tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. tonight, part two of our conversation with actor and humanitarian sean penn. is efforts on behalf of the people of haiti earned him the 20 12th humanitarian award. he has also been named ambassador at large to haiti, now two years removed from the devastating earthquake. we are glad to have joined us. a part two of our conversation with sean penn, coming up right now. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

[captioning made possible by kcet television] tavis: welcome back. good to see you again. i want to pick up where we left off last night. last night, you raised the name of president clinton, who was an ambassador to the haitian people, who was our ambassador, asked by president obama to lead the effort to raise money for haiti. what is the top line of what president clinton was able to do in terms of fund-raising, and has that money trickled down, pardon the phrase, to the haitian people? >> president clinton is the most significant foreign player in

haiti. just running an ngo for the first time in the past two years, i think we can say safely that is a difficult process where the money should go, donors are very wary of the investments they make, and people critical of president clinton in this, i think what they have to understand is that most of the billions of dollars that were raised that the complained have not yet been spent, would not have been in existence had president clinton not been there to encourage the raising of those funds. so we can start there. he is, i think, and the haitians would acknowledge this as well, i mean the haitian government and most haitians on the street as well, i think the

great hope of haiti. so what happens is we all associate everything that has gone right or everything that has gone wrong with president clinton, and that is quite a burden to have on him. he is very involved, he is very invested, he is constantly curious. he knows more about it than anybody else there. i think he has been an enormous with the support of the best efforts that have happened. i think the picture that he gets, the title page john, -- the title page on, which is the celebration of the good works that have been done and most of the criticism, is what is going to show itself is going to become an extraordinary legacy, and it is also an example,

though he could be very demanding of individual organizations. he understands better than any of us that this will take a long time, but it will work. tavis: would you say a majority of the money has or has not arrived? >> no, there needs to be. this is why the media plays an important part also, separate and apart from what president clinton does, the nation's state commitments have to come through on the pledges they made. we understand the world economy is in a different place. but those pledges are the hope of haiti. as i said yesterday, there is a thing about haiti that has to be

understood when talking about ownership. martin luther king, as he once said, telling a man to pick thimself up by his own bootstraps is fine, but it is cruel to a man who does not have boots. there is still a lot of that going on in haiti. when you are dealing with donors, there is a word that comes up constantly, which is sustainability. the sustainability is the understanding of the haitian people themselves. it is they will create the sustainability. when you do it and the radical programs, one time after another it does not work. frankly, my belief is that haiti would have been better off today had not been a single ngo there in the last 30 years.

tavis: that is a serious statement. am i am pretty sure. as a primarily destructive force, which now, large the because of the leadership of president clinton, it organizations are beginning to align and understand that it is not what makes you feel good that does good. tavis: unpack that for me. i think i know you are going with this, but i don't want to make assumptions. destructive's be forces? babbitt is as simple as traffic. at the traffic in the capital. a call at the republic of ngo's. what happens is all of these people who come and are paid a stipend-type stories, are really career aid workers, also have career aid worker domiciles, which means they are pushing up the grants on those people -- on

those areas where the haitians cannot afford to le in what is left of housing. tavis: traffic, gentrification? >> i guess, and a kind of dependency that the talk about something to avoid. you do not want to create a welfare state, independent state. and has to be looked at for what it is. it is a country where what is available to people is $1, $2 per day, to begin with. almost no clean water all around the country. at a child gets a fever in the united states and it is high enough and sustainable enough, all of us can bring a child to an emergency room. most haitians never have that opportunity. they never have an emergency room to bring them to. virtually every time a child has a 102 fever, you wait for it to die and you have no clean water to give it.

when you are talking about a country that is really starting to scratch, people apologize. they wanted to mask that, and a duet with pocket projects that will last -- and they do it with pocket projects that last as long as the organization's stated. we have seen an enormous flight from the country, which is a good thing because those who stay where able to identify each other and the government is able to give them areas of operation and not have them overlap and have this whole system work and turn it over to the nation's -- and turned over to the haitians. tavis: president clinton is the most important player outside of haiti. what does that say about current president barack obama and what his organization is or is not doing? >> president clinton court and it's very much with the white house, in particular the state department, not just the

secretary, clearly, but also the chief of staff of the secretary, who is cheryl mills, who has been i would say the most active deputy of the u.s. efforts to help haiti, and she is an extraordinary woman. she is available. we'll call her the haiti desk office. she is immediately responsive, even at 3:00 in the morning. it has been a great effort. there has been a change of philosophy with the trade policies adjusted significantly to allow for what ultimately needs to be more efficient. the power structure is a problem

there. one of the issues of like to see is a taxation on delagdo. --on the lotto. if i had my way, they would nationalize the lotto, because this is the only organization that has been able to secs -- successfully tax the haitian people. tavis: one more thing, and then we will move on to the movie stuff. all of the work that you were doing through your ngo, what are the things that you have felt that you have done the best? you suggested earlier they can be destructive. you are not speaking of your own. what are the particular things that you have done best, that you are the most proud of? when you look at what happened after the earthquake, there was so much to be done. what have you done best? >> we had the largest camp in

port-au-prince, 60,000 people. we located 40,000 into safe housing, where they have support, matchmaking between skill sets and training. we put two community hospitals from our camp into the community. we have 20,000 people yet to go. the engineering, we have used hundreds of thousands of cubic meters and demolished dangerous buildings. we started a project for the where we hope will have thousands of permanent structure homes built in the community, and medical organization, one of the most dynamic in the country, serving the area of operations in port- au-prince in the camp, but also nationwide when it came to the call our response because we were the only ones there what supplies, and we have the

largest supplies. and our education support is starting to broaden. i would say i have a staff of 300. 95%, 97% haitian, and i'm really proud of all of them. i find myself now and bystander to a haitian operation, and they have elevated the operation to a level i never would have imagined. tavis: you were given the humanitarian award, presented by george clooney for your work in haiti. last question on this, given all that you have done, given how much more areas to do still, why the remain hopeful? >> well, i tell you, what i went to haiti originally, you see

what you see on the streets, and it was like nothing i have ever seen, from bodies to the stench of death to the extraordinary amount of the devastation, roads completely blocked. and while there is so much legitimate criticism to be had, the miracle of what has happened in only two years -- and it is not just a miracle of infrastructure work clearing to make way for the infrastructure, it is the miracle of the spirit of the haitian people. they were devastated, traumatized population, and now you see this incredible life inside coming out of these people, incredible partnership.

now turning it into instead of us being there to help them, it is them showing us the way moving forward. haiti is taking on leadership, both in the populous and the government, and that, hand-in- hand with the support or they did not have the ability to pull up on their own, until they do, it is a recipe for success. it just takes a visit to see it. once that happens, we have, in terms of a good trade partner, you think of the carbon footprint of china, if we are in an environment the world, the united states has an obligation to invest in manufacturing in haiti, because north america is 1.5 hours away by airplane. it is strategically, business- wise, it is socially responsible and ultimately dramatically more

profitable of an investment to make. tavis: in a few minutes i have left, i want to shift questions. never know what to believe everything we read. but a kind of sounded like you. i am paraphrasing, it is clear to me that you have fallen in love with the haitian people. at the other day, this said something to the effect that even yet admitted that i am not always crazy about humans, but i love humankind. i love this notion of humankind. did you say something similar to that? and what did you mean by that exactly? you clearly love these people in haiti. >> look, i phrased it this way -- tavis: go ahead, refreeze. >> what it refers to is i was

never -- once i started to be known at as an activist, the pediatric hospitals, i'm not good at it. i'm not good at talking to strangers, whether they are sick children -- i'm not good, i'm shy with it. when i get to haiti, it's the same thing. i always want to wear a shirt that says "tellez to this humanitarian." -- tell it to the humanitarian." i am there as a facilitator. that is my mission there, i like it, and when i go to bed at night, i think of all of those things, of course i am touched and proud and feel like i have had something to do with it, but i look at it, what i was trying to facilitate, and i look at the many people or organizations

that have taken it on, work it into something bigger and better, and you cannot help but fall in love with the country that you are working and, the people you are working with. it does not matter who is, wherever, our relationship with haiti is with haiti. i did not specifically choose it, it was a bit of an accident, but whether it is haitians or americans, i have social issues, no question. tavis: i will accept that rephrasing. i'm glad to get along well enough with me to come see me sometimes. >> i appreciate it. tavis: i was looking the other day at your discography, yearlong corpus of work. i don't know if it has occurred to you or not, but this is the 30th anniversary of "fast times." 30. >> ugh.

tavis: 30 years since "fast times at ridgemont high." reflect on that, three decades later. >> well, of course, the first response is age. my first reflection is of a time, i remember how fast i was running up and down the town, trying to maintain the physique of a surfer, and how much slower i would run that now. you know, i maintain some french ships. -- i maintain some friendships. that movie represents a lot of things. it represents the beginning of guess at aw been i

pretty long and lucky road. it has enabled me to do it a lot of other things that i have been able to do in my life, work in movies. it is always a tricky road. i had this experience the other day, had been in haiti until last week, and i came in because we had the fund raiser. i was rushing from one place to another, and i looked out the window of the car, it was the afternoon, but as they were preparing, the people are filing into the golden globes, and i thought to myself, i used to be in that business. it was like i was still in haiti in my head. "fast times" was a long time ago, and also a minute ago. tavis: you are a long way from being done, but has this dirty

of the past few decades -- your hollywood work -- as this journey bed with you thought it would be? as it exceed your expectations? how would you characterize what history has been so far? >> in many ways, it far exceeds. i have had opportunities to do things far in excess. i was in the theater for a long time. work for a lot of young actors, timothy hutton, you figure that you will be older by the time you work with people. on the other hand, it's a struggle i did not anticipate, because i came directly out of a moviegoing generation. the stories that were written, the people that made them did both. they made them.

now i feel that the way that films are made, by and large, is they are made on the budget. it has to represent the ideas and to sell it. the movies that we often celebrate today as our best movies are midgets in comparison to the texture and investment that was what i grew up with. i did not anticipate to have to fight tooth and nail every time out to try to get some of the things i was involved in, the basics. and i cannot expect quite the celebrity culture that was called to come. is really an infection that everybody embraces. it has been good for me to have the perspective in haiti, and i expect the only thing that anybody can do is try to at least invest that in the

projects they are involved with, particularly when i am directing and have ownership of that to do that. it's like starting over again each time. you are in a new environment each time. tavis: the robert deniro project, the comedian? >> it looks like it is happening. we're just trying to figure out the timetable on which to do it. it is a terrific script, written by the person who wrote "fast times at ridgemont high." >> starring in a project called the comedian. sean penn, i'm always honored to have you on this program. i respect you not just for entertaining us, but also a powerful work that you do, and work that you do in haiti is among some of the best in the world come at a celebrity. >> i celebrate you back.

it is nice to be here. tavis: sean penn, two nights of great conversation. that is it for tonight. we leave you with a small sample of some of the memorable roles that sean penn has given us over the years. until then, good night from l.a., and as always, keep the faith. >> tasty waves and a cool buzz. >> you don't have to go up there. [applause] >> i'm here to recruit you.

>> i have not had a lot of time to think about what it is that make somebody a good parent. it is about constancy, and it's about patience and it's about listening and it says about protecting to listen even when you cannot listen anymore. >> figures i would have to die to find love. thank you for letting me.

>> he took my daughter! no! no! no! >> it's the white house. he seriously think he could pick a fight with the white house? it will bury us. >> they will bury us if we don't. >> you listen to me -- >> no, does that make meet right if i shout louder than you? it on the white house and i shot a million times louder than you, does that make me right? they lied, that's the truth. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. smiley.i, i'm tavis to me next time for our conversation with investigative journalist michael hastings. that's next time. we will see you then. >> every community has a martin

luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning made possible by kcet television] captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org--