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America and the reason the courts can get away with that and the policing can go on in that fashion is because unfortunately in america we don t listen to what poor people tell us and what communities of color tell us. that s got to change, and i would hope we won t continue to look at the doj report just about ferguson. we substitute whatever name of the town we live in and take seriously the allegations that are made there. when you read the report and listening to mr. harvey, this is stunning, really stunning. i want to ask you how do we get to this place where revenue generation trumps public safety? profit has always been more important than personhood in this country. the note of black people as commodities has been a key driver of revenue. all of this makes good economic sense. this is sound economic policy. we don t want to admit it we don t want to talk about it that way, but corporate metrics that ....
There to protect and serve. that is in many ways, the lesson of selma. the lesson of selma was precisely that you had had to use all available human resources, people power, to challenge authority at every level of society. i hope that the president himself steps outside of his official position and recognizes that can t be rhetoric about people being inspired. they could help to exacerbate inequality. they could be inspired to become lawyers and defend corporations that systemically in some cases create structures that are polluting environments or are not actually as we heard earlier from the center of democracy encouraging full employment. so there s a lot at stake in terms of the lessons that we take from this moment in selma. i also want to add that the story of selma as a metaphor for america does match ferguson as a metaphor for america because the systemic abuse that we see ....
Coming out of ferguson through the doj report is matched around the country, whether we look at the percentage of whites serving on police forces over african-american residents, whether we look at the racism that exists in the mouths of officers. 20 officers were disciplined for referring to black people as animals just a few years ago. we also know that mettic us are driving policing. so outside of miami, we know that people there, the entire population was essentially systemically subject to racial profiling just like in the case of new york. and as we ll learn later on reasons for ferguson police department. right now we re going back to selma, alabama and melissa harris-perry who joins us live from the staging ground for the 1965 march. she s joined by two pivotal figures, diane nash and bob moses. dorian bob moses here with ....
It s not that the police on their own unleashed anger and rage and violence. it s an entire system. the ferguson, you can only call it a scheme which was to raise additional revenue for the city by accessively ticketing citizens and targeting african-americans for that system. dorian i want to bring in you and the panel as well. thank you, melissa and joy. i want to take a step back and ask a big question that is why are the police at the heart of so many key moments in civil rights history? because they are on the front lines of racial and social control of america. by that i mean poor people. when we re talking about the african-american experience, there s no moment in u.s. history where police officers were not on the front lines of regulating freedom and opportunity in this country. absolute fact. let me connect you back to selma because it s fascinating in the report they u point out that not only do they have systemic bias ....
That s the context. yolanda, how was the movement trying to change the system that was just described and what was the fight against racial discrimination about in that moment? it was about a number of things. i think we often look back in the 60s and think it begin there is. but we can go back 150 years prior to that and african-americans have consistently been trying to basically shake loose their chains. so at the moment that we re seeing whether it s selma or ferguson, folks are trying to get free. e folks are trying to fundamentally be considered equal citizens of this country. i essentially see this as people trying to change not only legislation, voting rights but people are also working about a heart condition. you have to change how people are perceiveing other people. how they are looking at them, whether or not they can feel that they are, in fact, equal to them. so there s a heart condition that s a part of this change as well as the legislative and political piece. th ....