to see you. i am -- i think i am surprised that it seems like the greater the call for police fairness, the less police fairness we're seeing in america right now. they're responding to those calls with exactly the thing people say police shouldn't be doing. >> sure, because it's the old cliche about if you only have a hammer, every looks like a nail. this crisis was prefaced and triggered, the entirety of this crisis is about police use of force. and as if to prove the point,

they react to a critique about their excessive use of force with the excessive use of force. thereby proving the argument that's been made against them. i also think we have endured a feedback loop in the policing culture for a really long time, and having gone out and reported on this for years, i can tell you that there are -- it's not uncommon for people to see those officers who have 8, 10, 20 complaints against them, and that is to the public a cause for concern. internally, that is seen as a sign of this is a productive cop. this is not someone who is just sitting in their car. this is not someone who's sitting in the diner and wasting the public's time. and so they believe that this kind of use of force is actually a badge of honor in many

instances. so the other thing i'll tell you about this is that the argument that you encounter from police unions, from police reps, and so on, is that when you see police officers with chronic complaints against them, this is just the actions of people who are doing something wrong, who have been criminally charged, and in order to beat the case, they're trying to bring a police brutality or excessive use of force issue or complaint against the officer who arrested him or her. and so there is no room in that conversation for legitimate concern about when do you have the right to put your hands on someone, when do you have the right to use a firearm or taser or tear gas or any of the other mechanisms people have at their disposal. >> and over the last few years, certainly since eric garner, since michael brown, since

trayvon martin, there have been discussions that have brought to the fore the idea that there's no agreement on the what of excessive use of force is in this country. there are no statistics that can be used to determine the degree to which police use force against african-americans and no real valid training about intrinzt bias, an inherent bias we may have against police. but that argument seems to have taken a back seat by people talking about defunding, redirecting police resources and abolishing police. where does success lie here? because those are two very different approaches. one is about improving policing. the other is about diminishing policing. >> okay, so listen about the history of policing in this country and i'll give you a kind of comparative example that nobody thinks about. that's education. at the beginning of the 20th century, 19th century, schools were just there to teach you to

read, write, and add, count. and when we got an upsurge of immigration in 1880 to 1920, the schools became citizenship academies to teach people to be americanized and then we learn about immunization and inoculation, and then polling places. you would often go to your school gymnasium to vote. and then people become aware of nutrition and schools are a place where we're making sure kids get the kind of meals to help them grow and become mat e mature, strong adults. so the responsibility of schools has multiplied in terms of what we expect the teachers to do, what we expect the institution to do, and so on. the same thing has happened with policing. when you look at what police were initially charged with doing and what they do now, it

is wildly increased. we have police dealing with one of the worst examples of this, police commonly called to deal with people who are in mental health crisis, which makes about as much sense as calling the police when someone has a heart attack. this is an issue that should be dealt with, with social workers or medical intervention or whatever this is. police are particularly unsuited to handle those kinds of concerns. and with the expansion, the vast expansion of their responsibilities, we have given them what? more weaponry. and that's about it. and so it's not really surprising that a disproportionate number of instances in which police use fatal force against unarmed people are people who are in mental health crisis. so a whole array of social concerns that are not illegal have been put in the hands of the police. you have seen expanding police budgets at the same time because in order to address all these

concerns that really should not be in their purview, and at the end of it is we have created a kind of law enforcement monstrosity that is gigantic that cant really be reined in, particularly when we look at cases like what happened to mr. floyd. >> you have articulated a very complicated problem. it's not as clear cut as it appears to be. you'll stay with me for the hour. thank you, sir. jelani cobb will be with me in a few minutes. >> new videos like the one from minneapolis, show what appear to be cops driving by and tear gassing peaceful protesters and they're already challenging police tactics. this week, the city banned police choke holds of all chiendz following the death of george floyd, but police unions across the nation are a big reason we have yet to see change in the system when it comes to these tactics. the unions, quote, aggressively protect the rights of members

accused of misconduct. they have effectively fended off broader change using their political clout and dm fluence to derail efforts to increase accountability. joining me is the ferguson, missouri police chief, jason armstrong, and the baltimore police chief, michael harrison. thank you for joining me. chief armstrong. these are cities that have been under something in the past called a consent decree. an agreement to improve things with federal policing. tell me how that has gone in ferguson. >> so far, it's gone pretty well. when you have a consent decree, there are a lot of stipulations put in place that you have to meet and a lot of standards you have to meet. and so, you know, that's one of the things we're working towards here in ferguson. the challenge for us has been we're a small department. and normally, when you see the consent decrees, they're normally for a large sized department. here in ferguson, with having a smaller department, it's been -- it's taken us longer than we

would have liked to have taken to get things in play with our consent decree, but we're making significant progress with it. >> that's the problem. it's a small department. so when you have to make these changes, sometimes they require resources that a smaller place like yours doesn't have. michael harrison, you're the commissioner of the police in baltimore. that's a big department. also having been plagued with problems in the past. you took a knee with protesters the other day. >> i did. thank you for having me. i was invited to march with the group of protesters and then answer their questions at a protest rally in front of city hall. i was honored to do it. halfway through the march, which is about a mile and a half long, we all took a knee for for the eight minutes and 46 seconds and there were a bunch of officers with me who did it as well and we're also under a federally mandated consent decree. >> chief armstrong, one of the problems when we talked about

ferguson when it was in the national spotlight was that it is a mostly african-american town with a mostly white police force. has that changed? >> yes, it has. our police department right now is over 50% minority. >> and does that in itself change things? because police commissioner harrison's force has a lot of minority members, but systemic racism doesn't necessarily mean a white cop and a black man. >> correct, it doesn't. and yes, it has changed things. but you know, what makes the most change is not what the person looks like. not what their skin color is. it depends on what's in their heart and their mind. that's one of the things we try to focus on on the people we're looking to bring inside our department. you know, one of the things we have heard a lot of people clamoring for in the aftermath of some of these things, they want the police department to be more representative of what the

communities look like. and so, you know, that defini definitely is a step in the right drexirection to have a mo diverse police force where people bring their life experiences into the job and that helps them to be able to relate with people a lot better. but like i said, it doesn't -- just because what you look like, the color of your skin, it's not the end of it. we have to have good people with a good heart and a good mind for the work they have to do. >> commissioner harrison, one of the things jelani cobb was talking to me about is the degree to which police are called upon to deal with mental health issues. a lot of people killed by police are dealing with a mental health issue. protesters work urging you to seek reforms with regard to mental health, and you said you don't have enough money for that. >> well, i think one citizen asked me about using social workers and mental health professionals to ride in the car

with police officers, and i told her it was a very great idea, but we don't have those persons employed within our department. so it's about brokering deals and building relationships with stakeholders to be able to do that. sometimes that costs money. i wanted to add some clarity to that. we also, like i said, are under a federal consent decree which is really about culture change. while many departments have to change a few things within the department, our consent decree is the most expansive in the entire country, which is 18 core components, which is like a 100% makeover of the department, and changing the way we deal with the mental health crisis is certainly a part of ours. training officers in crisis intervention and making sure that we have the resources to do it properly. but there are alternatives to enforcement because it really is a health issue, not an enforcement issue. >> thanks to both of you for joining me this morning. police chief jason armstrong of

ferguson, missouri, and michael harrison, the police commissioner in baltimore. >> this week, washington, d.c. became a militarized zone. hurj fences, military combat vehicles and units of unidentified federal cops. is this attorney general bill barr's idea of law and order or blind loyalty to president trump. you're watching "velshi" on msnbc. changing data. more and more sensitive, personal data. and it doesn't just drag hr down. it drags the entire business down -- with inefficiency, errors and waste. it's ridiculous. so ridiculous. with paycom, employees enter and manage their own data in a single, easy to use software. visit paycom.com, and schedule your demo today. however, there is one thing you can be certain of. the men and women of the united states postal service. we're here to deliver cards and packages from loved ones

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two weeks, we continue to see officers confront americans protesting police brutality with more egregious force. but the mentality of why this can be acceptable starts at the very top of the law enforcement chain, with u.s. attorney general bill barr. listen to how he described protesters back in 1992, following the rodney king beaten by police compared to his reaction to protests today. >> our preliminary information is that there was significant involvement of gang members at the inception of the violence, also involvement in the spreading of the violence and the arson. >> in many places, it appears the violence is planned, organized, and driven by anarchic and left extremist groups. far left extremist groups using antifa-like tactics. >> 28 years later, the only thing that appears to have changed for barr are his loyalties, and these days, they

lie with donald trump. according to the white house, barr ordered law enforcement officials to clear the area while trump crossed the street for a photo op at a church on monday. peaceful protesters were met with tear gas and rubber bullets. my next guest argues as barr amplifies trump's law and forder rhetoric for political gain, joining me is the executive editor for news at the new yorker, david rode, also author of "in deep, the fbi, the cia, and the truth about america's deep state." thank you for being with us. what's going on with bill barr? he seems to be ampifiesing conspiracy theories that have no basis, seems to be using these protests as a reason to sort of outline a law enforcement agenda that is not actually running in parallel to the problems we're actually having. >> well, he's been very consistent about this for decades, as you have pointed out in terms of the l.a. riots.

when he was attorney general under george h.w. bush, he felt that federal charges should have been brought against the police who beat rodney king that caused those riots, and then the protesters themselves. so this law and order approach is not new. he's a very hard-line supporter of tough policing. he supports longer jail sentences and has supported along with other members of the trump administration ending the consent decrees for local police departments that your earlier guests were talking about. >> to what end, david? this is what i'm trying to figure out. who gains from things that are supposed to make police more accountable? i go back to when donald trump was running for election and when he would talk about taking the handcuffs off police, he would talk about roughing them up a bit, so police should be tougher with people they apprehend. is this a basic conservative law

and order platform to which he is appealing? >> yeah, and it's a play to sort of people's fears, and people fear lawlessness and chaos. the problem here is i think barr is exaggerating it. in the clip you showed, he mentioned the group antifa. that's a leftist movement that's sort of amorphous. and what barr has done, he should be neutral. he's the country's chief law enforcement officer, is back the president's political messaging that antifa is the problem, antifa is the cause of lawlessness, and just on thursday, barr announced the results of a nationwide crackdown by officers. only 50 arrests for people committing crimes out of 10,000 people arrested for demonstrating. that's 2% of the demonstrators crossing state lines and doing these things that barr alleges. and a federal law enforcement official told me that there are small numbers of antifa members, and there are also members of a right-wing group that, you know,

wants to start a civil war in the country. so there are small numbers of extremists from the left and right. it's not simply antifa, and most people are peaceful. so it's a disinformation campaign, i think, to frighten people and drum up support for a tough law and order approach. >> david, good to talk to you, as always. david is the executive editor at the new yorker. >> tens of thousands of protesters can't be wrong. it's time for a change when it comes to policing standards, but what it looks like is unclear. >> we are the majority that is being brutalized and terrorized by the police in our communities. so the system needs to be torn down and built up again.

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unrest presents the country with a real tangible opportunity to change policing in america as we know it.

mayors from major u.s. cities from both parties are being forced to reckon with tough questions from their constituents about police funding, about conduct, about training. all factors that shape the relationship between officers and members of their community. in los angeles, democrat, mayor eric garcetti has responded to calls from protesters to defund the police. he said he won't authorize a boost in funding for the lapd and will instead reallocate $250 million from next year's proposed budget to black communities to address health and education issues, though he provided no specific examples. this is just one step in what activists hope will be a complete overhaul in redefining the role of policing in this country, particularly in communities of color. joining me to discuss, eugene scott, identity politics reporter for "the washington post," legal analyst maya wily, who is also the former chair of the new york civilian complaint review board that independently oversees the new york police department, and jelani cobb of

the new yorker back with us again. maya, i want to speak to you about this because you were the former chair of the new york city civilian complaint review board. "the new york times" had an article where it reads across the country, civilian review boards generally composed of members of the public have been notoriously weak. they gather accounts but can't enforce recommendations. the review board in minneapolis was replaced by an agency called the office of conduct review. only 12 have resulted in an officer being disciplined, the most severe censure has been a 40 hour suspension. talk to me about civilian review, because cops don't like it. >> you're right, ali. cops don't like it. police departments don't like it. civilian oversight is critical, and here's why. we can't think data and

information on discipline into the dark and expect either the ability to understand the systemic issues in the police department or gain public trust about the fact that there's meaningful accountability. because the police departments themselves have generally kept all that secret. so one of the things the civilian oversight does and that we do in the new york city civilian complaint review board, we take all our complaint data, and we make public what the trends are, what the trend lines are, including, including whether the police commissioner is agreeing with our recommendations for discipline or not. but here's what's not happening that should. police departments should be required to make their complaint and disciplinary data public, because we could only make ours. so you can do that in a couple different ways. you can either say police departments, you have to give

that disciplinary data over to the civilian oversight authority so that that data can be combined so the systemic issues can be better identified, recommendations elevated, and the public told what they are, and be responsible for answering whether or not you're taking those steps. that's called democracy. that's called accountability to the people you're supposed to protect and serve. and of course, the other way to do it is police departments should just do it themselves. the truth is the reason we have needed external civilian oversight is because police departments believe that they can and should keep that data secret. that is a significant problem, but civilian oversight has increased your own specifics show it, your own statements. it has increased public awareness and knowledge about whether or not police departments are holding officers accountable for misconduct, and that's how we know it's a

problem. >> eugene, public awareness and knowledge, bearing witness, holding people to account, that's our job as journalists. and one of the things i have heard in these protests is the need for people to understand that authority naturally does not like to be held to account. we're talking about the police in this instance, but authority doesn't like it. they don't like civilian review. they sometimes don't like what their chiefs tell them in minneapolis, they don't like mayors commenting on them, the public talking about it, and what we have seen in the last 13 days really is the degree to which they do not even want the press to hold them to account. the police lines, the pushing back of journalists, the intimidation and attacks on journalists are part of an effort to say, nobody controls us. we control ourselves, and what these protesters are saying is that police work for us. >> absolutely. i mean, protesters have been very vocal about the fact that many of the tools that we have seen police departments use

across the country to assault protesters, to assault journalists, have been funded by taxpayer dollars. that's caused great frustration to those in communities who have seen significant cuts to education, to health care, to economic development, and to other spaces that are greatly in need of some of the funds that they believe police departments are receiving. more than $100 billion was given to police departments in this country each year despite so many of the challenges that people from communities that have underfunded schools, underfunded medical resources, have made vocal, and these issues are becoming more public in this moment. >> jelani, npr was addressing social issues and how it's not working. the quote is from alex vitale, the author of a book called "the end of policing." part of our problem is we keep imagining we can turn police

into social workers. when we turn a problem over to the police to manage, there will be violence. you started talking about this, the expansion of police into work that is not well suited to policing. do we defund and redirect that money as eric garcetti is doing or in the way many protesters are asking for, or can we train our police to identify, understand, and maybe redirect at the point of intervention to say hey, this is a mental health issue, this is a social work issue. this is something other than something that needs my gun, my knee, my baton, my pepper spray, or my taser? >> oh, i mean, ali, we theoretically could train police on these issues, but i guess the question is why would we? we have law enforcement, lots of law enforcement things that police can be doing. the famous backlog of rape kits. all sorts of, the low homicide resolution rate in this country, generally, if you commit a homicide, especially in many cities, you're far more likely

to get away with it than be arrested for it. there are plenty of things in the legitimate purview of law enforcement that police could be working on. i think that one of the other things we should bear in mind about this is we have suffered in some regard because this has been seen as a black problem. and as long as it was seen as a black problem, it was possible for very many people in this country to ignore it. the same sort of arc we saw with covid-19. as people started thinking about this as something mainly affecting black and brown people, you saw people divesting from the concern about that. but here's the thing. this is not a black problem. not a brown problem in this country. this is an american problem that disproportionately falls on the shoulders of black and brown people, but by no means exclusively so. what i mean by that is maya pointed out, there's very little data and police departments are

generally reluctant to share data and the doj does not collect data on police instances of violence. but when newspapers began doing this after ferguson, after the death of michael brown, one of the things that became very clear very quickly is that the majority of people, the majority of times you have an unarmed person killed by police, that person is white. so there are lots of white people who are disproportionately impacted -- who are impacted by this as well. some of which we saw. we saw the video from buffalo, the video from new york city, and the police reluctance to use anything other than force, i guess, in dealing with the question of how you respond to protests. but that's been across the board. and so there's much more of this happening to black people, but it's not exclusively happening to us. >> maya, one of the things -- look, i have generally in life come down on the side of unions being valuable to extend protections and collective

bargaining to their members, but there's a lot of evidence that police unions are the problem here. in minneapolis, the police union chief is more influential than the actual police chief, and he's got some inflammatory rhetoric. in buffalo, we have seen what happened. those 57 police officers who left the emergency response team continue to collect their salaries. they're still police officers. they're just not part of that particular team anymore. how do we deal with this? because we don't want to paint all unions as being bad, but it's starting to look like police unions protect misconduct. >> we need to be pro-union, but we need our politicians not to be controlled by fear. part of why this data problem is important is because the other thing that police departments do and unions use this constantly in the political dialogue, is they ratchet up fear. we have had three decades of precipitous drop in crime.

violent crime is no longer fundamentally a problem in this country, yet we ask as if there's constant danger, constant murder. if we get 20 more murders in one year, we act like there's a criminal justice crisis in the country. that's ridiculous when we have seen year after year literally of historic low violent crime numbers. but very small changes means unions come in and tell politicians, you are not hard on crime. so we have given bad union leaders the power to use fear and the way that police can control data to tell us to shift our priorities. i think eugene said something that was so very important, as jelani did. the reason police budgets have increased, and in new york city, increased 22% over the last four years, despite historic low crimes and virtually no budging in murder rates is because of using that fear. so frankly, it's our leaders

that have given an inappropriate power to fear. >> thank you to all three of you. eugene scott, maya wily, and je'llani cobb, staff writer wit the new yorker. thanks again. >> some small businesses in the united states have been dealt a one-two punch. the coronavirus lockdown and now looting. i'm speak to the owner of a hair salon whose life's work burnt to the ground in the protests in minneapolis. s. which is breast cancer that has spread to other parts of the body, are living in the moment and taking ibrance. ibrance with an aromatase inhibitor is for postmenopausal women or for men with hr+/her2- metastatic breast cancer, as the first hormonal based therapy. ibrance plus letrozole significantly delayed disease progression versus letrozole, and shrank tumors in over half of patients.

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the coronavirus pandemic has been devastating for small businesses, but black-owned businesses have been particularly hard hit. according to "the washington post," 40% of black businesses have already shut down because of covid-19. now, this is not the first time that black-owned businesses have closed down in disproportionate numbers. a study from the u.s. census

bureau found fewer than half of black-owned firms survived the great recession. now some black business owners are facing another setback, property damage from looting and damages. flora took a video of her salon, flora hair designs, burning to the ground. joining me now, flora westbrooks. thank you for joining me this morning. you opened 35 years ago in 1985. you work there with your sister and your niece as stylists. what were you thinking when you saw your shop burn down? >> i was just in disbelief. couldn't believe it that this was happening to me. being there so long in the community, and just, you know, crying and wondering why. why would this happen to me, because i thought it was a great community that i was working in for all those years, and i never thought anything like this would

happen. >> how do you feel about the context in which it happened? are you generally supportive of the protests that have been going on? >> yes, i am. you know, because this has been going on for years, police brutality and, you know, it's been going on so long. and we need -- you know, we have to support each other. but not where you start looting and burning their businesses down. i don't agree with that. that's the only thing i don't agree with. >> talk to me about what happened on the night of the fire. it was may 29th. you got a call around 7:00 p.m. you weren't at the shop, obviously. >> no, because we were still closed. my business was closed because of the coronavirus. so we were just about to open on monday. and i get a call around 7:00, and my cousin had called me and

said oh, my granddaughter is up there, and shaun, his business is on fire. so that's my son, so i know i'm like two doors down from shaun. and when i go up there, i just could not believe what i saw. i could not. i would never, never in my life imagine seeing something so horrifying like that. that just really, really hurt me to see our business. not only my business but my son's business and there was a business in between us. and we lost everything. auf everything. we don't have anything. >> is that your building? >> yes, that's my building. yes. my boys were trying to board it up. and that's my building right there. >> you have insurance on that? >> no. no, found out we don't. no. so we don't know what we're going to do. we just don't know what we're going to do.

>> there's a gofundme campaign. is that being helpful? >> yes, it's going slowly, but you know, it's not -- i mean, i think everybody, what they have done, the support, but if it would just go a little faster because i know it's going to take over $100,000 to rebuild our business. and you know -- >> i'm sorry, i didn't mean to interrupt you, ma'am. >> that's okay. that's okay. >> i'm never short of words. i don't know what i can tell you, flora. i'm sorry that you lost your business, and i hope that you are able to rebuild. thank you for joining me this morning. >> thank you. >> flora westbrooks is the owner of flora's hair design in minneapolis, minnesota. for many americans, the protests of 2020 seem to be a repetition of the 1960s civil rights movement, mainly because many of

the inequalities that existed then exist today. they're baked into our economic system and very little has been done to change that. the median household wealth for a black family today is roughly $13,000 compared to a white household at nearly $150,000. now, the difference between those two is actually wider on a percentage basis than it was in the late 1960s. the inequality doesn't end there. according to bloomberg, quote, black americans are steered into costlier home and auto loans, they get poorer health care and suffer worse outcomes. they also have chronically higher unemployment rates. just this friday, the new jobs report showed the unemployment rate for black americans increased while unemployment for the general population went down. while those numbers are flawed, they're still very telling. with me now is chris lue, former deputy labor secretary under

president obama. chris, good to see you. i wanted to talk to you about something else, but i actually want to talk to you about flora westbrooks, because floory represents the growth of wealth in the african-american community that can be passed down to people's children. she bought a building. she and her son had seprtd businesses in that building, and the building is gone. whether it's this or whether it's coronavirus or whether it's something else, african americans have had virtually no opportunity until the middle of the 20th century and smaller opportunity than most americans to build wealth. never mind just what they earn and what they get paid in their job, but actually build wealth and accumulate it. when they have been able to acquire property, that property is typically undervalued compared to what it would be in a white neighborhood. >> it doesn't matter if we're talking about good economic times or bad economic times. communities of color have traditionally lagged white

americans. even before this pandemic when unemployment was low, the african-american unemployment rate was still double what it was for white americans. as you just discussed, unemployed african-americans stay unemployed for longer periods of time, they earn less, they tend to work in jobs that don't have full benefits. so when you compound that year after year after year, you add to the fact that african-americans don't own businesses at the same rate as whites. they don't own homes at the same rate as well. it's that they're constantly trying to keep their head above water and to the extent they're able to own something, they're often in a very precarious situation. we saw this play out over the last couple months with the ppp loan programs that we consistently heard about minority owned businesses having a difficult time getting access to the capital if they need it to stay afloat. so what we're seeing over just the past couple months is laying

bare so many of the systemic racial economic inequalities we have seen really for decades. >> so chris, yesterday, i think it was, maybe two days ago, yamiche alcindor asked the president what are you going to do do about this problem? his response was, the economy. the president said the economy. here is the problem. if the economy is systemically racist, this will never end. in the '60s there was a spread between white wealth and black wealth and white unemployment and black unemployment. today there is a spread between white wealth and black wealth. it takes 11 1/2 black families to create the wealth of one white family. the gap is not closing, so the idea of a better economy is not solving the problem, as you said. >> well, it's exactly right. you have a president who consistently, when asked questions like this, goes back to the stock market. as we have discussed and everyone knows, the stock market is not a representation of what

most people are feeling. in fact, the vast majority of americans have very little money in the stock market at all. and so, yes, the economy does, a strong economy does lift all boats, but it doesn't lift them equally. as i said, even during good economic times, the unemployment rate among african americans is double what it is for white americans. i think we need to get serious in this country to understand that we need a real solution to education inequalities, racial inequalities. you have seen during this pandemic the fact that we have a digital divide in this country that makes it difficult for a lot of inner city and rural communities to do virtual education. and wonder what impact this kind of three to six-month gap of learning will do flong-term for african american children in the country. >> thank you for joining me. former deputy secretary of labor under president obama. here in the united states we are not accustomed to having

press freedom questioned let alone see journalists in direct physical confrontation with law enforcement. a prepress is enshrined in our constitution, one of the founding principles of our nation. as a journalist it doesn't matter where in the world you are or how free the nation is, the very nature of our work to bare witness and to hold power to account always stands in opposition to those who hold power, be they business leaders, presidents, prime ministers, princes or police. power of all rank and stripe does not enjoy being held to account. donald trump has spent the last four years attacking the press for doing its job. a practice that although some warned could have dire consequences, few believed would actually manifest into physical distaste for the press, but that is exactly what happened. on tuesday night, as i stood on the perimeter side of a police line, one block west of new york city's union square, i asked an officer why the line was established where it was when there was no evident risk to anyone's safety.

hi respon his response was if i continue to press the issue i may be arrested for asking the question. in minneapolis i was hit by tear gas a few times and by a rubber bullet. i was in a crowd upon which police were firing. it's likely the police had no idea my team was made up of journalists. we approached an intersection upon which police supported by the minnesota national guard had c conversioned. without any protesters around us we approached the authorities slowly with our hands in the air announcing we're media. they heard us and then they responded with, we don't care, and opened fire again. >> do it like they are daring the state troopers to fire on them again? am i hearing that right? >> guys, i got hit. i got hit. hold on. >> let's come out for a minute. ali velshi is standing by on the scene in minneapolis. >> since may 26th, according to the committee to protect jurn

itss, more than 300 journalists have faced press freedom violations including several of my colleagues targeted by or incidentally hit by police projectiles. he h ed oh, garrett haake in washington, d.c. and jo ling kent in seattle. >> we have police now advancing on protesters. oh, my gosh. >> forgive me. we are going to make some moves here so we don't [ bleep ]. we are going to end up in a place we don't want to be here if we are not careful. oh! i'm -- i just got hit in the side. >> move as quickly as you ask.

>> move! move! move! >> nearly all of us except those seriously injured went back into the field because we exist to bear witness and to hold power to account. because it is our duty to tell the public of this country what authorities are doing ostensibly in their name. again there was no threat, no violence from journalists unless you consider coverage by the media a threat. in this heated moment we must continue to remember that there are some police who entered this profession to honorably serve and protect, but what police departments and police unions don't seem to ever want is scrutiny. they don't like it from their chiefs. they don't like it from civilian review boards, from their mayors, they certainly don't like it from the media, but scrutiny is what we do. and without scrutiny the ability of the media to bear witness and accountability dies.

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i'm ali velshi. breaking news. according to an nbc news/wall street journal poll 80% of registered voters say they feel that things are generally out of control in the united states. while nearly 60% of voters say

they are more troubled by george floyd's death than the actions of the minneapolis police than they are by the protests that followed it. this as those protests honoring the memory of george floyd continue across our country. the 46-year-old will be honored at a memorial in houston tomorrow. he will be buried there on tuesday. most of the protests from coast to coast remain peaceful. >> things got tense in seattle as police used flashbangs, a familiar but never popular tactic among protesters. in san francisco large crowds making a statement and holding up traffic at the golden gate bridge taking a knee for 8 minutes and 46 minutes, that's the lengt