Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth Wes Moore 20240712

Its called the other wes moore and then his book the work came out in 2010 and his most recent book is about baltimore during the arrest and death of freddy gray. It just came out five days is what that is called. In your book the work, you write that the military saved your life. What do you mean by that . Well, i think the military plays an incredibly Important Role in my life where, you know, some of the most important times in my life have not been when i was wearing a suit. They happened when i was wearing a tshirt and jeans k but when i was wearing a uniform on this country. I was first introduced to the military system actually when i was about 13 years old. I was actually sent to military school. I had a mandatory year in military school. And it was i got into some issues, some challenges, and when i was younger, my mom threatened to send me away to military school when i was 8 years old. Every year she would say im going to send you away. I kept blowing her off. The first time i felt hand cuffed to my wrist was when i was 11 years old. My mother noticed i was intentionally hurting people that actually loved me so i could impress people that cared less about me. Finally one day she came up to me and said im going to send you to military school. Honestly i thought she was kidding or exaggerating, and then finally i realized that she wasnt, and she sent me to a mandatory year of military school. I hated every minute of it, when i first started. I remember that first, you know, those first days there, i ran away multiple times. I ran away five times in the first four days of military school. I also noticed that the longer i stayed, i began to fully understand what it was that they were trying to teach me and also what it was my mom was trying to teach me and the fact that we did live in an interconnected environment, and, you know, how everybody was doing in my unit mattered to how my unit as a whole was doing. And so when i actually finished high school and i had a chance then to, you know, go on, basketball scholarship offers and do a collection of other things, i decided that the thing that i actually wanted to do, the thing i wanted to spend my life on, it was i wanted to lead soldiers, and so thats why i made the decision that i wanted to join the army. So for me the decision to go into the army was both a continuation of the fact that, you know, i had this level of service, both the fact that they were going to help pay for college, and that was very helpful, but then it was also this idea that i felt a debt of gratitude, because i felt like it was the introduction of that at a really crucial time in my life that really helped make a lot of difference that ended up happening in the life i was living. What was your role in the 82nd airborne . I was i was a paratrooper with the 82nd airborne division, and i had a few different roles, but my final role in afghanistan was i was the director of Information Operations for the first brigade in the 82nd airborne division. Thats a long way of saying that everything that we had in terms of information ops, psychological operations that we had within our entire area of operations, which was what they call rc east which is regional command east, the entire Eastern Region of afghanistan, the entire eastern border of afghanistan, where pakistan and Afghanistan Border each other i was the informations director for that. At the time when i was you know, my last assignment when i was leaving afghanistan, we had about 1700 paratroopers that were under our command, that we were responsible for, so it was an amazing and an aweinspiring experience. Wes moore, how had you changed after that first year in military school . As a, what, a 12yearold . Yeah, 13 years old. I would say the big thing that changed for me was there fs there was this introduction of leadership, what it meant and the role it played in my life. I felt military school gave me a chance to in a way, it was a remake of identity that was important. There was a chance to rethink my role and my space within society, but also i think some of the other bigger things that happened was there was this very intentional introduction of leadership. That matters. Sometimes people say about military school or of the military, yeah, you know, we need to send them to the military because they need discipline, you know, they will do push ups and wake up early. The reality is you will do push ups and wake up early. All those things are real and true, but thats not what made the experience useful for me. The thing that immediate the experience useful for me was the introduction of leadership, and it was this idea that they are very much going to introduce you to leadership early and in a very deliberate way, where they are going to put you in charge of something. After you go through the initial basic training or the police system, whatever it is, they are going to put you in charge of something, relatively early and relatively small. And its not because thats where your cap is. It is because they want you to get a taste. They are going to put you in charge of a hallway. They will say okay, you are in charge of this hallway, or youre in charge of the dumpsters, youre in charge of whatever. If it is clean, we will congratulate you. If it is dirty, then we will help you. If we notice you are doing a good job with that, then you will be promoted and move on to the next thing. Now you may have a couple cadets or soldiers under your command. And then you move up. Theres this gradual sense of responsibility about the way they try to teach you leadership frameworks that i think are not only useful and important for me, but also it was something that really gave me a taste about what was actually important. So like i knew i knew going in that leading people was important to me. I knew going in that whether it was in the case of leading cadets or leading soldiers or i think about the work that we do now, being able to be part of that process, being able to be the person who can, you know, help shape the direction of organizations and execute on things, thats something that became really important to me when i thought of my development, and i think both the frameworks on what it meant and how to do it, but then also the introduction of its necessity in my life was something that the military helped foster that. Wes moore, how did you become a road scholar . Truth is is that i actually think about that experience quite a bit buzz the first time i had because the first time i had a real conversation about the road scholarship was when i was interning with the mayor of baltimore. At the time he was a former road scholar. It was the last day of my internship. He called many e into his office. He called me into his office. In fact, i think i have a picture up there because it sits in my office. In that picture, hes standing there and hes pointing towards a picture on his wall. Understand, he was not the type of guy that had, you know, camera people following him around all the time. Thats not what he did, but on that day, on the final day of my internship, he called me in and he said, have you thought about the road scholarship . He knew about my grades and extracurriculars. I told him i had heard about it but havent thought about it. The picture that he took is now sitting in my office is him pointing to the wall at something. The thing hes pointing at is his roads class and where he was in the picture. Thats when he told me to consider it and gave me instructions on people i should talk to about it, and i did just that. I talked to certain people. I had certain people that helped me with my essays and helped me think about how do i express, you know, my lifes journey in a thousand words for the road Scholarship Application . And then i love that story, and it is really important because right there in my office is a picture of my roads class, and im very clear that that picture would have never happened if that picture didnt happen. And so it was an experience that i will never forget, one where, you know, literally i think our plane flew off less than two week after 9 11, where, you know, where the nation and the world had just changed immeasurably, at the same time, that i was having this experience, my entire experience was shaped very much so by 9 11, especially with the fact that at that point i was also a military officer. It was a chance to Study International relation in a place where i was one of only a few americans studying it. Youre getting a chance to truly Study International relations with people in your class who are from brazil and china and nigeria and argentina. You know, getting a chance to really understand and see how all these dynamics take place amongst some really remarkable people and people have become some of my best friends. It was a pretty special experience, and i give a lot of thanks to the mayor and many others who really helped light that path for me and helped me to realize that it actually could be real. Whats your view about taking money from the roads foundation, and what did you tell the overview board . Yeah. You know, one of the last questions in fact, the last question they asked in my interview was because i had spent time in south africa, im also africanamerican, i know our history in this country really well. And one of the last questions that i was asked, in fact, by the person who is a chairman of the board, he said listen, youve been to south africa. Youre africanamerican. How can you accept the money, knowing the history, knowing how he made it and knowing the lives that were lost in order for him to make that money . And i thought about it. I paused, and i said, you know, i know a few things for sure. One was that when cecil roads was creating this scholarship, he didnt have me in mind to be sitting here as a finalist for this scholarship money and hes probably turning in his grave knowing that im a finalist in this scholarship and that does show me what progress means and progress looks like. The fact that something that was not at all intended for me, that i actually have an opportunity to not only stand here and utilize it, but then also have a real obligation to make sure that youre doing something with it besides benefitting yourself. And the other thing that i do know is that it was my ancestors who fought and who bled and who built and who were able to build in a way that created a pathway for me to be in that seat at that moment, who were able to sacrifice and to dream for a world that they didnt see but to dream and fight for one that hopefully one day that i would see. And for me to have the opportunity then to be there in that seat, for me to have an opportunity to then take the privilege of that seat to then go out and as it says go out and fight the worlds fight, i felt it would be disrespectful to them not to, and so understanding that particularly when youre looking at the history of cecil roads, looking a t the history of it is not even just south africa, but the entire Southern African region and the damage that he did to the people there, for his own personal benefit, to the point that at that time he was the we wealth wealthiest man in world, it is not lost on me. So it is also not lost on me the obligation that i now have to use the benefit that were fought long and hard for me to be able to have to use that now to make sure that we can create a more just and a more fair world. Where did you grow up . I spent part of my childhood growing up in maryland, part of my childhood growing up in the bronx. I call really two places you know home. One is baltimore. Actually where i live now, even though i was actually born a little off from baltimore, actually closer to the d. C. Area, and then new york, where i spent a lot of my childhood after my dad died. And so my dad was a radio personality down in the baltimore and d. C. Area. And one day he was complaining about his throat and was saying how his throat was bothering him literally to the point where he couldnt sleep. He went to the hospital the next day. As he went to the hospital, he, you know, was wearing raggedy clothes and had an uneven beard and a lot of assumptions were made about my dad when he walked into that hospital day that looking for help. When my mom finally made to it the hospital to come join him, they asked her questions like is your husband prone to exaggeration . And they gave him instructions to go home and rest, and if it got worse, then to come back. And five hours after they released him, he died. And thats when we were living down in maryland. My mother had a really difficult time with the transition at that point and finally called up her parents, my grand parents who were living in the bronx, my grand father was a minister in the south bronx, and my grandmother was a schoolteacher in the south bronx, and their house was barely big enough for them but figured out a way to make it big enough for all of us, so we ended moouching up there. We ended up moving up there. At that point after moving up there, thats where i spent a good six, seven years of my childhood before i ended up going to a military school in pennsylvania, so a lot of my childhood was a lot of moving around. But the thing that i knew is that no matter where we moved around to, i had a remarkable loving family who i was blessed to be able to say, you know, that with what they had, they really tried to provide for us as best that they could, and thats something i always felt. From your first book the other wes moore my father was dead five hours after having been released from the hospital with the simple instructions to get some sleep. Same hospital was now preparing to send his body to the morgue. My father had entered the hospital seeking help, but his face was unshaven, his clothes dishevelled, his name unfamiliar, his address not in an affluent area. The hospital looked at him askance, insulted him with ridiculous questions and basically told him to fend for himself. Now my mother had to plan his funeral. Why do you think those assumptions were made . Race. I think its its really one of the heart breaking things, you know, and i think about it a lot, both with, you know, where we are now and also when people say well, you know, at what point in your life did you know or did you understand the impact of race in the world . the fact that had the specters and a friend that had been mentioned, there would have been the benefit of the doubt. I would have had the benefit of the doubt and had given we would not have had the same type of results and this is something that i know is not just, its not just anecdotal because there is data that continues and race as one of the most predictable indicators for outcomes across several areas, across education, across maternal mortality, cross mental and physical health and so the thing that made that real in my case, in the case of my father, in the case of making it about my Family History is this idea that i know its inescapable, its inescapable to not understand and embrace the impact of race at all. Host who is the other wes moore . Guest the other wes moore is a young man that i heard about actually the same time i was getting ready to head off and the Baltimore Sun which is my hometown paper was writing an article about this local kid who just received a scholarship and they were writing about my background in writing about my childhood that they were writing about the fact that 10 years ago i had cut my wrist and 10 years later i was getting a full scholarship and what a journey was like inapp period at around the same time there were also writing about a botched robbery were four guys get into a Jewelry Store in the first two guys went to the Jewelry Store and they had guns and they had everybody on the ground and the next two guys walked in and they pulled out a mallet and a guy with a gun. The ones with the mallet went to the right in the ones with the guns kept them on the ground while the ones with the mallets were smashing out cases in getting rings. They got about 40,000 worth of jewelry that day and all four ran out of the store and ran outside to the parking lot. Though other person in the store that day was an offduty police officer. He was a 13 year veteran of the Baltimore Police force. He he was a threetime recipient of and also a father of five who just had triplets and the reason he was working that day because it was his day off from the police force and he took on a second job to make extra money for his family. And when he ended up in the store he got up off the ground and drew his weapon and he ran outside to see the kids stop the guys from getting away and when he ran outside he started kneeling behind a car stick give him cover petionville as one of the cars he was next to is one of the vehicles the guys ran in the window rolled down and he was shot three times at pointblank range and he was killed. There ended up being a 12 day National Manhunt for those guys in all four guys were caught. One of them that they were looking for was captured and convicted and he was a guy from west point. The more i learned about this crime and the more learned about this tragedy oftentimes in newspaper articles the more i knew there were questions i want to ask. One day just decided to write them a note and the first note that i wrote him hey of my name is wes and i read about you. He was in the Correctional Department where he is today. Got a letter back address to wes moore in that wide and let her was fascinating to me all of his answers in in and everything he was alluding to in that one letter turned into dozens of letters and dozens more letters sent by now have known wes moore over the years and hes in year 20 of his life sentence he and his older brother and two other guys there the day of the crime. And so thats two he was and that initial letter really turned into something that change the way that i thought about reform because it did help to serve as an important reminder of how fin that line is. The chilling truth is that this story could have been mine and the tragedy is not my story and how thin those differences are and how thin that decisionmaking is and how sometimes you can make the small decisions that we make that we sometimes accidentally fall into and sometimes the decisions are made for us. Sometimes its a lack of options that we have for the decisions that we make but as a society we cannot be quick to castigate unless we are willing to dig into the story unless we are willing to understand the things that make our stories are rich and make them real and how to understand the neighborhood that we are growing up in and the fact that for far too many of our children we are screaming to them about what we want from them and what we expect from them and their number one west point we were talking about baltimore and we were living blocks away from each other in baltimore. He said to me and i asked him i said to you think we are product of our environment talking about all of us and he then said to me actually think we are product of our and as soon as he said that to me at thought to myself he is absolutely right. We were proud of our expect nations and someone would say its a real shame that you lived up to your expectations and i said really the real shame is that we both did to cousin many ways thats exactly how we have structured it. People are continually living up to their expectations of them the question becomes what expectation do we actually have . s. Host you quote the other was more talking to premiere the book the other wes moore. We both did some pretty wrong stuff when we were younger and both of us had Second Chances but if the situation of the context where you make the decision dont change than Second Chances dont mean too much. Guest thats right and also it is interesting to see who gets Second Chances and for what and thats the thing for me to be able to appreciate and understand it from you shares that every one of those needs that chance. There is not one of those that live our lives like everything is good but i tell people all the time my days now are two steps forward and one step back. I mean and thats now. So the idea of needing Second Chances or whatever, that is a very human technique that will consistently be there but what we are not structured to do as a society is to have any form of parody or equal apportionment of what exactly that means. Right now we still know when you can look at data that reinforces it from every single measure from our criminal Justice System to our educational system, that we have massive disparities when it comes to everything from race and class about how the Second Chances are allocated and what we use our Second Chances for big effect is we have people who are living in poverty and its like when people say how this party show itself and the answer is its through everybody. They are the people are drinking in the water that they are drinking. Its how they are policed, its what transportation you have around you so unfortunately if you are creating this concentrated level of poverty and injustice that exist and oftentimes a colorcoded poverty that exists we also know this idea behind Second Chances becomes fleeting. This is, actually than experiencing getting to know wes a mic and tenuate being continuing friendship with wes and he says dont you know why hes in prison in the answer is i know why is there an i dont need to anybody to remind me. What i know is this people have different circumstances and how some of this, if we arent learning willing to learn about Second Chances and what they are supposed to me and are we giving them an opportunity to mean something thats crucial about how we think about the world. Host what did he think about you telling his story . Guest i remember wes was one of the first dimensions when i started the idea that i have a friend who is a remarkable writer and shes like guerrilla writer. She put satellite of books he puts out a lot of books but she would always ask about wes. Every time i see her talk to her i give her an update and she one day said to me you know i really think you should write about this. I think theres a bigger story to be told here. Im not that interested in writing of look and im not lending to write a book. I honestly dont want to delve into my own and i went and i talked to wes about it and i asked him, i said im going to approach about writing a story on their lives and their relationship and what he think. He immediately said i think you should do it and he said two things that always stuck with me. He said ive wasted every opportunity that it had ever had in life and im going to die here and if you can do something to help people understand the consequences for their decisions but also help people understand the neighborhood that these decisions are being made and then you should do it. That really then became the entire fire and focus behind doing this project was that i wanted people to understand not just the consequences of decisions that people were making but i want people understand the context of the decisions that people were making in the neighborhoods they are making the men. I remember soon after the book was published my editor called me up and he was like i have great newsbreak we just received word from kristof and kristof wants to do an oped about the book. Nick kristof is a fantastic writer and author and in the dark times of progressive and a brilliant guy. He writes this remarkable oped where he said i really enjoyed this book the other wes moore because its an examination of race and class in our society. About three weeks later my editor calls me up and hes like great news we just received word that Michael Gershwin wants to write an oped on your book. Hes a former speechwriter for president bush a writer for the washington post, brilliant guy and i said sure. He says i really enjoyed the other wes moore. Its a great examination of personal responsibility and individual choice. I said this is a massive because they liked him for two completely Different Reasons. My wife asked me who do you think is right and i said honestly they are both right cant talk about societal responsibility. All these things are individual choices and all individuals would be held accountable to either good or bad choices however you cant talk about individual choice without understanding the individual choices are being made in the societal content and that societal context does influence the type of choices that people are taking. And so all of those things really help to tightend as to how that story was not just illuminating to me but also very humbling to see the way that it has translated across the community, across the line to help people understand these conditions we are in come of these things that we are asking people to endure, we have really made a bit of a double bargain where we are asking ourselves every single day how much pain are we willing to tolerate to survive and how much pain are we willing to tolerate in our neighbors. Sometimes its too much and that doubles the bargain that i think is eating away at our collective souls every day. Host thanks for joining us on the tv. This is our monthly in Depth Program where we have one author on to discuss his or her body of work and we are taking your calls. This month its author veteran rhoades scholar former investment banker wes moore. His book the other wes moore came out in 2010 and searching for life that matters came out in 2015 is most recent but that we havent discussed yet is five days the fiery reckoning of an American City. Hes also written discovering wes moore young adult and a novel called this way home which came out in 2016. Heres how you can participate in our conversation with its westmore. Call 202 area code 7488200 if you live live in eastern and central timezones. 202 7488201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific timezones and you can also text questions or comments to wes moore this way 202 7488903. Make sure to get that correct so we dont sent text out to anybody but ourselves here at 202 7488903. We also have several social media sites where you can participate, twitter, facebook, instagram. Just remember look tv is our handle and you can go to those sites could one other way of contacting us booktv cspan. Org by email and we will begin taking calls and questions in just a few minutes. Wes moore what is the visitation process like to get into just the person in maryland . Guest does change now because of covid19. Prisoners havent been able to have visitors in months and im not sure. Its pretty restricted and not just access but even people who arent just up where they are locked in for 23 hours in individual cells due to covid19. Prior to doubt though its a pretty onerous process. Its not like theres a heavy encouraged him and for people to be able to have outside people and family and friends come visit her at often you look at situations where its nowhere near where the majority of people who are being housed there actually live so its not an easy process for people to be up to go visit. Once you do it is really an allday process that it takes to go when and go through visit to you will go in and go do your searches and go through multiple searches and then you could wait for hours before youd have a chance to see the person and when you do get a chance to see them its a pretty restricted time period that you are allowed to be able to interact. For a lot of people part of the top location of staying in touch is that its not an easy process to stay in touch. Its also not easy to have telephonic communication. We have policies that exist right now the country that are charging an exorbitant amount of money by charging individuals to stay in touch with their family despite the fact that the vast majority people are currently incarcerated will be coming home and despite the fact that all data shows that the person can keep contact with family and while they are incarcerated they have a much better chance of reentering to society and a stable and safe reentry back into society. The vast majority people will be coming home and the vast majority of people are not there for life sentences are long sentences. The vast majority will be ranted into our society so the fact do we make it so complicated for people to not just in touch but also to enter back is benefiting nobody because these are all people who will be returning back to our society. As lets go can you pinpoint a point in your life where you could see yourself as the other wes moore . Guest absolutely. One of the things that really got me about this whole process was how in many ways arbitrary and in many ways its delivered the way we have structured this entire framework. I remember the first time that i was in handcuffs or member having at that point no Real Authority or say as to how the next phase of my life was going to go. I remember this idea of watching being ticked bag up or whatever for a collection of Different Things and so you see how incredibly fickle but at the same time when it comes to many communities there were impoverished communities and communities that were below the poverty line how they were very unfair measures and mechanisms when it came to policing and frankly it was something that was very unfair for the officers who are worse to patrol these areas. You absolutely see how thin that line really is and i know that one of the things that i have to credit where i am now is the fact that one of the greatest gifts god gave me was my mother and i will always be grateful for that. Also i remember theres one thing that served as an initial prerequisite and that is luck. Luck shouldnt have to be a prerequisite not in a real meritocracy. So i think one of the things that really fueled so much of how we think about not just my relationship with wes but also the work that ive been asked to do its eliminating luck is a prerequisite in order for people to make it an understanding our own larger conversation that we all want to have in order for us to be able to do just that. So i absolutely cannot only imagine that the thing i spend more time talking about had it not then for a series of decisions some of which had nothing to do with luck that i dont see a scenario where wes shouldnt be right here next to me contributing. But thats the dynamic. Thats the challenge that i think we have to sort through. Host why did he move back to baltimore . Guest it was for a few Different Reasons. After came back from afghanistan i had a chance to work in washington and i worked as as a white house fellow which is a yearlong nonpolitical nonpartisan fellowship with a cabinet secretary. Then i started working in finance and i was working in finance and doing well and ive gotten promoted a couple of times and finding a real role and the way my mind works is a more quantitative mind that a qualitative mind. I have to work a lot harder to establish but i also know it wasnt fulfilling something was really missing. A new but i wanted to spend my time being able to focus on things that made my heart you little bit faster and that wasnt finance. It wasnt banking and so i remember going and having a conversation with my old boss who is still as citigroup and i told them i said i think i want to do Something Different and he said to me you should understand its not like you can hop out and hop back in. This treadmill keeps moving so if you make the decision thats a pretty Firm Decision and i told him i thought about it and i still thought it was the right thing to do. And then he said i get it and you are ready. So thats when i decided that part of my journey that brought me back home, i love baltimore payday think is an amazing place its quirky, its complicated but its also a place where the story is very much being written right now. This is a city that used to be a city of close to million people. Its now a city of less than 100,000. The city of baltimore has lost more citizens than any other major city. Its a city that is the home of Thurgood Marshall and its the home of a bruce. Its also the home of some of the most discriminatory policy is in housing polities transportation policies that this country ever instituted on the population particularly the black politician. The place that while at the same time we were celebrating the rebirth of the Baltimore Orioles and the nice round that the orioles were having and we were celebrating the Baltimore Ravens was around the same time we learned about chris brown. Its a city thats still very much healing from its past and its a city that is still very much trying to surge and determine its own future. Its a place where people take Baltimore Ravens very seriously and they take a pride in it no matter where they happen to be. Im very much living here in raising my family here but i know people who are no longer here. But i also know its a place where our story is being written as we speak and the chance to actually be one of 600,000 authors of ready Great American story is exciting to me. When i thought about this place that for me embodied community, for me and bodied ownership, for me it became a pretty easy decision. Host where were you living on saturday april 12, 2015 . Guest living in baltimore at that time. Host what happened that day . Guest that was the day that freddie gray made eye contact with police and i say that because that was his crime, that he made eye contact with the police and brand. Its important for people to understand, i say that because thats not a crime. Its a crime and distinctly labeled high crime and hype ive played areas where they make eye contact with the police and run thats enough to trigger probable cause and you can then be chased and arrested. Had that been done in another neighborhood, had that and done in a neighborhood that was only a mile and a half or two miles away from where freddie gray was he could have done the same exact thing but he didnt. He did it and Highland Park so when he made eye contact with the police he ran and he was eventually arrested and an hour after he was arrested he was in a coma. When he finally made it to the university of Maryland Medical Center he had three broken vertebrae and a crushed lair next and a crushed voicebox and he never made it out of that coma. He never recovered from his injuries. He died a week later trying to survive but eventually was unable to. That was the day that the world started off in west baltimore and then eventually baltimore and then eventually the world. That was the day that the world was first learned of it. Host from your book five days the fiery reckoning of an American City you write there were reasons for these death was different that is so quickly turned into a galvanizing moment in the passing and painful silence like with others. Were shunted freddie grays final moments were caught on camera capturing video of Police Encounters which is commonplace now but freddies death in 2015 coincided with the emergence of smartphones and social media as tools of the citizen journalists. It was one of these things where ive thought about what was the thing that made us even know who freddie gray was or what his name was and in the two years before freddie gray there wasnt just freddie gray. There was Anthony Anderson and there was chris brown and there was hiram wes. Similar situations where you have an unequal distribution of force and a black man makes contact with police and loses his life. And so when people say what was different about freddie and white is it so influential . Said the two things that we cannot underestimate is one that was caught on camera and like those of the other ones that i had seen where the idea of your word versus mind particularly when your word is someone he cannot speak for themselves anymore becomes much more complicated when theres video footage and becomes much more complicated when we are watching it live and someone is capturing what actually happened. The second piece that i think makes freddie grays story different is the context of when it happened and the fact that there was this group now called black lives matter that was able to respond and able to move. You watch this dynamic where this organization was founded by three black women and founded by three black women in response to what happened to trayvon martin. This idea that we have to be able to remind this country that its not about black lives matter but asking this country to remember that they mattered he cannot take out our lives he now saw this becoming something that had become a Global Movement and moved and mobilize quickly in different areas. So was not just about how her repositioning these things but when these things happen in individual areas are worstcase individual families from having to fend for themselves. How do we put a real level of attention and focus when these things continue to happen in our community and so for freddie gray it was the fact that we now have camera footage of him in his last moments, of him being dragged literally because he wasnt helping it was being dragged into the back of a police van and we also have this movement called black lives matter. It was a focus on making sure we dont just know the names and we dont just understand the names Michael Brown and walter scott and sean bell and eric garner and Breonna Taylor and tamir rice and Ahmaud Arbery and freddie gray, that we dont just know their names but that we demand justice for the fact that we have two scream and chant their names and so i think those were the things we saw in some of the differences that we were able to say is different than freddie gray and his situation that we didnt see with the others. Host back to five days freddie gray in and some of the other boys like him grew up and poverty that permeates everything so was that poverty that raise the possibility that freddie would be exactly where he was on april 12, 2015 and then again on april 272015. The odds started being stacked against freddie of a generation before he was born. Guest is one of these things where we are not here to make arguments about freddie was this or freddie was that or freddie was a thug and all the Police Officers knew his name. We needed to have elected officials and this is the most heartbreaking thing about it these are elected officers whose jobs are to protect him. People yet to remind them that freddie was your constituent to but its also important for people and understand freddie gray not just in his death but freddie gray in his life. Oftentimes we start the conversation as if there was what happened to freddie and how he died and those are important conversations and we have to be able to contend with and we have to be able to understand what happened to him on the day that he died and what led him to being in a coma the entire week but its also important to understand the tragedy of his life. Its also important we understand the tragedy of how freddie gray existed. This was a young man who was born underweight, premature and addicted to heroin. His mother who battled addiction for most of her life met he never made it to high school and she couldnt. Nor write. When he and his twin sister in the antanov wait to leave the hospital they moved into a Housing Project in west baltimore on north kerry street. This Housing Project on kerry street that along with 480 at the homes were cited in the civil lawsuit in 2009. We have no that lead is a narrow toxin for over a century. The cdc indicates if a person has six microbes of lead in every deciliter blood that person will have tons of damage further made her of their life. Freddie gray had 36. So this is a young man who was born premature, underweight addicted to heroin and lead poisoning and by that time in his life he is two years old. Freddie gray never had a chance. We never gave freddie gray a chance and so when you look at the fact that his last recorded data in school was when he was in the 10th. And he was almost 19 years old, when you look at the fact that he was in special education classes his entire career and asking the teachers to perform in an incredibly unfair task to make up for things that ended up being the poisoning of his neurological system. The fact that we continue to do that in every single interaction with the various systems of freddies life whether it was not just that but also educational and Health Systems and every single time those systems touched freddie gray it wasnt just that they could not help him but in many ways they were each doing in their own individual ways and measurable damage. That is the thing that i think we have the Larger Society in a larger frame have to also really contend with. It is that hard truth that every system that touched freddies life, it was the fact that freddie could have died 100 times before he made any eye contact with the police and it was the fact that arguably the most peaceful week in freddies life was the week he was in a coma because at least that week he was surrounded at doctors and nurses. Elise that week he was surrounded to lawyers and at leasat week there was a city who knew his name and that week there was a city who cared whether he lived or died. Name one week in the 25 years prior that was the case. So we have to be able to seek and demand justice and its not just the justice of what happened to him that day but it is a justice and that cannot be excluded either but it is justice focus on everything from Environmental Justice and educational justice and Health Justice and all the other justness that frankly eluded freddie for his entire life. Host lets hear from our callers. Wes moore as her guest and Nicole Scullion from fort lauderdale. Hi nicole you are on the air. Caller thank you very much for taking my call but i want to say mr. Moore im very impressed with the way you speak in your articulation. What im calling about is i was born in 1970 and two black middle class in southern new jersey by middleclass family and i got a good education which was something that was paramount in our family. We were very lucky, my sister and i to be able to go to Parochial School which i think made a huge difference in our lives. My family made sure that we are exposed to many things such as classical literature and Classical Music arts, theater jazz and science programs on pbs that my dad made us watch. My question to you is what can be done to put experiences such as i had into the lives of four black kids in poor neighborhoods the may be scholarships for money to be raised so that science programs and things could be brought into the schools . Guest nicole thank you. Thank you for that question. So id love the frame of your question because really what you are asking is how can we make education really an all encompassing experience for students that is not just about reading and writing and arithmetic and not about qualifications but how do we make it a truly holistic experience that promotes this idea of Lifelong Learning and promote this idea of exploration that makes life interesting. I love the frame that you are approaching. I also know that what we are seeing particularly both. Covid19 but also postcovid19 where we have watched these educational divides where if you think about the things that we have spent a lot of our time on an oka sun things like how the mixture that kids are prepared to learn and they are coming in knowing their letters and numbers and to help them get on up pathway where if you talk to many elementary and. Kate Elementary Teachers we say what would be helpful and oftentimes the answer is have your kid ready to go. If i speak too fast i am losing him. How do you then come up with that and its a very big deal for students. If they are to the question they cant learn in the third thing is what happens during the summer months because we know a gap exists between june and september for many students were not able to have it in the summer which keeps Brain Development going. What happens if the kids are in the classroom and when you consider the fact that some kids have not even logged on consistently during this time of virtual education. This actually gives us an important opportunity to rethink education in a different kind of way to rethink how would we introduce these types of experiences that sometimes happen for certain students and sometimes happen because cert instructors are able to do it and introduce it but we are it again doesnt have to be exceptional. But we actually make it a part of our core. How can we think about things like rethinking a school year or a school day . The can we know that its absolute criminal but we still one of students who dont have mechanisms to do the proper things that will help with Virtual Learning consistent wifi and highspeed internet that will help them stay at a board and we are now adopting a curriculum in creative ways to help our students. Your question is a powerful one because it does force people to think they are how can we use this moment to use all the things you got about things i got when it teachers and i had an instructor that helped me to understand how the Constitutional Congress worked and took me do a play to explain that to me or would really try to understand the things that made life so adjusting to help me focus on how can we make that a part of our core focus for all of our students. Ticket at a time when everything from the educational framework is being upended. That becomes their Bigger Mission but its something that has to be done if we are going to address this problem. Host wes moore nicoles question made me start thinking about the difference with how her parents gave her activism and how freddie grays parents couldnt. Guest we have to understand you are absolutely right that there is an important and the crucial role that parents play in their childs educational exduration. I am not at all, the fact is my mother was very active parent in terms of what her kids were learning. I know that my grandmother was a schoolteacher and she was a very active participant and she was very clear as to what types of things that students should and should not be getting and i also know for kids that are coming up in situations where their parents dont necessarily, it isnt necessarily how their parents have approached this, that we cannot understand for that. We then have to think about how we come up with structures to make sure even if that is not something the child is getting lately its still something that child is getting structurally. I think about it where only talk about parents that can be this blame game that takes place for parents and its the parents fault. Ive been working with students and families for decades and heres the thing that i can tell you. For the vast majority of parents its not that they dont care. For a lot of parents they either dont know or for a lot of parents its really hard because its really complicated and challenging when you are trying to work three different jobs that are taking up 14 hours of your day and still living below the poverty line because none of those jobs pay above the poverty line. You are going to need help. You are going to need support. Frankly you are going to need the same kind of help and support that my family got. My mother got her first job that gave her benefits when i was 14 years old. It was the first job that allowed her to work one job. My mother got her first job that gave her our size 14 and she was not only helping to raise us but living with my grandparents and helping them. Might grandparents gave a real and significant amount of support in my mom will always credit them and say if it hadnt been for them i dont know what i would have done raising my three kids. And so its not the parents dont care. Its that for many parents they dont know or many parents just dont have the resources and so with that how do we make sure. What i guided how do we institutionalizes . The to institutionalize it and make sure that its not just your mom or grandparents its not their situation that allows you to have a pathway that the grace of the fact that you are a member and a valued member of our society and therefore our society should be thinking about how can we create instruction that just gives kids a chance thats creating a platform or pretended he envision can actually meet each other. Because we dont have that now. We still have a framework that is too based on lot and having that infrastructure or that support is frankly, i know i didnt ask for it but i was lucky to receive but that cant be enough. Thats how i think about it and how we should be thinking about the way we are going to reshape and rethink all of this. Host if you cant get through the phone lines and you have a question or comment we will scroll through our social media sites including our tax number. Lynwood in winterville maryland good afternoon you were on with author wes moore. Hello mr. Wes moore. You just said locke. I read perhaps the last chapter that says luck comes and everything. I dont see how you eliminate luck from the world and luck from humans. I think luck comes and everything and when you say conditions i agree with you 100 but you seem to be going do we must have a Perfect World in order for a person to have the option of doing the right thing. I think thats a little far out. Ive got something to say about freddie gray. You are wrong when you say the police had probable cause to arrest him. They did not. There was no crime by him or anybody else. If he was good forget about the social problems and all the problems he had. If he had a hot date they had no right to arrest him. And another thing about love, about that lot. There was a guy in omaha, good citizen who called the police. He sees a young black man holding what appears to be an ak47. The clerk is not there. There are no people around there anywhere. He tells the police that looks like we have the mad gunman and it looks like he is randomly taking shots at people and you had better get over here and check it out to they came to the store. The clerk who was he they come in and they pull their guns and the gentleman, the young black kid [inaudible] he goes for his wallet and he doesnt drop the gun but he goes for his wallet. Host we need to bring this to a conclusion. Caller okay, they shoot him. Its a facsimile of an ak47. Thats a tragedy but that was bad luck. Host lynwood can you very briefly give us a quick glance at your life story . Caller i was born in a sort of rough down there, oneperson household could i graduated high school. They was in the military during vietnam, not a vietnam veteran but during vietnam. I went to morgan state. Thereafter i did a stint at social services and went to the university of mary bill law school. I passed the bar, i was with the office of baltimore for approximately 10 years. I went to act to the office of Public Service until 2011 by retired. Host do we will have two leave it there and thank you for that information. Guest first my wife is a fellow and she did it opeb did some of the work that i did even prior to what im doing now as we launched an initiative where we were working with juvenile centers and open the office which was huge for us so thank you for that and thank you for the lifetime youve given toward this work. You bring up an important point about conditions about how they have to beef perfect for people to make it through and the obvious answer is no but the thing we also know as the conditions also cannot be stacked against you either wear if you look at the statistics and the dynamics that exist right now we always talk about how a College Degree is the target and thats that thing we want all of our students to have. But college increases lifetime earnings by nearly 1 million gift Research Also shows that lack College Graduates are less than White College dropouts pretty cute take a look at just new york for example black new yorkers are two times likely to experience hardship than their white counterparts 39 versus 19 and 70 of lowwage workers on the front lines during covid19 are people of color. The point that you make that i want to also push on is that when we are talking about the decisions of people we also cannot underestimate the role that race plays in those conditions and the fact that if wed do have a framework where we can just say if everyone is willing to work hard and do their task than they should have the opportunity to succeed and all that is right in all that is true but the reality is that we are still making that curve for many people intentionally so and making it unnecessarily high. And so thats the thing that we, you and i and all of us should be battling against. It is this idea about i dont think people need to be perfect but it needs to be fair and right now its not fair. Ask obrien from Montgomery Alabama please go ahead with your question or comment. Caller thank you for taking my call. Host brian, are you with those . Brian please go ahead. Caller okay, im enjoying the conversation. I wanted to jeff a comment about the context and for instance what you mentioned about freddie gray. What he did is demonstrated that black lives matter when you do that. That is him or mall thing and so how can we actually do better with complex for everyone. You talk about prayer and thats related to the content come is that correct collects. Host mr. Moore . Guest a great question and it goes back to in some ways to nicoles question about how do we add comment text and the first and we have to do is we as a Larger Society have a difficult time dealing with the issue of truth about this country. And i think because when people say race is one of the trickiest issues and our society, i disagree. Its not one of the trickiest issues, it is the trickiest 20 think about the history of this country great the fact and the reality that this country was founded on a racial hierarchy and the fact that this country did have and was founded on land and labor in the fact that we have had a history of systemic challenges that did not and with slavery but immediately went into construction and jim crow and mask incarceration. And how all of these things have provided a context that we have to be able to understand and from the founding documents that were first put together and as beautiful as they were structured they did not include everything and there had to be a collective Movement Towards this idea that dr. King talks about this bending of the moral arc that bends towards justice but there also has to be an understanding of a couple of things. One is how we and who was responsible for so much that this country is built on this idea that they moral arc of justice bends because there were people who work polling towards justice, people of all types in this countrys history. So when we are talking about context that means how do we attract things like cricket am going back to nicoles point about education when we talk about the history of this country its important that context will lead to our curriculum. Important to understand one of the most important things that happened to me was i began to appreciate the history of this country and the richness of this country i then began to understand what people would say how could you put your life on the line for this country and how did you serve in this country and do privately and say i would do it again if i had the opportunity. I would do it to cosign no that i love this country but loving this country doesnt mean lying about it. Loving this country means being able to understand what does make it so powerful in the first place and name such as baldwin and parks and carmichael and names such as rogues and these are names that are just as important to the framework and the building of our nations history and any other name and its important that its not just africanamerican children understand but for all children to understand that and if all children understand the many people who toiled to make this country better at every single turn when we had a chance to make a decision that we move towards that in a very deliberative fashion because there were people who look like every single that were able to make progress and it should not be limited or minimize in that conversation. The other thing when we were talking about context and again its important question about context because context also means understanding of history that the only time we have had a Major Movement and its had lasting Sustainable Impact was when it didnt just impact the community but fighting for justice to impact the community. Movement, part of the reason the Antiapartheid Movement was it wasnt just black lives matters were standing up and where is no one you can allow at this point. Part of the reason that we had the movement for Marriage Equality was because it did not have to be our lgbtq friend who were demanding more from and chanting that love is love. And part of the reason were able to see movement now is we can add context to our humanity. Context is simply about the fact that what we are seeing right now, sometimes it is not as simple as people want to lay it out to be. Understanding the fullest tradition of her history, understanding the polish tradition of iran places that were w already now in reason tht we have a market level of poverty that we see is not intentional and when people in poverty say we should work or poverty is a choice my answer is this, poverty is the choice and is not impacted by poverty, its not a choice ofho the people who are feeling the weight of poverty people dont wake up and say i love being in poverty. It is a choice of our society. Is the choice of how much pain we choose to m endorse. Your question is a really good one and how your thinking because context matters we were creating policy. Context matters when were deciding on what justice means and what justice looks like, context matters ever going to truly honor and try to protect what not just about the intent of this countrys founding problems. But the word thatt we put down, the word that we stood p by. And that is why we keep pulling on the storage justice in order to make those feel real. Host nancy is in los angeles. Caller good morning, can you hear me . Thank you, hi mr. Moore thank you so much for allo that youre doing in peter you as well, my parents march with folks who march with Martin Luther king and i was so fortunate to grow up in Corpus Christi texas and so fortunate to be raised in environment where my siblings and i were required to take action if we saw an injustice and we look back at that and i see not everybody was raised in that kind of environment and i am so thankful that that is how it wasas for me because i been n activist my whole life, i have a goal to help enlighten my friends and others who have progressed as well and we want to know what white people can do. People who know that racism is out of control that change absolutely must occur. I feel before may 25 and after may 25 when george floyd was killed, peter asked you what the date in april of 2015 meant to you and i did not know because there have been so many. I have not got over trade von martin were in that. And i did not know about tulsa in 1921 until there was a mer miniseries that came out this year. No one that i knew had been taught that in school. I dont know if it was in ahistory books. When i get done this weekend earlier yesterday, i had just made something and ill send an email to help enlighten folks, dodo you know about the class divided, jane elliott the blueeyed brown eyed experiment . Absolutely. I thought that would be a start and then theres a documentary called the untold story of emmett shell. I think its by keith, do you know that. Host nancy what is your point . Caller what . Host what your point of bringing those up. Caller i want to know what other documentaries because i feel the education is number one and folks have context and im not your negro where he said nothing can change until its based, i jotted that down what he said. I was just wondering what can they watch, what do they read to have context and be educated and take action whether volunteering or giving money or being more politically active. Host thank you very much lets hear from author. Guest nancy that is such a beautiful question and also thank you for your vulnerability and yourue leadership because i give a tremendous amount of credit to your aunts and your families because the fact that you are raised with having social justice as part of your core, you were raised right. I am grateful for that and im grateful for what you are talking about in this check challenge off racism. When we think about whats happening now, 2020 weve seen crisis that were thrown at her doorstep, the introduction of a virus that have catastrophic help in Economic Impact on society. In the other one was a reminder of how inequitable policing is in different communities per thm reality is, even those these were different types of crises they spoke the exact same truth and they spoke the exact same truth that dealing with covid19 is not about the discovery of a vaccine in dealing with a neck rulebook policing is not about the chokehold, covid19 did not just expose but exacerbate thee fact that while impacted everybody it did not impact everybody try equally. And Police Reform is all necessary in all communities. What we saw with george floyd, as you heartbreaking we mentioned, we saw someone who was handcuffed, face down on the ground and take his final breaths because a grown man was nonchalantly putting his knee into his neck. So what we saw had what were seen at the protest that are taking place around the country, this is not simply about policing reform, but it is about racism and its about systemic racism. And your point about racism and its impact is exactly right because people think that racism is an act, that racism is if a person says ask or for person goes to a klan rally that that person is racist. I get it but racism is not just an act of the system. Its a system that finds its way and moves like water through all of her other systems and changes the shape and changes their focus and their core. And so part of the thing that i love that youre talking about because its both about how we do with education, how are we makingon sure that we are readig classics by here i stand in the fire next time and reading things and watching documentaries that are able to add a level of exposure to these dynamics that take place but also it cannot simply be about how are we going to penetrate individuals but how are we doing it with a focus on being able to deal with systems. Understanding that this interplay between Racial Injustice and i economic injus injustice, understanding the fact that this does not have to be a binary conversation about if this person gains than this person must lose, nor is it something that helps any of us by not talking about it i think about this issue with grace because its a tricky thing, sometimes people would say i would rather not talk about it or i dont want to Say Something that would be incorrect and therefore next thing you know im getting canceled or maimed or whatever whatever the case might be. Im pretty certain that in our time, i probably said quite a few things that have offended quite a few people. I know that becomes a problem when we do stop talking about it. Or we pretend like we can move on without being able to do it. I think about the fact that nancy, you brought up a really important word in your question which is true where we have had countries that have gone through and stared at the deepest wounds and of done in a way because they know that we cannot move on to a better place and we are not willing to steer the deepest wounds that our society has faced. Countries like brandy in south africa and rwanda and Northern Ireland in chile and colombia in canada, twice. Countries that have gone through truth and reconciliation processes where they have been able to b say we have to be able to examine the things that continue to show themselves in our society if were going to address it once and for all. The reality is, the president of the United States has activated the National Guard in this country 12 times in our nations history. Ten of them had to do with race. , only twice has the president activated the National Guard and it did not involve race, the looting that took place in the postal worker strike in new york in the looting that took place in st. Croix after hurricane. That is it. The fact that youve had other countries that have been able to explore some of their deepest roles and be able to say the only way that wey can move forward is to move forward with a measure of truth is something that i believe is crucial that this country also goes through. That this country goes through our own process on a federal, local, state and Institution Level to know her history and then be able to think about how we move forward with an understanding of what our history actually is. Host you mentioned paul in his book, here i stand, every time an author is on depth, we ask him in her their Favorite Book and what theyre currently reading, hereoo i stand as one f wes moores Favorite Book and also my mitch album into the wild and is currently reading dog flowers by danielle. Which is about what . Guest it is actually a powerful story when you think about the immigration story and i think about it t in context of what it means to define ourselves as american. In this moment, what it means to define ourselves of members of the human race at a time when people are questioning the importance and the depth of what that means and i feel like one reason i love that story, we can actually tie it to the other things in the other books that i mentioned before. Because i am aor datadriven person, i really like analysis. I also know, this is what i learned from my publisher as well, when i was getting ready to read wes moore, i wanted to turn into the ten step guide for parents in a ten step guide for guardians. This is years ago before we had rb to full children. And i asked him what he thought. He said listen im going to be honest with you. That sounds interesting in all but no one wants to read a parenting book by a 30yearold with no children. [laughter] that is actually a really good point. Make sure you tell us a story because sometimes statistics can add context but stor stories pre action. What is it that you are trained to do with your work. For me the honest answer is both, it is both to provide context but also to promote action and thats one of the reasons why there is a beautiful and masterful job of being able to lead in context and knowing akat you can make abu person ino lee connected with the person that you are reading about, you are then going to have something to fight for because im ao deep believer that when you know what youre fighting for and in particularly when you know who youre fighting for, you will never stop fighting. And thats why all those box. Host the second book the work, searching for life that matters. Heres an email from lauren in maryland by baltimore. Mr. Moore im wondering if you and tomahawk c coats know each other, grew up next to each other or talked about all that is baltimore and structural racism. Guest he is my guy, for those of you who dont know tom, he is another one and very proud guy. Hes very active out of baltimore and still a person i look to the and i admire, him and also his son and im proud of him. We have had a chance to speak a lot about the city, a lot about where the city is and where the city is going, and why the city is the way it is. I would actually ask people, tom is actually known for all of his remarkable books, he is Toni Morrison was saying before that he is basically our version of James Baldwin which i dont think you could get a higheriv complement than that. The brilliance of James Baldwin you see all of our in tallahassee. If you read a beautiful struggle in a book about his up bringing growing up in baltimore, thats another one i would recommend to people to check out if you want to understand baltimore in the history. Understand, location for understand why people are so very proud of the city of baltimore. Im thankful that he continues to drive me and so many others and is still currently very much committed to the city and is fairly committed to the state in a way that i am, in a way that we know that it can and should and will be better. Host you mentioned, hasses father, he is a publisher in baltimore to go to booktv. Org go to our Video Library we talked about some of the book city publishers, you can go to booktv. Org and toppin type in pl coates. Our next call comes from marjorie go ahead marjorie your booktv. Caller thank you so much, you answer to a prayer. I am telling you, you got it down pat and i want to thank you so much for having the nerve and tenacity to say the things that you save and nobody turned her around, it is all about the community and not understanding where we come from, how we got here and how we get out of here. Black lives matter, john lewis martin, you all have answer to how we move, i want to know do you travel because right now im working with the superintendent of schools in the county and im going to tell him tomorrow, he needs to bring you here to talk for a couple of days because thats what were working on. Host marjorie before we get an answer from mr. Moore, tell us about yourself. Caller heres what we need to know, the truth. Weve got to know the truth. First tell me, i know you want me too answer your question, this is my question. Do you travel or not, i just need you to get here. Guest. Host will get an answer t two seconds, tell us about yourself a littlee bit. Caller i did not hear a word you said. I am so sorry. Host we will get an answer from wes moore. Mr. Moore what your answer to marjorie. Guest ms. Marjorie you have no idea how you fill me up, you have filled me up more than you know. I hear in your voice and in your passion. I am thankful for the work thats you are doing for students of our community. You have no idea how much he filled me up this morning. To answer your question, i do and i would love to, one of the joys that i have had and the experience is spending time with her students and spending time with our teachers and our leaders and our people who are the ones who are shaping our society and the answer is yes and i would love tos come spend time with you but your comment to me, it was not just incredibly humbling but one of the most important thing to happen to me was once i got a chance to know my truth and my history, i know that when peop people, there is everywhere i am at and everywhere i am, im there because it was written. That i knew there were people who were willing to fight for me and advocate for me and i include my mother my grandparents and i also know there are people who woke up pevery morning who never even knew who i was and i would never know their name and they might not even know mine. But they woke up every morning with the hope of me. And that drives me, it drives me for the fact that i can and i should be proud of my history and the fact, sometimes i will tell people, when they say things, i do not see color, i tell people i say you know what not only do i believe that is not true, i believe that is a role. When people say to me, i dont see color, what im hearing, i dont see your blackness. Isnt that something i should be ashamed of, i am not. I believe and im so thankful for the people who look just like me who fought for the hope of me and so i stand to not only knowing every room im in i and there because i belonged there. I am not in any room because of a social experiment, im not in any room because of the in evelyns, im not in there because of someones kindness, im not in every room because someone was to prove a point, i am there because i belonged there. And im there because the room would be incomplete if i was not there. And thats why want all of our children to understand that they are walking inner beauty as they are as they are. They are walking in their destiny as they are in their walking in the sense of hope that there are people and angels errounding them every single day who might not even know the name but they know their potential crude and thats what they fight for. This marjorie, you fill me up this morning. Thankk you. Host tony is in the bronx. Hi tony. Guest. Caller i respect you ver, youre very educated young man. Awanted to say this also, you mentioned this about your mother but its very important about your father that is very important. I am 58 and have been in relationships that i dont have any children or wife and i have friends and i have been in relationships that i try to woexplain that you true duly do need a father in their lives, just not the mother because that hurts when they dont have a father to guide them like a mother. I learned 50 years ago, 58 years ago that is a breakdown in the family and thats very sad because you have a lot of young men who are out here and i lived in new york all my life, youve a lot of young men who are trying to do the right thing but sometimes they dont have the guidance of a black man so i have been in relationships and i am two sisters and a mother, god ncess her that she is here but the thing about my experience then my life is when you have in all respect i love black women but all respect, would you have a black woman who breaks down the block man, dont want the black man to be the black man in the family. Host i think we got a lot on the table, lets hear from wes moore. Guest blessings, its always good to talk to you. Its great to hear your voice. You know what is interesting, i think about the missing context and some people say is there anything from the other wes moore did not make it in the book that you wish would have. The only answer is one thing and that was when wes, when i was transitioning from knowing wes is a friend and saying i should write about this, the first thing i did i asked wes if you can write something to your father, im going to try to find your father, wes t only has two memories of my father and the second one was watching him die. Wes only has three memories of his father, the last one when he was about 133 years old and he saw his father laying on the couch in his father asked him who he was because his father lived around the corner from him and had no relationship. And i asked wes isaac can you write a letter to father cousin going to try to find him and i want to give him something. Wes hesitated and turned around and said heres a letter it was five pages long and it was the most fascinating mix of love and support and empathy and apathy and hatred that you would ever read in one letter. It was fascinating to me because i thought about it, i showed it to my publisher and he said did you do it and i said did i do what. And he said have you written a letter to your father . And i told him no. And he said you should not ask wes to do something that youre not willing to do yourself. And i went to his gravesite and i sat there with a legal pad and a pen and i started writing. Not editing or worrying about nothing, just literally what was on my mind and i ended up showing my publisher that and he said to me im going to be honest with you i dont know if yours is any less confusing. And the point that he was making in the point that i took from it, in many ways we both still wrestle with something very, very, located. We both wrestle with the absence in this whole in this void. My father was a special man from every story ive heard from family and his friends that he was a good friend, a good husband, a good man. And i think about that in context when wes said listen, our fathers could not be there for Different Reasons and therefore we mourn their absence in different ways and hes absolutely right. But the reality is, your point is the right one, regardless of why the void is there, it is real. And we have to be able to lift up and celebrate, not just how powerful in many ways black women have been in serving this functional lou within our society but also we have to stop doing damage and continuing to put out false narratives as well about things that we are seen among walkman in what women who want to be engaged with their families. The reality is a very much policies of keeping people engaged with their family members. When we talk about t t the kickk and thats just oneca element. And they are telling people you can reintegrate with your family but remember they are in Public Housing and you cannot join in. Or else they will need Public Housing, the fact that we have so manyy restrictions when it comes to everything from pell grants into qualifies to childsupport payments and disincentives of things that are placed out, we need to think about what it is that we want from our society and i think the honest answer is we want engagement. We want unified penalties. We also need to stop making so complicated and so difficult and we also have to think about it from a truly holistic process were able to bring a lot of perspectives into the conversation but know the way things are stating right now, this is not useful nor helpful for anybody, i think about it right now the concept of my children who i adore and they have a wonderful mother, i cannot think about how challenging it would be even right now the fact that we do have this very unified front and how difficult it was for my mom, how difficult it must amen beenr so many other single mothers and dads out there doing on their own and creating to support those are important in the structures to make those things real. Host don has mentioned often in your book and when we taped an interview with you earlier about your most recent book, five days one of your sons got into the picture but we unfortunately cut that out and i wish we had left that in because he was zipping to the office to come visit you. Guest he does too, its one thing i will always say in this moment of social distancing in many goes back to ms. Marjories point, my kids are allowed everywhere, i will have meetings with anybody and i dont know where my son or my daughter is in the frame but i always let them know, you are welcome everywhere so yes, even if they happen a popping and just know im okay t with it. Host we would love to see you then. Steve and marilyn. Go ahead please. Caller good afternoon. You gave some pretty good context about freddie gray and his background and most people hauld not have been an interesting if you would comment on black lives matter being a marches organization that theyre going to destroy the society, families especially and also that the police and the freddie gray case were acquitted and if you have time to comment on governor hogans book about dealing with the riots. Host wes moore. Guest so i will tell you when black lives matter were pulled together and especially having known the three women who started the organization, started again with an acknowledgment but a real fear of what we were seeing about the treatment for black lives and also lack of accountability, you bring up a really important point where even if you think about the two years prior to freddie gray and pushed past before that, there were other names that were involved in the types of misconduct and often times people think they saw something would happen, a payoff would happen and then it would gofo away. There is actually a misconception that people had about what happened in baltimore that comment everything down and this g goes back to the second part of your question where people think the thing that come to everything down was when larry hogan called in the National Guard and thats what brought the temperature down and that is not true. The thing that actually brought everything down in baltimore at the time was not that the National Guard, i stated this to someone in the uniform and sometimes heres the thing that i do know and they did bring the temperature down in the state attorney atow the time and when she pressed charges against the six officers because baltimore was shot, it was the first time that that had been done, it did not happen the first time or with any of these. But then you had charges being filed and i remember being in baltimore when those charges were filed and its a must as celebratory environment where people were shot and there were charges being brought. Two of the officers were found not guilty and for above they were dropped but i think thats important thing to note because that was actually what change thee temperature when people thought at the moment that there might be accountability for what they were seeing and what the d. O. J. , department of justice showed was a pattern and practice towards discriminatory behavior that was taking place, i think that is one thing t different we are seeing and what we are seeing with george floyd and where the bar before was an idea of an indictment, now the bar has been risen, even if you see these officers and the protest has continued because this is about much more than an indictment, this really is about a conviction in the thing and your point about the governors book, one of the things that was incredibly disheartening and disappointing frankly was in the governors book when you esdescribed freddie is again connected streetlevel gang dealer with a long criminal rap sheet, the reality is i study this and dug deeplyhi into this with a journalist andnd a reporr and not just a good friend but a great reporter who collaborated in this book, first of all there is no evidence with any gang connection. Second of all for the governor to make an insinuation like that inside of this book, freddie is gone and he cant defend his own character. In the governor has seem to forgotten especially when you see the context of freddie gray and the governor seems to have forgotten or does not recognize the fact that freddie was his constituent two. And so freddies death was almost inevitable result of the accumulation of societal failure and policy failures and leadership failures and when people say in the governor says in his book that people should not confuse freddie gray with the singer in thefu church choi, i do not. But i also know freddie gray never had a shot and that is a distinction that is important to be able to draw and the pushback that is important to be able to draw about what exactly is the take away from those moments and what exactly as a society would we do ass marylanders to be able to rethink that, to make sure that these things have to keep happening and we dont have to continue adding names and frustration into solution into an already complicated situation. Host they put out a report that 22 trillion has been spent on the war on poverty since lbj founded it in the poverty rate is still about the same as it was in 1967 and i want you to get a response of this text that we received, please address how government, welfare and slaves people and leads to perverse incentives with life decisions and dependence on the government check instead of o selfreliant. Host you are absolutely right, we had this war on poverty that olhas gone on since the time of lbj but someone who has seen w war, war means that youre willing to dispose every single tool an asset to your ability to win. We have not done that with poverty. The reality is, that is not an indictment on a Political Party i treat inconsistent policies that weve had input people and poverty. The reality is, we do have policies thatt w we can and shod be and we do have policies because policies position matter in moments like now and one thing i would make how we talk about welfare systems the reality is we watched over the past 11 weeks and we saw 1 11 years of job growth going, the reality is that 22 of people who lost their jobs due to covid19 are people who are living in poverty before1 covid19. This is a working core, these are people with working jobs in many cases, multiple jobs and still were not living above the povertyy level. The reality is, if you just take a look at new york city alone, half of new yorkers have lived in poverty for at least a year over the past four years precovid19. Not half of the borough or the demographic, half of the city was living in poverty for at least a year over the past four years and that is research with columbia university. And so when youre talking about these kind of dynamics and you have a situation where half of the poverty in half of the city has been living in poverty for a year or the past four years but the unemployment is still stated around 4 , there was a massive disconnect. So when were talking about policies, when were talking about ways too support families, here are some policy recommendations that we can do to address some of the things that you are speaking about and at the same time know that were going to benefit our population particular the t most honorable, we were talking about things like how do we continue to expand federal on appointment Insurance Benefits because its necessary in its necessary now than its ever been before. How do we make permanent the expansion of the earned income tax credit to include adults. In making adjustments to the child tax credit. This becomes important because these are things that the simple stroke that could actually and be Child Poverty immediately and almost have Child Poverty in complicated times but what it means, does not mean when were creating support for people, is somehow is being seenw as handouts in particular for most honorable to give them a pathway with a longterm success in the ability to make it through an economic downturn and bring the that have nothing to do with it. That not only becomes a moral obligation but the most effective thing in most effective way that we can thinkn about our resources in particular our resources and how were going to, and recover from this issue and the issue going forward, if you look for example an appointment insurance, we know for every dollar of an appointment insurance that comes in that we get a dollar 80 back. There is ways to leverage us but we have to be incredibly thoughtful in delivering and n not. Host devastating in wisconsin, we have 30 seconds for you in a thirty second answer for wes moore. Caller thank you so much,mo i t a Firm Believer and when we make people feel heard and make them feel like they matter, great things happen we move to change. When elected officials are breaking the laws there u suppod up hold, gerrymandering, all being real issues. My question to you, to what extent is power or the lack thereof affect everyday individuals. Host only 30 seconds for a big question. Guest thats a big question in a brilliantig question. It is everything. Even when were talking about policies or putting in place in the role of philanthropy, it is not just about how can we provide support, its about how we arero sharing power and sharg economy. That we are not here to save people, people do not need saving, we have to focus on removing barriers and making life so, located for people. So it is a big question but power, autonomy and freedom have got to be Guiding Principles and the way that were thinking about our policies, are selling through peak and our work. Host we Westley Moore has beenr guest for the last two hours on book tv, we appreciate your time and all your calls and text. Weeknights this month repeating book tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan2. Tonight begin at eight easter we look at writing and publishing, first english professor Donna Harrington looks at the concept of Summer Reading that was popularized in the 19th century. And then laura miller, priscilla and brandon talk about the future of books and Book Publishing an air of technological and social change. Later author and essay roger discusses the importance of documenting everyday life during times of crisis enjoyable to be on cspan2. Here are some of the current vesely nonfiction books according to the wall street journal. Topping the list fox news host sean hannity argues that a Democratic Victory in 2020 would lead to socialism and economic strength and live free or die. After that and too much and never enough, president trumps niece mary trump takes a critical look at the president and his family. And poet surprised author calls what she calls a hidden system in the United States. That is followed by finding freedom, the reflection on the significance on prince harry in making merkels marriage. In the nonfiction books in the wall street journal, how to be an antiracist, where he argues to be antiracist and work towards an equitable society. Most of these authors have appeared on book tv, you can watch them online at booktv. Org. During a virtual author event in seattle, katie looked at how women experience and manage power. Heres a portion of the program. This is a photograph, a very famous photograph taken in 1950 by the photographer and as you can see, shes in her 40s, she is getting ready and shes in the bathroom and wearing very high heels, i dont know if you can see them, shes putting up her hair and somehow this photograph has always interest me in the contradictions of it. The fact that shes wearing heels but she is naked, she did not technically give her permission for this photograph but she did leave the door open with a strange man who was a photographer sitting right there and he says he heard the clicking and she was like naughty boy she did not care but what you see in the photo is her not caring that the world is seen her in this intimate moment and that is what projected their and the two things i inspire in this book from the photograph are the idea that maybe its okay to add a certain point in your life to show your self in the intimate bombarded moment like the real self, the real you and that was one thing about the photograph and the other thing that interests me is something that herself was really interested in which is kinda showing women in other contradictions, the weird jarring fact that shes putting her hair up and wearing heels and all the contradictions of who she is in that moment and shes a brilliant feminist intellectual and a woman getting ready in the mere and all of that contradiction that goes into being itself interested me and in this book, the second thing that inspired the book also related to something she said in one of her biographers asked her and was talking about her relationship with john paul. Those of you who dont know much about it, they had an open relationship and it was very tormented, she was extremely obsessed with him her whole life but they mutually have this open relationship but she basically wanted more of them then he wanted of her, it was an unequal relationship and she would write him in letters saying without you i am mutilated, she said that her relationship with him famously was her greatest achievement which irked a lot of people because she was such a Brilliant Writer and philosopher. So her biographer asked her, she said what do you say to feminist who say your relationship was at odds with the feminist theories and he looked at her and said i am sorry to disappoint the feminist but i just do not give a damn i live how i wanted and its too bad so many of them live in theory and not in real life. And i found that quote so interesting, maybe that concept of disappointing the feminist partly because i myself have disappointed the feminist for many decades. But also the idea of the gap between theory and life that you could be somebody who lives in subjugated yourself and your relationship to a man but also this incredibly powerful person in your work and in your life and in your intellectual achievements in that paradox is at the heart of this book which really upsets is a lot over the questions of how and i look at my own life very frankly in this book how sometimes you are strong and successful and sometimes you are not. To watch the rest of this discussion visit our website booktv. Org and search katie or the power of notebooks. Book tv on cspan2 this Labor Day Weekend, watch top nonfiction books and authors. Sunday at noon eastern on indepth, a twohour live conversation with author and faith and Freedom Coalition founder ralph read. And then at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on after words, the Senior Editor at large joe pollick on his book read november and his thoughts on the 2020 democratic primary election, he is interviewed by recent editor at large matt welch. On monday, labor day at 6 15 p. M. Eastern, judy gold with her book yes i can say that. Then at seven melissa and jennifer on the college omission scandal with their book unacceptable. At 830, wes moore with his five days and at 10 30 p. M. Retired admiral james on his book feeling true north, watch book tv this Labor Day Weekend on cspan2. And be sure to watch the all virtual 2020 National Book festival, Live Saturday september 26 on book tv you are watching book tv on cspan2, every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. An