follow tweets it@lawrence. the rachel maddow show is up next with melissa mharris-perry. thanks to you at staying home with us. we're going to talk to rachel. we're in the ninth year of the war. in an announcement, president obama told the american people the war in iraq was ending, definitively and absolutely the war is over. >> i can report that as promised, the rest of our troops in iraq will come home by the end of the year. over the next two months, our troops in iraq, tens of thousands of them, will pack up their gear and board envoys for the journey home. the last american soldier will cross the border out of iraq with their heads held high proud of their success and knowing that the american people stand united in our support for our

troops. that is how america's military efforts in iraq will end. >> for as long as there has been an iraq war, for as long as there have been people arguing in favor of starting a war in iraq, there have been people on the other side of it arguing against it. one of those people arguing against it in very early stages was the man who announced today that that war was ending. and when president obama said this afternoon that it was ending, quote, as promised, he was talking about himself. about his own promise to the american people that he would be the president to end the war in iraq. president obama's opposition to the war went back years, to the beginning of it. to a now famous 2002 speech he gave as a state legislator in chicago. >> i don't oppose war in all circumstances. when i look out over this crowd today, i know there is no shortage of patriots or patriotism. what i do oppose is a dumb war.

>> five months later, president george w. bush ordered american forces to invade iraq through kuwait. because we were told over and over again iraq was responsible for 9/11 and iraq had weapons of mass destruction and iraq wanted to use them against the free world. >> we know that iraq and al qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. we've learned that iraq has trained al qaeda members in bomb making, in poisons, in deadly gases. iraq has sent bomb making and document forgery experts to work with al qaeda. iraq has also provided al qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training. he's a threat because he's dealing with al qaeda. >> simply stated, there is no doubt that saddam hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. there is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us. >> iraq's weapons of mass

destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people. >> we know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. >> those claims about al qaeda and the weapons program all turned out to be 100% grade "a" huey. they were not true. outside the cheney dinner family table, no one argues they are true anymore. just like no one thinks the pre, pre, pre, premature mission accomplished declaratik llarati good idea. the argument about it didn't turn to, okay, how do we end this thing, instead in 2007, the question was, how many more american s do we send to fight there? remember that? the surge. president bush deployed 20,000 more american troops to the war in iraq to give the iraqi government the breathing space to stabilize. so that a political resolution in iraq could be reached and then ultimately the troops could

come home. that was the idea. now, the catastrophic violence in iraq declined a bit, but as far as a stable government, that didn't happen. that still hasn't happened. iraq had a parliamentary election last year and took nine months for them to form a government. nine months of grinding political stalemate. but while the troop buildup was going on in iraq in 2007, and into 2008, back home here in the united states, two very important things were going on. first, senator barack obama, the man famous for that anti-iraq war speech, he was running for the democratic presidential nomination. and at the center of his argument for why he should be president was the promise that he'd end the war. he ran for president successfully as the anti-iraq war candidate. the other important thing back here at home happened with very little notice. before leaving office, president bush made a security agreement with the iraqis. that agreement, the status of forces agreement, set the timetable for gradual.

many say too gradual withdrawal of u.s. troops. and then a couple of years later, this happened. president obama ordered all u.s. combat troops out of iraq by august 31st, 2010. and nbc's chief foreign correspondent richard engel was there. in fact, nbc and msnbc were the only television networks to carry it live of u.s. troops left iraq the way they came in. driving across the border with kuwait. now, the point of the troop surge, the escalation, was to give the iraqi government the opportunity to succeed and today the president said the troop deescalation actually gave the united states a different kind of opportunity all its own. >> the drawdown in iraq allowed us to refocus our fight against al qaeda and achieve major victories against its leadership including osama bin laden. >> the iraq war will have lasted almost nine years. almost 4,500 american troops were killed and more than 30,000 wounded. now the war is finally ending.

and not with a victory day parade, but with a conversation between president obama and the iraqi prime minister. you can see him here on the screen. and with a somber short announcement by the president that over the next two months, 40,000 americans will be coming home. and not one american would be getting notice that he or she had to ship out to replace them. so joining us now is nbc's chief foreign correspondent, richard engel. who was in iraq at the time that the troops started coming home in august. it's really nice to see you. >> thanks for having me on. >> it is a very significant day. and a day -- i'm still touched by that moment when the president said, all the troops are going to be home for the holidays. >> yeah. >> and there have been a lot of people who wanted to make that statement. and he said it today very nonchalantly. and said, well, there was an agreement to the works to leave a few thousand troops there beyond and that agreement fell through. so they're all coming back. >> yeah, it is a moment of privilege. i think i will always remember

just now saying, the war is over. right? >> the war is ending. it's not over yet. we'll be back in two months and we'll have that conversation. >> well, actually, i wanted to ask you exactly about that. i mean, why was this such a surprising day? i mean, this status oft forces agreement has been in place. why is today so surprising? >> there are about 39,000 u.s. troops there right now on a training mission. so the combat mission is over. so troops aren't going out and invading cities anymore. that mission ended about a year ago in the footage you showed when we came out with that convoy. >> sure. >> since then there has been this, tens of thousands of troops training iraqi forces, officially deployed in uniform, on a mission, sent to iraq serving on bases. that was supposed to end always at the conclusion of this year. but there was talk mostly coming from different iraqi factions. they wanted to leave a residual force of 2,000, 3,000, 5,000,

the exact number was never made very clear, beyond 2011. as a trip wire. as a safeguard in case things went wrong and the civil war came back. and the problem was, and this i think benefits the iraqi people much more than the u.s. would have gotten a benefit from this. the problem with certain iraqi politicians particularly muqtada al sadr, thought this was giving into the occupation, extending the occupation and prime minister maliki was getting beat up domestically over this and the u.s. was putting pressure on the u.s., saying, listen, we have a timeline here, you have to make up a decision and then when the ultimate decision came down and maliki told the president, we can't promise these troops immunity, president obama said, fine. we're done. >> we're done. >> we're done. >> and so this is the big question, right, i mean, the anxiety here is the idea there may be a residual possibility of

civil war, we don't know exactly our withdrawal is better or worse. but let me ask -- >> civil war might happen. there could be a civil war in iraq. the indications are not good on the ground. sectarian killings are coming back. car bombings are coming back. the kurds, one particular militant group in the north has decided to go berserk and attack turkey, provoking a major retaliation from turkey. iran is moving. things are not good in iraq right now. but would 3,000, 4,000 troops that don't have any kind of immunity in a training mission that is opposed by a large section of the society been enough to stop a potential civil war or all these other negative influences that are going on in the country? probably not. >> right. so this is a question for us. we're facing this moment. where it's not all perfect. we've been there nearly -- >> not all perfect. the country could collapse. >> momentarily.

right? but somehow our occupation, our staying there also does not build the wall against that happening. >> not with 2,000, 3,000 trainers who are there without any kind of immunity, without any kind of legal framework. if the united states wanted to make sure that iraq was going to be a success, we'd have to stay there with large numbers of troops and large commitment and maybe even that is not going to ensure its success. there's two ways of looking at it. the training wheels are coming off. so the iraq bicycle is either going to fall down and everyone's going to get very badly bruised and cut up, or they're going to have to start peddling harder and they're going ton'k have to realize tha this is their moment. they really have to take responsibility for themselves. and let's hope it's the latter. >> let's hope not only for the question of american involvement but much more fundamentally for this nation. >> for this nation. also for the united states. if there is a gap in the middle east, that's a problem for the united states. if there is a hole in the middle

east and iran is more empowered and there's rising tension or military conflict between kurds and turkey and there's ongoing civil strife within iraq, that's bad for the united states. frankly. so we have a stake in this as well and what happens in iraq will influence the united states, will influence the region certainly and will influence what we have done. the legacy of all these soldiers, of all these ideals that were put on the table. if you were an american soldier, and you served three deployments there and you lost your best friend there, you don't want to see this fail. >> that's right. there's still a reason for us to care about these outcomes in a very, very critical way. >> absolutely. >> richard, always, a pleasure to talk to you. >> we'll talk in two months. you'll get to say the iraq war is over. >> truly over. >> it sends chills up one's spine. >> it's quite a moment. richard was not alone in iraq in august of last year when the last combat troops were leaving.

rachel was reporting from there, too. tonight she's about to be a guest on "the bill maher show" so she can't host her own show. we're able to talk with her by phone for this moment. >> good evening, melissa. thank you for having me on "the rachel maddow show." i feel like it's a looking glass thing. it's great to be on the snow. >> you can always be a guest on my guest hosting of your show. >> deal. >> listen, back in 2005 and 2006, when americans were in the streets pushing back against this war, did you imagine that this is how it would end with the security agreement, with this kind of a slow, you know, movement out, this immunity, denial of immunity by the iraqi government? does american protesting about our own international entanglements matter at all? >> you know, it is, i think that the most i could have foreseen, the most i could have imagined was that the american people would elect a democratic president who was opposed to the war and that would be the person overseeing the end of it.

i think that protest movements and the in-the-street kind of protests that we have about wars and that we certainly had about the iraq war is -- it's an -- it has an indefinite and indirect effect on our politics. it creates a sense of crisis around which politicians must pick sides. and, you know, just looking at the reaction, partisan political reaction to what president obama announced today, it's a reminder about why it is really important that we have politics about these things. every single one of the republican presidential candidates except for ron paul has reacted to this by saying, you know what, i wish the iraq war was going on longer. that is a really important thing about, for americans to remember about our politics right now. one of the choices we have to make is whether or not we want to stay with president obama or whether we want to pick somebody instead who looks at the iraq war situation and thinks, man, if only that were going on

longer and weren't ending, america would be so much better off. >> well, look, you're talking here about the question of protests and right now in the streets, right here in new york city, right, americans are protesting on the questions of economic inequality. we have 40,000 troops coming home. 40,000. and the unemployment rate for veterans in this country is outrageously high. on the one hand, you know, richard and i were sitting here thrilled about the possibilities, about what it may mean for this war to be ending. on the other hand, what do you see as the domestic economic implications of this return of our veterans to such a poor economy? >> you know, the -- it's interesting. we did have earlier this week the president and actually the first lady announcing a major private/public partnership that was essentially a hiring program for new veterans. part of the american jobs act that the president has proposed would be not just a tax credit but sort of a mega tax credit to

private businesses who would be willing to hire veterans and even disabled veterans of the iraq and afghanistan conflicts. so we have actually seen some focus on that, disturbingly high levels of unemployment among iraq and afghanistan veterans. looking at it more broadly, i mean, the whole country has an unemployment problem. and one of the problems that we've got is that even when jobs are available, we do not necessarily have some of the skills as an american workforce to fill the jobs that are available. part of that is the way jobs are distributed in urban versus rural things. we have to look at the 2 million americans who served in iraq and afghanistan as an incredible repository of experience, expertise and a real american leadership. i mean, i do not know a more impressive group of my peers, people in my age group and the ten years younger than me, than people who have served in iraq and afghanistan. that professional experience sets them up uniquely i think in

our age group cohort for taking jobs that other people don't necessarily have the skills for in america. i think it's an imminently employable group of people. i think the administration is focused well on it. and i think that our nation's veterans are really, really, really impressive group. we're going to have to rise to the occasion to meet the promises we've made to them, but mostly we should be looking to them for leadership on all sorts of things in this country because they are the best that the country has to offer. >> and we've leaned on them in a way that hasn't been true in previous wars, where such a small group of people have carried really all of the sacrifices, in fact, we were asked as a country not to sacrifice, to go out and shop in the context of our colleagues and our peers doing this work. now, speaking of iraq winding down, afghanistan, the president tells us is also going to be winding down. nato is going to be ending its operations in libya as well. is this time for us to be having a conversation about how and when we go to war? is this a moment -- are we going

to start to enter a period of peace when we can actually engage in some thoughtful conversation about war? >> yeah, melissa, when you said this is ending, not with a parade, but with a conversation, you're exactly right. i had a -- when i learned the news that osama bin laden was killed, i, like i think most americans, had a very emotional reaction to that. i had a bookend very similar reaction to this morning watching the president announce the end of the iraq war. between those two events over the past six months, the 9/11 era is over and the 9/11 era is the george busw. bush administration that was in place when 9/11 happened. no one will be able to sell to america again the crock pot cockamamy foreign policy idea of the bush administration which is war could be something constructive, a creative force for reshaping the world in a positive way that was good for america. that was a radical faction neo

con idea that got ahold of the republican party at the worst possible time and set us on a decade long misadventure of m e making war for choice. that is over. there will never, ever be a group like that who's able to take hold in america because now we know what happens when you do it. that means it's time to start talking about what we're going to be instead. we're not going to be controlled by foreign policy radicalism but be pragmatic and realistic about it. president obama is ideally suited to lead the discussion. i hope republicans will participate in it, too. it's time to have a big national partisan debate about how we use the biggest military, excuse me, the biggest military the world has ever known. >> rachel, thank you for joining us as a guest on your own show tonight. i really appreciate it. >> thank you for making time for me. you're doing an amazing job. >> i'm going to stay up late and watch you on bill maher on hbo a little later. >> thank you. all these foreign policy victories for president obama, truly remarkable historic

progress. when we the tries to get a badl badly needed jobs bill through congress you'd think he was asking for the moon, the stars and some comets to be named later. so i washed them in tide with downy and they're still soft and fresh. right? i'm blogging. really. i'm talking. that's my tide. what's yours?

the best new thing in the world today is that there still is a world today. details ahead. but for now, remain calm. [ male announcer ] every day, thousands of people are choosing advil®. here's one story. [ regis ] we love to play tennis. as a matter of fact it was joy who taught me how to play tennis. and with it comes some aches and pains and one way to relieve them all is to go right to the advil®. i have become increasingly amazed at regis's endurance. it's scary sometimes what he accomplishes in a day. well i'd rather not have time for pain but unfortunately it does comes your way every now and then.

and that's when i take my advil®. [ male announcer ] take action. take advil®. consider for a moment the last 36 hours barack obama has had as president of the united states. just the last 36 hours. >> today the government of libya announced the death of moammar gadhafi. this marks the end of a long and painful chapter for the people

of libya. who now have the opportunity to determine their own destiny in a new and democratic libya. without putting a single u.s. service member on the ground, we achieved our objectives. and our nato mission will soon come to an end. today i can report that as promised, the rest of our troops in iraq will come home by the end of the year. after nearly nine years, america's war in iraq will be over. >> the successful toppling of one of the world's most brutal dictators and formal end of a nine-year-long american war, in these last 36 hours barack obama has presided over two events that would qualify as monumental in any presidency, and yet, even while racking up those two enormous accomplishments, there was something else that happened in the same 36-hour span that may ultimately matter more to the future of his presidency.

>> the senate has rejected president obama's stream lined jobs bill aimed at preventing lawoffs of firefighters and teachers. this was a slimmed down version of the president's larger $450 million jobs bill rejected last week. >> toppling moammar gadhafi and ending a war, no problem. passing a jobs bill in the middle of a terrible, terrible continued economic recession, no shot. last night, every single republican in the senate voted to filibuster the first part of president obama's now piecemeal jobs plan. every single republican along with two democrats voted against a bill that would allow state and local governments to hire or rehire and retrain schoolteachers, police officers, firefighters, and other first responders. republicans blocked that bill from even being debated. and even though this was just a snapshot, the past 36 hours, this is sort of the story of the obama presidency so far. huge foreign policy achievements

coupled with jaw dropping frustrations on the domestic policy side. from essentially the moment barack obama took office, he's managed to rack up one foreign policy success after another. his first real test on the international stage actually came within his first 100 days in office. remember, it was when he sense an order in for the u.s. navy s.e.a.l.s to free an american shi captain taken hostage by pirates. most notably the successful mission to hunt down and kill the head of al qaeda, osama bin laden, after ten years on the run. more recently, there was a drone strike that took out the american born cleric in yemen. and president obama won the nobel peace prize in 2009 for the new vision of diplomacy that he offered from america. that new face to the world included amazing and sometimes highly affective relief efforts on the part of the united states in places like haiti, japan, as

well as pakistan. president obama's administration has skillfully maneuvered through the arab spring in the middle east, that brought down regimes in tunisia, egypt and now finally the nato mission initially led by the u.s., the toppled moammar gadhafi in libya. whatever side you're on here, whether you're a democrat, or the few republicans watching, there really isn't any denying that these are real concrete foreign policy achievements. many of them coming in just the last year. yet in that same time period, president obama has seen his domestic policy agenda stalled to the point where it's considered an achievement just to keep the lights on in washington. we are now heading into an election year. this president is facing a real dichotomy, a dichotomy made most clear by the libya/iraq news this week versus the jobs bill news. many maintain foreign policy successes don't make a difference on an election about

the economy. maybe there's something useful in demonstrating how obstructionist republicans have been by holding them up against a president who has clearly had leadership capacity, skills and successes in this other arena. given the current political reality, is there anything that this president can get done domestically? is there any way to govern in the american political system to bring back our economy, create jobs, generate new opportunities for education? can we do any of this without congress and the president actually working together? now, barack obama campaigned for office by saying that the problem of partisanship was destroying our country. his tenure in office has been an object lesson in that, partisanship grinding progress to a halt. now, what can be done to change that? joining us to think through that question is chris hayes, the host of msnbc's new show "up with chris hayes" that i spent time on last weekend. >> it was delightful. >> it was great. this is my payback.

you got me up early i'm keeping you up late. >> i love being introduced as joining us now to think through that question. that's what i want to do on tv. think through things. >> this is legitimately a question. right? i could just sort of rail about how this is all the republican's fault and so, you know, we just have to put president obama back in there with a democratic congress. that's fine. we have a year. >> right. >> we're a year out. is it possible to govern domestically right now? >> i think the short answer is no. the more disturbing answer as you were reading the intro, what occurred to me, this is a perfect example in which the way legislative dysfunction cultivate life. we can point to the things the president has done in the seat of imperial power that is the executive. with essentially no congressional oversight. he can do that. he can order anwar awlaki is killed by a drone strike, can send navy s.e.a.l.s around the

places. he sits in the throne of imperial power. as soon as he moves into the domestic sphere, he has to deal with the senate and dysfunctional body of the filibuster. it produces a desire in the populous to bypass congress which is deeply unhealthy. deeply, deeply sick and unhealthy in terms of how we think about it. the other thing to think about is, that bill failed. the stripped down bill failed 50/50. in the absence of the filibuster, joe biden shows up on capitol hill, casts a deciding vote and it's passed. the way the filibuster has been institutionalized is a huge part of the kind of cancer that's growing on our legislative body. >> sure. it's true the democratis turned around and filibustered the bill. this is part of what's going on. the rules of the game. let me ask you about the rules of the game. i hear you. i also feel anxiety about this idea of let's concentrate power. it's exactly what we were upset about, for example, in the context of the war we're finally

ending. but there have been moments in a context of divided government where we have been able to govern. and it's largely been because the president could go to use the bully pulpit, go to the population, get the backing of the public then pressure congress. why is this congress so insulated from public opinion? >> i think they produced a level of caucus discipline, that is essentially unprecedented in modern times, and i think political scientists, such as yourself, have shown that. have done the analysis to show the level of party-line voting in caucus. unity is unprecedented. we've moved toward the sort of parliamentary system. the other thing i think is important to think about is the difference between rules and norms and how they guide a legislative body. the rules say one thing. the norms say the other. there's a body of things that just aren't done that can be as powerful in the force of prohibition as a rule that says it hasn't been done. one of the things the republic chance have been entrepreneurs in, incredibly pioneering is breaking those norms. things that just weren't done, they just do and say, what's up,

what are you going to do? tom delay, we saw the redistricting, iconic example of this. no one wrote a rule saying you can't redistrict me in an election, it's the norm. the commerce secretary, brycen, finally approved on friday, passed by 45 votes. took five months. there was no reason. except for the fact republicans said we want you to sign these trade deals first. what we have seen, they've exploited the space between the norms and rules to create this kind of obstruction and dysfunction. >> right. we're in a place where we've got obstruction, we've got dysfunction. it was not always this way, but we can't just yearn for the authoritarian. we can't yearn for the dictator. that's not going to get us in the long term where we want to go. >> we need actual reforms. when a space opens up between the norms and rules as they have in the united states senate particularly, you need to reform the rules. the two have to reflect each other. that's really the issue. it's a hard and rachel god knows has talked about the filibuster. we talked about the filibuster. you talked about the filibuster.

it's a hard thing to sell. at the end of the day, that dysfunction begins to be this cancer that spreads through the entire democracy. >> chris hayes, from msnbc, from my favorite magazine "the nation. "make sure that you watch "up with chris hayes" this weekend and thanks for joining us tonight. i really appreciate it. when you talk about occupy wall street with your friends, do you have the same take on the protesters' goals? bet you don't. we're going to dig into that a little later. does that in one daily dose. citracal slow release... continuously releases calcium plus d for the efficient absorption my body needs. citracal. for the efficient absorption my body needs. ♪ we're centurylink... a new kind of broadband company committed to improving lives with honest, personal service, 5-year price lock guarantees and consistently fast speeds. ♪

occupy wall street has been

protesting unceasingly for more than a month now. long enough for the initial splash to be over and media's attempts to figure out what the long-term ripples might be to really take hold. and no one has had a clearer take on the real deal downtown than the always insightful new york city hip hop host and social commentator, jay smooth. who likens wall street to the sidewalk game three card monty. >> and as you probably know, every three card monty setup has a ringer. the ringer's job is to pretend they're an objective outside observer commenting on the gale when they're part of the hustle that's there to help bamboozle the public into thingi ingthink game is legitimate. if we stand next to the game and tell everyone the game is rigged, the ringer is going to flip on us and start doing everything they can to make sure nobody listens to us. they're going to try everything they can to discredit us so they can protect that game that they're so invested in. >> so at occupy wall street, who

are the players and who's getting bamboozled? that's just ahead. you want to save money on car insurance?

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there's a kind of an old joke that says how can you tell when a politician is lying? the answer is you can tell he's lying because his lips are moving. i like to think there's a corollary. how do you tell someone's a politician? because they keep talking about the middle class. >> the middle class needs our help. >> so what happened to the middle class? they lost their jobs. they lost their houses. >> the middle class has been chipped at, squeezed and hammered for an entire generation now. >> they're trying to raise taxes on middle class. >> washington is hanging the middle class out to dry. >> the middle class, it's the foundation of our political conversation. it's the one safe thing politicians can talk about. mom, apple pie and saving the middle class. far fewer people are willing to talk about american poverty. not the unemployed, not folks who are down on their luck, but the poor. we don't really talk about the poor in this country. in very official terms, u.s. economy flipped into a recession at the end of twe2007 and start

to recover part way through 2009. you can argue we're not growing enough to really be out of the old recession. you can argue we're about to fall into a new recession. a double dip. we are growing, at least a little. you want to see what else is growing? poverty. last year, 15% of americans were living below the poverty line. more than 46 million people. 46 million. a year after the recession ended and the recovery began. it's not an accident. it's the natural outcome of the choices our government makes. when republicans in the senate refused to even consider a bill to keep teachers and cops and firefighters working, as they did last night, when republicans do that, they are choosing to put people out of work and keep them that way. when republicans in congress defend tax cuts for the rich and call for tax hikes on working families, they're shifting resources from the less advantaged to those who already have more than they need. it's hard to believe you could even take a position like that with a straight face in this

country. unless you think this whole poverty thing is a joke, the conservative heritage foundation this year questioned the whole idea of poverty. "the overwhelming majority of the poor have air-conditioning, cable tv and host of other amenities. they are well housed, have an adequate and reasonably steady supply of food." reasonably steady? "and have met their other basic needs including medical care." the latest republican argument is the poor have no one to blame but themselves. they're not really poor, they're failures. >> don't blame wall street. don't blame the big banks. if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself. it is not a person's fault because they succeeded. it is a person's fault if they failed. >> herman cain is now leading in the polls for the republican nomination. just barely. but herman cain is the front-runner. and herman cain is winning in part because the republican base loves the idea of getting tough

on the poor. >> herman cain, i got to ask you, you said, quote, don't blame -- two weeks ago, you said, don't blame wall street, don't blame the big banks. if you don't have a job, if you're not rich, blame yourself. that's two weeks ago. movement has grown. do you still say that? >> yes, i do still say that. and here's why. wall street didn't put in failed economic policies. wall street didn't spend $1 trillion that didn't do any good. wall streetson going around the country trying to sell another $450 billion. they ought to be in front of the white house taking out their frustrations. i do stand by that. >> woo-hoo! blame yourselves poor people of america. do it for herman cain, do it for the nice middle class people applauding in the audience. well, this is the face of poverty in america. this is who's poor in our country. children. particularly latino and black children. last year, a year after the great recession, one in five kids in america lived in

poverty. four of every ten african-american children. where i live in new orleans, most of the young, black children are poor. not some. not many. most. nationally, it's latino kids who suffer most. more than 6 million latino kids in poverty in this country now. we have so many children living in poverty that they outnumber the population of all but our four largest states. and here's the most shocking part. this is within our control. we do not have to sit back and watch poverty and child poverty rise. our problem with child poverty in particular results largely from a failure of political will. not from a lack of resources. when you compare america to the world's other rich nations, we're on the wrong side of average. and we're way down at the bottom. we're a giant nation and a very rich one. in terms of how we treat our kids, we're down there with tiny portugal and with hungary and

poland from the old soviet block. our kids are poor like that. and when people cheer for the poor to blame themselves, that's what they're clapping about. children. american children who never lost a job or made a bum decision about a career or did anything at all that would expose them to blame for their own condition. american kids who might even have a reasonably steady supply of food, as they say in conservative circles. as if that were somehow enough. h expedia. make it work. booking a flight by itself is an uh-oh. see if we can "stitch" together a better deal. that's a hint, antoine. ooh! see what anandra did? booking your flight and hotel at the same time gets you prices hotels and airlines won't let expedia show separately. book it. major wow factor! where you book matters. expedia.

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in recent weeks, there's been a great deal of criticism directed at the occupy wall street movement. for not having a clearly articulated policy agenda. come to think of it, one of those critics was me. but today a number of occupy wall street protesters took on a very clear public policy. the new york city police department's policy of stop and frisk. stop and frisk is very much what it sounds like. it gives police the power to on front, question and search whomever they deem suspicious. something they felt the need to do over 600,000 times last year. reportedly, 85% of those stopped and frisked were black and latino. that's why for a time today some of the people who have been occupying wall street joined those occupying frederick douglass boulevard in harlem.

>> stop and frisk, don't stop the crime. >> stop and frisk is the crime. >> stop and frisk is the crime. a few dozen protesters around t precinct. some even using the occupy protest traditional people's mic to tell their stories of police harassment. and after protesters blocked the precinct, arrests began, including my colleague, cornel west. what happened not only flies in those who claim that occupy wall street has no policy goals, it challenges another criticism, that it is largely a monochromatic movement. it is not very diverse and not interested in questions of racial inequality. you just don't go to harlem and march through the projects protesting stop and frisk if you're not interested in dealing with racial bias on some level. but questions still remain about how a broad-based global

movement like this has and will continue to address the ways of economic inequality and racial skp and ethnic inequality are intertwined. this economy, it's hit black and latino communities the hardest. the wealth gap was a crack in the ground compared to the canyon it became after the financial crisis. in real terms, you could not talk about economic inquality in america without addressing race. today, at least part of this new movement plainly and openly protested at the intersection of race and abuse of power by law enforcement. and they did it in harlem. so what does this mean for the future of the occupy movements and for the focus of the occupy wall street? joining us now is tim wise, an educator, anti-racist advocate, and the author of "white like me: reflections on race from a privileged son." tim, it is so good to see you again. >> it is very good to see you. >> i saw you earlier this week,

when you were at tulane, where i now teach and where you graduated, and i wanted to ask you a couple of questions about the occupy movement. >> sure. >> the first is really about this language of occupy. now, many indigenous native american communities are pretty concerned about the language of occupation. i mean, after all, we just finished our occupation in iraq. what does it mean to occupy versus decolonizing wall street? >> i think that's important. i mean, the people of color i've been speaking to around the country, particularly indigenous activists, have been very clear, a, for their support of the goals and the wall street movement, but that you have to be careful. when you choose language like occupy, what you forget, particularly if you're a white activist, is that white folks have been occupying manhattan, including lower manhattan, for hundreds of years. it's not really new. and when they go home from the park and wall street, wherever they may go home to. if it's greenwich village or the west side or whatever it is,

they're still going to be occupying what was indigenous land. this is a site of long-standing racial injustice, and it's important to have that narrative. it's not just a historical matter, it's a matter of contemporary reality. if we're trying to build a solidarity movement, we have to be clear, we're trying to de-colonize a colonized and occupied place, not just re-occupy it for better purposes. >> speaking of a little history, i want to ask you a little bit of your own history. you were an activist at tulane, where you first cut your teeth on this work, doing divestment from apartheid south african work. tell me a little bit about how that work, like the occupy work now, can help to reveal aspects of white privilege and the meaning of race work in trying to build progressive commitments and community. >> sure, what i learned from that work, and that's been about two decades now ago, was that many times, even those of us that are radical and progressive and have all of the right politics in our mind, whatever that means, sometimes manifest

both tactics and a narrative that can be off-putting to people of color, and that can sometimes prevent us from building the kind of solidarity we need. so in our case, you know, it was choosing tactics of occupying buildings, risking arrest, very cavalierly, going on hunger strike, which for those of us who were white, we sort of saw that as cool. for a lot of people of color, they were like, okay, good luck with that whole getting arrested thing, let us know how that works out with you. we don't have the same experience with cops that you do. we also don't have the same experience with hunger and economic deprivation, so we're not going to voluntarily starve ourselves, but good luck with that and the reason i say that now and why it's important, i'm not saying that's what the occupy folks are all about. i think today's development in harlem is fantastic. but what it suggests is we have to be mindful when we are trying to build a cross-racial moex for social, economic, and political justice, that we don't choose tactics that are going to be, for some people, extremely risky. getting arrested does not mean

the same thing when you are white as opposed to when you are black and brown in this country. >> tim, it is always a pleasure to talk to you. i so appreciate your work as an anti-racist advocator and educator, and appreciate you being here tonight. the next new thing is tonight. i don't want to use words like armageddon or apocalypse, but we've still got a couple of hours to go, so don't get cocky. that's next. i needed more customers,

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the best new thing in the world today is really simple. the week is over, the war is over, but apparently the world isn't. and it seems to have been a very, very long day. let me explain. do you remember what you were doing on may 21st? lots of stuff happened that day. the mississippi river was so swollen that engineers made the decision to flood hundreds of thousands of acres of louisiana on purpose. in new york, the french

politician, dominique strauss-kahn, was released from prison and placed under house arrest on charges that were later dropped. the pope spoke to astronauts on the space shuttle. and oh, yeah, it was my bff's birthday. all in all, sort of a busy day for a saturday. but here's what didn't happen on may 21st. the world did not come to an end. we're still here, right? now, a radio preacher named harold camping had said that would be the day of rapture. he predicted 200 million christians would ascend to heaven on may 21st amid massive destruction and everybody else who calls the planet home would be left to fend for themselves. now, who's to say it won't happen some day, but may 21st wasn't the day. and after may 21st, harold camping regrouped. he explained that he just made a bit of a calculating error. just yesterday on his website, he seemed to have posed this special message. "on may 21 of 2011, mankind entered into the day of judgment. this day will last three months, 153 days,