Baltimore uprising following the death of freddie gray he is interviewed by the most senior fellow heather mcgee. Hi, how are you . I am good and so happy to see im so grateful youre doing this. It is so great to give our audience the opportunity to get to know bestselling author, wes moore author of i am wes moore and now a new book that could not have been more timely. You cowrote the book i would say with erica greene and warren winning record who covered education for the New York Times in baltimore reported that was part of the team for its breaking News Coverage of the death of freddie gray and those events that followed. This book is a beautiful way to understand what happened to freddie gray, what has happened to baltimore, what happens in black and white america. How the lives that connect us and the un truth and a half spoken truth and the incomplete stories stop us from truly being one community. And most importantly, five days as a way to think about uprising and reckonings in america and so i am really pleased to be able to have this conversation with you. Thank you. Lets start by talking about the young man whose life was taken from us, freddie gray. The book begins the entry points is your attending the funeral of freddie gray and then leaving the funeral and seeing all the different parts of Baltimore Society go back to their corners but you want to go and knit the thread between and among them to paint a story that would reflect the entirety of whats going on in baltimore in the country. Could you talk a little bit about who freddie gray was and why his death rocked the city and the nation we also knew the names of anthony anderson, chris brown, we knew the name tyrone west, all similar circumstances, similar situations, africanamerican men contacted police, dead. So with freddie, i think that was interesting, that fascinated me was we never heard about freddie, for many in baltimore it was like we know the story. This is a long line of this and a long thread and it continues. There was Something Different about freddie that just captured not even the citys attention but the worlds attention. This 25yearold young man who loses his life simply by having an interaction with police. There are a couple of things that struck me about why that moment, there was Something Different about freddie. One was all the other things, freddie was the first one caught on camera so there is an importance to that and the idea, what did you do to justify an argument . There is footage. I know you must have said something incorrect or i know at some time you related the situation and correct when we are watching the officers put him in handcuffs and then watch him. The other thing was the appreciation all of us have for a group called black lives matter. I think about how is ago when black lives matter was first started by three black women, they started black lives matter. When opal and alisha come up and say a statement that seems like it is basic but it causes an uproar about lack lives matter but the reason it became important in the case of freddies black lives matter in a relative short period of time, 2 now an active mobile organization that can move and disperse and activate quickly when these things happen around the country. Theres a little before that, there was Michael Brown and movement from ferguson and quickly mobilize. This drove a level of attention that some of the other incidences we have seen in baltimore, it did not drive so i remember attending freddies funeral and going to the funeral in the morning and it was that evening or the afternoon when everything jumped off and i attended the funeral in the morning and was looking around the church and looking at the fact, when i was there hundred 22000, everybody showed up to freddies funeral. It is the first funeral i attended where i didnt know the person and that really struck me because it was one of these things right felt like in many ways, that was part of the problem. One of the things that made me truly understand my own complicity in all of this and youre looking around the church in europe like, are any of us prepared to do what it would take to make sure Something Likely are watching right now doesnt happen again . I also learned more about the life we asked freddie to live and thats where i knew and decided, i want to tell this story. I want to do it through the eyes of the other individual people, i want to capture in my own mind, process this moment we find ourselves in and why it matters and why it should matter on a deeper level. So tell me about those people you decided to tell the story through, eight different people, tell me about some of them. If baltimore is nothing else, its characters. I found myself, youre talking to all these people from all these places and everybody had ideas. Everybody had thoughts, their own hypothesis and conspiracy theories so one of the toughest parts of the books was going through and identifying who are the stories want to tell out of the dozens of people youre talking to. Which makes the cut . Initially, it was more later on but i wanted to try to include names of folks who represented different perspectives. The idea of no matter where you sit, theres someone in the book who probably will resonate with you. Theres probably someone in the book who you vehemently disagree with. Thats what i wanted to explain in that situation so as i was going through, i knew you cannot tell a story about the history of policing in baltimore without including the name jones in it. A woman whose brother, two years before freddie gray died in police custody. Every wednesday, yesterday, i participated in the 360th, last wednesday for every wednesday, she holds a protest. Demanding accountability for her brother. Rain, sleet, smoke, virtual, she has not missed a wednesday. She found herself in the middle because freddies family knew about her, asked her to help and lead rallies and that kind of stuff which she was humbled to do but at the same time, she was like i love baltimore is standing up but where was this when my brother was killed . I knew i wanted to profile a guy named mark who is a police major and who grew up in baltimore, not one of the highest ranking africanamerican officers the Baltimore Police force and found himself leaving the area where everything jumped off at and one of the fascinating things, had a conversation with him, he said to me i know for a fact that none of my colleagues woke up that morning with homicide on the mind but i also know those kids in west baltimore, i understand why they dont believe me. So he found himself battling throughout these days of justifying both sides in a fascinating way which i loved exploring his story. Williams who runs a spot called shake and bake and the thing i loved about anthony and his story, he would only hire kids with a record. Kids with tattoos, the kids who everyone else will look at and say this is probably not the right thing for you and i loved telling his story about how his interpretation on how it happened because his story was in the middle of everything that jumped off. Seeing how both response to shake and bake in his response to the uprising, i found it fascinating. People like john angelos, the son of a founder, one of the people who made the final decisions to play baseball because the city was in the middle of the state of emergency but he wanted the world to see it and what happens when racial divides essentially explode and implode within a city. All these characters, greg butler, a basketball star turned protester, on the cover of the times magazine with a gas mask, brought him from being on the top basketball players in the city to be person who says let it all down so i wanted to explore it through all these different lenses to help people understand and see a level of complexity of the situation, the level of seriousness and for each and every one, these ramp issues of race and poverty, but shows all throughout this entire scene and it showed itself because we had to wrestle with our history and when we dont, these things continue to explode themselves in different ways. I want to get to the current moment but i want to say a bit in 2015, in those five days that you take the title of the book, five days, a reckoning of american cities, you are a proud son in baltimore, youve gone on to being a bestselling author and now you are the ceo, anti poverty organizations in the foundation, what did the time you spent learning about these five days and baltimore in the five now years since then, what did you learn . What changed your perspective . One of the things that i, that really struck me was the natural unfairness of freddies life. And how we spent so much time at the largest society talking about what happened in his death. Which we should have. We spent a lot of time talking about the fact that despite he is a young man who had a broken vertebrae and crunch question larynx, theres got to be a single officer convicted for his crime. Nobody has been held responsible for what happened. The thing that really hit me, even the way i think about the work we do, i think about that week freddie was in a coma and the horror was arguably, it might have been one of the most peaceful weeks of his life. At that time, he was surrounded by doctors and nurses. By then, he was surrounded by lawyers and activists, surrounded by people who knew his name, people who cared if he lived or died. I cant argue for a single week in the 25 years prior where that was the case. Where he had a city rooting for him. I think about when you think about the horror of what those 25 years, the horror of his introduction, the fact that every single turn, the world was screaming at him, what they felt about him. And how damning those 25 years were. Theres a part ill read from quick, maybe whats one part of the book that hits you . Say the one part that hits me every single time is a simple timeline of reddys life. Understanding from the time is introduced into the world, how the world viewed and treated him. Ill read this part, 1989, giving birth to twins, a boy and a girl. The twins are born two months premature. Early 20s, when she had the twins, gloria had never attended high school. She could not read nor write and struggled with heroin addiction. Underway, the twin sister spent her first month in the hospital. After five months, gloria brings the twins back to the housing projects in west baltimore. 1992. Freddie and his family moved to 15, west baltimore. The house rents for 300 a month. In 2009, 480 homes like it would remain in a civil suit regarding suit with lead paint. By age two, freddie and his twin sister have elevated levels of lead in their blood and have lasting brain damage. They lived there until the twins are six years old. 1995, freddie starts school in chester. Because of the lead poisoning, freddies behavior poses considerable challenges to the schools teachers, statistically, among the least experience and least equipped cities in Baltimore City. Special education classes which he would never leave. By fifth grade, freddie was fourth grades behind in reading. Driven out of the classroom by intellectual disabilitys, he spent his early years in nearby recreation centers. 1998, freddie spent more and more time out of the classroom, expanding increasingly long stretches out of school, he started to migrate to the corners and deals drugs, at home, his stepfather leaves for drug rehab because of heroin addiction. Without his income, freddies home expenses long stretches without electricity or running water. Freddies godmother takes freddie to church. Volunteers delivering meals to Senior Citizens and washing cars. 2008, Baltimore City, Public Schools record his attendance from school. Hes 18, is in the tenth grade. In 2009, freddies arrested and sentenced four years prison for two counts of drug possession with intent to distribute, hes paroled and back on the street 2011. 2013, arrested again for drug possession and dispersion. Shortly after, his halfbrother, 31 years old, gunned down near the harbor in downtown baltimore. That brings us to april 12, 2015 when he makes eye contact with police where he is placed under arrest by age 59 and by 926, the Fire Department responded to a call for paramedics to support an unconscious mail at the police station. April 14, freddie and the girls surgery, trauma, determined freddie has three broken vertebrae in april 15, he remains in, april 18, word spreads about happened to him and protests begin. April 19, 2015, 7 00 a. M. , freddie is declared dead. Twentyfive years. It haunts me because we spent so much time going over and thinking about justice for freddie. What justice for freddie means. It was this process that i know that i take away the justice for freddie is not just what happens to those six officers. Just as for freddie is making sure provided an environment where his wife meant something. Where society actually treat his life like it meant something. Is started in the womb. Thats exactly right. Financial support during treatment. Thats exactly right and not treating and addiction like its something criminalized which we repeatedly do. We have seen it, its not just this, in maryland, Baltimore City has more overdoses than the entire state of maryland combined. Part of it is we still have yet to get to where we can treat addiction, which is an illness, its an illness. I know one of my dearest friends lost his battle about a year ago now. He fought and repeatedly, we werent able to get the treatment for him which would have allowed him to go out of state to a better facility because of the fact that his addiction was criminalized before so he couldnt leave the state. Im like, why are we doing this . Is is something where his mother spent her entire life in poverty. We have this situation where part of the reason, its not even just that its there, it is permissible. Its sticky. It the fact that if a child, particularly a black child is born into poverty, their probability of dying are so monumental. Thats something i think we, as a society have to take a real account for because these are issues we have get to deal with, weve made a devils bargain about how much pain we are willing to tolerate and other people. Do a beautiful job of taking the individuals story and zooming out and tracing where the public decision and decisions of the powerful have shaped the individuals life. Thats so much for the conceit of your first book, i wonder, what changed for those who are paying attention right now and who no, whats different about writing this book . Thats a great question. I think i was much more reluctant to tell that story. In part because it was a deeply personal story, even more than the story of baltimore. I had known west for years and one of my dear friends, Terry Williams who is an author and book writer of a book called black pain and she said, she would ask me about west, west . I would give her the west update. At that time, i first met him i think when he was in year two or three. She said i was like, i think you should write about this. As a story to be told about these guys. My reaction was no and i said i dont want to dig that deep into this is life. She was like, have lunch with a friend of mine. Having the conversation and i think there is a story here. I went back and talked to him about it. I said ive been approached about writing a story about this and without hesitation, he said you should do it. When i said that, i said why . I said ive wasted every opportunity ive had and he said if you can do something to help people understand the consequences for their decisions but also do something to help people understand these decisions are being made, then you should do it. The became fire and focus behind it but it was a very reluctant process for all the reasons i mentioned. For this one, it was different. With this one, it was different because i felt like the idea of the context around everything taking place here, we cannot miss this. We cannot miss the context of what was being said and what was being expressed during those five days thats why i wanted to include some of the stories and i knew i need to get a journalistic approach, so i approached erica, ive always respected her work night remember a conversation with h her, which i thought was powerful and was one of the ones where kids were yelling at the police. It was what they were yelling that was fascinating. They were yelling justice for freddie, freddie wasnt even mentioned. They were yelling like, this is for my uncle buck. This is for the time you put your hands on my mother. It was like it was a time when you saw the city and particularly the citys children standing up for the first time it was about much more than just what was happening for what happened to freddie. Freddie symbolized something figure and there were bigger problems existing within our community so as those days went by, early on, thats what i thought i was more hesitant to do the other was more than i was for this story. Also, i want people to understand this story is about how can we deal with not just in the policing or brutalization of black baltimore. The brutalization of black baltimore is not just for the police. Its every aspect of our society which has had a play in the brutalization of black baltimore, the history of red light. The brutalization of black baltimore under discriminatory housing policies, and equitable policies of the g. I. Bill, all of it. Brutalization of black baltimore. I wanted to be able to tell that story in the context of this narrative of this moment that captured all of our attention for this moment also, demonstrating the fact that it was a Long Time Coming with think about the measures of inequity that existed in the city. So now we are in this moment, you and i are talking in late june, 2020, figure god can just have back. [laughter] seriously. We are in a moment of profound black pain and grief where we have lost over 100,000 people, disproportionally light to preventable and manageable pandemic, tens of thousands of clients need to be because our government betrayed us. The National Emergency around it from washington seemed to disappear as soon as it was clear it was bearing the brunt of this disease and upon the back of that will in the pandemic, we had repeated witnesses on camera, hunting, the discrimination and then the murder of black people christian trooper, ahmaud arbery, george floyd, another we didnt see but we can close our eyes and imagine. An emergency medical technician flying in your bed and having an uniformed Plainclothes Police knock on your door and start firing and kill you. Ill be at the upon atrocity that fundamentally changed the country right now and what youve seen is still now thr