free meek mill! >> how do you explain why your case has become so important? >> this is the same thing that thousands of minorities are going through. they just don't have anybody to speak on their behalf. >> now they do. >> yeah, now they do. >> rap star, hashtag, symbol, meek mill inspired a movement. >> he's been wronged by the criminal justice system for a decade now. >> we have been conducting criminal justice with a chainsaw. >> in his first post-prison interview, he tells his powerful story. >> my father was murdered in south philly. you ever see somebody get your brains blown out? i've seen it multiple times. >> how he rose from the streets to the charts. >> he has this energy about him. >> sentenced to prison for a probation violation. >> being locked away is just like a mental torture. >> it's affected his life, my life too. yeah, it affects all of us. >> and why he rose up for change. >> i'm still doing time for that case. something is not working. >> this is a tough judge. he violated. he

meek mill was living the fantasy.went from rapping on street corners to rubbing elbows with some of the biggest names in hip-hop. then suddenly the risen star found himself in a spotlight he never imagined. what happened to meek mill and how he fought back struck a cord that had nothing to do with music. here's lester holt with dreams and nightmares, the meek mill story. >> we're here to demand justice. >> his plight sparked headlines around the world and protests in the streets. his cases defining a cause for millions, demanding reform. charging the criminal justice system is corrupt; that mass incarceration and a punitive probation system are unfairly insnaring minorities. >> we're sick of a system that over incarcerates black and brown people. >> also known as meek mill a philadelphia rapper who has sold millions of albums. in november 2017, he was thrown in prison for probation violations. but the free meek mill movement gave hope to many that justice is on the way. >> in 25 years in working in criminal justice re

idea what life is is about because they spend 247 in a cage when you came into one of these puppy mills you would just see one on top of another in these little chicken wire crates. you know how cramped it is when you're when you're flying and i was thinking about and i thought it must be like that for the puppy mill dogs that are in these cages being able to get up and move around and i think that's a 740 seven's comedy 400 people and i thought it's just like taking 400 golden traverse or labs or shepherds and putting them in a sea shore up in the men and making them live there for 8 years you will typically smell a facility before you actually walk near the cages and as soon as you can see the cages. i know it's going to. best situation when you have the above ground wire bottom change because that sort of tells us that the person is trying to be very efficient. this is a business people are not for profit for an initial outlay of a couple $100.00 for a few breeding pairs you can be selling puppies for a $1000.00 or more apiece if you breed every heat cycle which is not what you're su

you're when you're flying and i was thinking about and i thought it must be like that for the puppy mill dogs that are in these cages being able to get up and move around and i think that the 740 seven's comedy 400 people and i thought it's just like taking 400 gold controversy or labs or shepherds and putting them in a scene strapping them in and making them live there for 8 years you will typically smell the facility before you actually walk near the cages and as soon as you can see the cages. i know it's going to be a bad situation when you have the above ground wire bottom cage see because that sort of tells us that the person is trying to be very efficient. this is a business people are not for profit for an initial outlay of a couple $100.00 for a few breeding pairs you can be selling puppies for a $1000.00 or more apiece if you breed every heat cycle which is not what you're supposed to do but which many of the millers do you could be making tens of thousands of dollars within a couple of years they were housed in chicken coops take one dog so there's probably more dogs and chicke

of state highway $53.00 in the middle of ohio this is a puppy mill not unlike the one that rufus waslikely born and it's where his parents will remain until they're unable to produce the puppies and profits expected by the owner there's no natural light no human contact except for the red pickup that stops by wanted a discount or food and fill water bowls unregulated and under the radar. was. the often we find that on the east coast that many of the puppies are coming from what we call ground 0 for large scale volume bring puppy mill bring and that's holmes county and it is really the heartbeat of where a lot of the puppy mills and a lot of the issues have started in the state of ohio when you consider that they have 43000 population and you have over 500 canales that's a lot of camels for the number of people in that general area. and holmes county alone and 200720088 was a $9000000.00 business. now when you consider that the average family income for a family of 4 is probably less than $30000.00 in holmes county that's a considerable amount of production that is coming out of that

in the hopes of improving the lives of dogs living in missouri puppy mills national and state animalwelfare organizations focused on a ballot initiative that would later become known as proposition be over 190000 signatures from missouri residents were collected and the measure made it to the ballot in the 2010 election. join me every thursday on the alex i'm i'm sure i'll be speaking to get a feel of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then . so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy confrontation let it be an arms race off and spearing dramatic development only closely i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time to sit down and talk. one else seemed wrong but we're all just all. get to shape out just to become educated and engaged with equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart when she's to look for common ground. the world is driven by the dream. of the day or thinks. we dare to ask. probably was something that was in the works for many years because missouri

on a problem or worms or parvo or anything that these animals can pick up in the actual mill and theyalways seem to be you know we can state always most of the puppies are coming from this large scale factory farming kind of operations are being sold in pet stores so when you go into a pet store and you see that beautiful little puppy that's a jumping out animal really wants the attention from you most people have no idea that the mother and father are back somewhere any factory farm type a setting where it can be horrendous it's not just pet lamb franchises they get the vast majority of their inventory from the primary states for puppy mills independent pet stores choose to seek out the same states a stark example of the supply chain leads directly from holmes county ohio to a single pet store in patterson new jersey. petite pups inspection reports obtained by ohio voters for companion animals show that in 2012 over 300 puppies from puppy mills in holmes county were sold wholesale to d. and g. only one reason would seemingly compel the owner of d.m.g. to seek out breeders located ove

was something that was in the works for many years because missouri is the puppy mill capital of theunited states probably simply sought to impose humane breeding standards and limits on the size of the puppy mills you know what i started out here paying for all this stuff and literature and pictures of puppy mills and things like that after 2 weeks i just forgot all that literature it was a copy of prop because it wasn't that people wanted to support above the bills or call the dogs it was this this is terry it that it affected other things it was a campaign of fear and misinformation fear that he was going to mysteriously morph into a ban on all rearing of animals and agriculture you know they said that this would affect farm animals you know it and then of course when they were confronted on it and showed the wall they said well it's a slippery slope but they would still continue to go into rural areas and convince everybody that this was going to shut down the family farm and it just created mass hysteria and it made a really difficult campaign it didn't deal with cattle deal wit

in the hopes of improving the lives of dogs living in missouri puppy mills national and state animalwelfare organizations focused on a ballot initiative that would later become known as proposition be over 190000 signatures from missouri residents were collected and the measure made it to the ballot in the 2010 election. plays the i've been arguing for the last decade or so it was a crisis is both a structural prices and it is also a crisis of state when you're going to see in a capitalist edge money and this and democrats did not cause that crisis it only made it very astley. and we deal with it so the whole world and it's going to aggravate all of the reds and dimensions of the crisis the health emergency relearns good we're still going to be left with this dual crisis of structural the structural crisis of the economy and the political crisis of state budget in the seed. style bananas is to put on a chain on us going to continue a little spike that's them. on their own that it is that. but i told of the. just a little earlier still. some you know well let's show. you some will pus

mill town is a narrative nonfiction book about small paper town, paper mill town in mexico, maine, where hi family work forward three generations and the unbuilding of the american dream and in the working class but the hazard or and the nature of toxic disease. and how i started this book was -- began with a false document and ends with a false document. i had been doing genealogy research back in 2001, and saw my grandfather's obituary and his death certificate and found all kind of information i never knew because he died when i was two or three, and i wanted to find out a little more but him. so i started -- i wanted to find out where he lived, first of all. in this little town, and i couldn't find the town so i decided to go to this town. so my father and i drove up to rhode island and come to find out there was no town with that name. the document was wrong and so i thought, what else is wrong? my family tree and what else is wrong in documents that we think are supposed to be stable and true and real. >> and why don't be -- let me frame it this way. this is a mystery book and not

what i started out here paying for all this stuff and whether churn pictures of puppy mills things ibet after 2 weeks i just forgot all that literature it was a copy of. because it wasn't that people wanted to support puppy mills or called you the dogs it was this this is terry it did in fact and other things it was a campaign of fear and misinformation fear that he was going to mysteriously morph into a ban on all of animals in agriculture you know they said that this would affect farm animals you know it and then of course when they were confronted on it and showed the wall they said well it's a slippery slope but they will still continue to go into rural areas and convince everybody that this was going to shut down the family farm and it just created mass hysteria and it made a really difficult campaign it didn't deal with cattle pigs it in deal with chickens it in the old any other species the language was explicit and anyone who's a 1st year law student could say with definitive precision that it just applied to dogs in space a clear way to one of the dominoes in what i call the

. >> kerri, tell us about the bleach room at the mill. >> i've never been there. my grandfather worked there but what happens in the bleach room is where the magic happens. it's where the pulp turns white. and to do that, at the beginning our paper mill opened in 1901 and up until 1997 a process was basically the same. two bleach paper they would use elemental chlorine to bleach it and what happened in the combustion process of that had this byproduct, it's a family of dioxins. and fat dioxins are one of the most dangerous toxins known to humankind. there the thing that is used in agent orange. equally as nefarious. and that bleach room up until 1997 the use elemental chlorine and created those dioxins all over across the us and the world and the mills had to change their bleaching process and they changed it to elemental chlorine free bleaching, which is not chlorine free, it's just elemental chlorine free, a trick of language so that created remarkably less dioxin but it still creates dioxins. >> and when your grandfather and your grandfathers, as far as i can t

law the law is changing they even changed the name of the long puppy mill cruelty act to the caninecruelly prevention act and it does remove the breeding dogs limit the requirements of the living conditions of animals it is a constitutional process and when citizens decide they can do that the legislature should defer to the will of the people how do you run a government when the voters go to the polls they will win something that is just ignore the result action that's the way things run and then i have to think what is best for these you know as you know you swallow your pride and sit down and work out something or i'm going to take the high road and say no no we're taking anything we want all in all no you have to do what's best for you might as well you got into this. pain has changed american lives but pharmaceutical companies have a miraculous solution. based drugs for the people who are chronic pain patients believe that their prescription is working for them and the remedy be sent to the price that they pay closer dependency and addiction to opiates to long term use that rea

from puppy mills whether you believe it or not that's where your dog came from a puppy. thing that needs to be to trust because they're not rescuing are saving a puppy by by buying that dog what they're doing is they're sentencing the mother that dog to a lifetime of misery you know you know the general public doesn't stop buying poppies a stock or a change it's just it's not going to stop i'll be down as the day i die and i owe a lot and i hope i hope i don't have to spend my days to save dogs we americans are treating dogs like members of the family we all love them in their beds to sleep at night we spend money on them we give them life saving better a care a society that values dogs is not an aside it's going to tolerate this abuse of dogs on puppy mills. until the public is willing to forgo the purchase of a puppy on the internet or in pet stores no regulation will end the suffering of thousands of breeding dogs trapped in commercial mills across the united states and humane societies rescues impounds millions of dogs are awaiting the chance to join a family if the