tavis: do evening. tonight, a conversation with influential civil rights attorney connie rice. her latest is a powerful narrative about cases and issues she tackled during her long career, including efforts to reshape and reform the lapd in the wake of the rodney king beating. the new book is called "power concedes nothing." >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it is the cornerstone we all know. it is 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. tavis: connie rice is a veteran civil rights attorney based here in l.a. she is also the author of a new memoir called "power concedes nothing, one woman's >> for social justice in america -- one for social justice in america." why power concedes nothing is

the title for this memoir? >> every single fight we have taken on has had to be mainly demanding from their friends with power to get with it and help solve these problems for our clients. if you do not ask and you cannot ask loud and clear, they will let you anything. so it takes an aggressive demand, not just any old demand. it does not concede anything and you have to hijack the power and do jiujitsu on it and demand it. and sometimes you have to hide jacket and infiltrating it. it depends on how big the mission is and what you are trying to do for folks. tavis: i assume that strategy is necessary given the kind of clients over the years you have taken on. >> you take the poorest of the poor, tennis. you know better than we do. you talk about the bottom echelon of folks -- i do not care if they are an appellation

or native alaskan, poor african- americans in the bottom of the well -- the poorest of the poor have been left behind. and you cannot just make a demand. you have to engineer it did you have to get in there and take over the leaders of power and kind of infiltrate so that you do on inside/outside game. anyone can win a case in court. we are all good lawyers. we can win a case in court. but i discovered that the lawyers were winning. we were winning in court, but our plans were losing their lives on the street. you have to -- but our clients were losing their lives on the street. but you have to -- as martin luther king said, we will not find it in the courtroom. you have to get on the streets and have people demand believers and the latter's so that folks can bring themselves up and out of poverty. >tavis: "the l.a. times"

referenced view as of a fall in the work of clarence darrow -- you as following in the work of clarence darrow. individuals making choices to become lawyers for different reasons. then they become lawyers and decide to become different kinds of lawyers for different reasons. i say that to us how it is and why it is you chose to be the kind of lawyer that you are fighting for these kinds of clients, dispossessed people. >> i am a lawyer third. i am a solutions lady. i want democracy to work for those who have leased. if you keep your eye on that mission as opposed to winning a case, you will get a different result. we had all the results. we were win, win, win. we beat the lapd.

be sued the share. we get people off of death row. we could win the cases. but then you look at the conditions that the children of our clients were living under, travis, and they were losing. they were still dodging bullets. the gains were still taking over. the only amendment an operation was the second amendment because everybody has a gun. you cannot find fresh vegetables and there is no first amendment. because if you exercise freedom of speech, you could get shot. if you exercise the fourth amendment, the police search wherever they want to. everybody is cruelty and when you look at the little tiny hot spots, the curve systems were neither you or i want to live, i think this is the greatest commodity -- greatest democracy known to woman and on the planet and we can do anything better than this? oh, no. if your toolbox is not big enough, you leave and you get a bigger toolbox. and that is what we had to do. tavis: i want to ask a broader

question in a moment about the rest of the country learning about the reforms that the lapd had been undergoing. lapd is still a long way from perfect, to be sure, but there are so many movies and tv shows based on the lapd, we need to look at what the lapd has gone through actor rodney king. -- through after rodney king. how do you make the switch? >> you figure out what works. we had to do hand-to-hand combat. we were at work here everybody from johnnie cochran to the police and we were inundated day contact. lapd was impervious. they were like the board. the spartans, they were spartans. you cannot talk to them. you could not reason with them. so you had to sue them.

there was no other choice. while that was well -- well, communique was not possible. they were terrorizing the black community. they were emasculating are men. they did not carry fewer the mayor or the ex-convict, they were pulling you out of cars. but the lapd was cruel and aggressive and excessive in terms of its force and then they saw the community as a target. they did not see the community as a partner. they did not see the committee as someone to protect. they saw the black community as you are a danger so we will contain and surprise you, just like the sleeper and -- the slave plantations did. that is where the police model comes from, the slave plantations. how did we go from warfare? it took a couple of change agents. from the lawyers side and from

the cop's side. african-american officers and the women officers would quietly calls from pay phones. you know how long ago that was a call from pay phones. there would say, i am sorry, i will have to lie in court tomorrow. i am very sorry. i have been ordered to change my testimony. or they would say, get somebody out of the county because the graveyard. they were whispering on the phone because of what their fellow officers would do to them. lapd was a fearsome, paramilitary, unforgiving oforc, even to other officers. you had no choice but to do hand-to-hand combat. so we started a -- i was told, you cannot touch lapd from the outside with lawsuits representing the public. you have to represent cops. you have to move and infiltrate inside and then the officers who are your clients will give you a new platform in court.

so it was moving in side representing copse of that i learned what cops faced. we represented african-american female cops, some of the bravest, to have ever seen. we represented african-american male cops who were told you could not be an undercover narcotics detective because you're too close to the gains. we began to take on the eye of our clients. my mind-set changed. you want to know something? these people are putting their lives on the line for the community. i need to learn why they behave the way they do. why do they go after the community? i started asking what do you need to change so that you can police more humanely and with more compassion and you can stop robo killinofg the community? they finally said, ok, that is the right question.

this is what you need to change for us and then we were on the right track. tavis: what to do they need to police more humanely? that is a critical question. but there is a problem i found fascinating. you talk about similarities between robocalls and gangsters -- rogue cops and gangsters. >> if you take the man out of a community, that community will buy. we have been taking black men out of the underclass community for 40 years now, mass incarcerations, drug addiction, no jobs, five generations of no work. 50% to 60% of unemployment. so we have rototilled our poorest of the poor.

and it is not just african- americans. it is all americans. the poverty stuff is devastating. you want to know what comes out of an ecosystem like that. you get these ferocious cultures of survival. i'm not excusing it because i do not make any excuse for the violence. economic any excuse for the games. they are a plague on the community and they endangered children and women and they kill upper mobility because the kids can add even walk to school because they have to dodge bullets. so i do not make any quarter and i do not make an excuse. but to understand the macho cultures, i saw in the gangland and i saw it in the police appeared to have the same flag board. they had the same tattoos. they had the same us-versus-them attitude. i was in danger from both the cops and the gangs almost

equally. i said, you know something? one is a blue gang and the others -- the crips and bloods may be red and blue, but there's also the green gang. they would live for one another and kill for one another. is there a difference between the cops and the gangsters? absolutely. i am not saying they are the same. but that us-versus-them mentality that made a steal with cops who were willing to plant evidence on people and view the committee as a target as opposed to a partner, there was enough similarity. they are very different, but there is enough similarity and you have to deal with the mindset of both. tavis: mayor are some other fascinating things in the book. conversations you had, were you have done with people high up in the justice department, the defense department, i should say. and some similarities that they saw between what happens in the streets like los angeles and new

york and chicago and what they see in iraq and afghanistan. talk about some of those similarities. >> we started the gang prevention academy -- former dancers who can stop the retaliation shootings and work parallel is a former gangsters who can stop the retaliation shootings and work in parallel these men had left the game. i used to terrorize the community and now i will try to keep the kids safe. they taught me the streets. they taught me the gang culture. and to help shield them from a cop, the talks began to see that they are a resource. we need to learn to work with them rather than try to annihilate them. but that took 15 years. as we went down this road to figure out what in our toolbox we had to change, we had to create an army in the community that focuses on wrapping up these kids in safety.

to do that, i had to get the cops who have the power -- the police are the most powerful entity in los angeles. when i realized that the politicians were just looking for the next seat most of the time and not focus on long-term problem solving, the cops would focus on long-term problem- solving because they wanted to be safe. they wanted to be able to make it home at night. when i learned from the officers, ms. rice, we with love to protect the committee, but they hate us. and we understand why they hate us. but we do not know how to change. that is when i realized i could be a go-between between the gang intervention workers and the officers. officers would say things like call. rice, woulwhat you lying we call survival. we are told do not provide city

for these poor people. just keep communities that are in the upper a bushel on, the good committees say. and contain and suppress the violence in the hot zones. once i realized that they did not do this and cops wanted to provide safety, the safer the poorest communities are, the more likely a cop will not get shot on their watch. they can go home safely if the community? them here so that became the mission. that became the mission in the early 1990's -- no, late 1990's, 2000, and then brought in came and that opened it up and we could really try -- and then bratton came in and that opened it up and we could really try these things. tavis: what kind of comparisons were they making to places like iraq? >> this is amazing. these are the conversations that left me speechless. you know it is hard to keep me speeches.

-- keep me speechless. [laughter] dod told l.a. that this is why you are stuck on stupid for not reducing the problem of gangs. you use $10 billion and not reduce the number of gangs, you are doing something wrong. this guy from the dot called me and he says, hy, ma'am, i am from the department of defense. i said, no, you want my cousin. >> conte wrote on the back of the book. -- condi wrote on the back of the book. >> no, ma'am, we understand that you have a gang intervention academy. we need to come out and see it because your gangsters are former insurgents and they're helping to ruce the violence and we need to find out how to do that. travis, i was speechless. if folks in the green zone think

we can help them, then we are in trouble in iraq. but sometimes, let me understand this. then another commander came out. brain.petraeus's when he came out here, he spent four days of assessing on the ground our gang problem. we had 1000 gain, over 100,000 gang members. we have prison gangs, international mafia, the russian mafia, everything out here in l.a. it is were the first world meets the third world in terms of getting stuff. we're falling like italy did in terms of assimilating our games. it is very dangerous. he said, connie, sit down, shut up, take out a legal pad and do not say a word. we went back and forth for three days. he said, do not argue with me.

just take notes. he said, i cannot believe that i have a doing counterinsurgency defending this country for the last 30 years and i come to my own backyard and find out i have the exact same thing here that i am fighting in afghanistan. and he said, let me tell you which you have in los angeles. you have what in my business we call a sustained incipient parasitic insurgency. it is full-blown and here's the bad news. you have some of the best law enforcement in the world, but they are doing sustain tactical elegant responses to sustain tactical responses. he was basically saying that you have an insurgency and what your cops are doing cannot help it. because you have to get into these calzones, secure the population, build a safety net around them -- into these kill zones, secure the population,

build a safety net around them, and make sure that the population trusts the mainstream government and the intervention workers and the police. that is the only way to inoculate a community from being taken over by gangsters. when he told me that we had a full-blown insurgency, i went to bat for three days. i said, oh, no, i cannot deal with this. but the bottom line is, that is why i wrote this book. we need to wake up and smell the cordite here can we keep thinking we are safe. our neighborhoods are safe. we can build a private security and walls and gated communities. but chief bratton, who endorses this book, says you cannot build enough walls to keep this stuff out. look at what has happened in latin america. look at what has happened in italy. if you think you can secure your neighborhood and leave these children in the gang has ounce in perpetual terror, they end up

incubating a threat that will come out where the upper-middle class folks like us like a cat in a bag and it will be too late. generalontdi, mcchrystal, all saying that this is a good book. it is a warning. if you keep the poorest children in gains on, you incubate a real danger that will come back at you. tavis: sometimes people do the right things for the wrong reasons. i would be happy if those persons who are well-to-do, the rich, the lucky, the elite would understand the argument that you are making in the book. if they understand and act -- and accepted the argument for what it is as opposed to doing the right thing for the wrong things, which is my personal safety, that is all i care about. how do we get them to do the

right thing for the right reasons? does that make sense? >> it does make sense, but i do not want to waste my time can i do not thave to change hearts ad minds. i do not need to have everybody to be all kumbaya out. .- kumbaya o if you work at changing hearts and minds, you could be at it your whole life and not accomplish anything. you do not have to like me, you can test and not racially every day, but i am the only thing standing between you and the electric chair. we are on the mission to keep you out of the electric chair. we are on a common mission. we do not care about morality. we just do not. i am talking about upper-class

african-americans. i am talking about all of the races of the rainbow. our american tapestry. we do not do things for the right reasons. why should i tell my head against that because all -- against that broad wall -- against that brick wall. it is us and them. it is: class. it is class. it is all this complex stuff. but it is us and them. but they can walk in their neighborhood at 11:00 p.m. but they cannot even walk in their neighborhoods. i am not worried about a moral argument. if people do not want to do the morality, if we continue to put these kids in kill zones and failed schools, they do not care about these kids. we do not care about these kids.

i am not worried about the right thing for the right reasons. i want people to do the right thing, and i do not care if it is for selfish reasons. tavis: you mentioned condoleezza rice who is your cousin. condoleezza does a wonderful borba on the back of the book. -- wonderful blurb on the back of the book. the country knows a little bit more about her history. what was it about her upbringing versus your upbringing that put you on two different pass politically. your cousins and friends and all that, but your politics are very different than her politics. why is that? >> i do not know. we are cut from the same cloth. we're both commanding and demanding and total loners and aggressive feminist 10 people do not particularly like us, but

they do respect us. [laughter] and she cares about the poor, but she will go or about solving it in different ways than me. i think that one major difference is that i growth all around the world. tavis: 17 places. >> you and i are both air force brass. less of a with much sense of limitations. she grew up in birmingham where it was more repressive and that takes a lot more jujitsu. so we had different and others on us. i think that shaped the differences in their outlooks. my family has been republican for a long time my grandmother put out my grandfather out of the bedroom when he put in the goldwater signed outside. [laughter] my family has been republican

for a long, long time. i do not belong to any party. i have sued many democrats. i have sued many board members. i do not belong condoleezza is more of a bit longer -- a belonger. but we are more alike than not, which is kind of scary. [laughter] tavis: i like you. i like you a lot. her name is connie rice. she is a brilliant attorney. her memoir is out called "power concedes nothing, one woman's >> quest for social justice." i think it is something that we have to do in this country to advance the cause for all of us, not just the rich and the lucky. until next time, thank you for tuning in and keep the faith. >> for more information on

today's show, visit pbs.org. tavis: join me next time for conversation with the google executive in the center of the arab spring uprisings. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard, the cornerstone we all know. it is not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make everyday better. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. you. thank you.