tv Politics Nation MSNBC May 1, 2021 2:00pm-3:00pm PDT
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composite plan to shore up our current economic suffering due to covid. and to ready the country for an equitable future that republican lawmakers have spent the past five years running from. the republican party's response was to present its sole black u.s. senator as proof of its own racial equity. but the gop rebuttal to the president coming three months after a racist insurrection that it never mentioned barely mentioned racial discrimination, except to claim that it was president biden and the democrats who were responsible for our national division. of course, their political problem is that a cross-section of americans not only approve of the president's action, but they want more of it. and for black americans, that means discernible action to match the president's soaring
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rhetoric on racial inequity, starting with this challenge to congress to have the george floyd justice in policing act signed into law by the end of this month. joining me now, one of the people who got justice for george floyd, attorney jerry blackwell, prosecutor in the murder trial of derek chauvin. attorney, let me first thank you, attorney blackwell, for being on the show tonight. one of the things that i learned after your successful prosecution of derek chauvin last month, it's something i think many americans were shocked to learn, and that is that this trial, the trial of derek chauvin for the murder of george floyd, was your first experience in criminal law. you said that your decision to take the case was, quote, a moral moment. you told the family and i at the
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courthouse you did it free of charge, and this was the first criminal case. you have a long civil case record. can you explain to our audience what that means, a moral choice? >> you know, i can only liken it to something that's biblical. it's like a fire in your bones. when i saw what had happened, i felt this kind of inner compulsion, injunction to get involved, to do whatever i could do for the cause of justice, and i felt i was sent and told to do it. so i didn't ask about pragmatisms, how i will keep the business of 30 to 40 employees going, how i would pay for anything. i was simply told that this is how you are to serve. and i heard the call and i answered the call. so that was the spiritual reason. and then personally, george floyd is me. he is so many other african-americans. i've had my own experiences of being harassed by the police for no reason, being stopped for no
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reason. and nobody should've to live that way. and it was emblematic of the relationship, the social contract that all of us as african-americans have, even with our democratic experience and criminal justice. the personal reasons and the spiritual reasons compelled me to step up and do that it and to not be focused on how it would even be paid. >> i must give credit to the minnesota state attorney general, keith ellison for investing that kind of faith new, which clearly worked. but tragically, rather than view the conviction of derek chauvin as just a ruling brought by due process, we've seen where police officers and certainly conservative commentators have cast his conviction as mob justice, black rage, everything but a deserved punishment for murder. as one of the architects of that conviction, i want to hear your
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thoughts on why it'ssupposedly everything that happened in the street last year and not in the court last month. what is your view of that? >> you had a group of neutral citizens who were there to call simply balls and strikes. what they saw pierced their conscience, to see a person bound, subdued, who's helpless, who is defenseless, being choked to death one breath at a time. and the jurors saw that. they saw no justification for it. they heard no justification for it over weeks of trial, and they concluded that what it was, in fact, was murder. they could believe their eyes. i'm not surprised necessarily that conservative commentators are casting it that way. as you know, a person who's committed to dishonest has a
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hard time seeing the truth. if you see that scene and you take in what happened to george floyd there on the street, how can any human with a modicum of consciousness feel that's wrong? >> as we watched the month-long trial, i asked every legal mind we had on "politicsnation" whether they thought a conviction for chauvin would ultimately impact police misconduct cases going forward. your turn. do you think it will? >> i think it certainly does. with respect to the most brazen of police that feel they can do this sort of thing in broad daylight and even on video feel comfortable there will be no consistent or accountability for it. i think it certainly is a statement that that's not necessarily going to be true for them. i hope it also encourages other police officers to stand up against bad policing, standing up against bad policing is good for good policing.
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chief arradondo, the chief of the minneapolis police department took a stand and other officers from the minneapolis police department too, stood up and testified to say that this was wrong. so i think it will make a difference, rev. that's one answer. and the other answer has to do with how i view racial justice and racial equity just in general. it never rolls like a wheel on a smooth pavement. justice rolls more like a brick, and it's always against the landscape of cultural, social, moral inertia. that's the landscape. and the question for me always is will we take our thrgz and -- energies and flip the brick? we have opportunities to flip the brick and to me this verdict was most definitely a flipping of that brick in the direction of progress. >> and the things you just mentioned was the thing that i really took to heart, is that you had ten police officers
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testify for the prosecution, including the police chief, something in the many years that i've been out here i've not seen the blue wall of silence pierced like we did in the chauvin trial. but what did that mean to you? what did that mean to the prosecution? >> it was very important, obviously. of all the persons who testified about what was proper policing, the most credible ones were the other police who were willing to stand up and say this does not represent us by way of policy, by way of training, by way of our values. i mean, it was incredibly important for jurors. and i think that it is possible that if we never called an expert at all on use of force, the jurors may have been persuaded by the police officers. >> the courage of the bystanders
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the defense attorney tried to make an angry mob, including the young lady we met, the family of george floyd and i at the first funeral in minneapolis who had faced threats and all, their courage and they're not willing to walk by all of them but stopped and tried to do something, i think their tmz were things that grabbed the hearts of many americans. and obviously it made an impact on the jury. >> they were -- they were, i think, hugely, hugely important. the subtext for this trial had to do with the objectification of george floyd himself and people of color, the effort to paint them as simply an unruly mob stereotypical ways and painting george floyd as a crazed thug was an undercurrent also. so it was really the duty and burden of the prosecution to humanize the humans.
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and that meant bringing the bistanders in one by one and having the jurors meet them. more than meet them, to feel them, feel the anguish, their remorse, their own sense of guilt at not having been able to do more for this man who was a stranger to them, and meet them one by one from all races, all genders, different genders, i call them a bouquet of humanity. but to get to know them and experience the humanity because our theory was that the humanity that unites all of us, also in mr. george floyd, to get to know him. he struggled with drugs, a health condition. we wanted to humanize that also. but the bystanders, i think, were really the symbolic representation of the humanization of the people involved in this trial so they couldn't just be cast as unruly
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mobs or as thugs or as simply angry people, as you heard a number of the witnesses on the stand simply being asked if they were angry or angrier still. you heard that. >> well, all right. i appreciate you. thank you for coming on and your summation as a preacher, you dropped the mic with that last line. i won't forget that one. thank you for being on, attorney blackwell. joining me now is row land martin, managing editor of ronald "martin unfiltered. "thank you for being with us tonight. i talked with attorney blackwell and you and i know at the end of the trial and even after, there has been continued police abuse from columbus, ohio, to elizabeth city, north carolina. you've been on the ground in elizabeth city most of the week. i've had some of our associates
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there on the ground and attorney ben crump and others, kirstin foy, the mother of eric garner and i myself will be going back to that city on monday to deliver the eulogy for andrew brown, working with naacp and activists on the ground and bishop william basher. what's the latest on the ground where protests are going on? as expected, a military response of barely 18,000 people, and you're big audience knows you shoot it straight. you say you're going to brink the funk on the show and you know i'm the surrogate son of the godfather of funk, so let's get funky in here. what's going on on the ground? >> elizabeth city, you got two different things going on. there was elizabeth city and then there's the county. african-american majority on the city council, but a different situation with the county. the shooting took place by
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deputy sheriff's, that's the county. elizabeth city had to declare a state of emergency, and that was a concerned to some folks. you had people criticizing the university there, the hbcu having students move out and have police officers stay there. school was made virtual the entire week. but the reality is you had peaceful protests. you haven't had folks act a fool, rioting. the fundamental problems you have in elizabeth city and this county is that who actually is in charge of the investigation? who's leading it? we have a district attorney who when the shooting took place, reverend spearman kept calling his office, they said he was unavailable for five days. how can you be the d.a. in this type of shooting and you can't be reached for five days? the concern for people there is what's the transparency? what are the actual -- who is leading the investigation? we've been told that the d.a. has an investigation, the state bureau of investigation has one.
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well, who's the lead agency? first of all, unlike minnesota and other states, the state attorney general cannot take over the case. >> right. >> the d.a. has to recuse himself. you have all these dynamics at play here, and the people say we need to have real transparency, who's leading the investigation, who's in control of the evidence, who has not the body camera footage, who has the cameras at the house where andrew brown lived, the cameras were removed. i talked to the landlord. he said we don't know who took the cameras. >> right. of course you don't know who's in charge of the investigation. and we do know from an independent autopsy, they say that the law enforcement shot him in the back of the head. that was the fatal shot. going to another case -- >> and then three times in the right arm. >> right. another case, we saw the funeral of 16-year-old ma'khia bryant in
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columbus, ohio, killed last month by police during an encounter outside her foster home. among those that came to comfort the family was the mother of breonna taylor from louisville. you heard what i asked attorney blackwell about the impact of the chauvin verdict on the courtroom. but given just as many police shootings we've seen since the verdict came down, is it safe to say there's been no effect on policing or that we are seeing some of the last bastions of police disregard for the law? >> i don't think we'll see the last bastions, and i don't believe we've seeing anything actually happen. the reality is this was always going to take time. what we have to realize, and what a lot of people -- they've realized over the last eight years, you cannot go to d.c. and think that's where changes to police are going to happen, because these are local law enforcement agencies. since the chauvin trial, you had
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the attorney general merrick garland announce the doj is going to investigate practices in minneapolis. you had them announce they're going to do the same thing in louisville. the mayor of columbus, ohio, where 40 people have been killed since 2013, he's calling on doj to come in as well. now, the problem is the police department does not put into practice what is recommended, then they fail. in chicago, doj came in, made recommendations, chicago police department did not put into practice what they recommended. they still have problems. and so you must have local officials who are willing to stand up to police unions, to police departments, to the public, and say we're not going to kowtow to the old-school notion of whatever the police want, they get. you got to have leadership. you got folks trying to appraisal the collective bargaining deal in san antonio. i think what you're seeing is the public realize that local
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pressure, which is why voting comes in, we're going to put people in charge who are going to be far more aggressive when it comes to these police departments, including d.a.s, judges, city managers, city mayors, city council members. that's the only way this thing changes. >> because it's implemented on the ground with localities and we cannot hold them accountable. before the killing of george floyd and breonna taylor last year, you had the modern lynching that was the killing of ahmaud arbery in georgia. this week a grand jury charged three defendants in arbery's death with federal hate crimes and kidnapping charges. i bring up the arbery case because while the defendants aren't law enforcement officers, they had relationships with prosecutors in their county, which critics cast as central to why the defendants were not charged for months. so yeah, reforming police departments is one thing. but it has to be go hand in hand
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with reform in the legal system itself. your thoughts, ronald? >> and we got to remember, the reality is in this country upwards of 80%, 90% of your district attorneys are white men. many of them conservative. so sure, there's a marilyn moseley in baltimore, larry krasner in philadelphia, one who was in florida, and now another one. the difference you're now seeing, you're now seeing folks realize that the d.a. is just as important. in the case of ahmaud arbery, there were three different d.a.s who were not moving. it wasn't until the video was released and the pressure was put on the georgia buffer investigations that charges were filed. so the public has to understand, when we're fighting voter suppression, that has a direct impact because d.a.s are elected. >> right. >> and so think about this. everybody listening, you want to
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see law enforcement and criminal justice reform, you got to have voter suppression end because that impacts who gets elected. so all of these things are interrelated. so when people tell me, man, why you always talking about voting, because you can't say i want to see the legal system change but you don't vote. all these things go together. so we must say top to bottom, president, u.s. senate, members of congress, governors, state reps, state senators, d.a.s, judges, the entire system -- >> all the way down. >> -- impacts all of that, which is why we're fighting georgia, texas, florida, all these states who are trying to steal these elections because they see what's coming, reverend. white fear is driving all of this. i got a book coming out next year. they're frayed of the browning of america, and that's what we're fighting for. >> all right. and that's why we have to keep fighting. 47 states trying to change voting laws. the fight is on. ronald martin, thank you for being with us. coming up, the gop misinformation machine is
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getting out of hand. that's why i'm ready to drop some truth on the republican party. but first, my colleague richard lui with today's top news stories. >> good saturday to you. some of the stories we're watching this hour. more than 30% of the u.s. adult population is fully vaccinated against covid-19. over 100 million americans, according to the cdc. at least 100 colleges and universities across the country will require incoming students to be fully vaccinated before attending in-person classes this fall. india continues to struggle with a massive surge in covid-19 cases and deaths. today the country reported a single-day record of more than 400,000 cases. the biden administration says it will send supplies to help combat the overwhelming second wave, including oxygen, masks, testing equipment and ppe. a few hours from polls closing in a closely watched special congressional election in texas' 6th district to fill
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the seat of republican ron wright who passed away in february. 23 candidates are on that ballot. if no one receives the majority of that sloat, the top two candidates will compete in a runoff election for the seat. we're less than two hours away from the start of the 147th kentucky derby. fans this time will be on hand for the first time since 2019. attendance is capped at 45,000 due to covid restrictions, and masks, you got to wear those there. the horse race starts at 6:57 tonight eastern time live on nbc. more "politicsnation" with reverend al sharpton right after a short break. r ulcerative colitis treatment in a different direction. talk to your doctor about xeljanz, a pill, not an injection or infusion, for adults with moderate to severe ulcerative colitis when a certain medicine did not help enough. xeljanz is the first and only fda-approved pill
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address to congress this week, i knew things might get out of hand, but the misinformation was under way well before the president came to the capitol wednesday evening. it started off days before with a full-on tantrum over the story that was made up completely when republicans spent days spreading a lie that the president was trying to force americans to cut red meat consumption by 90%. if one bad-faith freakout wasn't enough, the lie hadn't even been corrected before republicans started tearing out their hair over another made-up controversy. this time it was a lie that the biden administration was handing out copies of vice president harris' book to migrant children. by the time biden arrived for his joint address to congress wednesday, republicans had already worked themselves into a
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frenzy. but joe biden did what he does best. he calmly outlined his early successes and then explained his agenda for america. the speech didn't have much in the way of theatrics or fire and brimstone bloveuating because joe biden's super power is laying out full plans in a straightforward, plain-spoken manner. republicans gave their only black senator, tim scott of south carolina, the tough job of responding to the president, and he couldn't remain consistent in his criticisms. >> i have experienced the pain of discrimination. i know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason, to be followed around a store while i'm shopping. hear me clearly. america is not a racist country. >> unless scott was
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discriminated against somewhere else, it seems like he was describing his own experiences of racism in this country. then contradicting himself just moments later. scott also decried biden's so-called divisiveness, which makes me wonder if he and i were watching the same speech. >> i like to meet those that have ideas that are different. i welcome those ideas. but the rest of the world is not waiting for us. i just want to be clear. from my perspective, doing nothing is not an option. >> that line gets to the crux of the gop panic over joe biden. this president watched the successful blockade of barack obama for nearly eight years, and he saw them blaming him for not getting anything done. so while biden is reaching out his hand to bipartisanship, if
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they want it, he's making it clear that with senate and house majorities, he won't take no for an answer. worse for republicans, a cbs poll conducted after the speech found that a whopping 85% of adults watching approved, and nearly three-quarters of those who responded think biden's plans will benefit them. with numbers like that, it's no wonder republicans are clinging to made-up scandals. the false outrage is all they have, so republicans, you can keep churning out your lies about red meat, picture bookers and whatever else you can think of. the rest of us will look forward to trotting to the ballot box at our next opportunity to elect some officials who are actually interested in the business of governing. i gotcha.
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we have a lot to get to with with my panel. joining me now is juanita tolliver, democratic strategist and msnbc political analyst, and david jolly, former republican congressman from florida and msnbc contributor. let me go to you first, david. republicans in your home state of florida are on the cusp of enacting a voter suppression bill worse than georgia's. what can floridians do to ensure their rights are protected? is there anything the rest of us can do to support them? >> yeah, rev. i think much like the state of georgia and other jurisdictions, the florida law is headed straight to a federal court. advocates organizations will challenge it, that it makes it harder to vote, not easier, and it has a disparate impact on communities of color. you hear this notion of voter integrity. in the state of florida our governor said, hey, we have no problems. this is one of the best
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elections we ever had. but the politics of the gop got into this legislative session and they decided to pass a georgia law. the bottom line is is it easier to vote in florida today? and the answer is no. and that's bad news for florida voters. >> well, i think that that speaks to, again, a solution looking for a problem rather than a problem that's finding a solution. juanita, instead of proposing any substantive legislation, republicans seem focused on stomping their feet over fringe cultural issues. for instance, this week minority leader mitch mcconnell sent a letter to the education secretary demanding that a reference to "the new york times" pulitzer prize winning project be removed as an example on how to teach about american slavery. a republican's hoping americans don't know that localities
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control history curriculums. worse, why are they so determined to censor slavery in this country? >> right rev. emphasis on that last point, censoring the true history of slavery. what we saw in that letter from mcconnell was him making really strong efforts to try to discredit a project that i'm sure he didn't even read the resources associated with the 1619 project. so when i look at this as yet another move to get engaged in culture wars, try to rile up the base and distract from the fact that he's not legislating, and the gop has ridiculous fractures within its party right now, and other scandals to tend to. i promise, mitch mcconnell has bigger business to tend to than trying to pick a fight over what we know to be true, that history in this country has not been taught adequately or accurately. i speak from my own experience, rev. and so these culture wars are yet again another example of gop
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members trying to rile up their base. you mentioned in your previous segment lies about vice president harris' book being distributed at immigration facilities, lies about beef. they're really grasping at straws here, it shows desperation. >> president biden's joint address to congress yesterday -- he got high marks from the people watching. david, which parts of the speech do you think most resonated with republican voters? >> look, with republican voters they saw a president committed to the betterment to the health of the economy and closing the wage gap, closing the wealth gap, closing the gap around ladders of opportunity, access to health care, to education. those are main street issues that trump and republicans tried to suggest with this new threat of populism they were fighting for. but if you look over the last four years, that wealth gap,
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ladders of opportunity really got bigger. what they heard from president biden the other night was he's trying to close it. you know, the question about the 1619 project, why don't republicans want to talk about the issue of slavery and race? it's because, rev, that issue is a calling for public policy changes to help close the disparate policy impact we've seen for hundreds of years. that's what joe biden was saying, and that's why it polled so highly among american viewers this week. >> juanita, the speech was timed on the 100-day milestone for the biden administration. what do you expect from the next 100 days? >> i expect biden and democrats in congress to push his agenda forward full force, right? rev, biden has already shown that his white house can help to organize and get the country on track, whether that's vaccine distribution, whether that's checks being deposited into bank accounts and direct aid. now his attention goes full force on his economic-framed infrastructure agenda and his
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families agenda, which we know people desperately need. and so while i'm sure biden will still prioritize bipartisanship where he can, he should make those smaller deals. but i think it's going to be critically important for democrats to be unified in making sure this agenda gets passed no matter what type of congressional tool or apparatus they have to use to pass it. and so voters are going to be looking for him to keep the same energy and addressing the range of issues that we're facing, the range of issues that he outlined in his speech on wednesday. >> my thanks to juanitale tolliver and david jolly. up next, a new campaign that's helping black survivors of abuse share their truth. that's right. after the break. ♪ (ac/dc: back in black) ♪ ♪ ♪ the bowls are back. applebee's irresist-a-bowls all just $8.99.
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for too long, black and transgender women and girls have been subjected to heightened risks of sexual exploitation, rape, and abuse. this week a me too initiative hosted by the we as ourselves campaign is honoring black survivors by raising awareness about sexual violence and reshaping how we talk about it. joining me now is the founder of the me too movement and the campaign, tarana burke. thank you for being with us, tarana. one of the things that strikes me is monday marks the start of
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the first ever black survivors week of action that we as ourselves campaign is hosting. tell us about it. >> well, we really decided that this was the right time to launch a campaign during sexual assault awareness month that was specifically focused on black survivors because we've never had anything like that before. and so just like everything else, when something is focused on a general topic, we kind of get lost, and we wanted to pull out from the general topic and really focus on what is happening in the lives of black survivors in this country. >> now, you've been working with this a long time. i've known for you for years, you've been an activist for a long time. one of the things that i think has distinguished some of your work is you've also way before it became trendy or fashionable included those in the trans
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community. how did you feel when you saw the president stand up and say in his speech that i want you to know i've got your back? you even had to face it in the black community some that didn't want to include that segment of our community. >> absolutely. >> the trans agenda community i'm talking about. >> i thought it was a step in the right direction. trans folks are under attack in this country right now. we have these horrific bills that are trying to be passed in states across the country. and so to have the president of the united states say i have your back signals to that community that these attacks, really, they have some help from the government around these. but it's going to take more than just the president saying i have your back. we have to be really proactive in our communities and on the ground. we have to know that trans folks are human beings. if we are really about organizing to advance humanity, that includes people of all stripes, including trans people.
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>> as we face that even inside our own community, we have to deal with our own biases whether we relate to someone's life or not. the fact of discriminating and robbing them of their rights is an altogether different issue. >> that's right. we've been through this. black people know what this is firsthand. we understand it deeply. and so it really is painful to see folks in our own community want to have certain rights for sis folks, but not for trans folks as of they're not humans, as if they're not black. >> your website has startling statistics. for example, quote, nearly 1 in 5 black women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. trans women of color also face a high risk of sexual assault. your thoughts? >> you know, this is the reason why we have this week because people need to understand these figures. black women have the second
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highest rate of sexual assault in this country behind indigenous women, which also should have a spotlight on them. people don't realize that there is a particular issue around sexual violence when it comes to the black community, not because there's any special depravity in the black community, but we do need to exam it closely. we don't know these numbers because we don't hear these stories. >> now, as you go through this week emboldening and standing up for these things, what do you want to see the response from black men and whites around the country, what is the response you want to see? >> you should know first, rev, this is not a campaign for women. this is a campaign for survivors. i would love for black men survivors to be amplified as well. i want black men to be seen as people who survived sexual violence and also need support and resources.
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and men who are allies should recognize that when black women speak up, if we really believe black lives matter, if we really believe that we need to make a change for black people in this country, we have to apply that also to black survivors. and so this week we want to amplify the voices of all black survivors, men, trans folks, women, however you identify. and we want people to really be focused on -- this is a social justice issue just like the many other social justice issues that affect your community. and just like everything else that affects us adversely, when they say white folks get a cold, we get the flu, it's the same thing. the numbers show you and the numbers and the data don't lie. i want people to pay special attention to just how much it impacts our community. and we have to lift the veil of silence and talk about it openly. we won't make any advancements until we have real conversations about it. >> since you started in the south and now nationally, have
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you seen progress? if so, where do you think we are and how far do you think it is that we need to still yet go? >> rev, i've seen progress. i think the biggest progress is that we couldn't have these conversations out loud before. we weren't on television. i couldn't get on national television talking about sexual violence in our community or any other community. so we've definitely advanced the conversation. we've seen some laws and policies changed. i would love for us, as i was saying, to shift the culture of silence, particularly in the black community. this campaign, the me too movement, we as ourselves, is not an attack on black men. it's not an attack on anybody. what it really is a cry for help. we need for everybody to understand how pervasive this issue is, and that everybody should care about it, the way we care about gun violence, we should care about sexual violence. our communities are not safe unless they're safe for everybody. >> and we're going to be looking at it this week around black
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women and transgender in the black community. tarana burke, thank you for joining us. up next, my final thoughts. stay with us. janie, check this out. >come here. >>let me see. (chuckles) she looks...kind of like me. yeah. that's because it's your grandma when she was your age. oh wow. that's... that's amazing. oh and she was on the debate team. yeah, that's probably why you're the debate queen. >i'll take that. >>look at that smile. i have the same dimples as her. (laughter) yeah. >same placements and everything. >>unbelievable. finding new routes to reach your customers, and new ways for them to reach you... is what business is all about. it's what the united states postal service has always been about. so as your business changes, we're changing with it. with e-commerce that runs at the speed of now. next day and two-day shipping nationwide. same day shipping across town. returns right from the doorstep,
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terminix. hi. the only way to nix it is to terminix it. we started with computers. we didn't stop at computers. we didn't stop at storage or cloud. we kept going. working with our customers to enable the kind of technology that can guide an astronaut back to safety. and help make a hospital come to you, instead of you going to it. so when it comes to your business, you know we'll stop at nothing. with relapsing forms of ms, there's a lot to deal with. not just unpredictable relapses. all these other things too. who needs that kind of drama? kesimpta is a once-monthly at-home injection that may help you put this rms drama in its place. kesimpta was proven superior at reducing the rate of relapses, active lesions and slowing disability progression
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this week, as i watched the president's address, and the rebuttal, i must say how i took issue with some of the statements made in the rebuttal. senator tim scott, who i've met and talked to and find very bright and reasonable was at best disappointing to me. because he went out of his way to, one, say america is not a racist country. now what do you mean by that? do you mean that the country in terms of its social landscape, social policies, and laws? or do you mean the people? well, obviously, all american people are not racist. but you can't deny the history of this country that started by
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justifying racism and started by using labor based on race to build this country and never give wages to those who built it, and then after they were given freedom from chatel slavery, couldn't vote, couldn't each use public accommodation, all of that built up until now, where you still have an equities, inequities in every area of american health from health to education to the criminal justice system, and beyond. you're going to have the kentucky derby tonight. if you gave one of the horses a a-yard advantage, and -- 50-yard advantage and then you started the race and say we don't move the finish line, you can't say the race was fair. we must deal with reality. this nation started with racist policies. it doesn't mean all of the people are racist. but it means we've got to deal with a racist past that has shaped the racist present.
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and that is how you solve the problem of race in america. we'll be right back. we'll be ri. . more love,... more adventure,... more community. but with my hiv treatment,... there's not more medicines in my pill. i talked to my doctor... and switched to... fewer medicines with dovato. prescription dovato is for some adults who are starting hiv-1 treatment or replacing their current hiv-1 regimen. with... just 2 medicines... in 1 pill,... dovato is as effective as a 3-drug regimen... to help you reach and stay undetectable. research shows people who take hiv treatment as prescribed... and get to and stay undetectable... can no longer transmit hiv through sex. don't take dovato if you're allergic to any of its ingredients... or if you take dofetilide. hepatitis b can become harder to treat while taking dovato. do not stop dovato without talking to your doctor,... as your hepatitis b may worsen or become life-threatening. serious or life-threatening side effects can occur, including... allergic reactions, lactic acid buildup, and liver problems. if you have a rash and other symptoms of an allergic reaction,...
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to discuss the emergency order in place ahead of the funeral. you don't want to miss the conversation tomorrow though. my colleague alicia menendez picks up coverage right now. >> thank you so much, rerchlz sharpton. we will all be looking forward to that conversation. hello to you, i'm alicia menendez. as we come on the air, a nationwide push to get washington's attention on the need for immigration reform. the president challenged congress this week to get a bill to his desk, and today, his words are being backed up by advocates in the streets, across the country. including the nation's capital, where the forefront of demands today were for congress to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants living in the united states. >> not knowing what's going to happen if they decide not to act on this big issue. it affects me. i don't want to live anywhere else. i lived here for
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