alexandra pelosi, that documentary filmmaker, joins us right now.lex, thank you so much for being here. first question, the house budget committee chairman, paul ryan, released today a new report where he says, "in some significant respects, making it worse" is his assessment of programs designed to combat poverty. did you find that to be the case, being in these soup kitchens? >> here's the thing, i'm not really a politician. i can't get into the politics of it. i'm more like a political tourist, like i go check stuff out to see what's going on. they cut food stamps. i wanted to see what the impact of that was going to be. >> right. >> so i went to food kitchens around new york city to check it out, and what you see is, if you go from 9:00 to 5:00, they're empty. you know why? because people are at work. at 5:00, there's a rush of people called the working poor. and if paul ryan wants to cut food stamps, he wants to cut unemployment benefits, he wants to cut -- all the cuts they want to make, they have to find a way for people to actually be able t

to get a better look we sent filmmaker and msnbc contributor alexandra pelosi to harlem to bring youxclusive. >> reporter: i'm here in harlem, ground zero of the battle over charter schools. >> parents want to keep their kids in public school if they didn't suck. >> go to the right public school. public schools is not bad. >> you're happy in your mick school. >> i am. >> like the charter schools. kids are doing very well. their grades are up. i think some of them are smarter than public school kids. >> my daughters are both straight-a students and we need our space. i think it's unfair for them not to have the rooms they need to have. >> i totally agree with my mom. i don't think it's fair for a charter school to take up space. that belongs to us. >> reporter: an incredibly successful charter school competing with needs for a public school. >> this is about space. we're talking about three rooms that were to go over to the charter school in this building. >> what goes on this-in those rooms now? >> we're strugting special needs student ps. >> let me know if you need help. >> state of