Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. For the past week, there have been protests,
Speaker 1: mass demonstrations, rallies, and looting all around the country. All
Speaker 1: of this protest began in an immediate sense with the
Speaker 1: death of an African American man, George Floyd, whose last
Speaker 1: moments were captured on video. He was being held down
Speaker 1: by a white police officer who was arresting him. The
Speaker 1: officer's knee was on his neck. Here to discuss policing
Speaker 1: civil rights and what can be done to improve the
Speaker 1: dire situation we're in is Venita Gupta. She's the president
Speaker 1: of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which
Speaker 1: is the country's largest civil rights coalition. Under the Obama administration,
Speaker 1: she was the acting Assistant Attorney General running the US
Speaker 1: Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. That means she was
Speaker 1: the chief civil rights prosecutor in the United States. Before that,
Speaker 1: she worked at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund
Speaker 1: and at the ACLU. Venita, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining me. This is an extraordinary and extraordinarily upsetting time
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, and I just want to
Speaker 1: start by asking you, how is it that after years
Speaker 1: of consciousness raising by Black Lives Matter and other organizations,
Speaker 1: we're still in a situation where an event like the
Speaker 1: tragic death of George Floyd in Minnesota can trigger circumstances
Speaker 1: like brand Well, I think we as a country have
Speaker 1: been saddled with the problem of police violence and state
Speaker 1: violence against black communities in particular since our funding. And
Speaker 1: while one can argue that there's been progress in certain places,
Speaker 1: these are issues that are pretty confounding for the country.
Speaker 1: And you look at that video of mister Floyd on
Speaker 1: the ground with four officers on him, one of them
Speaker 1: on his neck, you know, where witnesses and community members
Speaker 1: are pleading for the officer to get off of him
Speaker 1: and the like. There's just no way to look at
Speaker 1: that and not be profoundly outrage And that's the pain
Speaker 1: that you're seeing out lying on the street. And we
Speaker 1: have we don't have perfect police departments, so we still
Speaker 1: have really deep problems of systemic racism in our justice
Speaker 1: system in policing that we have not yet addressed. And
Speaker 1: there are a number of reasons for this, but there's
Speaker 1: no question that policing, in racial justice, in public safety
Speaker 1: remain really tense issues that we often just kind of
Speaker 1: push under the rug, and then they flare up when
Speaker 1: you have incidents like mister Floyd's, because they resonate in
Speaker 1: so many communities as to the spear for the kind
Speaker 1: of harassment or problematic broken relationships that exist in too
Speaker 1: many communities. With regards to law enforcement, the Civil Rights
Speaker 1: Division of the Department of Justice, which you ran during
Speaker 1: a chunk of the Obama administration, of course, has the
Speaker 1: legal authority to come in and prosecute when police go
Speaker 1: too far. What about the systematic approaches to trying to
Speaker 1: solve what you were describing as a systemic problem. What
Speaker 1: efforts did you make, you and your teammate during the
Speaker 1: Obama administration of the police brutality question more generally, and
Speaker 1: then I'll ask you what became of those efforts. So
Speaker 1: in the Obama Justice Department, there was a real understanding
Speaker 1: that Congress gave the Justice Department in nineteen ninety four
Speaker 1: the authority to investigate police departments for systemic misconduct. This
Speaker 1: came out of the Broadney King beating in in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and an investigation of the LAPD and this jurisdiction
Speaker 1: has been always judiciously used, but it was one that
Speaker 1: the Obama Justice Department took seriously open twenty five investigations
Speaker 1: into major police departments. At the time that the end
Speaker 1: of the administration ruled around, we had consent decrees in
Speaker 1: fifteen cities across the country, and these consent decrees had
Speaker 1: really become the basis for our best practices for triggering
Speaker 1: really hard conversations in law enforcement. But as you know,
Speaker 1: I came into the Justice Department just weeks after Michael
Speaker 1: Brown had been killed in Ferguson, and the country was
Speaker 1: ablaze quite literally around the same questions that the country's
Speaker 1: contending with right now. And we had a president who
Speaker 1: in his final years really dug in on race and
Speaker 1: justice and policing in a way that I think was
Speaker 1: pretty stark, and understood how important it was for people
Speaker 1: to have for communities of cloud, for black communities to
Speaker 1: have some faith in the legal system as providing justice.
Speaker 1: But we needed There's been a lot of focus on
Speaker 1: the fact that there's been two little criminal accountability of
Speaker 1: officers when they engage in this misconduct. But I've always
Speaker 1: thought that the criminal accountability, while absolutely crucial to giving
Speaker 1: people faith in the legal system, is not sufficient, and
Speaker 1: that these pattern and practice investigations are really aimed at
Speaker 1: getting at systemic, entrenched problems and police departments that can't
Speaker 1: be fixed overnight or with a single criminal prosecution. And
Speaker 1: so we did these investigations, and we had these consent
Speaker 1: decrees around the country. It was pretty obvious when when
Speaker 1: President Trump nominated Jeff Sessions to head up the Justice
Speaker 1: Department's Attorney General the direction that all of this would go,
Speaker 1: which was South Attorney General Sessions from a minute he
Speaker 1: came in, actually even where he was confirmed, trying to
Speaker 1: get the Justice Department out of a very intense negotiation
Speaker 1: for a Baltimore consent decree. And we were in this
Speaker 1: strange position in February of twenty seventeen where the Justice
Speaker 1: Department was trying to get out of this consent decree
Speaker 1: and arguing federalism to the federal court in Baltimore and
Speaker 1: the police commissioner and mayor in Baltimore. We're saying, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we need this consent decree to be able to rebuild
Speaker 1: trust in the city of Baltimore. And they have systematically
Speaker 1: both under Sessions and Bar stematically gutted the work of
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Division, dismantling police reform efforts, halting to
Speaker 1: almost a complete halt except in one tiny investigation, but
Speaker 1: halting all police investigations. They gutted. Jeff Sessions on his
Speaker 1: way out of his firing, left a memo behind basically
Speaker 1: making it almost impossible for the Civil Rights Division to
Speaker 1: to get consent decrees against local jurisdictions. And so we've
Speaker 1: had a series of all of these, the kind of
Speaker 1: gutting of this work, coupled with rhetoric and a bully
Speaker 1: pulpit that is from the President to Sessions and bar
Speaker 1: giving speeches that basically, you know, really foster not only
Speaker 1: in US versus them mentality, But I would go so
Speaker 1: far as to say, even you know, Trump in twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen encouraging police violence of suspects and the like. And
Speaker 1: this is a very very dangerous place for the country
Speaker 1: to be in in this moment. Can we drill down
Speaker 1: into what a best practices consent to create ought to
Speaker 1: look like, because I mean, some of those do remain
Speaker 1: in place, and they also raise at least of possibility
Speaker 1: of providing a model for what ought to be done
Speaker 1: going forward. It's not going to come out of this
Speaker 1: Department of Justice, obviously, but there will be other administrations,
Speaker 1: one hopes, in the future. So what is the content
Speaker 1: in your you of best practices? What should departments do
Speaker 1: when they don't want to have events like this take place? Well,
Speaker 1: I the consent decrease all look very different from each other.
Speaker 1: They're really important, rich documents, but they look different from
Speaker 1: each other because policing is inherently local. We have eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand police departments in this country, and so policing in
Speaker 1: this country is local, but it is bound by the constitution.
Speaker 1: And these consent decrease covered topics like supervision systems, accountability systems,
Speaker 1: efforts to stop racially biased policing through changing policies and
Speaker 1: training around stop and searches, arrests practices, looking at officer
Speaker 1: wellness to deal with stress on the job that can
Speaker 1: create very bad conditions for certain officers on the beat,
Speaker 1: looking at problems with excessive use of force in putting
Speaker 1: in de escalation policies, time communication, space mechanisms to de escalate,
Speaker 1: and the like. But every one of these looks different
Speaker 1: because they are fueled by they don't come about until
Speaker 1: the Justice Department has engaged in intense investigation, looking at
Speaker 1: every record, interviewing hundreds and hundreds of police officers, community activists,
Speaker 1: leaders people, residents that really describe what is happening in
Speaker 1: the policing in that particular city, and then coming up
Speaker 1: with solutions tailored to that city. The Leadership Conference last
Speaker 1: year actually issued a report called the New Era of
Speaker 1: Public Safety that aggregated a lot of the best practices
Speaker 1: in that document, in consent decrees, in DOJ research, in
Speaker 1: research from the International Association Chiefs of Police and civil
Speaker 1: rights organizations in order to really provide communities on the
Speaker 1: ground with the kinds of tools and best practices learnings
Speaker 1: that came from these consent decrees, in part because the
Speaker 1: Justice Department has literally walked away from this work, and
Speaker 1: so we wanted to be able to provide those tools.
Speaker 1: But this is some of the flavor of what is
Speaker 1: in any particular consent decree, And just by example, with Chicago,
Speaker 1: Chicago Police Department long and storing history of systemic misconduct,
Speaker 1: we really went deep into the problems of accountability, the
Speaker 1: lack of accountability systems, lack of supervisory consistency, the lack
Speaker 1: of adequate training, and accountability on use of force and
Speaker 1: accessive use of force. So that's just to give you
Speaker 1: some examples. Veneda, when I hear you say that there
Speaker 1: are eighteen thousand police departments in the United States and
Speaker 1: that there were fifteen consent decrees put in place by
Speaker 1: the Obama administration, of the enormous disparity in those numbers
Speaker 1: really makes me think the solution can't be the kind
Speaker 1: of nuanced, case by case, individually negotiated agreement then approved
Speaker 1: by a court, which is a consent decree. There if
Speaker 1: we really are serious about a systemic problem, it needs
Speaker 1: to be addressed systematically. So I want to ask you,
Speaker 1: imagine a democratic Congress, imagine a democratic president and a
Speaker 1: will to make fundamental change At the national level. Could
Speaker 1: there be federal legislation that would operate wholesale, not just retail,
Speaker 1: that would, through let's say conditioning receipt of federal funds
Speaker 1: on reorganization, lead to the kinds of changes in supervision, accountability,
Speaker 1: de escalation, and so forth at a national level. Is
Speaker 1: that something that's doable, is it something that's desirable? And
Speaker 1: what would it look like if so? Yeah, So before
Speaker 1: I want to answer this question, but I want to
Speaker 1: it's really important to mention that the patter and practice
Speaker 1: tool that the Justice Department has is just one tool
Speaker 1: of many that it has to incentivize reform. The Justice
Speaker 1: Department uses has a Cops Office, a Community Oriented Policing
Speaker 1: Services Office that has a host of different programs, Technical Assistance,
Speaker 1: Collaborative reform. These were programs that back the Obama administration
Speaker 1: were well funded and really helped push departments at a
Speaker 1: much greater scale to engage in reform. They produced research
Speaker 1: that was out for the field, convening authority with chiefs
Speaker 1: from around the country that would come together to talk
Speaker 1: through best practices and what they were doing. But also
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of Ferguson, President Obama are recognizing, you know,
Speaker 1: just how widespread this problem is and how many police
Speaker 1: departments there are launched the twenty first Century Policing Task
Speaker 1: Force that over the course of three months came up
Speaker 1: with best practices and then can started to convene twenty
Speaker 1: thirty forty chiefs once a week for the next several
Speaker 1: years to literally dig in on this report and engage
Speaker 1: how these chiefs were actually implementing the outcomes and best
Speaker 1: practices in this report. And so it is not one
Speaker 1: tool or tactic that is going to win the day.
Speaker 1: You have to have sustained leadership that is pushing on
Speaker 1: this in a way that obviously wet now, but if
Speaker 1: you look at this, this is part of what is needed.
Speaker 1: The Justice Department is going to need. A new Justice
Speaker 1: Department will need to reinvigorate all of these tools, but
Speaker 1: I also think needs to go beyond what it already exists.
Speaker 1: So we need to have a justice department that reinvigorates
Speaker 1: the community relations service that played such a profound role
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight. In the late sixties, it's been
Speaker 1: really gutted, but in maintaining and building relationships locally on
Speaker 1: the ground when unrest breaks through. We need to have laws,
Speaker 1: federal laws that are actually in place that provide for
Speaker 1: minimum national use of force standards. We need a national
Speaker 1: Registry of Police and miss conducts in a national registry
Speaker 1: that documents officers that have been fired for disciplinary reasons
Speaker 1: or excessive use of force, so that these officers are
Speaker 1: just not cycling around between department to department getting hired
Speaker 1: despite their own records in law enforcement. We need to
Speaker 1: expand the federal charging options. This is you know, it
Speaker 1: used to be a controversial topic, but I just don't
Speaker 1: see how we can proceed and give the It is
Speaker 1: the fact that the Justice Department and federal prosecutors have
Speaker 1: one statute with the highest criminal intense standard in it
Speaker 1: in order to prosecute officers who engage in this conduct.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make sense and it has let It is
Speaker 1: meant that the Justice Department has had to decline prosecution
Speaker 1: in cases that they shouldn't have had to given um,
Speaker 1: given kind of how reckless the behavior was. So right now,
Speaker 1: there's a it's a standard that requires proving specifically that
Speaker 1: not only was the use of force unreasonable, but that
Speaker 1: um that the officer knew at the time that he
Speaker 1: or she was violating a constitutional right of a person,
Speaker 1: that they knew it was wrong and did it anyway.
Speaker 1: And we need more charging options for prosecutors. These are
Speaker 1: just some of the things that I think states and
Speaker 1: Congress ultimately need to take up. Even as we talk
Speaker 1: about reinvigorating a Justice Department and all of the tools
Speaker 1: that has and you talk about the spending clause issue,
Speaker 1: this is something that has been raised a lot about
Speaker 1: what is the power of the federal government's purse, which
Speaker 1: provides money out of the Justice Department to every police
Speaker 1: department in the country. How can that power be used
Speaker 1: to incentivize um better policing, And in some cases there's
Speaker 1: been conversations about mandating better policing, better data collection, and
Speaker 1: I think this is a this is a question that
Speaker 1: we have not reckoned with and I don't think that
Speaker 1: it is we have to put this on the table now,
Speaker 1: and it's something that has been politically toxic before in
Speaker 1: prior times. But I think the fact that we don't
Speaker 1: even aren't even able to collect data on officer involved fatalities,
Speaker 1: I think is a real travesty. We'll be read back.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about the historical patterns that
Speaker 1: are essentially starting to emerge now. The Rodney King police
Speaker 1: brutality event, followed by the Los Angeles riots, then the
Speaker 1: Ferguson riots, then now the riots that are spread all
Speaker 1: over the country, just beginning in Minneapolis but not spreading
Speaker 1: all over the country. These have become kind of recurrent events.
Speaker 1: And I suppose it could even go back before then
Speaker 1: and go back to the nineteen sixty eight riots if
Speaker 1: one wanted to push the historical model back before and
Speaker 1: I'm omitting some smaller instances, but these are the big
Speaker 1: national kind of cataclysmic riots. They're now a part of
Speaker 1: the American historical trajectory. What is your deep instinct about
Speaker 1: what can be done to address this recurring phenomenon? And
Speaker 1: the reason I ask is, you know, we could imagine
Speaker 1: Joe Biden becoming president, then you become attorney general or
Speaker 1: deputy attorney general, and the president says to you, look,
Speaker 1: you know, take the leadership on this. We don't want
Speaker 1: this to happen anymore. We want something that's transformative. All
Speaker 1: of the sort of policy oriented approaches that you're describing
Speaker 1: all seem valuable and worthwhile, do any of them get
Speaker 1: at this kind of core recurring phenomenon? Is this the
Speaker 1: kind of problem that can be solved or addressed through
Speaker 1: those kind of cautious, incremental, rational, very Obama like interventions. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, some of the things that I've talked about
Speaker 1: would actually be pretty transformative, about having minimum national use
Speaker 1: of force standards and things that things that actually may
Speaker 1: seem like words on a page but that don't exist
Speaker 1: and have never existed in our nation in this way.
Speaker 1: But you know, I have said this a lot to people,
Speaker 1: which is that there is no silver bullet solution, and
Speaker 1: I know that is deeply dissatisfying to people, but there
Speaker 1: truly isn't in policing. The structure of policing in this
Speaker 1: kind of tree, with eighteen thousand police departments, the long
Speaker 1: history of structural racism and state violence in particular against
Speaker 1: block communities. These are this is the legacy that we
Speaker 1: are saddled with, and we are saddled with a legal
Speaker 1: system that is that won't be allowed for a single
Speaker 1: silver bullet. It's going to take transformative, bold thinking. It
Speaker 1: is not going to be enough for a Biden administration
Speaker 1: or any administration to basically say, let's let's reinstate all
Speaker 1: that President Obama did and then cross our fingers and
Speaker 1: hope for the best. Because that's enough. We have to
Speaker 1: go away beyond what we were able to achieve in
Speaker 1: the Obama administration. This is the kinds of things that
Speaker 1: we are putting on the table now are require bold,
Speaker 1: new thinking. But it is going to take multiple efforts.
Speaker 1: It's going to take work at the part on the
Speaker 1: part of mayors in cities. It's going to take work
Speaker 1: on the part of police chief to actually implement much
Speaker 1: of what is known to be best practices. There is
Speaker 1: still tremendous resistance, mostly coming from police unions, but also
Speaker 1: from leadership. You know in certain parts of the country
Speaker 1: that are resistant. But I would say the law enforcement
Speaker 1: leadership around the country is in a different place today
Speaker 1: than they were in twenty fourteen. And it may be
Speaker 1: cold comfort right now, but I take that as some
Speaker 1: modicum of progress. It's going to take Congress passing some
Speaker 1: sweeping laws around the stuff and policing. For some reason,
Speaker 1: you know, there's been this surge of bipartisanship around chronal
Speaker 1: justice reform. Policing is never a part of these conversations.
Speaker 1: You can't talk about policing without talking about race in
Speaker 1: a really frontal way. And so there isn't a silver bullet, Noah.
Speaker 1: But I don't think also the answer is just like
Speaker 1: return to what we were doing before in a more
Speaker 1: liberal or democratic administration. It's actually going to take like serious, progressive,
Speaker 1: bold thinking based on what we know today. And in
Speaker 1: the end of the day, there is never going to
Speaker 1: be a perfect police department. There are going to be
Speaker 1: critical awful tragedies that happen, and the difference will be
Speaker 1: what the police department and what police departments around the
Speaker 1: country do about it versus kind of the defiance or
Speaker 1: resistance that we have seen in parts of the country
Speaker 1: in response to these events. And I think that's part
Speaker 1: that requires a racial reckoning, and we're kind of reckoning
Speaker 1: with our history even as we change laws, engage in
Speaker 1: deep thinking and reform efforts those at the local, state,
Speaker 1: and national level. One of the tragic features that we're
Speaker 1: seeing now in real time is that there are peaceful
Speaker 1: protests demanding reform and change when it's light out, and
Speaker 1: then at night there's looting. And without entering into the
Speaker 1: very difficult to answer question of who's responsible for the
Speaker 1: looting and whether their community outside is, whether they're from
Speaker 1: the far left or from the far right, I just
Speaker 1: want to ask you what is the appropriate, from your
Speaker 1: perspective and civil rights respecting police response to the looting,
Speaker 1: because one thing that we're seeing is that in that
Speaker 1: you know, police are becoming increasingly aggressive and violent. But
Speaker 1: that just begs the question of what should the police
Speaker 1: be doing when they see looting. I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: response to peaceful demonstrations, but to actual violent looting. Well,
Speaker 1: I think we have to be clear that there is
Speaker 1: most people are peacefully protesting, even at night. And what's
Speaker 1: happening is that you've got now, you know, increasingly, as
Speaker 1: night after night goes of forces at play that have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with mister Floyd's death, that are instigating
Speaker 1: acts of violence around the country. And there's been so
Speaker 1: many videos of black protesters and activists, you know, getting
Speaker 1: mad at at so called white allies for defacing buildings
Speaker 1: and putting things on fire and the like. And I
Speaker 1: am really distrusted about this, as are so many and
Speaker 1: I think that that is something that you have to
Speaker 1: talk about when you're talking about what's happening on the
Speaker 1: streets right now, because most of that has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with honoring mister Floyd's staff and the issues underlying it.
Speaker 1: But I also think look at law enforcement, it isn't
Speaker 1: that they started acting aggressively in a lot of cities
Speaker 1: just two three days ago when the protests started to surge.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of militarized response. Um the leadership
Speaker 1: conference with the NAACP, the National Urban League, the NAACP
Speaker 1: Legal defenseman and other civil rights organizations wrote a letter
Speaker 1: to the mayor and the police chief in Minneapolis about
Speaker 1: about ways to make sure that they can protect the
Speaker 1: protesters right to the First Amendment while protecting public safety. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, using tear gas unnecessarily on peaceful protesters. Um uh,
Speaker 1: you know, not having a militarized response. These were some
Speaker 1: of the things we were talking about early on when
Speaker 1: when we weren't seeing what's playing out in the streets
Speaker 1: right now and in tuning these cities, that aggressive response
Speaker 1: was happening very early on, that inflamed what was happening
Speaker 1: on the street. But of course law enforcement has to
Speaker 1: be able to protect operate from being burnt into faced
Speaker 1: and uh. And the question is are they making you know,
Speaker 1: just kind of reinstigating or throwing fuel on the fire
Speaker 1: around engaging in excessive force or excessive use of arrest
Speaker 1: to do that. I think community leaders are speaking out
Speaker 1: calling for peace. There are civil rights leaders calling for peace.
Speaker 1: There are activists on the ground that are saying this
Speaker 1: is not in George Floyd's name. But I think we
Speaker 1: have to be really clear eyed about like the dynamics
Speaker 1: on the street without you know, re emphasizing or reasserting
Speaker 1: kind of an US versus them mentality here, because it
Speaker 1: is very, very complicated. The Bonna Justice Department conducted after
Speaker 1: action assessments of how police were managing the protests that
Speaker 1: on occasion turned violent, h you know, in Ferguson and
Speaker 1: the like in Minneapolis, even after Jamar Clark was killed,
Speaker 1: you know, like the pandemic reports that were shelved and
Speaker 1: are been collecting dusk in the Trump administration, I don't
Speaker 1: think that this Justice Department is looking at what was
Speaker 1: learned in those prior incidents and encouraging law enforcement to
Speaker 1: de escalate and to find the ways to both protect
Speaker 1: protesters and protect public safety in this moment. Do you
Speaker 1: think the protests at this point have gotten beyond the
Speaker 1: straightforward demand for black people's lives to be respected and
Speaker 1: honored by the police, and have sort of come to
Speaker 1: stand more broadly for not only structural injustice, but also
Speaker 1: more general frustration that many people around the country are
Speaker 1: feeling with a lack of change. And the reason I
Speaker 1: ask that is that when I talk to my students,
Speaker 1: of course they acknowledge that the core claim of black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter is that the police ought not to engage
Speaker 1: in brutal and unlawful forms of policing. They kill people
Speaker 1: to kill black people. But they also say and that's
Speaker 1: just a part of a broader project, which includes prison abolition,
Speaker 1: which includes other kinds of basic change. And I'm wondering
Speaker 1: whether your perception is that the protests have sort of
Speaker 1: gotten beyond the initial topic of George Floyd's life and
Speaker 1: the lives of other people like him. You know, we
Speaker 1: have to remember that this is all playing itself out
Speaker 1: amid a global pandemic that has ravaged in particular, black
Speaker 1: and brown communities disproportionately in this country. And the unemployment
Speaker 1: rates are going to be there, they're staggering across the board.
Speaker 1: But the health outcomes of COVID, the prevalence of COVID,
Speaker 1: the mortality of COVID, has hit the Black community further
Speaker 1: than any other community in the country right now, save
Speaker 1: probably for the Latino community. And it we are in
Speaker 1: a situation where there is such a massive degree of
Speaker 1: frustration around structural inequalities at large, and policing is usually
Speaker 1: the tip of the sphere. When we were in Baltimore
Speaker 1: and after Freddy Gray was killed, Freddie Gray's death is
Speaker 1: just the kind of the final thing that triggered the
Speaker 1: massive unrest in Baltimore after years and decades of profound
Speaker 1: segregation and housing in schools and divestment in transportation and education.
Speaker 1: And so you are seeing play out on the streets
Speaker 1: right now. So it is it is anger at mister
Speaker 1: Floyd's death, but it is much deeper than that, And
Speaker 1: I think this is part of the broader reckoning that
Speaker 1: we have to do as a country to acknowledge this
Speaker 1: pain in the current lived experiences of communities of color,
Speaker 1: not only visa VI policing, but but regarding so many
Speaker 1: other issues that are that are kind of excluding these
Speaker 1: communities from access to opportunity, from access to wealth. And
Speaker 1: it's in the face of an administration that, frankly, you know,
Speaker 1: uses racial division racial polarization as an electoral tactic and
Speaker 1: a president who thrives on this and thrives on the division.
Speaker 1: So we don't even have national leadership that could even
Speaker 1: pretend or wants to pretend or wants to show up
Speaker 1: as a unifying force or as a calming force. So
Speaker 1: that's why I think you're seeing the kinds of things
Speaker 1: play out that you're seeing today. My last question, Venita,
Speaker 1: when you look at the situation that we're in now
Speaker 1: and it's recurring nature, do you have any optimism about
Speaker 1: our national capacity to improve in these dimensions in the future.
Speaker 1: And if you do feel optimism, why you know. I'm
Speaker 1: a civil rights lawyer, and I think as a civil
Speaker 1: rights lawyer, we are we have deep wells of optimism.
Speaker 1: It's the only reason why we are able to continue
Speaker 1: day in and day out doing what we do. And
Speaker 1: so I do feel optimistic. I feel optimistic because I
Speaker 1: look at the decades of our history and look from
Speaker 1: where to where we've come. And I don't think you
Speaker 1: can deny progress that has been made. It is been painstaking,
Speaker 1: it has been slow, it has been at the cost
Speaker 1: of people's lives. But I you know. I was in
Speaker 1: Selma in early March commemorating the fifty fifth anniversary of
Speaker 1: Bloody Sunday, and Congressman John Lewis showed up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the Edmund Pettis Bridge, the first time he
Speaker 1: had had a public appearance since he was diagnosed with
Speaker 1: pancreatic cancer, and talked about how he was standing on
Speaker 1: the spot where his skull had been broken by the
Speaker 1: Alabama state troopers fifty five years ago in his quest
Speaker 1: for the right to vote along with you know, thousands
Speaker 1: of people who were marching that day, and he forced
Speaker 1: all of us in that moment to remember that is
Speaker 1: bad and scary as these times are, that this country
Speaker 1: has been through a lot. It has been through slavery
Speaker 1: and Jim Crow and deep seated pervasive violence, and it
Speaker 1: has been through this and has seen some progress, not
Speaker 1: because we just sat back and hope that time would
Speaker 1: make this all inevitable, but actually because people of good conscience,
Speaker 1: young people especially, but people men, women, young folks have
Speaker 1: rolled up their sleeves and insisted on a better America,
Speaker 1: and they have worked at it. They have marched in
Speaker 1: the streets, they have litigated in the courts, they have
Speaker 1: elected representatives, they have fought voter suppression. And so the
Speaker 1: only way that we are going to see change is
Speaker 1: by re engaging and doubling down our commitment to this.
Speaker 1: Despair is not an option. Despair is really a kind
Speaker 1: of tool of the privilege to sit back as communities
Speaker 1: burn or as communities suffer under inequality. And so to me,
Speaker 1: hope is actually one of the most important things I
Speaker 1: say hope is a discipline. I think it's one of
Speaker 1: the most important things that we bring to this work.
Speaker 1: But it requires a commitment because the alternative is far easier.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, when people say, well, how
Speaker 1: are you coping, your civil rights leader, how was anyone
Speaker 1: doing this work right now? I said, the only thing
Speaker 1: worse right now would be to be sitting on the
Speaker 1: sidelines at this moment, not giving a dam and just
Speaker 1: saying nothing can change. Because I think that we all
Speaker 1: are our agents of change, and that is our responsibility
Speaker 1: in this moment, is to not let go of the
Speaker 1: possibility of a better America. Thank you, Anita, Thank you
Speaker 1: for your efforts. Thank you for your work, Thank you
Speaker 1: for your frank discussion. Now, thank you, Thanks Noah. Talking
Speaker 1: to Vinita gave me a strong sense of the challenges
Speaker 1: that continue to face the United States in the realm
Speaker 1: of civil rights. On the one hand, within the Obama
Speaker 1: administration where she worked, serious efforts were made to try
Speaker 1: to take on the problem of police violence and to
Speaker 1: improve policing in the United States. That included case specific
Speaker 1: consent decrees involving particular police departments and how they should
Speaker 1: be reformed. It also included some broader efforts to produce
Speaker 1: system change and how policing takes place in the United States.
Speaker 1: Those efforts could potentially be restarted in a democratic administration. Yet,
Speaker 1: as Venita fothrightly acknowledged, just going back to the Obama
Speaker 1: administration's policies would not be sufficient to solve the problems
Speaker 1: that we are talking about. They have deep historical roots
Speaker 1: and they express a fundamental structural injustice in the United
Speaker 1: States that's bound up in our four hundred year history.
Speaker 1: As Vanita said, there is no single silver bullet solution
Speaker 1: to the problem of police violence and civil rights. How
Speaker 1: much more so then, is it true that there is
Speaker 1: no single bullet solution to the problem of structural racism
Speaker 1: and its history and ongoing effects in the United States.
Speaker 1: Despite all this, Vanita still has hope for improvement. And
Speaker 1: as she depicts it, hope is a discipline, perhaps even
Speaker 1: a moral obligation, insofar as it stands for the idea
Speaker 1: that we cannot simply stand idly by and accept that
Speaker 1: the world is broken. Rather, we have to undertake a serious, sustained, patient,
Speaker 1: long term effort to try to improve it. Until the
Speaker 1: next time I speak to you, be careful, be safe,
Speaker 1: and be well. Deep Background is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Lydia Jane Cott, with research
Speaker 1: help from Zooi Winn and mastering by Jason Gambrel and
Speaker 1: Martin Gonzalez. Our showrunner is Sophie mckibbon. Our theme music
Speaker 1: is composed by Luis Guerrat special thanks to the Pushkin Brass,
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, and Mia Loebell. I'm Noah Feldman.
Speaker 1: I also write a regular column for Bloomberg Opinion, which
Speaker 1: you can find at Bloomberg dot com slash Feldman. To
Speaker 1: discover Bloomberg's original slate of podcasts, go to Bloomberg dot
Speaker 1: com slash Podcasts. And one last thing, I just wrote
Speaker 1: a book called The Arab Winter, a Tragedy. I would
Speaker 1: be delighted if you're checked it out. You can always
Speaker 1: let me know what you think on Twitter about this episode,
Speaker 1: or the book or anything else. My handle is Noah R. Feldman.
Speaker 1: This is Deep Background