joining me now is ruth richardson, the minnesota state representative who wrote the bill to create the think it's so important? >> when we think about politics, politics are often very personal. and what led me to start this task force was not only personal experience, but the devastating and heartbreaking stories that i was hearing from too many families across minnesota who had lost loved ones, and in very violent ways, and also from individuals who experience a missing child. and so it was those personal stories that got us to this point. >> what are some of the reasons, you think, that black women and girls go missing at such an alarming rate? >> you know, i think one of the things that we're really struggling with as a society is that we have not done enough work to place a value on the lives of black women and girls because when we look at the data we see some really concerning disparities. black women in cases involving black girls stay open four times longer than cases involving other women. and when we look at black girls, for example, black girls are much less likely to get a