Minutes. So when that statement comes, well, of course bring it to you. And of course all of this ongoing in sydney as it comes up on 6 00 local time. This siege going on now for more than eight hours. Im john vause at the cnn center in atlanta. And im natalie allen. We have been with you for several hours, and we will push on as this situation in australia continues. It is breaking news of a siege there in a coffee shop that has been ongoing. A gunman Holding People hostage at the lindt coffee shop in downtown sydney. Sky news has just informed us that the gunman is calling himself the brother, and has contacted a Radio Station and two tv stations via hostages
with demands, a conversation with the Prime Minister and an isil flag. We do know five people have managed to get out. Three men were seen running out two hours ago. Two of them were customers. The man in the blue jacket, the man in the white zirs and a few moments later there was a man wearing an apron who appeared to be a work
fact what has happened. he s allowing people to post on facebook as well as twitter. is this adding up to a profile of a guy who isn t really in control of what s going on? caller: it doesn t seem very well planned. it depends on what his actual goal is, if it s to get attention for his cause then it s suck sided beyond his wildest dreams. if it s something else, he s got a problem. he didn t control the exit. he didn t control information in and out of the building. and he does sort of sound crazy to people who overhear him. it may be something drove him to do this without a lot of planning, without a lot of forethought. that s what you said earlier when you joined us, the whole thing by isis, if this is indeed related to that, which it does appear, is that they reach out to all kinds of people in the west and other countries to try to mobilize them and these
person. and that s not how things work. a tad defensive there. a tad defensive. and you know, this is very much like all of the fights that obama was having with immigration activists up until this time. and there was bad blood between those folks and this president, and i think what we see there is just indicative of some of that. whether or not it s lingering, whether or not this executive order and possible immigration reform will wash all that away is unclear. it was interesting because a lot of those activists have since got on board with the president, some of them travelled to nashville with him yesterday as he made the case for executive action. but ramos there s still a lingering tension between so let s close with this. rick santorum in an interview with the washington post makes clear he s running for the republican presidential nomination. a former pennsylvania senator. this time he says it will be different. he was the social conservative knt knd.
they continue to push forward with that message. is there a chance there could be repercussions, we know lebron has all of those endorsement deals is there a chance there could be a slippery loslope for the sponsors? who may say we re not going to endorse them any more? there s a bit of calculation here. think this in a lot of ways, when you look at the eric garner case, i think that has gotten support from whites and blacks. that was not necessarily just a racial issue. so i don t think so. quite frankly, you didn t see the same type of reaction from the michael brown case in terms of a lot of the athletes. so i do think from that standpoint, it was smart to go this route. because you even saw the commissioner. there hasn t been a lot of backlash, nor will there be because of the video and how graphic that case was for eric garner and his family. there is momentum. there is energy. how do we move on past that? the protests, the t-shirts, the
conversationsing central around the response to a tragedy. but why an officer can kill black people around the country, right? if you want to say excessive force is wrong and violence is wrong. you don t want to be the problem you re trying to expose. what s happening, was happening a lot what i see especially in ferguson, is it s almost as if i hit you, but the cameras ohm come on when you hit me back, right? that s what s been happening in ferguson. i was there early when a lot of the protests were simply people just wanting to express their moral outrage and kind of also come together to mourn and cops showed up in riot gear and shields, so you re telling me before you say any words, that you already think that i m going to be violent. that is provocation, right? that s a problematic dynamic. we ve seen play out. hopefully we start moving towards the progress part of this conversation. that s why we re here. cherelle, carmen, michael, thank