The path to ending systemic racism in the US
Chris Anderson: Hello, TED community,
welcome back for another
live conversation.
It’s a big one today, as big as they get.
You know, when we created
this “Build Back Better” series
our thought was how could we address
issues arising out of the pandemic,
how could we imagine
building back from that.
But the events of this past week,
the horrific death of George Floyd
and the daily protests that have followed,
I mean, they provided a new urgency
which we, of course,
simply have to address.
I mean, can we build
back better from this?
I think before we can even
start to answer that question,
we just have to seek to understand
the immensity of this moment.
Whitney Pennington Rodgers:
That’s right, Chris.
Right now, so many people
in the United States and beyond
are grappling with feelings of anger
and frustration, deep, deep sadness
and really helplessness.
No matter who you are,
you have questions about what to do now,
how to make things better.
And as we’ve seen,
violence like this unfolds
for many, many years.
What is the path forward?
CA: So –
We’re joined today
by a group of activists,
organizers and leaders
known for their crucial work
in social justice and civil rights.
We’re so grateful to have them here
to engage in a discussion
about racial injustice in America,
the unbearable acts
of violence that we’ve –
Acts of violence
against the black community
that we’ve witnessed,
the dangers to a nation
riven by anger and fear.
And how on earth
we can move forward from this
to something better.
So first, each of our four guests
will share their thoughts
on how we move forward from this moment.
And then we’ll engage as a group,
including you, the TED community.
WPR: And we’d like to thank our partner,
the Project Management Institute.
Their generous support has helped
make today’s interviews possible,
and of course, as Chris mentioned,
we want you to take part
in the conversation,
so please share your questions
using our Ask a question feature
and continue to share your thoughts
in the discussion thread.
CA: Thanks, Whitney.
OK, let’s get this moving.
Our first guest.
Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff
is the founder and CEO
of the Center for Policing Equity.
They work with police departments
across America, including in Minneapolis,
to seek measurable responses
to racial bias.
Phil, I can scarcely imagine
how the stress in the last week
must have been for you.
Welcome, and over to you
for your opening comments.
Phillip Atiba Goff: Thanks, Chris.
Yeah, this week has been a gut punch
to anybody who felt
like we could be making progress
in the way that we put forward
public safety that empowers
particularly vulnerable communities.
We started working in Minneapolis
about five years ago.
At the time, it was, like most
major cities in the United States,
a department that had a long history
of unaccounted for violence
from law enforcement,
targeting the most vulnerable
black communities.
And we tried to put into place
a number of things that we know work.
Change the culture,
so that the culture can be accountable
to the values of the community.
And what we saw was small
but measurable progress.
We always knew,
with small and measurable progress,
that you’re one tragic incident
from going back to ground zero.
But the events of the last week and a half
haven’t brought us back to ground zero,
they’ve torched ground zero,
and we’ve dug a hole
that we have to dig ourselves out of.
What I hear from
police chiefs who call me,
from activists I talk to,
from folks in the communities
that are literally on fire right now,
I hear folks saying,
I had one activist say to me
that the pain that he was feeling
was too large to fit into his body.
And without thinking about it,
I said right back,
“That’s because it’s too large
to fit into a lifetime.”
What we’re seeing isn’t just
the response to one gruesome,
cruel, public execution.
A lynching.
It’s not just the reaction
to three of them:
Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor
and then George Floyd.
What we’re seeing is the bill come due
for the unpaid debts
that this country owes
to its black residents.
And it comes due usually
every 20 to 30 years.
It was Ferguson just six years ago,
but about 30 years before that,
it was in the streets of Los Angeles,
after the verdict
that exonerated the police
that beat Rodney King on video.
It was Newark, it was Watts,
it was Chicago, it was Tulsa,
it was Chicago again.
If we don’t take a full accounting
of these debts that are owed,
then we’re going to keep paying it.
Part of what I’ve been experiencing
in the last week and a half,
and what I’ve been sharing
with the people who do this work,
who are serious about it,
is the acknowledgment,
the soul-crushing reality
that at some point,
when things stop being on fire,
the cameras are going to turn
to something else.
And the history that we have
in this country
is not just a history of vicious neglect
and a targeted abuse of black communities,
it’s also one where we lose
our attention for it.
And what that means
for communities like in Baton Rouge,
for those who still grieve Alton Sterling,
and in Baltimore, for those
who are still grieving Freddie Gray,
is that there is not just a chance,
there’s a likelihood
that we are a month
or two months out from this
with no more to show for it
than what we had to show
after Michael Brown Jr.
And holding the weight of that,
individually and collectively,
is just too much.
It’s just too heavy a load
for a person or a people,
or a generation to hold up.
What we’re seeing is the unrepentant sins,
the unpaid debts.
And so the solution can’t just be
that we fix policing.
It can’t be only incremental reform.
It can’t be only systems of accountability
to catch cops after
they’ve killed somebody.
Because there’s no such thing
as justice for George Floyd.
There’s maybe accountability.
There’s maybe some relief from the people
who are still around, who loved him,
for his daughter who spoke out yesterday
and said, “My Daddy changed the world.”
There won’t be justice
for a man who’s dead
when he didn’t have to be.
But we’re not going to get
to where we need to go
just by reforming police.
So in addition to the work
that CPE is known for with the data,
we have been encouraging
departments and cities
to take the money that should be going
to invest in communities,
and take it from police budgets,
bring it to the communities.
People ask, “Well, what
could it possibly look like?
How could we imagine it?”
And I tell people,
there is a place where we do this
in the United States right now.
We’ve all heard about it, whispered,
some of us have even been there,
some of us live there.
The place is called the suburbs,
where we already have enough resources
to give to people,
so they don’t need the police
for public safety in the first place.
If someone has a substance abuse issue,
they can go to a clinic.
If somebody has a medical issue,
they’ve got insurance,
they can go to a hospital.
If there’s a domestic dispute,
they have friends, they have support.
You don’t need to enter
a badge and a gun into it.
If we hadn’t disinvested
from all the public resources
that were available in communities
that most needed those,
we wouldn’t need police
in the first place,
and many have been arguing,
even more loudly recently,
that we don’t.
If we would just take the money
that we use to punish,
and instead invest it
in the promise and the genius
of the community that could be there.
So I don’t know all the ways
we’re going to get there.
I know it’s going to take everything and.
It’s going to need
the kind of systemic change
and the management tools
that we traditionally offer.
It’s also going to need a quantum change
in the way that we think
about public safety.
But mostly, this isn’t just
a policing problem.
This is the unpaid debts
that are owed to black America.
The bill is coming due.
And we need to start getting
an accounting together,
so we’re not just paying off
the interest of the damn thing.
WPR: Thank you, Phil.
Rashad Robinson is the president
of Color Of Change,
a civil rights organization
that advocates for racial justice
for the black community.
To date, more than four million people
have signed their petition
to arrest the officers
involved in the murder of George Floyd.
And of course, one was arrested last week.
Thank you so much
for being with us, Rashad, welcome.
Rashad Robinson: Thank you.
And thank you for having me.
It’s an opportunity that I’m taking today
to just tell you
about how you can get involved.
How you can take action,
because right now,
strategic action is critical
for all of us to do the work
to change the rules
that far too often
keep the systems in place
that hold us back.
Make no mistake,
the criminal justice system is not broken.
It is operating exactly
the way it was designed.
At every single level,
the criminal justice system
is not about providing justice,
but about ensuring that certain people,
certain communities are protected,
while other communities are violated.
And so I wan to talk a little bit today
about Color Of Change,
about activism, about the work
that’s happening on the ground
from other organizations
all around the country,
and the way that you
can channel this energy.
What we talk about at Color Of Change
is how do you channel presence into power.
Far too often we mistake
presence and visibility for power,
presence retweets
the stories of the movement,
people feeling passion about change
could sometimes make us feel
like change is inevitable,
but power is actually
the ability to change the rules.
And right now, every day,
people are taking action,
and what we’re trying
to channel that energy into
is a couple of things.
First is a whole set of demands
at the federal level
and at the local level.
As Phil described,
policing operates
on many different channels.
And what we need to recognize
is that while there are a lot of things
that can happen at the federal level,
locally all around the country
there are decisions
that are being made in communities
around how policing is executed,
where community needs to hold
a deeper level of accountability,
at the state level we need new laws.
So at Color Of Change,
we’ve built a whole platform
around a set of demands
and are working to build more energy
for everyday people to take action.
We’re fighting for justice
for Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor
and George Floyd,
we’re also fighting for justice
for other folks whose names
you haven’t heard,
Nina Pop and others,
whose stories of injustice
and the relationship
to the criminal justice system
represent all the ways
in which fighting right now is important.
Over the last couple of years,
we have worked to build a movement,
to hold district attorneys accountable
and to change the role
of district attorneys in our country.
And through the Winning Justice
platform at Color Of Change,
www.winningjustice.org,
what we have worked to do
is channel the energy
of everyday people to take action.
So, for folks who are watching
what’s happening on TV,
seeing it on their social media feeds
and are outraged about
what’s happening in Georgia,
what’s happening in Tennessee,
what’s happening in Minnesota,
you yourself, probably, most likely,
live in a place, in a community
where you have a district attorney
that will not hold police accountable,
that will not prosecute police
when they harm, hurt black folks,
when they violate the laws,
you live in a community
where police are part of the structure
that is racking up mass incarceration,
but many other aspects of our system
are racking up mass incarceration,
and district attorneys
are at the center of it.
You live in those communities
and you need to do something about it.
And so at winningjustice.org,
we’ve created the only
searchable, national database
on the 2,400 prosecutors
around the country.
We’re building local squads
and communities
for folks to be able to engage
around efforts that hold DAs accountable.
We’ve worked with our partners
across the movement,
from our friends in Black Lives Matter,
to folks who do policy work,
to our friends at local ACLU chapters
around the country,
to build six demands.
Six demands that folks can get behind
in terms of pushing for reform,
and then we’ve built
public education material.
But the only way that we work
to change the way
that prosecution happens in this country
is that if people get involved.
If people raise their voice,
if people join us
in pushing for real change.
At the end of the day,
I want people to recognize though,
and Phillip talked
a little bit about this,
is that people don’t experience issues,
they experience life.
That the forces that hold us back
are deeply interrelated,
a racist criminal justice system
requires a racist
media culture to survive,
a political inequality follows
economic inequality,
they all go hand in hand.
And so I also want us to not take
ourselves out of the equation.
We likely work inside of corporations
that may post symbols
for Black Lives Matter one day,
and then support politicians
that work to destroy Black Lives Matter
the next day.
We oftentimes are engaged
in practices inside of our companies
or in our daily lives supporting
media properties and others
that are harming our communities,
are telling stories.
Recently, we produced a report
at Color Of Change
with the Norman Lear school at USC.
It’s called “Normalizing Injustice,”
and it can be found at
changehollywood.org.
And “Normalizing Injustice”
looks at the 22 crime procedurals,
those crime shows on TV.
And looks at all of the ways
in which they, sort of,
create a warped perception
about our view of justice.
They create sort of an incentive
for the type of policing
we see on the country,
and actually serve as a PR arm
for law enforcement.
We’ve been working in writers rooms
around the country
to work to push folks
to tell better stories,
but we need folks
to be both active listeners,
and we need folks
in the industry to push back
and challenge those,
not only the structures that lead
to that content coming on the air,
but the proliferation across our airwaves.
At the end of the day,
we have an opportunity
in this moment to make change.
Inflection points are those moments
where we have an opportunity
to make huge leaps forward,
or the real, real threat
of falling backwards.
In our hands is the ability
to do some incredible things
about undoing so many of the injustices
that have stood in the way
of progress for far too long.
But everyday people must get involved.
We must channel that presence into power,
and we must build the type of power
that changes the rules.
Racism in so many ways is like water
pouring over a floor with holes in it.
Every single –
In every single way,
it will find the holes.
And so for us,
we cannot simply accept
charitable solutions
to structural problems,
but we actually have to work
for structural change.
And so I want to end by saying one thing
about how we talk about black people
and how we talk about
black communities in this moment.
Because we have to say what we mean,
and we have to build the narrative
that gets us to where we want to go.
So far too often,
we talk about black
communities as vulnerable,
we talk about black people as vulnerable,
but vulnerability is a personal trait,
black communities have been under attack.
Black communities have been exploited,
black communities have been targeted,
and we need to say that,
so we don’t put the onus
on fixing black families and communities,
but we put the onus on fixing
the structures that have harmed us.
We will say things like,
“Black people are less likely
to get loans from banks,”
instead of saying
that banks are less likely
to give loans to black people.
This is our opportunity
to build the type of progress
that makes real change,
and at the center of this story,
we need to show and elevate the images
not just of the pain that we are facing,
but of the joy, the brilliance
and the creativity
that black people have brought
to this country.
Black people are
the protagonist of this story,
and we need to make sure
that as we work to build a new tomorrow,
we ensure that the heroes
are at the center
of the liberation that we all need.
Thank you.
CA: Thank you, Rashad.
Dr. Bernice King is the CEO
of the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
The center is a living memorial
to her father, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
It’s dedicated to inspiring
new generations
to carry his work forward.
In this moment, when so many are hurting,
how can we better approach
unity and collective healing?
Dr. King, over to you.
Bernice King: My heart
is a little heavy right now,
because I was that six-year-old.
I was five years old
when my father was assassinated.
And he did change the world.
But the tragedy is that we didn’t hear
what he was saying to us
as a prophet to this nation.
And his words are now
reverberating back to us.
Change, we all know,
is necessary right now.
And yet, it’s not easy.
We know that there has to be changes
in policing in this nation of ours.
But I want to talk about America’s choice
at a greater level.
The prophet said to us,
“We still have a choice today:
nonviolent coexistence,
or violent coannihilation.”
What we have witnessed
over the last eight days
has placed that choice before us.
We have seen literally
in the streets of our nation
people who have been following
the path of nonviolent protest,
and people who have been
hell-bent on destruction.
Those choices are now looking at us,
and we have to make a choice.
The history of this nation
was founded in violence.
In fact, my father said
America is the greatest
purveyor of violence.
And the only way forward is if we repent
for being a nation built on violence.
And I’m not just talking
about physical violence.
I’m talking about systemic violence,
I’m talking about policy violence,
I’m talking about what he spoke of
are the triple evils of poverty,
racism and militarism.
All violent.
Albert Einstein said something to us.
He said we cannot solve problems
on the same level of thinking
in which they were created.
And so if we are going to move forward,
we are going to have to deconstruct
these systems of violence
that we have set in America.
And we’re going to have to reconstruct
on another foundation.
That foundation happens to be
love and nonviolence.
And so, as we move forward,
we can correct course
if we make that choice
that Daddy said, nonviolent coexistence.
And not continue on the pathway
of violent coannihilation.
So what does that look like?
That looks like some deconstruction work
in order to get to the construction.
We have to deconstruct our thinking.
We’ve got to deconstruct the way
in which we see people
and deconstruct the way
in which we operate,
practice and engage and set policy.
And so I believe
that there’s a lot of heart,
h-e-a-r-t work to do,
in the midst of all the h-a-r-d,
hard work to do.
Because heart work is hard work.
One of the things we have to do
is we have to ensure that everyone,
especially my white brothers and sisters,
have to engage in the heart work,
the antiracism work,
in our hearts.
No one is exempt from this,
especially in my white community.
We must do that work in our hearts,
the antiracism work.
The second thing is
that I encourage people
to look at the nonviolence training
that we [have] at the King Center,
thekingcenter.org,
so that we learn the foundation
of understanding
our interrelatedness
and interconnectedness.
That we understand our loyalties
and our commitments
and our policy-making
can no longer be devoted
to one group of people,
but has to be devoted
to the greater good of all people.
And so I’m inviting people to even join us
on our own line of protest
that’s happening every night
at seven o’clock pm
on the King Center Facebook page,
because so many people have things
that they want to express
and contribute to this.
We all have to change
and have to make a choice.
It is a choice to change
the direction that we have been going.
We need a revolution
of values in this country.
That’s what my Daddy said.
He changed the world, he changed hearts,
and now, what has happened
over the last seven, eight years
and through history,
we have to change course.
And we all have to participate
in changing America
with the true revolution of values,
where people are at the center,
and not profit.
Where morality is at the center,
and not our military might.
America does have a choice.
We can either choose to go down
continually that path of destruction,
or we can choose nonviolent coexistence.
And as my mother said,
struggle is a never-ending process,
freedom is never really won.
You earn it and win it
in every generation.
Every generation is called
to this freedom struggle.
You as a person may want
to exempt yourself,
but every generation is called.
And so I encourage corporations in America
to start doing antiracism work
within corporate America.
I encourage every industry
to start doing antiracism work,
and pick up the banner of understanding
nonviolent change, personally,
and from a social change perspective.
We can do this.
We can make the right choice
to ultimately build the beloved community.
Thank you.
WPR: Thank you, Dr. King.
Anthony Romero is the executive director
of American Civil Liberties Union.
As one of the nation’s
oldest social justice organizations,
the ACLU has advocated for racial equality
and shown deep support
to the black community
in moments of crisis.
And in moments like these,
black voices are almost always the loudest
and at times the silence
from our nonblack brothers and sisters
can feel deafening.
How we can bring our allies into the mix,
to better support ending systemic violence
and racism against the black communities,
is a question top of mind for a lot of us.
Anthony, welcome to the show,
and thank you so much for being with us.
Anthony Romero: Great.
Thank you, thank you Whitney,
thank you, Chris,
for inviting me to join
this TED community.
I think community
is really important right now.
With so many of us feeling trepidation,
the weariness, the anger,
the fear, the frustration,
the terrorism that we’ve experienced
in our communities.
This is a time to huddle
around a virtual campfire,
with your posse, with your family,
with your loved ones, with your network.
It’s not a time to be isolated or alone.
And I think for allies in this struggle,
those of us who don’t live
this experience every day,
it is time for us to lean in.
You can’t change the channel,
you can’t tune out,
you can’t say, “This is too hard.”
It is not that hard for us
to listen and learn and heed.
It is the only way
we’re going to build out of this,
by hearing the voices of Rashad,
and Phil and Dr. King.
By hearing the voices
of our neighbors and loved ones,
by hearing the voices on Twitter
of people who we don’t know.
And so white communities
and allied organizations
need to pay even closer attention.
This is the test of your character.
How willing are you
to lean in and to engage.
For me, I have –
These have been really hard
couple of weeks.
I feel like this is really a test
of whether or not we really believe
in the American experiment.
Do we really believe it?
Do we really believe
that out of many, one,
a country with no unifying language,
no unifying culture,
no unifying religion,
can we really become one people?
All equal before the law?
All bound together
with a belief in the rule of law?
Do we really believe that
or do we just think it’s a nice saying
to see on the back of a paper dollar?
And for me, this is a referendum
on the American experiment.
On whether we really believe,
and …
the future is in our hands.
And this is not like other crises,
I’ve been the head of the ACLU
for almost 20 years,
I feel like I’ve seen it all.
This is different.
And this is different
because it is cumulative,
like Phil and Rashad and Dr. King told us,
this is centuries
of systemic discrimination,
and the bill has come due.
And it will continue to be due,
and we will pay.
Unless we really do
something quite different.
I have been scratching
my head at the ACLU for the last week.
We’ve been at this for 100 years.
My organization has been working
on this from its inception.
In 1931, we were involved with this report
about lawlessness in law enforcement.
That was our first report
that we got behind in 1931.
We opened up our first door fronts
after the riots in Watts,
so that we can bring legal services
and lawyers to the communities
so they could demand justice
from the police departments.
You know, we brought Miranda, you know,
the right to remain silent,
and we brought Gideon,
the right to a court-appointed attorney
if you can’t afford one.
We fought Bloomberg on “stop-and-frisk,”
it took him years and he lost
in front of our litigation
to finally apologize.
We’ve been at this for 100 years.
And for the communities
that have lived this for 400 years, God.
I’ve been scratching my head, thinking.
It ain’t working.
We don’t need another
pattern and practice lawsuit.
We don’t need another training program
on racial bias or implicit bias
in police departments,
we don’t need to file another lawsuit
on qualified immunity,
we don’t need to, kind of,
bring another race discrimination
or gender discrimination lawsuit
to integrate the police department.
Yeah, we’ve done that
and we will continue to do that.
For me, where I’ve come,
is that we need to defund the budgets
of these police departments.
It’s the only way
we’re going to take the power back.
And the more I read
over the last couple of weeks
about where this country is,
the more I’m clear that that
is my North star at the moment.
We will continue to bring
the litigation on qualified immunity,
we will do the efforts
to hold unaccountable
law enforcement officials accountable,
we will bring pattern
and practice lawsuits,
because the justice department
is not doing that,
so we will continue to do
all that good work.
But the real thing is,
we’re going to go after those budgets.
When you look at the fact
that we spend 100 million
dollars on policing,
more than incarceration,
that the city of Minneapolis
spent 30 percent of their budget
on policing.
The city of Oakland,
41 percent on policing.
That when you have New York City
police department
spend more money on policing
than it does on housing
and preservation development,
community youth services, homelessness.
We’re going after the money.
And that’s hard-core advocacy.
Bills drop in local legislatures
to cut the funding for police,
to stop these programs
that give the federal military surplus
to police departments,
so they become, like, little mini armies,
these don’t look like police officers,
these look like standing armies.
And the enemy are communities of color.
So we need to take away their toys.
We need to cut their budgets.
We need to shrink
the police infrastructure,
so that we can get police out
of the quotidian lives of people of color
and communities of color.
The ubiquitousness of police enforcement
on things that the police
do not have a role,
should not have a role to play.
People should not lose their lives
over whether or not a cigarette pack
has a proper tax stamp,
or whether a 20-dollar bill
was forged or not.
That’s not worthy
of spending our dollars on police.
Get them out of that business,
let’s focus on the most important
and the most serious of crimes,
and that’s it.
That’s it.
We’re going to depolice our communities.
Shrink those budgets.
We’re going to reinvest
those moneys in local communities,
it will be like water on stone campaigns,
local legislatures,
local city counsels, lab report cards,
for people who talk out of both sides
of their mouths and say,
“We believe in police reform,”
and yet, they’re still going to vote
for 30 or 40 percent for the police?
We’re going to put that
right to the public.
And I think we just have to stay at it,
because I think that’s the only way
we can get at this in a different way.
Because much of what we tried to do
is just simply not working.
You know, with that,
I struggle with, how do you find
the optimism in this moment,
because you have to find the optimism.
You have to find the way
to still think that even though
on the face of so many setbacks,
there’s been change.
It’s been too little,
too slow, not enough.
We need to kind of, rock it, boost it.
But you can’t lose sight of the optimism.
And you know, I’ve been thinking
about who are the folks inspiring me,
and Dr. King’s father, of course,
and the words of Rashad
and Patrisse Cullors
and others have inspired me.
But I find inspiration
in the words of a scholar
I really don’t like bringing up,
Sam Huntington,
kind of often criticized
as being a conservative, a racist.
But sometimes you can find inspiration
even in your enemy’s words.
And in one of his books,
which I pulled off the shelf I have,
he writes about how America
is a disappointment,
because it failed to live up
to its aspirations.
And he actually started talking about,
America is a failure
because it doesn’t live up to its ideals.
But it’s not a failure,
it’s not a bunch of lies.
It’s a disappointment.
And in the disappointment
also is the fact that there’s hope.
I’m paraphrasing it,
but I think we have to kind of,
wrap all of that together,
and think about the disappointment
and the hope and the resolve to do better.
And we need to listen and lean in,
and I thank the TED community,
I thank Dr. King,
I thank Rashad, I thank Phil.
Thank you.
CA: Wow.
Thank you to all four of you,
that was astonishing.
I guess we’re bringing everyone back now
to have a conversation among us,
to answer questions from our community,
I hope you’re entering those questions.
So I don’t know whether we can bring back
our guests onto the screen at this point.
Welcome back.
Let me start with a question
to you, Dr. King,
I was so inspired by what you said.
Your father, of course,
also deeply understood
the anger that leads to protest.
I think he said that protests
are the language of the unheard.
And I’m wondering what you would say
to someone right now
who is angered beyond measure
by what’s happened,
and also sees this could be
the moment, you know,
like, someone who believes
the system is so fundamentally broken,
that our best choice is to tear it down,
that that is actually –
This may be a once-in-a-generation
moment to do that.
And so to actually believe that protest,
including violent protest,
actually is the way right now.
What would you say
to someone who felt that?
BK: First, I just wanted to make
just a slight correction,
he said riots are the language
of the unheard.
CA: I apologize, I apologize.
But that is the point
even more powerfully, yeah.
BK: Yes.
Protest we must,
and we must continue to always protest,
to keep the issues
in the awareness before people,
but you know,
when a person is angry,
sometimes it’s hard to reach them.
I’ve been on that journey,
I was at a stage of my life
where I was so angry, I wanted to destroy,
and I’m the daughter
of Martin Luther King Jr.,
and grew up in a household of love
and nonviolence and forgiveness,
and I had to go through that journey
I was surrounded by the right kind
of influences, fortunately.
Because that would have been a sad story.
But I think it’s really
allowing ourselves to hear the anger
and allowing the space for the anger,
but also trying to help young people
rechannel that energy.
And we’ve got to start ensuring
that we connect them
to some of the work that has been
and now is elevated to another place.
Color Of Change,
the work that you’re doing,
the ACLU, the work that they’re doing,
because sometimes,
there’s this disconnection
that intensifies the emotion
and makes you feel helpless.
But if you can channel that anger,
connect it with action
that is toward creating
the social and economic change,
then it begins to build you up,
and then you can begin to become
more constructive with the anger.
WPR: We have some questions
that are coming in from our community,
but before we do that,
you all shared such powerful,
meaningful statements right now,
and many of you touched on the fact
that this is not the first time
that we’re experiencing this.
The murder of George Floyd,
Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor,
this is one of –
these are three of many, many
instances just like this,
and I’d love to hear you all address
was has, sort of, brought us
to this boiling point,
what has contributed to this moment
where we’re now experiencing things,
Anthony, as you said,
that feels so much worse
than other moments?
And that’s it,
anyone who feels comfortable
to take that question.
AR: Rashad, I want to hear you.
BK: I wanted to say something.
I think we’ve always been at that moment.
But this moment is different,
because of the void in leadership.
There’s no real moral voice
in our country,
and the person who sits
in the office of the presidency
is not, you know,
leading in the right way.
And has kind of –
no, not kind of, has given license
to certain things.
And so now it’s,
you know, he’s lit the fires.
WPR: Yeah.
RR: The thing I’ll add …
The thing I’ll add here is,
you know, a couple of things.
For the last couple of months,
we have been both seeing and experiencing
all of the ways that this country’s
decisions of underinvestment,
of targeting black communities,
has been killing black people
through COVID.
And while we’ve been in our homes,
we have also been watching
how the media has blamed us
as we have been the essential
workers in so many places
and trying to ensure
that this country keeps going.
We’ve watched white men with guns
show up to capitols
demanding, basically,
black and brown people go back to work.
And then we see this eight-minute video
with a police officer,
with his knee on someone’s neck,
after seeing that video of Ahmaud Arbery
and hearing the story of Breonna Taylor,
and we see him looking in the camera,
basically knowing that America
was not going to punish him.
And what I think it is
is that it’s just enough is enough,
that people didn’t feel
that they had a channel for that outrage,
and because people had been inside,
and because people had been experiencing
all the ways in which the structures
had also been colluding to kill us,
that what we’re seeing
is alignment of all of those things,
where people are making demands
that are much bigger
and much bolder than before.
And we recognize that while we don’t have
leadership at the federal level,
we also have to recognize
that no political party
can say that they have been 100 percent,
neither political party can say
they’ve been 100 percent
on the right side of all these issues.
And so people are mobilizing,
they are fighting back like never before,
and in some ways,
people are unwilling to accept
answers like, “Just go vote,”
or, “Just participate in the process,”
because we recognize
that black people have been voting,
black people have been part of voting,
and part of ensuring that.
And so that I think is why
this moment feels so much different,
combined with, for the last seven years,
since Trayvon, we have seen
the growth of a new movement
of activists and leaders
all around the country,
who are also in a very different place
to be able to move the needle
on so much of what’s possible.
CA: We have a question here
from Genesis Be.
If we can get that up here.
“Here in Mississippi, the police
is synonymous with the Klan, historically.
How do we purge law enforcement
of white supremacists?”
PAG: So I guess that’s partially to me,
being the psychologist of bias.
I’ll say that just yesterday
we had an officer in Denver
who posted on social media
himself and two other officers
saying, “Let’s go start a riot.”
He was fired that day.
I worry about all the officers
that the FBI has now,
for almost half a decade,
been warning us,
law enforcement and unions
being infiltrated by white supremacists.
And all the officers
that have social media accounts,
but they’re private.
You know, the Invisible Institute
has put some things forward.
We’re not talking seriously
about the domestic terrorism threat
that white supremacy represents.
So the first thing that we’ve got to do
is we’ve got to take it seriously.
We have to actually say out loud,
and I can’t believe
that on a day like today,
or a week like this week,
I have to say out loud,
white supremacy is alive and well
and a driving force of American politics.
This shouldn’t be controversial.
I shouldn’t be looking forward
to getting hate mail in my inbox for it,
but that’s the reality.
So the first part of solving a problem
is acknowledging that it exists.
But the second thing is
we need to arm municipalities,
that’s law enforcement,
but even more so communities,
with the ability to take action
when someone violates their values.
Right now, I think about
the case in Philadelphia
where Charles Ramsey,
when he was a commissioner there,
fired six officers, right.
Concerns about racial bias
and concerns about police brutality,
and those six officers
were back on the same job
inside of three months.
We now have a law enforcement system
that says you can lose your job
in one jurisdiction,
and get the same job as law enforcement
in another jurisdiction.
And without the national registry
and the capacity for law enforcement
to make different decisions,
we’re going to have this exact problem,
not just in Mississippi,
but in Minneapolis, and Louisville
and New York and LA.
CA: Phil, how much of the problem
stems from the fact that police unions
have a huge amount of power
to protect and sometimes reinstate
so called bad apple officers?
PAG: Yeah, I’m getting
this question a lot,
and police unions
are one of the most labor forces
of the United States,
and are unique within
the labor movement, right?
So it’s police unions and teachers'
unions are the two largest
and could not be two different
groups of folks.
When I talk to union leadership,
that’s the leadership what wants
to talk to Dr. Blackenstein, right,
when I talk to union leadership,
what they say is
no one hates a bad officer
more than a good officer.
But the union contracts,
the new negotiations,
don’t look like that’s true.
What they look like is
anybody gets in trouble,
and the union’s only job is to make sure
whatever officer is in trouble,
gets to maintain their job.
The perverse incentive here
is that when people run
for union leadership,
no one can run saying,
“These people shouldn’t be in the union.”
It’s very hard to do that.
What you can run on is say,
“If this person didn’t protect you enough,
I’ll protect you even more.
The bigots? I’ll protect even them.”
So we have this perverse incentive
where union leadership ends up
not really representing
the values even of the rest
of the union members.
But they have massive,
outsized negotiating power.
So yes, engaging with
and appropriate rightsizing
of labor protections,
for folks whose jobs are difficult,
but who should not be protected
from the basic values of human rights,
human dignity and public safety.
It’s got to be part of the process.
I mean, when unions are negotiating
a two-year ban on keeping of records,
so that there’s no ability even to trace
what’s happening
in the state of California,
historically in terms
of police misconduct,
that’s not in the interest
of public safety,
public legitimacy, or our democracy.
AR: Yeah, the thing I would add, Chris,
is that I think the labor union piece
is a critically important one
to think through.
Because I think, like Phil said,
they are a key part of the puzzle
that we have to solve for.
And you know, it’s frustrating
when you look at a place in Minneapolis,
and Phil knows better than I,
but when mayor Jacob Frey,
the one who’s on TV all the time,
saying many of the right things
that you want an elected official to say
at times like this,
when he banned his police department
from attending the “warrior training”
that was being offered,
it was the Minneapolis Police Federation,
local union that defied him
and sent their police to the training.
And so we need to really be clear
that we need to have the police forces
under civilian control.
I know this sounds so elementary,
I feel like I’m talking
about a Latin American,
kind of, totalitarian context,
but we need to exert
civilian control of our police
in a way that we have yet not
been able to think through,
and a key part of that
is the labor unions of the police.
And there are moments
when you can find common ground.
When we brought one
of our COVID-related lawsuits
to deal with the outbreak
of the pandemic in a Maryland jail,
we worked really hard,
I worked the phones
with the head of police unions.
We got one of the local unions
to serve as plaintiff in our lawsuit.
Because we understood
that the incarcerated folks
who were being denied access to masks,
social distancing and the conditions
and lack of testing, and lack of PP,
that the people who were also
going to be in harm’s way
were going to be the guards as well.
And they were going to be the vectors,
communicating the disease
out into the community.
So if you can find ways
of bringing that relationship.
But make no mistake,
when you go after their budgets,
and you start taking away
kind of, their munitions,
and their seat at the budgeting table,
oh, are you going to have
a battle on your hands, right?
And we have to think about also
as we shrink the budgets for police,
how do we –
we deploy people in the police departments
to other meaningful jobs, right?
Because you can’t just throw them
out into the street, and say,
“You’re on your own,
you’re homeless, good luck to you.”
That’s not a way to deal with redemption.
So we have to really think
about all these pieces
in a much more cohesive way.
WPR: We have another question
here from the audience.
From Paul Rucker:
“The end of summer of 1919
was followed by the Tulsa Race Massacre,
the Johnson-Reed
Anti-Immigration Act of 1924,
and also the rise of the KKK.
Is there a possibility
that white supremacy will get stronger
if we don’t seize this opportunity?”
Rashad, I think this might be something
that would be great to hear
your perspective on,
working so deeply in activism.
RR: I’m having a little trouble hearing.
WPR: Oh, I’m so sorry.
RR: No, it’s OK.
CA: Can you read the question
on the screen, Rashad?
RR: Oh, I heard that, I heard you.
WPR: Yes, I think it might just be
my mic is having some issues here.
“Is there a possibility
that white supremacy will get stronger
if we don’t seize this opportunity.”
Yes, absolutely yes.
You know, to be clear, right,
if we don’t have the right diagnosis
of white supremacy,
if we think of white
supremacy as just hoods,
if we think of white
supremacy as just folks
who are operating, you know,
with, you know –
in some of these underground
networks that have grown,
if we’re just thinking about white
supremacy and white nationalism
as people who marched
with tiki torches in Charlottesville,
then we will really mistake all the ways
in which our systems and structures
have white supremacy embedded,
and allow for something
like a Tulsa Race Massacre to happen,
something like anti-immigration to happen,
but on a day-to-day basis
allow for the targeting
of black communities
through predatory practices by banks.
The targeting of black communities
through predatory practices like bail.
A whole set of systems
that can be produced day in and day out.
We live in a country where the rules
are far too often designed in ways
that create a caste system,
that create a different standard
for some over others,
and so when I talked
about the inflection point, right,
of this moment where something
could really go forward
and something could turn backwards,
we are seeing this right now
with this current president.
And as we look at what could
be happening with the next election,
we have to be very, very clear
that Donald Trump
doesn’t just operate on his own.
He’s enabled by big corporations
who benefit from him being in office,
and so continue to turn a blind eye
to all the things that he does.
They may post “Black Lives Matter,”
but they show up to the White House
and engage with Donald Trump.
And then we have
a whole set of politicians
that may sometimes say that he said
something that was wrong,
but then allow for –
but support his platform in other ways.
You know, true co-conspiracy
in the effort to dismantle
white supremacy and white nationalism
is not a thing that people
can do on vacation.
It is a 365-day project
of us constantly working to dismantle
all of the structures
that have been put in harm’s way.
The final thing I will just add,
because someone mentioned
about police unions,
and I want to just add that
one of the problems with police unions,
and many of us have been
in this position, I think,
is that I have shown up to the table
with police unions on many occasions.
I remember going to the White House
during the last administration
and being around a table
as we were talking
about policing and police reform.
And having members of the Fraternal
Order of Police leadership
say things like,
“All of this talk
of racial profiling is new to us.”
It is one thing for folks
to not agree with you
on the policy reforms necessary.
It is another thing for people to say
that our demands are too aspirational.
It’s another thing to be gaslit
and told the problem
doesn’t actually exist at all.
And that is what we are dealing with,
and so we have to actually change
the way that people see
these institutions.
Politicians who say that they are
on the side of justice and reform,
can no longer take money
from police-only unions
and Fraternal Order of Police.
We actually have to create a new standard,
a new litmus test of what does it mean
to actually be with us.
You can’t just sing our songs,
use our hashtags and march in our marches,
if you are on the other end
of supporting the structures
that put us in harm’s way,
that literally kill us.
And this is the opportunity
for white allies
to actually stand up in new ways.
To be the type of ally,
to do the type of allyship
and the type of work
that truly dismantles structures,
not just provides charity.
PAG: And I’ve got to add to that –
so, Paul, thank you for the question,
but we’re in a moment where people
are looking at what’s
happening on the street,
as if a week and a half ago
we weren’t in a midst of a global pandemic
as the greatest news story,
the biggest new story going on.
One of the things I’m most worried about,
and have been worried about
since the beginning,
what I’ve been talking
to our chiefs about, is say,
you must be out of the social
distancing policing game.
You can’t be the ones doing that,
and the reason is this:
We’re in a moment
where creating scapegoats
and enemies and others
is incredibly politically advantageous
for at least one side.
And there is deliberate efforts
to do exactly that.
And we’ve seen that black communities
are two and three and four times
more likely to contract this virus,
which feels like the manifestation
of racial discrimination,
because it is.
But very soon,
that’s going to look like
black people made bad choices
and they need to stay away from us.
And when that happens,
that’s when law enforcements get used
to regulate where black movement can be.
We used to call it sundown towns,
I don’t know what we’re going to call it
when it’s around COVID.
But it’s coming.
I’m already seeing that
on communities like Nextdoor,
and on Facebook groups.
People who don’t think of themselves
as white supremacists
but just want the disease away,
and the disease has
a black and brown face.
So we’re not only dealing
with a moment of generational tension,
between black communities
and law enforcement,
we’re dealing with a moment
when people are looking for scapegoats,
and black people’s vulnerability
has always been our greatest casting note
for being cast as scapegoats.
So for folks who are worried about this,
this is not inevitably a moment
for change and reform and enlightenment
and America’s best values,
because historically,
these have been precisely the moments
when regression back to white supremacy
has reigned supreme.
So let’s not just look
at everybody signaling.
I don’t want to just see
black and white cops on their knees,
I want to see the policies.
I want to see the things that will prevent
this kind of thing
from moving to the next stage.
CA: Rashad, I want to respect the fact
that you’ve got a hard stop at one.
And so I just want to thank you
for your participation in this.
If you’ve got a couple of final words
you want to share, that would be great,
and then if it’s OK for the other three,
I think there’s just a couple
other questions I’d love to put
and continue this conversation
for just a moment longer, if possible.
Rashad, any closing words?
RR: The thing I want to say
is that now is the time for action.
And I want to invite people in
to join us at Color Of Change
to make justice real.
And in so many ways,
you can visit us at Color Of Change,
you can take action.
Five, 10, 15 years from now,
we will be dealing with the impacts
of what we did or didn’t do
in this moment.
How we stood up and how hard
we were willing to fight.
And as the other speakers have said,
now is not the time
for reform around the edges,
now is time for dismantling the policies
and practices that have held us back,
and championing solutions and new rules
that will move us forward.
And so we hope that you will do something,
whether it’s with us,
or whether it’s with local
organizations in your community,
or other groups around the country.
But this is an opportunity to make change,
and I believe that we
can make justice real,
if we find the passion and the energy
to work together to achieve it.
So thank you all for having me,
and I hope that we have an opportunity
to build, not just online, but offline,
in the months to come.
CA: Thanks so much, Rashad.
We’re just going to ask
this last question of you.
This one is from David Fenton.
“How can the movement unite
around a clear, simple platform
of policies to enshrine in legislation?
Like making all complaints
against cops public,
banning all choke holds,
ensuring independent review boards, etc.?”
WPR: That seems like a great place
for you to chime in, Dr. King,
if you have some thoughts on that.
PAG: I think that was
to go to you, Dr. King.
BK: Oh, OK.
You know, this may sound simplistic,
but it’s a Nike thing,
I think we have to just do it,
we have to see our work as interconnected.
I think there’s been efforts
towards people working in that vein,
but we have to intensify that.
And in doing it,
one of the things that my father said,
and I know people sometimes
get tired of hearing me say,
“My father said,”
but I just think,
I wish, should I say,
we had really listened to him,
because we wouldn’t be
on this platform right now
having this type of conversation.
But he left something with us,
sort of a blueprint
in “Where Do We Go From Here:
Chaos or Community?”,
his book, and he said,
going forward, the meddlesome task
is to organize our strength
into compelling power.
And that is so key,
because oftentimes we organize
merely around passion.
But people have certain areas of strength
and talent and giftedness,
and we’ve got to figure out
how to build our coalitions
based on these strengths.
You know, people do different things well.
And so, in order to unite
in an effective way
that they might not elude the demand
that we’re making,
I think that’s what’s going to happen.
People have to do
their own personal assessment
within their organization,
I call it a SWAT analysis.
And then that SWAT analysis
has to happen across organizations,
so that we can make sure
that we are moving in a united manner,
off of the strengths
that each organization brings,
so that we can maximize
the impact and the effectiveness
to do things like this,
in terms of getting the legislation
in place that is needed in this hour.
CA: Thanks so much.
Just quick closing words
from you, Anthony,
and then from you, Phil.
Anthony.
AR: You know, I would just say
that what gives me hope
are the young folk.
You have to believe that among this group,
this groups of young’uns,
seeing what they’re seeing,
living with this president,
with these instincts,
seeing the continued indifference
that mainstream communities
have given to issues of racial justice,
or economic justice,
you’ve got to believe that what comes
out of this very hot fire,
is something even more powerful and strong
than we’ve ever seen before.
That’s what gets me through the hard days
that we’re now experiencing,
this thinking, there is another
Dr. King among the young’uns, Dr. King.
And I have to believe
that what they’re seeing
and what they’re witnessing
and their righteous indignation
and their frustration and their anger
is going to be miraculously
a beautiful blossoming
of a new opportunity, of a new change.
This generation will take us there,
I have to believe that.
My generation has failed them miserably.
So I’m just looking forward
to the new ones.
CA: Thank you, Anthony.
WPR: Phil.
Thank you, Anthony.
PAG: So it really has been
a privilege to be on with you all.
To David’s question,
let me say that a number
of civil rights organizations,
I believe the ACLU among them,
CPE, Center for Policing Equity,
and hundreds more have signed on
to principles for legislation
that would include eight pillars.
It’s been led by the Leadership
Conference for Civil and Human Rights.
And it includes a federal ban
on choke holds,
it includes a national
registry for officers
who have engaged in misconduct.
I also think that it’s important
at this moment to get,
we’ve got law enforcement’s chiefs
of major cities willing to say,
if we emerge from this moment
and our profession hasn’t changed,
then we have failed again.
So it’s a critical time to get behind,
I would direct you to LCCHR’s website
for the eight pillars,
because I won’t remember
them all right now,
and to start calling
your local law enforcement,
and say, “Yes, own that.”
You should be signing on,
they should be going public
with letters that do all of that.
But I’ll also say this.
For a path forward in the principles,
I’ll end where I started,
which is that this
is bigger than policing.
These are the unpaid debts
owed to black communities
for stolen labor,
owed to native communities
for stolen land, for stolen culture,
for years taken away
and for lives lost in it.
This is bigger than policing.
If we don’t understand the size of it,
then there’s no solution that’s really,
truly proportional to the moment.
But in this moment,
when we’re seeing trillion of dollars
in bailouts, mostly for corporations,
it is absolutely a time
when we can do things
that normally, people could pretend
that’s too much, it’s too big, we can’t.
We have literally
all the money in the world
that can be spent and directed
towards making us the society
we pretend to be,
before moments like this happen.
And so the thing that gives me hope
is that the lies have to be obvious now.
The lies have to be,
that was a reasonable use of force.
The lie has to be,
we don’t have the money.
The lie has to be, that’s too hard,
it’s too big of a challenge.
This stuff feels impossible
every day except today,
because the alternative is
we lose everything.
Everything is at stake,
our democracy is at stake,
the people we choose to be,
we claim to be,
that’s at stake.
And in the face of that,
I think we can do impossible things.
I think we can be mighty.
So my hope for all of us is
first, that we wake up tomorrow
with more peace in the evening than war,
and that we hold on
to what’s possible from this moment
at the same time that we hold on
to the size of the task in front of us.
I don’t want to come
with half measures out of this.
I don’t want to come out
with radicalized youth
and indifferent aged …
I don’t know what the contrast…
The radicalized youth
and indifferent people
who are old like me.
I want to come out with a unified country
that understands that the costs
that we owe are big,
and our pockets
are deep enough to match it.
CA: Wow.
Thank you to each of you
for extraordinary eloquence.
Really, so powerful.
This conversation, obviously, continues,
I know that there’s many people listening,
you have other questions,
this, I think, from TED’s point of view
is just the start of the conversation.
To the extent that our job
is to amplify the voices that matter,
we couldn’t be prouder
to be amplifying further
your extraordinary voices.
So thank you for being part of this today.
PAG: Thank you.
WPR: Thank you all.