Transcript for:
Intersection of Race, Health, and Education

[Applause] so protecting americans health also means fighting infectious diseases we are coordinating with the chinese government on the coronavirus outbreak in china my administration will take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from this threat as the world bears witness tonight america is a land of heroes and my fellow americans the best is yet to come [Music] there are whole businesses in the united states that have been around for quite some time that their business model depends on high levels of racial and economic segregation perhaps one of the reasons we struggle so hard in the u.s to get beyond it in housing health care education is simply because there's money to be made billions of dollars to be made by keeping it intact [Music] in the early 20th century in the u.s you have this unprecedented accumulation of wealth in the hands of people like andrew carnegie john d rockefeller [Music] people in the time know these are people who break up strikes with violence these are people who are maximizing profit these are not heroes this is sort of driving industrial production in the north [Music] but in the south they are largely still an agricultural society there's a lot of a lot of labor a lot of hard labor and usually that labor was primarily done by blacks [Music] they're being exploited uh they're coming from a system of slavery slavery has finally ended all of a sudden you have no free labor and they're kind of trying to figure out how do we make sure that the south stays economically viable we need people who know enough to do the work that we need done so we need to train the negro to have basic rudimentary kinds of skills in this moment you have people like andrew carnegie and he said i have this great option it's called philanthropy one of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is in discrimination northern white captains of industry who all of a sudden want to go all in on educating newly freed rural black people what they wanted to ensure overwhelmingly is that they had workers the students are black families living on the ragged edge of survival they must be taught and shown that their lives can be made better and more meaningful they decide really that it has to be a manual arch training something that is going to keep these folks subservient to white authority but also keep them in the south we have to keep them in the agricultural industry because otherwise our economy false falls apart this is a vision of what black education could be and it's getting massive amounts of money from andrew carnegie himself from john d rockefeller with the establishment of the geb in 1903 which is rockefeller funded rockefeller created the general education board which was a organization that created schools for black students rockefeller decided me and my friends should do this just a group of rich people and their friends go to the united states congress and they're like hey we're going to pay for it it won't cost you anything but we want to take over who's getting educated in what kinds of ways and congress goes sure one of the things that the general education board was telling farmers is abandon whatever you know about farming from generations probably of having been a farmer and listened to us african americans would learn the latest techniques and how to plow and how to milk a cow and how to pick cotton as if they hadn't been doing that for hundreds of years previously they were big with black women on the scientific method of homemaking it was very controlling and in that regard it was all about a kind of white upper middle class standard it's a form of education that in no way will challenge your governance and your governance is specifically white anglo [Music] americans [Music] we've never had a moment where the country has been committed to educating poor kids and black kids in the same ways that we do wealthy white kids it's always been a series of experiments for people who were poor lucrative experiments experiments that created wealth for businesses the process of instituting public education in the united states starts off at its core as having been designed by philanthropists and business people and organized around black inferiority most philanthropists have intermediate and ultimate outcomes the intermediate for many of these philanthropists was black education the ultimate outcome was pacifying avoiding revolution avoiding a rise in black consciousness that could challenge peace peace for whom in springfield illinois troops and onlookers surveyed the results of a riot that broke out on august 14 1908. when you're looking at the rise of violence in the early 1900s what you're seeing for the first time is that blacks are entering public life and they are breaking those jim crow customs two days of white mobs raging through the city's black district ended with two blacks hanged from a dead tree and two thousand blacks looking for shelter elsewhere whenever you start to see instances in which some people would call a race riot what they are is essentially either police brutality which was directed against the black population or it was white mobs [Music] lynching was done by members of white civil society you know it wasn't exactly something she would hide it was something which was like yes i'm a member of the clan the naacp which stands for the national association for the advancement of colored people is founded in 1909 and it's founded after a lynching in springfield illinois it's not because of racial violence that's happening in the south they are concerned about that let's be clear but it's because of a lynching that happens in in the north in the naacp it was mostly focused on anti-black violence so this was their thing stop killing us that is the first civil right that black people needed to live first before we could actually go after and fight other things there was this board meeting at the naacp and one of the white board members said that why don't we also focus on education and housing and voting and one of the black members at the naacp responded and this is a quote all the american negro wants is the chance to live without a rope around his neck [Music] so the naacp is focused on this issue of racial violence they are focused on how do we protect black lives they are launching letter writing campaigns they are organizing their citizens they are doing demonstrations they genuinely believed that if they could publicize the lynchings and the mob violence that people's hearts and minds will change and it will end they genuinely believed this right and it did shift i mean it's not that it didn't do anything it did shift but it lynchings continued right and so they realized that they also needed to combine protest and marching in the street with work inside of political institutions they had a vision and a view of equality that was audacious but they were funding themselves primarily by uh ten dollars here five dollars there but they were poor they were poor for a very long time the naacp in the 1920s it's considered a radical organization funders are like oh hey [Music] we might want to focus on different organizations but the naacp is like nah we want to focus on black lives on racial violence so in the naacp's campaign in terms of their trying to pass an anti-lynching bill in congress there is a fund commonly referred to as the garland fund and the garland fund was a vanguard of left-wing philanthropy what's interesting about the negotiation between the naacp and the garland fund around the grant was are they giving this money with strings attached or not at the time the naacp is mostly focused on physical violence and equal pay like the economic violence when the the garland fund comes along they're kind of like yeah but we don't want to focus on those things like that whole that's a downer you know like that's not what we want to focus on we think what the key thing should be is integration [Music] the garland fund believes that there should be perhaps like a new initiative focused on desegregation of education and we should fund work that is focused on desegregating schools in the south and the naacp is the best organization to actually lead this effort and it's crucial i think to also understand without the garland funds funding the naacp was a vulnerable organization they would have gone under [Music] and that was the moment their focus began to shift and so a sense of it being a movement that had to do with the hopes and dreams of black people and the safety and lives of black people was supplanted by what you most need is integration and you need educational integration [Music] the culmination of this education desegregation litigation master plan is going to be brown v board decided unanimously by the supreme court in 1954 and ended jim crow in the area of education segregated schools were unconstitutional you don't get the supreme court decision without this crusade around lynching and around mob violence and that happens at the beginning of the 20th century the garland fund is reflecting these foundations focused on education at the time not let me see why this violence is happening so i can make a more peaceful and equitable world specifically at any cost to white people there's always a question are you willing to support and hear the outrage and address it at all costs because it's going to be disruptive today the world health organization officially announced that this is a global pandemic we have been in frequent contact with our allies and we are marshaling the full power of the federal government and the private sector to protect the american people this is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history we are at a critical time in the fight against the virus i will never hesitate to take any necessary steps to protect the lives health and safety of the american people i will always put the well-being of america first we will heal the sick care for those in need help our fellow citizens and emerge from this challenge stronger and more unified than ever before god bless you and god bless america thank you even after the supreme court decision in brown v board in 1954 it's not that black people were safe one of the biggest examples of where you see that is going to be the murder or the lynching of emmett till emmett till was a 14 year old young man from chicago whose mother had moved to chicago but still had family and people in mississippi he goes down to mississippi summertime you know sort of a museum see his relatives but he goes to the store and carolyn bryant is this white woman who's working there and he whistled at her most likely just trying to impress his cousins who were like you know this is this is not chicago this is this is a dangerous dangerous place but the story that she made up was that he had tried to kiss her and that he had been bragging about having white girlfriends up in chicago and that she was in fear for her life as he touched her what carolyn bryan does is she gets her husband and her brother-in-law and they go to emmett till's house where he's staying or his grandfather and his grandfather handsome over because he understands the danger which everybody is in they mutilate him they kill him and submerge his body and when it's found it's so distended he's so bloated from having been in the water it is not recognizable as a human face but yet carolyn bryant her husband her brother-in-law they're found innocent they're just basically they got away with it undoubtedly it made black people angry but it also it also let white people know we're not going to let you off the hook for this one his mother decides to have an open casket so that the world can see what these white races did to her baby so this morning the fbi is looking into the death of a black man after he was stopped by police in minneapolis the attempted arrest was caught on camera and we need to warn you here that it's very difficult to watch the video of last night's confrontation shows a white police officer with his knee pinning down the neck of the suspect and you can clearly hear the man saying i can't breathe several times before an ambulance arrives jeff begayes is following this story for us jeff what are police doing about this ale good morning both of the officers involved in this incident are on paid administrative leave this morning pending the results of the investigation traditionally in the south schools had been segregated so it is not surprising that there was opposition when the supreme court ordered schools to integrate i will not force my people to integrate against their will little rock arkansas and the first phase of the trouble the white population are determined to prevent coloured students from going to the school their own children attend the incidence of the little rock nine which are the nine african-american kids who had to be groomed and prepared for the racial violence and the stress that they were going to have to the endure of the land decrees integration of white and colored school children but racial feeling still runs high in the southern states of america [Music] if you look through a lot of the photographs from that period or their propaganda photographs they have a picture of a black man next to a white woman and they said if black and white kids go to school we're going to have the mongrelization of the race by then everyone was clear that white people did not want black children in their schools [Music] they didn't see this as the supreme court has now spoken let us listen because it is the right thing what they saw it as is there some political agenda and now you are coming after my baby the white citizens had lost their battle or have they [Music] whites were like we have to find our way to make sure these schools don't get integrated and they settled upon this idea of privatization the senior prom at the public high school now officially integrated not far up the road from the public high school the private prince edward academy holds its prom [Music] what they do all across the south it's the the model for the privatization of education more than 99 of the white children of the county attend private school so if we can bankrupt the public education system and take it and just sort of educate our kids white kids over here let's do that so you had the white citizens council and the ku klux klan white supremacist organizations in the south that start a chain of charter schools they start a chain of privately run taxpayer-supported schools all across the south that enroll tens of thousands of students they're forming private protestant schools which are all white and they're sort of popping up sort of all over you start having foundations not the big ones like not the not the huge ones but small family foundations mid-range foundations start funding this separation in these segregation academies left and right because they see the potential for more of a mass movement around this idea that we can now have access to taxpayer dollars and not have oversight for a group of philanthropic and business leaders it becomes a financial opportunity that may not actually have been that grounded in race but tying it up with with racism and white supremacy turned it into [Music] a a bonanza it fuses the idea of whiteness with this idea of private or if white is good then private also is good what's the opposite of white well then has to be black unless the opposite of private it has to be public so any type of space bigger small neighborhoods buses bathroom schools become racially integrated it's devalued and it gets degraded there is a move to centrally to withdraw whites withdrew from those spaces and they created private alternatives to those spaces and then you know instead of public golf courses there's private golf courses instead of public pools there's backyard swimming pools instead of going to parks to play in the playground there's backyard swing sets instead of taking the public bus i take a private car and then the civil rights movement starts to happen that fundamentally i think changes the game [Music] what is called a civil rights movement was really insurrection they demonstrated they picketed in a drive for equality we all know what happened we all know what happened tomorrow [Laughter] [Music] and so many more don't even be afraid to die no man is free if he fears death that is the result of slave rebellion and we'll keep marching and marching and marching until one day you look around and we'll all be marching together [Music] they needed us for labor and for sport now [Music] they can't get rid of us [Music] we cannot be exiled and they cannot be accommodated [Applause] now something's got to give the civil rights act of 1964 is signed at the white house by president johnson president johnson calls for all americans to back what he calls a turning point in history the conventional narrative of the civil rights movement takes us from 1954 brown v board of education to 1965 the passage of the voting rights act and the kind of arc of achievement but in the mid 60s you start to see some shifting energy and once legislation has been passed people start to turn to things like poverty police brutality because at the same time as federal legislation in support of civil rights is happening there's also support of increasing police presence in neighborhoods there's a very deliberate commitment to law and order that goes alongside civil rights and white flight has begun from american cities and in part in response to the desegregation of cities you get the tax base eroding because white residents move away into the suburbs so you have a kind of powder keg in the united states and that grows even more intense after the assassination of martin luther king jr the worst race riots since those two years ago in the watch section of los angeles american cities are essentially they're on fire some of them are actually burning down where you find what has been called a race riot there are always responses of police brutality whether it's in watts whether it's in newark new jersey whether it's in rochester new york cleveland ohio they all start off as essentially because of police brutality the rebellions were kind of organic uprisings that came from deep poverty that came from experiences of police violence that came from unemployment that came from the creation of large-scale housing projects in cities where people were literally sitting on top of each other for many negroes housing remains a problem well-intentioned white people well-intentioned liberals people of political power and influence who are sympathetic to the black freedom struggle they're like why why are these cities burning a lot of these folks who consider themselves to be liberal they're trying to separate themselves from conservative white supremacist politics they believe that there are more gentile ways of actually addressing naughty thorny issues than some of what they're seeing they're not saying don't address them they're kind of like we can make an argument we can move the needle so what happens is that a number of philanthropic institutions are trying to figure out how can they meet this moment but also how they can stop things from spiraling out of control into a space in which they and perhaps some of their colleagues are uncomfortable [Music] people want a type of change that they can manage they are not okay with the complete transformation of institutions in which they have actually benefited from what makes them move it's a fear of black consciousness we are now on day seven of civil unrest in america you're looking live once again as protests get underway to honor the memory of george floyd when it comes after more exploitation of the situation last night riots looting taking place on american streets rocking cities like new york and st louis and president trump is under fire for threatening to deploy the military on rioters as well as using extreme tactics to disperse white house protesters just moments before walking to a photo op at a nearby church top democrats accusing the president of fanning the flames of discord [Music] those who join this coalition this movement are doing so out of their concern to fight against racism to fight against repression and politically we may be active [Music] one of us as a revolutionary another one as a as a reformer what you see with with the foundations as well as like just rank and file senators with someone like lyndon johnson is that they realize that they weren't going to be able to stop the civil rights movement you know the nation of islam petrified them the black panther party petrified whites in northern california because they weren't doing anything illegal it was legal to carry a gun we're making the revolution by educating the people to the fact that they should arm themselves for self-defense you see educate them to what the power structure is doing to them that they've made racism the primary objective that the people have to deal with when we mainly have to deal with capitalism so they saw like what perhaps real revolution could look like and for them it was like well you know something we better start giving some legislation here we better start supporting that ford foundation is really interesting in this moment they become active in terms of this question about reform or transformation there transformation is a lot we just came out of a civil rights movement let's focus on reform and from their positions of privilege of distance they believed that their money their connections their influence could fix it um if they tried hard if they spent enough money if they got the right people if they found the silver bullet um they could make this go away early on the ford foundation is very much a regional organization in michigan and after the second world war with the ballooning endowment it not only creates a national presence but it's bigger than carnegie rockefeller for the ford foundation and their money of focusing on the black power but in focusing on how to contain it we can meet black power not in terms of the full transformative vision um but perhaps we can focus on black arts programs perhaps that we can focus on black studies in colleges and universities and and resourcing those right perhaps we can focus on funding and or supporting quietly and or explicitly a black liberal elite who can be the spokes women and men for black people ford started to fund fellowships doctoral student fellowships for black studies and women's studies ford had a big hand in opening up spaces particularly for african americans and women to get into higher education african americans are able to start to come into predominantly white institutions in large numbers where they had previously mostly gone to historically black colleges but when they start to be able to go into predominantly white institutions the racial conflicts are still very apparent and it gets manifested in the classrooms it gets manifested in campus newspapers but also outside of the university now the brothers in here maintain that they will stay here until the university is willing to talk on their terms so we're going to let colombia know that if they don't want to deal with the brothers in here they're going to deal with the brothers on the street you can look at a lot of american history as this kind of contest over the moral high ground and that really burst upon the scene on april 18 1969 at cornell university in upstate new york it was parents week at cornell often many parents stay at straight hall in the heart of the campus some had already moved in and got evicted when black students decided to occupy the hall at cornell university institutional racism was pretty rampant and african-american students were particularly incensed by the refusal of the university to give them a black studies program but also the kind of harassment that was taking place in the dormitories and so from that these students really try to engage the administration in conversations about what to do and they're it's kind of falling on deaf ears and so you know they decide that they're going to take over an administration building the blacks were demanding the usual things black studies amnesty and such their demands were met and they came out it was then everyone realized the black students were armed during the occupation the images that emerged from this event were were shocking and one of the images that was widely publicized across the newspapers of the entire country was of students walking out of the hall african-american students with armed with rifles and with with ammunition bandoliers strapped across their chests and with a list of demands in one hand and the weapon in the other it is important to understand the context of armed self-defense amongst african americans was not coming out of thin air that it was a response to brutality it was a response to racial violence what ended the takeover is uh president perkins president cornell at the time had said you know we'll we'll start africom studies this is one of the demands and the faculty on campus were completely irate this is the first time in their life when they're having to be around women and black people and latinx people there were members of the cornell community who were uh horrified by this accommodation um and invested in destabilizing the vision of black studies the republic is in trouble i think that there has come to time in america for a new kind of moral leadership if you will that it is time that other peoples and americans besides white males run for the highest office in this land someday blacks will leave this country but someday women will leave this country shirley chisholm is the first black and the first woman to run seriously for the presidency of the united states she won't win we will have to move beyond the symbolistic attitude of marches and chants and shouts of all power to the people it will mean making our power to the people of reality by repelling the aggression that's being meted out against those that are truly in the defense of freedom and justice in this country all power to the people supporters of the black liberation movements are stepping up the pressure in the campaign to free angela davis [Music] it wasn't a question of morality it wasn't a question of being good or bad it was simply a question of power and the weak black people had no power we had to have some power on the type of power we could have is black power black power there was this very short period of time in the 70s around community control and who who is best able to educate black children so the black panther party had a community school out in in oakland that did amazing they had restorative justice they had yoga they meditated and they had a free breakfast and lunch program they educated kids by ability group and not age they asked them to question they had a socratic method and a lot of it was just affirming their humanity affirming their intellect [Applause] in privileged white communities this is not unusual for poor black people this was almost a first [Music] we're not saying that the survivor programs are necessarily revolutionary but the survival programs are tools and institutions by which we unify our people around when we implement what we call a people's free food program we are implementing something that black people and all poor press people have a right to and that's a right to eat they were creating an ambulance program they had the the free breakfast program they had eye clinic they had the sickle cell anemia foundation they had a number of almost 50 different initiatives it's like where is this money coming from and then when you look you start to see that ford is behind some of it that ford is trying to redirect the energies of the panthers and similar groups to get them off of the streets the ford foundation actually helped you know fund the black panthers people's free medical clinic it started in oakland but there's there came in about a dozen of them and this idea of trying to heal the community from within it's this idea of how do we meet the needs of the people that we're around in those communities that historically been marginalized j edgar hoover who was the director of the fbi saw that the panthers community programs were more dangerous than them carrying guns because folks were starting to turn away from their dependence on the government and look toward the panthers to come in and solve community problems historically the black panther party when we think about it we think about we think about violence we think about all the police conflict and they wanted something that was really important that's often been overlooked and it just speaks to the larger history of um you know exclusion and mystery event babylon struggle pigs were called madness the madness is the black man the panthers are really concerned with working on health care because they recognize that you have to take care of your mind body and spirit and there has been a lot of neglect with regards to health healthcare in black communities you know you know when we do get healthcare it's in the form of you know syphilis testing on african-american men in the year 1972 there was this sort of expose on the front page of all these newspapers nationwide that there's a study you know and it takes place in alabama and it's been gone over 40 years the us government had been researching the natural history of an infectious disease called syphilis on a group of african-american men and these men did not know they had syphilis they were told they had something called bad blood they're told that they're being given some kind of treatment for some illness and it's really vague but it's designed to study the effects of syphilis researchers in this we're basically sort of studying that natural history of what would happen to people over time they were infected with syphilis from beginning to the end stage the men in the study did not know that there was a treatment available it could cure these people and so we're talking about men about over 500 men didn't know they had syphilis it's really just a reflection of this idea that black people are kind of second class the black body is somehow different or expendable these are largely uneducated poor black men um in the rural south and in some ways the world of science is lending credibility to this sort of social hierarchy there's stories like this over and over again but then then there's this larger sort of oral history that individual people have all over the world all over the country [Music] the american medical association right this has the biggest umbrella of a group that represents physicians nationwide it was um in some ways an active participant in terms of exclusion racial exclusion of black physicians but also it prevented black people from you know state getting the licensure to practice medicine and so it just really speaks the idea that medicine as an institution was formally and you know segregated in 1910 um there was this report called the flexner report and it really transformed american medical education so it was a product of a teacher instructor story named abraham flexner and he was supported by the carnegie foundation and the rockefeller foundation and uh basically the whole point of it was to look take a closer look at the american medical education system it was also you know supported by the american medical association itself the flexner report is the model uh at the time in the early 20th century of the kind of study that's useful to this network of foundations why because it's a study by someone they trust to provide reliable knowledge i.e someone from their own networks who also not coincidentally is white providing a survey of different schools and which ones should be funded at the time there were seven historically being black um schools they were training black physicians those seven schools the flexion report recommended the closure of five of those that closure meant that they were really shutting off um the educational potential of many black doctors those black doctors were often the only ones that black patients could see it's really this idea of like black doctors preventing the spread of infectious disease among the black population to the white population an interesting thing about you know you have carnegie and you have a rockefeller health involved with this rockefeller was known for doing and providing the funding for research behind eugenics if you already believe that blacks are inferior genetically and you already believe that poor people are lazy and don't want to work well that research resonates with you so elites gravitate towards this but they also create the infrastructure the institutional infrastructure to fund this research they probably saw themselves as many in that area as being progressive right they're not the ones that wearing hooded white robes and going out and hunting black people and and lynching then and so they see themselves as advancing the calls and sometimes the good intentions can still have you know a real tangible downside they came here for an antibody test to see if they've been touched by the coronavirus but they wanted the test to come from a trusted source trust is a major factor because i mean we already know from history that black people have been used for guinea pigs you know for a lot of things with the high rates of diabetes obesity asthma and other respiratory conditions among black people they should have been the first ones to receive medical care people didn't believe them why they were sick and that is where our institutional racism was so much embedded into this pandemic there are plenty of trust issues to go around the pandemic is simply showing us the high price we pay for it president trump has chosen to kick off his re-election campaign in a city notorious for racist violence and mass murder in 1921 tulsa's prosperous greenwood neighborhood was known as black wall street when armed gangs of white's rampage through greenwood killing and burning planes dropped incendiary bombs in 2020 tulsa remains segregated with a history of racially discriminatory policing why then hold a rally in a state he'll almost certainly carry again it's a volatile combination a history of massacre a bitterly divided nation on edge and a deadly virus spreading fast with the president poised to stir up the brew mr brown speaking for the student body now has he taken over no he hasn't speaking up for the students i mean he the students here feel that uh the students here but they're not all here some of them are afraid to come because they don't want to approach you because they don't dislike you and they can't please you're not you're not uh we're not united anymore roland i would like to say first of all that uh we have no intentions of violence we are merely um occupying state property that we out we in fact our parents pay taxes for and that we shall resist peacefully over the late 1960s and the early 70s at universities really across the united states from san francisco state to yale to cornell in 1969 student organizers began insisting on having black studies departments [Applause] we want financial aid we want to be able to study our history we don't want to be harassed as we are trying to function in these campuses these protests are starting to scare white america it produced a lot of anxieties that the university could not be a site of radical transformation [Music] they are in a conscious endeavor to occupy university buildings and to eventually close down some of our colleges and universities we've waited for administrators to take action against these campus militants and we've waited and we've waited and while we've waited our campuses have been burning it is still not quite clear who won at cornell but the black students and the tactics of armed occupation silent majority we are going to be silent no longer when you have the unrest among the students at cornell you have an alumnus named john olin who took offense at it and he wanted to spend his fortune which he had made in the chemical and the arms industry on creating academic environments that supported his personal ideology so he gives money to cornell basically on a yearly basis and he thinks that oh these protests this this left movement has gone too far what happens perhaps if i find more conservative ideas and so what you see is a number of individuals wealthy individuals on the right who believe that ideas matter and that ideas change the world right and that the ford foundation working with black power has shifted the way in which the many people understand their place in it and understand things like liberty and justice and equality being rich and being well connected what they do is they start forming foundations that are going to produce data they're going to produce texts reports studies that will begin to influence politicians that they can get their side of the story out so you have the foundations like heritage which is both a think tank and a foundation and then you have individual family uh foundation so this is how you get the olin and the bradley and the scafees and the smith richardsons they become anti-multicultural they're kind of like in the heritage foundation they go to a very conservative idea of what education should be who gets educated how they're educated [Music] their idea was that american universities were becoming by nature not just liberal but havens for leftists and scary socialists and all kinds of frightening elements [Music] and so they wanted to take back the institutions of society especially those that form young people's minds and attitudes it's this remarkable period in american history where young people are really kind of pushing the envelope in terms of the political imagination [Music] we the representatives of the national gay community come to you on an equal basis with every other citizen they're talking about all kinds of new social arrangements for black and latinx people and for women this favorable decision is a significant victory for the abortion rights movement and for women throughout the united states all the various revolutions that are taking place are one and the same how can you talk about the freedom of black people and women are not free we had the civil rights movement and the women's movement and the anti-war movement and the gay rights movement but then you also have the rise of a kind of conservative backlash [Music] but we just don't want each one forced down each other's throat do the whites have rights any rights conservative forces come in that actually narrow the framework for imagining how the society might be transformed there was a poll that was taken that said that african americans were pushing too hard for civil rights and it was like an overwhelming majority of white americans like 85 percent [Applause] tensions ran high but boston avoided another dose of widespread havoc that had heralded last year's first busting effort and this begins to give people like ronald reagan in california the mandate to say those negroes and these long-haired hippies we have to root them out reagan's popularity is starting to increase threefold among conservative groups later reagan blasted federal bureaucracy in a speech to chicago's executives club he called for a transfer of power to state and local governments and they're saying ho wait we have the next person who could take the movement [Music] forward [Applause] thank you very much [Music] what is it that we as americans really want we want to worship god in our own way to lead our own lives take care of our families live in our own style in our own community without hurting anyone or anyone hurting us for those who've abandoned hope we'll restore hope and we'll welcome them into a great national crusade to make america great again thank you very much thank you thanks very much so there's resources that reagan starts to get from these foundations to put together a presidential candidacy committee and so all of this foundation money starts to pour in to prop up reagan's presidency by the time he gets to 1980 to run for president it is time for a change it's already pretty much set for him [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] my fellow countrymen the president of the united states thank you i'm told that tens of thousands of prayer meetings are being held on this day and for that i'm deeply grateful we are a nation under god and i believe god intended for us to be free when reagan is elected in 1980 it's supposed to be this this moment of optimism and a lot of the conservatives the foundations the individual financiers and business interests felt that they could attach themselves to reagan in this moment and as it happens in 1981 the council for national policy is founded one of the founders is paul wyrick this ideological architect of the right in the united states thank you mr president we appreciate paul wyrick played a role in founding a number of different organizations including the heritage foundation uh right wing think tank facts fiction he really wanted to ignite a hyper-conservative counter-revolution very much that this effect would be part of an ongoing consultation paul weirich says it's not enough to just elect people to office the left and the liberals have taken over the entire culture entertainment education domestic life everything we've got to take it back i want to describe the council for national policy as a group that exerts influence not exerts power and it's part of a constellation of organizations that work in concert all of its meetings are secret almost all it brought together big donors and political operators and strategists and then gave them a portfolio of organizations to work with all run by prominent members of the council for national policy working in coordination in their work around elections i don't want everybody to vote elections are not won by a majority of people they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now it was like we want this to play out over the next 20 30 40 years and ronald reagan becomes their standard bearer thank god for a president who agrees in totality with what we morally stand for here he cuts a deal with the fundamentalists [Music] he has already established his popularity with economic conservatives and this is a moment when all of these groups say all right this is our chance this is our launching pad and the council for national policy is begun in 1981 olin comes in and finances the founding of the federalist society in 1982. president reagan's comments are stark testimony to a concern shared by many of us throughout the nation the obligation of the legal profession in the judiciary to defend the founding fathers vision of a constitutional republic hello i'm senator orrin hatch i believe that one of the most important tools in this effort is the federalist society for law and public policy studies the best defense of our liberties is a government of laws not of men the federalist society is a group that number one funds a lot of the campaigns to have judicial nominees appointed they also play a role in grooming right-wing legal talent they'll find promising young people and cycle them through what one writer has described as the right-wing legal terrarium of you know fellowships and clerkships and things like that what they said about to do was organize law students to be politically conservative despite their tendency to be liberal the dominant intellectual culture in our law schools is exactly what the federalist students are challenging most of the students are liberal but i believe that their ideas can be changed they extended their membership on into practicing the legal profession and then on into judgeships and all the way to the supreme court so vader ginsburg who is far more than merely a supreme court justice has died a lot of people tuning in right now wondering what this means for the supreme court what this means for capitol hill and a confirmation process and the election this is sort of the crown jewel when it comes to what a president can do and that is to fill a supreme court vacancy it is remarkable how many trump appointees are now on the bench and when it comes to the supreme court that is the ultimate and it is a number one goal and has been his whole career for 10 years bob jones university in greenville south carolina had fought the federal government's policy which denied them tax-exempt status because they allegedly practiced discrimination against blacks bob jones university is in some sense the flower of the religious right kind of evangelical conservatism at its height they had a policy of not admitting african americans until 1971 and then even at that point required african-american students to be married if they enrolled in a university in the 1970s following a string of court cases the irs started to take another look at the tax-exempt status of some of these segregated schools and asking why are we subsidizing segregation you know tax subsidy is like a gift from the government [Music] from now on bob jones university and other private religious schools that discriminate racially will be allowed tax-exempt status naacp president benjamin hooks said he considers the move another retreat on civil rights by the reagan administration this last action coupled with all the other actions that have been taken is given real encouragement real comfort real aid to any reactionary racist in this country [Music] it would be hard to overestimate the degree of outrage that this provoked in conservatives and leaders of this emerging sort of hyper-conservative counter-revolution called the new right these different organizations that believe that if they have to pay more taxes that you are cutting into their liberty and what they mean by that is they don't want money to go benefit groups that they don't like like black people one of the ways that the kind of southern evangelical right wing or recast itself once segregation as a formal matter was rejected by the american public was to sort of shift its focus elsewhere now that they have realized that they'll lose their tax exempt status they need something else to be a rallying cry we love the rhetoric of this president but in point of fact paul weirich is looking for an issue that could sort of unite their movement and bring together disparate strands they sort of went down a list of these different issues and when they got to abortion it was almost like a light bulb went off and they're like huh that could work the issue is gathering momentum one hundred thousand marchers stretching half a mile across washington representing the biggest demonstration against abortion in america there's a material consequence to being racist but there is not a material consequent as of yet to being anti-abortion there was an agreement made between economic conservatives and elites on the one hand and evangelicals on the other and a coalescing of these parts of the electorate congress is still heavily in favor of the right to choose and the supreme court which permitted abortions is still just in favor of that judgment [Music] at the time that roe versus wade was passed most protestant republicans supported it abortion tended to be seen as a catholic issue but it also didn't divide republicans from democrats and it didn't divide the religious from the non-religious you know what they do in abortion is they simply take the lovely baby from its natural habitat and they rip it out and they throw it away it was really only over time when the new right decided to make abortion an issue what we're witnessing is the battle of philosophies the protestant fundamentalists didn't just show up out of anywhere right they were already there they were in the segregation academies they were the ones that were organizing private schools they were the ones in sort of white churches underneath this all is of course race and the rejection of the civil rights movement but the language shifts the discourse shifts in the context of the churches though there is a quite explicit discussion it's not on the public stage but about this anxiety about white babies and white birth and the fear of encroachment and being overwhelmed by non-white people the 50 largest cities of our nation will be predominantly black or brown and churches don't know what to do after the 60s and the 70s dark ages of the 20th century there has been a renaissance of commitment to traditional values family values don't kill your baby they use this issue to get people to support the hyper-conservative candidates that the movement favors it's a form of identity politics or voting identity senate republicans have made it crystal clear that rushing a supreme court nomination is more important than helping and supporting the american people who are suffering from a deadly pandemic and a devastating economic crisis judge barry in 2006 you signed your name to an advertisement published in the south bend tribune it described roe v wade as quote an exercise of raw judicial power and call for putting quote an end to the barbaric legacy of roe v wade and expressed opposition to abortion as the senate considers filling the seat of justice ruth bader ginsburg i would suggest that we not pretend that we don't know how this nominee views a woman's right to choose and make her own health care decisions we can say to the world and pledge to our children america's best days lie ahead and you ain't seen nothing yet [Music] a well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white if i was starting off today i would love to be a well-educated black because i really believe they do have an actual advantage today look at all this money there's always new things going on and i don't think there'll ever come a time when that that would be boring violent drug offenders will commit more than 100 000 crimes on this day alone what happened to rodney king is a blood on los angeles and on this nation [Music] unless black men shoulder their load no one else can help them escape the hard bleak lives that too many of them still face i will strive to improve myself [Applause] for four years i've worked hard to stand with the police officers of america and i am profoundly honored that they've decided to stand with me we have come through recession and terrorist attack and the uncertainties of war america is a nation with a mission founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman every white person in this country knows one thing they know they would not like to be black here if they know that they know everything they need to know this is the nightmare scenario that many people have been talking about for so many years the city of new orleans headed for a direct hit with a very powerful hurricane borderline category five katrina with very strong winds a uh very potentially devastating situation [Music] when the levees broke in new orleans floods it was primarily black people who were displaced black people were found dead floating because they could not escape [Music] and then in the aftermath the failure of an appropriate federal response had devastating effects people just died right right here at the convention center kids all people just falling undying like nobody even cared about us just settled off and left us to ourselves had the federal government been here within say 30 hours 36 hours with food water we knew this was coming then we wouldn't have had so many desperate people here [Music] the president came down and he said we will do what it takes we will stay as long as it takes to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives that's what the president said 17 months later we heard not a single [Music] word [Applause] when they decide to rebuild new orleans they also decide to not bring back their school system and they are one of the first cities that actually created a completely privatized school system in the united states the issue with american education is that the people you're always trying something on are the people who can least afford it and that's always the group that philanthropists end up focusing on with their experiments one that comes out of this period that gates and others fund our charter schools you had a series of presidents who made it possible for privatized education like charter schools to allow them access to taxpayer dollars if this nation is to continue to be at the global center of innovation congress must act decisively it starts with education so bill gates in particular just started coming up with these ideas he decided that because wealthy kids went to school in small schools that what poor kids needed were small schools and teachers and scholars and other people would be saying that makes no sense that makes no difference but when you grow up around people who are basically the same as you and if that same as you is wealthy and privileged and never hungry and doors open you don't actually believe that racism and poverty are our structural [Music] impediments [Music] the walton family foundation they are the wealthiest family in the country and they are really much like betsy devos completely committed to dismantling public education you have the betsy devos family fund she before becoming secretary of education was spending billions of dollars herself you have the broad foundation they spent 100 million dollars trying to get an all charter friendly school board so that they can then enact whatever they want to enact education becomes a business there's profit to be made from it they took new orleans public schools from f on national report cards to d it was an experiment it didn't work and there's generations of kids in the meantime you know who've basically been deprived of a functional education but it had overwhelming support on both sides of the aisle republicans democrats wealthy people people with access to power and influence regularly believe that privatizing education is what makes the most sense charter schools are taking money away from public education taking money away from communities that would benefit from better funded public schools and many times people in these communities don't have much of a choice but if you're asked do you want a choice or not they'll say yes school officials told u.s secretary of education betsy devos 85 percent of their 650 plus students are currently participating in at home learning so there's been a big priority put on improving technology i think this is a tremendous example of the need for different kinds of options and experiences for students devos has long been a proponent of school choice and believes in the future the options will continue to expand every recent poll that has studied this has only affirmed the fact that parents want and need more choices the health care bill that we're fighting today gives government control of our lives undermines our liberty and it certainly doesn't make any money what's kind of working while obama is in office is this network of foundations and media companies and think tanks they're all working together they're giving money to each other his term comes to an end and once that happens they threw their support behind whoever was going to defeat the left the council for national policy were horrified by obama and the obama administration for various reasons and they saw hillary clinton as a possible continuation of obama policies so in 2016 they really got behind really ted cruz more than anyone else [Applause] over the course of the primaries cruz had some early victories and then trump developed momentum and you know what's going to happen if you don't vote our country's going to go to hell because that's what's happening that's what's happening he started winning primaries and this caused a problem for the fundamentalists many of whom have a very puritanical outlook on the world and donald trump has not lived the life of a puritan surprise for many religious right leaders trump was not their first choice but trump courted this movement these never trumpers had a summit in new york city in june 2016 and they lined up there saying we could cut a deal with donald trump where he can deliver the goods to us in terms of our agenda and in return we'll give him our money and our ground game and our strategy which he lacks and if all of this comes together we can prevent hillary clinton from becoming president great service here is some of what we can accomplish together appoint judges so important as you know i put a list together of highly highly respected judges and by the way these judges are all pro-life pro-life was of course in this case a code for approving a wide range of policy positions that the right wants at some of the events speakers would get up and say this election is about judges judges judges donald trump will nominate conservative justices who will uphold the constitution support the rule of law and rein in out of control federal bureaucrats some subsection referred to him as like kings like king cyrus or king david the imperfect ruler through whom god chose to enact his will if god allows truth to be said and heard we will see donald trump the next president of this great america and trump plays along with that our christian heritage will be cherished protected it like you've never seen before [Applause] [Music] [Applause] january 20th 2017 will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again president trump's executive order on immigration has dominated the news cycle we're gonna have a very very strict ban this is not i repeat not a ban on muslims slate magazine wrote quote of course it's a muslim ban the president today in atlanta armed for political battle mr trump the first president to address the nra's annual convention since ronald reagan i will never ever infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms never ever president offering a defense for some of the people who descended on charlottesville a young woman killed by a neo-nazi president trump refused to pick sides you also had very fine people on both sides you had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of to them a very very important statute president trump is about to announce one of the most consequential moves a president can make his next choice to fill a vacancy on the supreme court i have selected an individual whose quality is defined really and i mean closely defined what we're looking for president trump has just signed the historic 1.5 trillion dollar tax bill and by the way we are cutting regulation at a rate never seen before in the history of our country thank you very much thank you three years ago we launched the great american comeback and our country is thriving and highly respected again and my fellow americans the best is yet to come [Music] the cdc said yesterday that they believe it's inevitable that the virus will spread in the united states and it's not a question of if but when do you agree with that assessment well i don't think it's inevitable i probably will it possibly will it could be at a very small level or could be at a larger level whatever happens we're totally prepared a sign of the times as most residents follow a statewide stay-at-home order more than half of the 50 u.s states are now under those orders intended to slow the spread of coronavirus you saw the higher rates of covet and african-americans and latinx populations because of the kind of work people do because they have to go to work people who had to go out when it was really bad and still work in the grocery store and still be a janitor and still drive the bus there's also the the poverty issues with regards to people's diets which is going to impact them having comorbidities like diabetes and lung problems like asthma and then you on top of all of that you have poor schooling which is going to impact people's ability to get the white-collar jobs that would allow you to work remotely and then there's the health care issue which is just unequal we also have a problem with racism and the providing of health care so that physicians are are are less likely to respond appropriately when black people go to hospitals in distress there are a lot of stories you'd hear about black people going to these place hospitals and getting turned away right and they wait till they get sicker and then you're in a worse situation so all these things these things have played out that mistrust is really going to be relevant when we were talking about a long history of experimentation that we've echoed back to racism is in the thick of covet at every turn we begin tonight with one of the biggest nationwide days of protest since the killing of george floyd in police custody thousands taking to the streets calling for an end to police brutality and systemic racism there have been more than 700 protests in all 50 states all are in the name of george floyd brianna taylor ahmad arbury and countless others there's been waves of movements against police violence and police brutality over 100 years in african-american communities but something happened in particular after george floyd's killing that seemed to ignite the entire world i think it was a real return to emmett till there's a repetition to it that feels like a kind of assault there is almost no way to believe that black humanity is real or black lives matter and what we saw with george floyd but they're the the mod aubry being shot in the back brianna taylor's is lying in her bed there has been this litany of names repetition of cycles of death bobby hutton 17 april 16 1968 in oakland shot as he surrendered his hands in the air after a 90-minute shootout involving over 48 policemen tommy lewis trayvon martin to brianna taylor right and literally dozens of names in between that became the impetus behind black lives matter responding to police violence and vigilante violence that went without remediation but then also with larger questions around policing even black lives matter is not untouched by these foundations there is this funding that is still coming from the liberal philanthropy of the left right now there's a lot of funders that are out there saying we're going to learn from this history and no strings attached there's always strings philanthropy by definition is intrinsically connected to capitalism i don't think that the foundations want to get bogged down in trying to fully understand the problems because then that would mean not just undoing institutional or individual racism but civilizational racism a lot of people are saying in the foundation world we're in favor of racial equity i highly doubt that the foundations that are so embedded with private public sector collaboration have the same ultimate outcome vision of what this funding should achieve at the very core of the american project is racism and i don't know that the foundations whether the ones on the left or the right have the stomach for that because political power is more important to them [Music] one of the ways that we can tell the story of the 2020 election is of course that black voters thought biden was the kind of person who would be acceptable to the american public at large precisely because there was this sense of urgency about getting trump out of the white house there's a long tradition of in the democratic party in particular of relying upon black voters for success but then a kind of distancing from policies that are seen as being directed towards african-american constituencies the people of this nation have spoken they've delivered us a clear victory we've won with the most votes ever cast some presidential ticket in the history of the nation 74 million i'm proud of the campaign we built and ran i'm proud of the coalition we put together the broadest and most diverse coalition in history and especially those moments where this campaign was at its lowest end the african-american community stood up again for a minute [Applause] and i'll have yours [Music] the country is not defined by the winner it's defined by the race it's not as though with biden becoming president that the 70 plus million people who voted for trump have disappeared we're going to walk down to the capitol and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women [Music] [Music] this way [Applause] [Music] [Music] donald trump becomes his own set of myths that he is uniquely horrific as a figure that trump sowed all of this chaos and discord and disaster but there is an entire infrastructure a foundation of think tanks that have been working on this agenda for decades [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] his presidency disrobed something quite ugly and it's old it has flourished and proliferated you can't get that cat back in the bag [Music] it's not just something to be alarmed by it's something that if we're invested in the nation itself right we actually have to work to transform we hold the trump when you try to slaughter our people and leave them nothing to lose your credit is not even nothing to lose and if i got nothing to lose what are you going to do to me we have one thing to lose that's our children and we've never done that yet and there's no reason for us to do it now real the trunk i said right patience and shuffle the cards you