Im chuck todd. Joining me is tom brokaw april ryan a baltimore native. Kimberly stros elf the wall street journal and author and veteran and a baltimore native. Wes moore. Its meet the press. This is meet the press with chuck todd. Good morning. The mood in baltimore has markedly changed this weekend following a week of violence and unrest that culminated in the charging of Six Police Officers over the killing of freddie gray. Yesterdays protests were largely peaceful. There were a small number of arrests after dark. Some attempted to defy the curfew. Baltimore remains a deeply divided city. But this is a national problem, and americans are deeply pessimistic about the state of our cities. We have a brand new nbc news wall street journal poll out this morning. Look at this. 96 of folks surveyed expect more racial disturbances this summer and 54 believe the disturbances will occur near where they live in the closest big city to where they live. . A moment ill be joined by the mayor of baltimore. First a reminder of why her city became the focus of global attention. From protests in violence to celebration. In a city still under curfew and patrolled by the national guard. We have probable cause to file criminal charges. The manner of death deemed a homicide by the maryland state medical examiner. Six Police Officers three white and three black, were charged friday in the death of freddie gray. States attorney Marilyn Mosby accuses the officers of arresting gray illegally, ignoring his pleas for medical help and failing to put a seat belt on him. He suffered a severe and critical spinal injury being unrestrained inside of the wagon. The charges against the officers run the gamut from assault to false imprisonment involuntary manslaughter. All officers have been released on bail. There will be justice for mr. Gray and justice for his family and there will be justice for the people of baltimore. The police union is defending the officers for now and demanding that a special prosecutor take over the case. We believe that these officers will be vindicated as they have done nothing wrong. Im joined by the mayor of baltimore. Stephanie rawlings blake. Madam mayor, welcome back to meet the press. Good morning, chuck todd. Let me start with the curfew. Is it possible you will lift the curfew in the 24 hours . Chuck were looking at that. Im pleased for most part every day youve seen peaceful protests. But this is a decision that has to be made in collaboration with all of the Public Safety forces on the ground. Were going to make that decision. A state senator named bill ferguson, a baltimore democrat im sure you know him well. He said this about the curfew. Its having a negative impact on communities and businesses. The curfew has transformed into another issue. The community expressed its desire to move forward peacefully and the Public Sector should respond in kind. What do you say to him . We try to be responsive to all of the concerns. I heard from the community that says look weve had these peaceful protests. We want to be able to get back to normal. But the same way that you ramp up into a curfew and a state of emergency with an executive order from the governor you have to ramp down. With the same people who were in town last saturday that participated when the protests went from peaceful to destructive, they were back in town and there were significant Public Safety concerns. You still believe theres Public Safety concerns today and something youre worried about tomorrow . Im hopeful. What we saw last night was a peaceful demonstrations. It wasnt anything like what we had last sunday. Im taking a look and having conversations with all of our Public Safety partners. So we can get back to normal. Everyone wants to have that sense of peace and calm back in our city. So we can begin to heal. Thats going to be my focus this week. Do you regret using the phrase, space to destroy . I certainly think that it was taken out of context. Let me say this. Im from baltimore, my parents are from here im raising my daughter here. Im a public defender. As a City Council Person as mayor, ive worked to strengthen my city. We fought to get those stores in our community. I would never condone rioting. I dont just period. I would never condone it. You wish you didnt use that phrase . I certainly used the wrong phrase to talk about what was clear that there were people who took advantage of the people demonstrators First Amendment rights and they used it to destroy our city. I dont condone it and well make sure that those individuals are held accountable. I guess, youve said that the other day. Do you have a task force thats actually going to monitor, you said theres all this videotape of people that looted. You are going to hold them accountable. Is that the plan . Youre going to have people go through videotapes and arrest these people . Absolutely. Weve already started identifying people. Were working with the stores that have videotapes themselves the mall that has videotapes. We have a lot of evidence that well be looking through. Ill say that were looking forward to working with the other Public Safety partners that have better facial Recognition Technology to quickly identify these individuals and bring them to justice. I do not condone the type of violence and destruction that we saw in our city. Im going to make sure that theyre brought to justice. The people in the communities are hurting because of the destruction that was done. I am doing it for our city and in their name to bring peace and calm and justice for those community members. You referenced one of the businesses that made it into one of these communities. It was very important in particular cvs. I was struck by something that was said by one of the protest organizers. Kwame rose. Its in the Baltimore Sun. Had it not been for the youth burning that cvs, we would not have had charges yesterday. Hes referring to the surprise to a lot of people that you were prepared and state attorney was prepared to bring charges against those Police Officers. But is this protestter right . Without the burning of a cvs, we wouldnt have seen charges friday against those officers . I think that statement is totally misguided and untrue. I pledge to do everything that i could to have a thorough and transparent investigation and give all of that information to the states attorney so she could do her investigation and make charges. We saw that is exactly what happened. What happened with the rioting and the destruction of cvs was senseless. Its destroying neighborhoods and making difficult for our seniors to get their medicine and get food. Now were working to repair that damage that was done. We have stations that are giving out food. We have working with the Health Department to get people connected their prescriptions. Thats the result of the cvs burning, not the charges that were brought. Your leadership has been critiqued shall we say over the last week. Including your pastor. Reverend todd yuri. He said this of your church. Some folks had the impression that the mayor has been indifferent and aloof and that the governor referring to larry hogan has been more active coming in to save baltimore from its inclination to implode. What do you say to your pastor to that sort of characterization . You know, i think its everyone has their opinion. Thats really not my focus. As a leader im focused on bringing us through this crisis. You have to remember chuck, when i came into office, it was a we were already the face of a national scandal. Thats how i got into office. I know how to lead our city through tough times. Thats what im going to do again. Im going to focus on healing our city and making the decisions that i need to make in order to get us forward and get us through this unfortunate, unfortunate crisis. How should you be judged . I dont think any elected officer can say how can you be judged . Im judged on what weve done right . We have a strong track record in baltimore of confronting the issue. You cannot heal until you acknowledge that theres a problem. Weve been talking i talked on your show about the fact that in baltimore, were deal with reforming our police department. I acknowledge that we have work to do. Thats why weve instituted Police Brutality reforms, thats why i asked the department of justice to come in and work with us in a collaborative fashion to reform our police department. We have a lot more work to do but it starts with ak nonlingcknowledging the problem. I am a leader willing to acknowledge we have the problem and fix it. Thank you for your time this morning. Thanks for coming back on meet the press. We turn to another former mayor of baltimore. Heres a sample of what some baltimore residents told us needs to be done to fix the city. Focus on education. Thats why youre seeing as many people, young black boys on the streets today, they have lack of education. Pretty much charging them to do anything but do nothing else but on the street. Some have to come back to economic development, Human Development and community development. My son is 3 years old. Thats all i wanted to watch was the news. He didnt want to watch policeman. Hes scared of the police. Dont feel like nobody in politics has our back. We do what we do and look at the attention we got. Bault who in the cornerstone for the Police Brutality. The politicians the Police Officers the clergy in baltimore, they cant address the problem because they havent identified it. You cant identify or find results during history that you dont know about. As soon as we can fix communication and get everybody on one accord then youll see progress. Joined by the former mayor and former governor omalley. Thank you, chuck. Good to be with you. I want to pick up on the last comment. He said politicians wont have the answers because they cant agree on the problem. What do you think the problem is . The problem is weve built an economy leaving whole parts of baltimore, philadelphia and new york so many citizens behind. A lot of people i was giving out food there at st. Peter clay bers in the aftermath of this unrest. There are people in whole parts of our cities being totally left behind and disregarded. Theyre unheard and told theyre unneeded by this economy. That extreme poverty breeds conditions for extreme violence. People are frustrated and angry. They feel like people arent listening. 1999 Martin Omalley said this when you were running for mayor. As much as wed like to think poverty is the cause of crime crime is also the cause of poverty. People are talking about your focus on more policing to deal with the crime issue. You talked about the drug issue back then. Looking back what would do you differently . Well, looking back i mean the fact of the matter was, in 1999 the main issue Holding Baltimore back was the fact that we had allowed ourselves to be the most violent, addicted and abandoned city in america. We had a conversation through a long hot campaign about not only how to improve policing in baltimore but how to improve how we train and police the police. So we followed through on that pledge. I was elected with 91 of the vote of my neighbors. So that was a majority africanamerican city. We greatly improved drug treatment and thanks to the work thats continued to this day under Stephanie Rawlings blake. Weve cut crime. This is a heartbreaking setback for baltimore. Theres a big bipartisan focus on criminal justice reform. It has to to with nonviolent criminals, people arrested thrown into jail on drug issues. That wasnt the focus in 1999. That wasnt the focus in the 90s when the policing thats the part i wonder if we got it wrong. Did we get it wrong then . We didnt get it wrong then. But we have yet to get it right. Ive sprent my life on criminal justice issues. My first job was a prosecutor on the west side place with images from the last sad several days. In our state, we were able to reduce our incarceration rate to 20year lows and recidivism by 15 and at the same time reduce Violent Crime down to 35year lows. I signed legislation to decriminalize Marijuana Possession and other minor charges. I signed legislation to restore voting rights. This is constant work chuck. It is not done but were getting smarter and better every day at this. We still have a lot of work to do. I want you to respond to something Speaker Boehner said to me about blame when it comes to americas inner cities. Take a listen. Chuck what we have here is 50 years of liberal policies that have not worked. To help the very people that we want to help. And this mornings Baltimore Sun has this headline. Why couldnt 130 million transform one of baltimores poorest places. 100 million was poured into this community over the last 20 years. Are we not spending the money correctly . What are we getting wrong here . Money has been there. What are we getting wrong here . We havent had an agenda weve had money but no agenda. We havent had an agenda since jimmy carter, in that era. Weve left cities to fend for themselves. You know what because of dedication of mayors cities have been coming back. In our city, we see more younger people moving back to the city than we have in decades. Its actually one of the higher numbers of any city in america. The problems in our economy, the way we ship jobs and profits broad, the way we fail to invest in our infrastructure and fail to invest in american cities, we are creating the conditions. Please Speaker Boehner and his crocodile tears about the 130 million, that is a spit in the bucket compared to what we need to do as a nation to rebuild our country and americas cities are the heart of our country. We need an agenda for american cities. We need to stop ignoring especially people of color and act like theyre disposable citizens in this nation. Thats not how the economy is supposed to work or the country. Do you think you can still run on your record, mayor of baltimore and governor. Youre getting a lot of scrutiny now. Do you think this is a positive thing that voters will look at and say Martin Omalley i did not dedicate my life to make baltimore more safer and just place because it was easy. I am more motivated now to what needs to be healed and fixed. This should be a wakeup call. It should be a wakeup call for the entire country. The protests that happened in new york and philadelphia and other cities, we have deep problems as a country. We need deeper understanding if were going to give our children a better future. This sounds like it has to be central. It has to be central. I wouldnt think of announcing anyplace else. This has been a setback. But our story is not over. Were not defeated as a city and not about to throw in the towel on our country. Thank you for your time. 15 years ago assistant secretary of labor Daniel Patrick moynahan who became a u. S. Senator from new york wrote a controversial report at the time. It was diagnosed the social and economic disparities between white and black americans. He appeared on december 12th 1965 on meet the press to defend the report. The family is a good place to see the results of unemployment. The results of discrimination, results of bad housing poor education. Five decades later, the problems of inequality and poverty are worse in many areas. 50 years ago, a third of africanamerican children lived with only one parent or none. Nearly three times the number of children overall at the time. That number is over 60 . In baltimore, by the way, 62 of children live in single parent homes. In 1965 the unemployment was nearly double the national average. In 2015 the situation is exactly the same. Twice the national average. In baltimore, 59 of black men between ages of 25 and 54 are working. Compared with 79 of white men. Child poverty rates for africanamerican children have gone down since the 60s. But there are twice as many africanAmerican Kids that continue to live in poverty as children overall. Tom brokaw when i reread this report, you sit there and say, number one, pat moynahan was presh yent and number two, some things never changed. I remember when that report came out and we had another report talking about a nation separate and unequal in this country. Moynahan was attacked from the left vilified for his candid and honest description of what was going on in the inner city. What was going on in the inner city by the way, at the same time a number of black families were getting out and getting education. Theyve not gone back. We have way too much crime way too much unemployment substandard education and very little hope. If we had seized that moment across the country and if black leaders, highprofile have said unfortunately, it breaks my heart, pat moynahan is right and we have to do something about it. I agree with the governor this is a time for us to have a Marshall Plan if you will for cities. I would appoint pat moynahan was basically calling for that 50 years ago saying thats what the federal government should be doing and it didnt do it. Im in agreement that. I think its more of a holistic approach. I believe that the absence of a father the breakdown of the family is part of the issue. But theres a lot more. Weve got issues with police and we also ive been covering the white house for 18 years. Under democratic president s and republican president. Ive seen whenever theres a budget crunch or tightness, they want to go in after programs that affect the communities. There are always people in the country or anywhere in the world that fall through the cracks. We have to come at this as an approach of a holistic approach. Not just pointing fingers at the father and the police. Its a holistic approach. Look at the old blueprint of the civil rights movement. The most successful movement in this country. What are black people asking for in the inner cities . Its not about what is given to us, what were asking for as a group, as a people. One of the conclusions, he was struggling moynahan coming to saying what is the answer here. He said this in the report. Three centuries of injustice have brought about, this is at th