rolling crisis that continues this hour in texas where millions of fellow citizens find themselves in a dire situation, days into a winter storm that crippled the energy sector, brought out the worst in republican leadership. while power started to come back for most of the millions of texans struggling through freezing temperatures without it, there are still tens of thousands without power and the crisis is shifting from power to water. half the state's population does not currently have safe drinking water coming out of its taps. >> we shouldn't have to be without lights. i know it is freezing but somebody is responsible for this. you got people dying out here. you got hypothermia, dying. you know, people's houses are busted up because of water pipes busted. >> if the crisis the texans are

living through now are not enough to deal with, their governor lied about the catastrophe, tried to use it to score political points. he went on fox news to blame it on renewable energy saying wind and solar were shutdown by the crisis. shows how the green new deal would be a deadly deal for the united states of america. wind and solar, by the way, makeup about 10% of texas' power grid. even the governor's own energy department contradicted him on the ridiculous attempt of gas lighting or natural gas lighting. the failures came about because the state failed to weather proof the infrastructure, including natural gas pipelines. >> we have been warning the governor about this since 2011 when it was nearly this bad around the super bowl. you may remember the ice storm. there was a federal report said if you don't winterize, it will happen again.

there was a state report that said the same thing. the governor made a conscious choice not to do that. when you're at a regulated market and tell companies they don't have to do something, you're telling them not to do it. >> but if the texas governor got in trouble with the dumb self serving, easily disprove enlie about the power crisis, the junior senator from texas, ted cruz, ought to have asked governor abbott to hold his beer before he attempted to abscond on vacation to cancun while his constituents battled freezing temperatures with no electricity or running water. when he got caught, he first tried to imply he and his wife were only dropping off two daughters in cancun and that he was coming back the next day. then flight records and leaked messages from his wife's group text made clear that, too, was a lie. he ultimately admitted it was a mistake. even admitting the mistake, tried to blame the whole thing

on his kids, they wanted to go to cancun. he was just trying to be a good dad. we begin where power is back on for most residents, but water is a major area of concern there. >> reporter: that's exactly right, ali. people spent the first several days shivering in homes, found water wasn't safe to drink, or in some cases people don't have water coming out of their pipes at all. i spent time at an affordable housing complex where none of the residents, many black and latino folks in the houston area, none of them had water. they were taking pool water from somebody's pool, boiling it to bathe, to help their children wash clothes. they've rushed to come together, come up with at this point i was going to say plan b, but it is a

c or d plan at this stage, ali. >> how long, is there an estimate when this gets fixed? some of this is serious, in cases of water pipes that burst in homes, there's flooding, this is not a one or two day matter in some cases. >> reporter: no, not at all. the mayor says the boil water advisory is in effect until at least monday but that's at least monday. it could be extended well beyond that. and again, there are communities that aren't seeing just poor drinking water coming out, they're seeing nothing. they're hearing from building managers and local communities it may take longer to get resources back. i spent the day yesterday at del mar stadium where thousands upon thousands of residents were waiting in cars, coming in to get two cases of free water from volunteers out in the cold working for them. they told us that it had been days since they were able to find bottled water but were worried two cases weren't going

to last long enough. even though they're hearing monday there may be major improvements, many people are aware that this crisis could continue to extend. >> fascinates me in america, we talk about lack of access to fresh water. thanks for the reporting. joining me, democratic representative lindsey fletcher whose district covers part of west houston, member of the house energy and commerce committee. also with us, michael evans, mayor of mansfield, texas, a suburb of dallas, fort worth, pastor at bethlehem baptist church. representative fletcher, let me start with you. i believe your representative is where your fellow legislator ted cruz lives. some people were defending him, saying the best thing he could do is leave texas, doesn't draw on resources people need to recover. that's not your approach to what you do when fellow citizens are in trouble. >> no.

that's not my approach and i don't think that's the best strategy. there's something that everyone can do in a moment of crisis like this, that's a lesson we learned in our community. it was the lesson i took away from hurricane harvey. just show up became the motto, show up to hand out water, help a neighbor with broken pipes. there's plenty we can do here. that's what the vast majority of leaders of the community are doing now. >> dr. evans, just tell us, she was telling us about issues with water and with heat. this has been a remarkable problem within the pandemic problem because people opened up their homes, those that had water and heat opened their homes to other people, then confronted the idea that strangers outside the pandemic bubble were now in their homes. you talked to npr about this the other day. >> i was. and i tell you this, while people are playing politics we continue to have folks on the

ground here in mansfield, texas, whole suburbs that do not have electricity. i'm thinking of one suburb now, remington ranch, these people have been without electricity since monday. and let me also share this with you, bearing in mind that the folks on the ground here in mansfield, our police, our fire, our neighbors, our city workers have been working 24 hours, listen, 24/7. they've given their time and even in their own homes don't have utilities but they're working. and these people, while they're playing politics, i've got folks here in our city of about 80,000 residents who have nothing. it is utterly ridiculous. one of the largest, largest electricity providers, encore,

here in texas is saying to people because of a computer glitch that these folks aren't able to have electricity, utilities. this many days later, ali. this many days later. i'm putting out a distress call. so thank you for allowing me to use this as a megaphone. you know, our state representative is working on this, state senator is working on this, and it is just mind boggling that these entities have gotten so large you can't get a person to push a dog gone button so people can have their utilities. >> yeah, fix it. >> it is mind boggling. it is not their workers on the ground but it is the people saying to our residents that we can't get electricity. i'm just livid. i'm just beside myself. >> you should be. i understand that you and fellow residents would be, without

water and heat in the middle of winter with flooding. representative fletcher, let's talk about this a second. a number of your state officials, the governor and some of the members of congress and former federal energy secretary who was the governor of texas are all gaslighting about this, redirecting what should be real concern about energy infrastructure and the way electricity is distributed in texas to some mythical boogie man called the green new deal and alternative energy. >> well, that's right, ali. of course, that happened early on in the crisis. that should not have been the focus. of course we need to understand exactly what happened, why it happened, and how we make sure it didn't happen again. but the first thing we saw, some of our elected officials do was blame wind turbines producing a fraction of energy on the grid, talking about the green new deal which as we all know is not law, has not been passed, has not

even been brought to a vote in the house, it is a concept. i set out my own views that i don't think that's the best path forward in our state, but certainly it's just a straw man and something to attack and something to rally people around, and it is so symbolic of the divisive partisan moment that we are living through that is really dangerous. people didn't have electricity in their homes. i was one of them. we were out of power about 48 hours at my house, my whole family lost power in the homes across my district. we are still under boil water notice. my mother out of water since monday, all across the district, i am seeing firsthand the challenges. that should be the first job of our governor, state legislators, ercot, public utility commission, making sure we have a system that works and responding to needs of citizens in real time, not going onto fox

news and pointing to something that really wasn't the issue at the moment, and wasn't true. and i think that's the real challenge that we have here. we have got to deal with true facts to make good public policy, to understand what happened, make sure it doesn't happen again. you have to start with the truth. this is a very complex system. there's a lot to understand. there are systemic failures that were late to the market system, systemic failures relating to weatherization of equipment which we've known at least a decade, perhaps longer, that we had these challenges. these are things we should be addressing in austin. the governor is ultimately in charge of ercot. electric reliability council of texas, he appoints members of the board and oversees it as does the legislature. there are plenty of places to

look. the very first thing we need to do is get the power turned back on, get water flowing again, make sure people have water to drink, have food, can be warm and have shelter. those are the priorities this week. at the same time, we have to understand we need to do a massive investigation to make sure we understand what happened and doesn't happen again. >> we'll make sure the eyes of the nation are on texas until you get your water and heating back. then we will start looking into how to make sure this doesn't happen again. thank you to both of you. our regards and thoughts to your constituents. we are watching this unfold, our hearts are with you. lizzy fletcher, reverend dr. michael evans, mayor of mansfield, texas. it has been awhile since we heard words immigration and policy used in the same sentence at the white house. in the old administration, the word immigration was usually paired with nastiness about the character of immigrants themselves. now biden has a plan that goes beyond undoing the former president's deliberate

anti-immigrant cruelty. why that's important for america next. first, this weekend, i am back in the business of traveling the country, holding safe, socially distanced conversations, in today's case with five locals from birmingham. i asked each of them what message they have for president biden. >> in the pledge of allegiance it says with liberty and justice for all. please make sure that happens. make sure that all people get the justice that is so needed for them, that it is not just one sided, but that we become a true america that is for our people. is for our people including little rock and even worcester. and tonight... i'll be eating the chicken quesadilla from...tony's tex mex...in... katy. (doorbell) (giggle) do ya think they bought it? oh yeah. tired of clean clothes that just don't smell clean? what if your clothes could stay fresh for weeks? now they can! this towel has already been used and it still smells fresh. pour a cap of downy unstopables into your washing machine

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on thursday, the biden administration along with congressional democrats unveiled a new immigration bill creating a path of eight years to citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the country. that's five fewer years than it

would have taken in previous bills. the bill also provides an expedited path for dreamers, undocumented immigrants brought to the united states at children by their parents. the bill's approval has a tough road ahead, given razor thin democratic majorities in both houses. while there's little bipartisan support for immigration reform in washington, there's broad support for what it aims to do among americans. a new poll found majority of likely voters and overwhelming proportion of democrats strongly or somewhat support offering path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. when the poll asked specifically about dreamers, support was even greater, showing 72% of all likely voters, and 87% of democrats in favor. this new poll is consistent with a pew survey. 72% of americans probably couldn't agree what day of the week today is. this is a big deal. after four years of the prior administration trying to make

america air tight from immigrants who aren't white, the biden administration seems to be trying for actual policy which is good because america needs immigrants and lots of them for one very important reason. we don't have enough people and we do have an aging work force that will need to be replaced. there's a term for it. negative replacement rate. we don't give birth to enough new humans to replace those that age out of the work force, we need immigrants to make up the difference, both to do jobs and sustain the economy with money they earn and pay taxes to pay for our future retirement. but after four years of an administration that characterized immigrants as drug dealing rapists, traveling in car advance from s hole countries, some americans think immigration shouldn't exist at all. it is economically unsound, xenophobic, isolationist with no support in facts. it is due in large part to america attracting the best,

brightest, hardest working immigrants. our universities considered among the best in the world attract the smartest people in the world and once they graduate are the brilliant minds, creating companies, running businesses that employ americans and advance the role on the world stage. amazon, apple, google, tesla, companies like these are the examples of best innovation, founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. america's immigration story isn't just something we talk about when we look at the statue of liberty, it is actually what makes america great, despite bad policy makers, america is really good at immigration. as we discuss actual immigration policy again, remember, it is not a matter of should we, but rather how best to finally get this done properly. done propery 90% clearer skin at 4 months after just 2 doses. skyrizi may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them.

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if you want to feel the impact of the covid-19 pandemic in the most stark way possible, here it is. according to centers for disease control and prevention, first half of 2020, the virus actually cut average life expectancy in the united states by a full year. this is the sharpest decrease since world war ii. racial minorities had the biggest impact. black americans lost nearly three years, hispanics almost two. that revelation comes as we approach the one year anniversary as perhaps the most infamous covid-19 lie told to us by the former president. >> it is going to disappear, one day, it is like a miracle, it will disappear, from our shores, you know, it could get worse before it gets better, maybe go away. we'll see what happens. nobody really knows. >> that was back on february 27th. nearly a year ago. today we are closing in on 500,000 covid-19 deaths in the

united states. former president continued to feed lies and falsehoods to the american people the duration of his time in office. he said we would be back to normal by easter last year. campaigning in the fall, he said we are rounding the corner as we approached the most dire, deadly part of the pandemic. what a difference a year makes. joe biden has been in office a month, and is brutally honest how hard returning to normalcy will be. >> i believe we'll be approaching normalcy by the end of this year and god willing this christmas will be different than last. but i can't make that commitment to you. there are other strains of the virus, we don't know what could happen in terms of production rates, things can change. but we're doing everything the science is indicated we should do and people are stepping up to get everything done that has to

be done. >> in early days of the pandemic, when donald trump analyze and unsteadiness set a national tone of chaos and fear, new york governor andrew cuomo brought a sense of order and control to frequent news conferences. many americans, not just new yorkers, were comforted by his leadership. now cuomo faces new questions about what appears to be serious undercount of nursing home deaths in new york state. last month, the attorney general reported the cuomo administration undercounted nursing home deaths by the thousands. state health officials then admitted that some 3800 deaths of nursing home residents who died in hospitals had not been counted as nursing home deaths because the residents didn't die in the homes themselves. governor cuomo is defending himself against allegations that the counting technique was a ploy to misrepresent, understate nursing home deaths, saying the overall count has always been accurate, blaming the controversy on his administration's failure to answer questions quickly enough. but the u.s. attorney in

brooklyn and the fbi reportedly have begun a preliminary investigation into the way the cuomo administration handled the data, and democratic lawmakers moved to strip cuomo of unilateral emergency powers during the pandemic. nbc's cory kauffman is outside a nursing home on manhattan's upper east side, a facility that saw dozens of covid deaths since the pandemic began. good morning to you. many new york families lost loved ones in nursing homes to covid-19 and a lot of them have been banging the drum for close to a year, saying there's something wrong with how we are looking at deaths in nursing homes. what's the reaction been to governor cuomo's attempt to explain what he did? >> reporter: yeah, ali, good morning to you. those families and more and more new yorkers say it just feels insincere, it feels like a hollow answer and they're just not getting the answers they have been seeking. they want more transparency. a growing number of lawmakers in

new york, democrats included, have signed a formal letter accusing cuomo of obstruction of justice. cuomo is firing back. he had press conference. he says attacks are politically motivated, that they're twisting facts. he says as far as calling them lies. he says other politicians are lying to new york public causing more confusion and he does continue to insist they have reported every single death in new york but some of the deaths were mistakenly categorized, he stopped short of an apology, but did say the administration should have done things differently. listen to what he said yesterday. >> i was not aggressive enough in knocking down the falsities. i heard them, i saw them, i dismissed it as politics, dismissed it as personal agendas, i dismissed it as

partisan politics which at a fevered pitch nowadays. but i should have been more aggressive in calling it out. >> reporter: all right. so in addition to the letter calling governor cuomo's actions obstruction of justice, these democratic lawmakers and other lawmakers signed on are insisting the governor release more information. they say that explanation is not enough. how did tallies get bumbled in the first place. this comes as the associated press released a report from top cuomo aide this week as well saying the aide allegedly told democratic lawmakers they did withhold tally information regarding nursing home deaths early last year over fear the trump administration would use it against them politically. so even though cuomo administration would like this to be over with his explanation,

certainly the new doj investigation will cause more information to be out there. ali? >> a lot of moving parts to the story. thanks for bringing it together for viewers. good to see you, my friend. cory kauffman. amid the pandemic a huge surge in hate crimes against asian americans, including a frightening spike in the last several weeks. >> and when the door opened, he stepped forward and slashed me. i put my hand on my face and then when i look at my hands, there's blood i was seeing. i cried for help. i cried for help but nobody helped. >> he was slashed from ear to ear with a box cutting blade on the subway in new york city earlier this month. doctors had to give him 100 stitches. other recent attacks include a

52-year-old woman attacked outside a new york city bakery. last month, a 91-year-old man was pushed to the ground in san francisco leaving him with a broken hip. and an 86-year-old man shoved in san francisco died from his injuries. according to the group, stop aapi hate, there were nearly 3,000 firsthand accounts of attacks from march when the pandemic began through december of 2020. 126 happening to people over the age of 60. this year is following a similar trend. with schools on the cusp of reopening, there are fears violence could extend from streets to the classroom. vicki nguyen is tracking this. there's a lot of xenophobic rhetoric that came out of the former white house. >> reporter: it is tough to say what motivates these heinous

racial crimes. many people in the asian american community and advocates say the rhetoric, the calling it the china virus and kung flu, they feel it caused increase in hate incidents. there was a man in texas who approached a father and his two-year-old and six-year-old while shopping at a sam's club. he stabbed them and reportedly later told authorities he did it because he thought they were chinese, they weren't, and he thought they were spreading the coronavirus. so it is that kind of incident that prompted stop aapi to start recording. some of them don't rise to the level of a hate crime, per se, but they're isolating, demeaning, spat on, yelled at, denied services because you're asian. it is very critical that people report the crimes. it can be tough, asian american

culture tends to be reticent about going to authorities. there are language barriers, other reasons people are reluctant to report the crimes. we have an interview with co-founder of stop aapi why it is so important for asian americans to speak out when these things happen. take a listen. >> i think police and law enforcement need to be sensitive to the state of racism to ask questions about what was said during the attack, if it was racially motivated or not and pursue it if it was racially motivated. a lot of times, these types of crimes if hate crimes that are racially motivated, they go underreported and people continue to be victimized this way. it is terrible. >> i encourage all asian americans to speak out because if you don't speak out, nobody will help you. >> reporter: and ali, to give a little more context, the rise in crimes so sharp in new york city

that the nypd formed a permanent task force to deal with them. they said last january to this january they have responded to 27 confirmed hate incidents against asian americans. compare that to an average of two to three a year before the pandemic. they now have 25 officers that speak 11 languages, trying to tackle the crimes. >> amid everything else going on, now this. vicki, thank you for the reporting. she's an nbc news investigative reporter. through the history of civil rights movement, peaceful sit ins and boycotts have been key to driving change. coming up next, i talk to someone who hemmed deseg rate wichita, kansas lunch counters. here's one of the citizens i spoke, with her message to the biden administration about dealing with mental health of americans. >> i ask president joe biden and vice president kamala harris to implement a mental health council in every single school in the united states of america.

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to allergens all season long. psst! psst! you're good. this country spent years fighting back against one of the biggest sins, racial injustice. last year, more than 7500 black lives matter protests, and 93% of the protests nonviolent, which i have spoken about regularly on the show. martin luther king jr. talks about and pursued nonviolent resistance. saying nonviolence is not

sterile passivity but positive moral force for transformation. at first it didn't work until news footage of resistance captured the attention of americans. birmingham, alabama was a turning point in the civil rights movement, that's why i am here. 1963, what's known as the birmingham campaign began a series of marches, boycotts, sit ins. the demonstrators met by police dogs, fire hoses. deeply disturbing images became key to help the end of the struggle for freedom, prompting john f. kennedy to confront the issue directly. >> 100 years have passed since president lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, grandsons, are not fully free, not yet free from bonds of injustice, not yet freed from social and economic oppression. the events in birmingham and elsewhere have so increased, the

cries for equality, that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them. >> with that, president kennedy set in motion the civil rights act, signed into law by lind on johnson a year later. while birmingham was central to the civil rights movement, it was not the beginning. five years earlier, one of the first series of lunch counter sit ins was organized and led by students in wichita, kansas. this peaceful protest ended in victory as the drugstore where the sit ins started with other locations changed policies throughout kansas. my next guest was among that group leading wichita's drugstore sit in. more than 60 years later, he is still there in wichita. good to see you. thank you for being with us. like so many of the protests in the united states or in other places where we have seen nonviolent protests, sit ins,

civil disobedience, for you it started as personal. it was looking at your parents and your elders who just wanted to be served and in many cases had to stay outside a restaurant, stay out in the cold. you just wanted a basic civil right remedy. >> yes. and on the point you just made, actually i did not know some of the elders waiting for a city bus that would have taken them to their jobs in white homes where they would take care of white families, prepare meals for white families, take care of white children, and to me, when students are waiting outside the drugstore, those elders standing there alongside us may well have appreciated getting a hot cup of coffee and wait until the bus come inside. but that wasn't going to happen. >> let's just talk about what

exactly the issue was in the drugstore and frankly every other place that served food in kansas or in many states in america at the time. you could go into the drugstore and go to the end of the counter and order food for takeout. you could not sit in that drugstore. >> correct. yes. that's correct. >> so how did you come around to the idea you're going to go there, sit there. this was after emmett till was killed. you knew there was danger of civil disobedience, danger in people that didn't think you had a right to do it, so what as a student caused you to do it? >> well, coming from church based families where you're taught from a very young age that sometimes in life you have

to pursue what you feel is right at the moment and that there may be risks involved in those actions. >> your parents were unaware, dad was unaware you were doing this. what would he say if he knew? >> wow, i would imagine one of the first things out of his mouth was don't you have something else to do. and dad loved beef, a packing company. i had a vision that the owner of malcolm's may well have been engaged on a golf course, playing golf with one of the owners of the dock and save. it occurred to me discussion might have come up.

harry's son worked at the packing company, he has been creating unwanted -- told him and some of the other black students they can get coffee, get food, but they have to take it out of the drugstore. and i didn't want dad to encounter that type of resistance. >> are you heartened by the fact there are young people across america that look to in 2020, picked up where folks like you left off in the '50s and '60s. >> absolutely. the nature of change, that means in my mind that different generations have to pick up the baton, continue the struggle for justice and humanity.

that's just the hand we're dealt sometimes in life. >> thank you for playing the hand you were dealt. thank you for your service to this country. he was a participant and project director of research on black wichita. this weekend, i am in birmingham, alabama. i moderated a socially distant discussion with residents about inequality, racial justice. you'll hear that discussion next. justice you'll hear that discussion next blair. [ chuckles ] whoo. i'm gonna grow big and strong. yes, you are. i'm gonna get this place all clean. i'll give you a hand. and i'm gonna put lisa on crutches! wait, what? said she's gonna need crutches. she fell pretty hard. you might want to clean that up, girl. excuse us. when owning a small business gets real, progressive helps protect what you built with customizable coverage. -and i'm gonna -- -eh, eh, eh.

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soft, smooth. i made a business out of my passion. i mean, who doesn't love obsessing over network security? all our techs are pros. they know exactly which parking lots have the strongest signal. i just don't have the bandwidth for more business. seriously, i don't have the bandwidth. glitchy video calls with regional offices? yeah, that's my thing. with at&t business, you do the things you love. our people and network will help do the things you don't. let's take care of business. at&t. on black history month, i am hosting this weekend's shows from birmingham, alabama. the historic city is one of the birthplaces of the civil rights movement. they endured water cannons, all because they wanted equal rights

under the law. it was in this city martin luther king penned his letter from the jail in 1963, imploring african americans to stand up and take action rather than waiting for whites to change unjust laws, something whites would never likely do on their own. fast forward to today. birmingham is a changed place, albeit with many traces of the checkered past. the largest city boasts a population of about 200,000, most black, but it is bustling, home to many creatives. it is called one of the coolest cities in the country. no matter how many years pass, locals know the history and exactly what took place on the streets, it is in their blood and in their souls. it was my privilege to host a wide ranging discussion with five birmingham locals from all walks of life. among many things discussed, ties to the civil rights movement, how those ties informed their views of the racial justice movement taking place today.

watch. >> my whole maternal side of the family is from birmingham, lived in birmingham, grew up here. my mom was born in 1950. she has lived through the integration, desegregation. it was about the equality of our people, to have listened to stories, just because of black history month, just because it is alabama or birmingham, to see the dogs, the hoses, to see people for marching, just for walking suffer and then seeing where we are today. my mom is 70. she said the same thing at 70 she was seeing at 16. america is still america. and what we are trying to do,

what i would assume the whole move is for america to become something other than what our history has us to be. >> so my mom went to school with denise mcnair. she was one of the young girls that young girls that got killed in the church bombing. my mom actually was supposed to go to church with her that day but my grand mother decided she couldn't go that day. my mom, it's embedded what it's like to be black and listened to the funeral, with martin luther king when all that took place. to me, what i see today, it astounds me that still today people do not see us as humans. we are humans. we want health care. we want money to take care of our kids. we want to live long.

we want the education. what i can't understand is someone to look at me and my face and tell me me that just because the top layer of my skin is a different color that i can't get it? that -- that absolutely blow -- it almost brings me to tears. why is it that when you see me you don't see a human? that's all i -- that's all i want to see change. is that people see the black community, that we are human, and that we want the same opportunity for our kids, four our families, the legacy, to be the same thing for everybody else. >> when you think about civil rights and even black history month, it's not a moment in time. it is people like yourself being intentional. you know, white americans, whether you feel that you have the privilege or not, doing that work to be intentional with

relating and understanding and learning the history of this country and not seeing it as an isolated event, because it's going to take all americans to really combat some of these systemic issues when it comes to our constitution that was really never intended for brown and black people. if you want to see change, you have to be the change that you want to see, and you have to get from behind your comfort zone. you have to be intentional with having these conversations. we can't shy away from them. >> so we need equity, and i cannot express that enough. we need increased assets to health care. this includes mental health resources. we need built environments. we need jobs in the black communities. we need better schools. we need educators in the schools who actually care about the well-being of those students that they are teaching and interacting with daily. you know, it's just so much that

black, indigenous people of color experience on a daily basis, and trying to just put one foot ahead it's like, well, many times those people are taking two steps backwards because they can't get ahead. we need a minimum wage. they have kids to take care of, bills to pay, we need things to increase our life expectancy. >> my hope that this will be a movement and not just a moment. you know? what it won't just be a fad that fades away, that everyone will stay committed and engaged to social justice, to understanding everyone's perspective, everyone's life experience, and, you know, trying to put yourself, maybe, in the shoes of that person. and so, you yo, the first, i guess, answer to fixing a problem is first acknowledging

that we have a problem. so what we're seeing now is that nationally all of the national medical organizations are, you know, acknowledging that racism is a public health crisis. right? and once you acknowledge that, then you can start studying the different factors that exist therein. so, again, we talk about providing people access to health care, but there are people who have access to health care who still are dieing at disproportionate rates. addressing things like unconscious bias, investigating and understanding why those disparities exist. right? access is one thing, but there's something inherent in our medical system that causes these disparities, and being able to acknowledge that they exist and then being able to, in our medical education process actually teach about bias. actually teach as diversity and how to interact with different, people of different backgrounds. >> with all the discussion we've

had we have yet to address criminal justice which is personal to me, as an ex-felon who can't vote. so i didn't choose a president. i didn't choose anybody. i do understand, though, how i have been minimalized over the years, and as a result of that, here i am standing in front of a camera. nobody would have known i was an ex-felon. nobody would have known i served 18 1/2 years in prison. as we talk about equity, talk about diversity and inclusion, as we talk about justice, we must first address the issues which are "the issues," and our issues primarily in america are our laws. >> in our next hour those natives of birmingham weigh in how they're coping with the coronavirus pandemic. ravaging black and brown communities. also head back to texas.

talking to julian castro about the infrastructure failure in one of the nation's biggest states, and coming up at 10:00, congressman colin allred joins tiffany cross on "cross connection." you don't want to miss it. ." you don't want to miss it. . buttercup! ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ for every trip you've been dreaming of, expedia has millions of flexible booking options. because the best trip is wherever we go together. ♪

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good morning. it is saturday, february the 20th. i'm ali velshi. today marks one month since the biden administration took office. on friday the president address

add global audience first time as commander-in-chief telling countries ensembled america is back. included in the to-do list meeting economic security challenges posed by china and russia and repairing damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic. >> those who understand that democracy is essential, essential to meeting these challenges. >> democracy doesn't happen by accident. we have to defend it. fight for it. strengthen it. renew it. we have to prove that our model isn't a relic of history. it's the single, best way to revitalize the promise of our future. >> while well-received biden's words did not erase in one fell swoop four years's nonsensical scald" america first" policy, pushback from longtime allies. germany the chancellor angela merkel warning "our