Coronavirus, which has struck communities of color disproportionately. Today, we welcome Congressional Black Caucus chair, bass, atative karen democrat from california. Chairs theive bass Judiciary Committee subcommittee and was passed by House Speaker nancy pelosi and judiciary chair jerry nadler, shepherding the George Floyd Justice in policing act, through the legislative process. T, which passed the house in late june, bans chokeholds and no knock warrants, as well as lowering the legal barriers for bringing civil and criminal charges against police for misconduct. A Police Reform bill offered by a republican senator, tim scott, has stalled in the senate after democrats complained it did not police abusesurb and key components, including an end to qualified immunity for police. Senator scott and representative bass have tried to negotiate a compromise. It is something representative bass can claim is a bit of a specialty. To congress in 2010, inresentative bass served the california state assembly. Under her leadership, republicans and democrats in the assembly came together to address californias crisis. Colleagues,ee another democrat and two republicans, one award in 2010. The judges recognize the the with theor standing up Party Pressure that they faced. Now, political pundits are buzzing about represented of running matesible for joe biden. Before we asked represented of bass about her position on Vice President bidens shortlist, let me take a moment to thank the organizers for the event. Coordinator,ine Club Communications director lindsay underwood, and Club Executive director bill mccarron. Basssng represented of opening statement, we accept questions from the audience. I will take as many questions as time permits. To submit a question, please send via email to headliners pre ss. Org. Screen, i will turn the over to represented of karen bass representative karen bass. Thank you for joining us. Rep. Bass it is an honor to appear before you and an honor to meet you virtually. Future that i can appear before the club in person. Moment. N an historic i think back to a couple of months ago when the world witnessed the brutal murder of george floyd. We sat there and we could see it take place over almost nine minutes. To me, that represented a profound difference in any video we have seat then we have seen before. Saw protests in 50 states around the country, people of every race and nationality, every gender out there. We saw people protesting in countries around the world and, on the african continent, all 54 countries came together and essentially leveled the protest at the united nations, about racism in the United States. Now that i moment believe has developed into a movement that started with Police Brutality and has now taken even a bigger issue up like systemic racism. Civil rightsto the movement. Jim crow had been going on for over 100 years in the south. Place inities taking the south had been going on for years. Cameranot until the tv went down to the south, pictures were taken, the media was there, and reports were given, about what was happening in the south. That really raised consciousness just for the people, not in the United States, but around of theld, and one outcomes was civil rights legislation. In thatike we are moment again. Holy would be taking place every time there was a murder taken place on video, and the pulling was always the same. I will make up the numbers to make a point. 70 of white people who were polled would say there is no systemic problem with policing. Problem, one example. 70 of africanamericans would say, there is a systemic problem with policing in the United States. A united now reflect view. Thatf americans are saying there is a deep problem here, and it is a problem we need to address. To me, it presents a real opportunity. That was the basis in which the George Floyd Justice and policing act was conceived, put together, and passed. Matter thatall every democrat voted for the bill. I believe prior to what we saw happen, we would not even have had all of the democratic support. We even had the votes of three republicans. That was no small matter. If you remember, the president tweeted a couple of days before, and he called for all republicans to oppose the bill. Everyone knows when that happens, he usually gets his way because mike my republican colleagues are concerned about him tweeting or attacking them and they line up. In the process of putting the bill together, the hearings we of my republican colleagues approached me and said, you know, i cannot be in 100 favor of this bill. But we need to talk about this. The subject of the bill actually reflected bills that minute members of the Congressional Black Caucus worked on for many years. This is the 49th year of the Congressional Black Caucus. In the very beginning of the history, members introduce policetion to address abuse. This is a longstanding issue in our community. When i went to George Floyds service and looked up and saw the year he was born, 1970 three, that was the year i first became active on this issue in los angeles. I joined an organization, the coalition against police abuse, in 1973. We had terrible problems in our cities our city which led to numerous losses. A police chief which was very difficult and out of step. Africanamericans were being killed by chokeholds in large numbers. He had a press conference and he told los angeles in the press conference that the reason why black people die from chokeholds was because our veins were different than white people, and our veins did not open up as rapidly. That is what we were dealing with 47 years ago. Kingught after the rodney beating, when it was on video, i said, finally, everything will change now, because it is on video stop because we had been crying out about these problems for years, but no one believed us. Killed,me someone was it was always said, well, they assaulted a Police Officer, the officer was in fear for his life. We thought with rodney king, the world would see and those officers would for sure be convicted. We saw what happened. Fastforward in the cell phone camera is invented. Are athought, ok, there lot of videos. Every time before george floyd, people would say, we really do not know what happened before the video started. The officer said he was in fear for his life. And we do not know who Michael Brown was. And eric gardner, well, you know, he was doing something wasg, as though, even if he committing a crime, when do you execute people . What happened to innocent until Proven Guilty . What happened to arresting someone and putting them on that george floyd was just so egregious, no one could really argue. You did not need to know what happened before the video. You watched him being murdered over eight minutes and 46 seconds. You saw that he was completely subdued. I think that really led to people saying, we cannot debate this one this time. So the movement has raised other issues. It raised the issue of systemic racism. Withng at her history, movement around the statue, i certainly do not agree with the violence that has taken place, the looting that has taken place in the protests, but we all know now that protests happen every day, in the incidence of violence now, if you add the length of time of the protests, there have been a few examples. The statue, i would like to see them come down. But i think there is a way for them to come down, as opposed to vandalizing the statues. But the point is that, what started with a killing of george floyd has now led to bigger questions in our country, like systemic racism, and questioning very specific systems. The education system, the criminal Justice System, and i happy to say there is a lot of bipartisan support for and i will introduce a bill related to the criminal Justice System and women next week. If you look at the Health Care System and prior to George Floyds murder, as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, i was focused 100 on the disproportionate death rate of africanamericans and because of covid. We could have a discussion about covid and how it is being handled and the fact that they are now 138,000 americans who died in last few months and a president who does not seem to be moved by it at all. In fact, wants us to congratulate him that there are not more americans. And we do not know what the breakdown of those 138,000 americans are. The Congressional Black Caucus introduced legislation to tell the cdc they need to give us the demographics, but now the administration does not even want the cdc to have the information. Know, the Congressional Black Caucus works lockstep with the hispanic caucus, and now we have two native american women in congress, and we all Work Together and are in lockstep because these issues do not just impact black americans. The impact latinos, Asian Pacific islanders, even a disproportionate death rate has impacted all of our communities in disproportionate ways. So we Work Together. Policing, you can detail what the bill was about accountability measures, transparency measures. Are twoo add there parts of the bill, one on accountability, where we are uplifting the police. Why is it that your hairdresser has national accreditation, but your Police Department does not . When we met with the paternal order of police, they were excited by that part of the bill and we feel it actually helps them, because they have been fighting for National Standards and agitation for a long time, but they have to fight on a retail basis. There are 18,000 Police Departments around the country. Us passing the george floyd act and hopefully getting it on the president s desk will allow National Standards to then take ways around the country, that will help the order of the police. One thing i would like to talk about is the grants we provide to communities so they can reenvision policing. Addressed a lot of what the protesters are talking about when they are raising a russian about how we are spending money in our communities. I prefer to talk about refunding of communities to address communitybased problems like Substance Abuse and homelessness. Police officers should not have to pick up the pieces because we have to vested from cities. Inhink we are at a moment our country, and inflection point, and it is my thatnsibility and those of other members of congress, to take advantage of this. Forme thank you very much the honor of addressing you today. Hat stop i would like to start with, could you go in a little more about the transparency portion of the bill and specifically, how that might appeal to the folks with black lives matter . Rep. Bass sure. First of all, one thing we absolutely need to have is a National Registry of Police Officers. If you think of to mere rights, and i will remind you, he was a 12yearold child killed within seconds after the Police Officer jumped out of his car and killed him. That Police Officer had been fired from a nearby department and had been fired because he was viewed as unstable, with a propensity for violence. And he lied and did not acknowledge that he had been fired. We think there should be a registry for officers like that. I do not think any police chief in the country would willingly hire somebody that was known to be unstable and violent. That is an example. But i think, very significantly, the idf communitybased organizations, not law enforcement, can apply for grants. In a city, they can say, why dont we all come together across sectors. Why dont we look at what we need to keep our communities safe . What are parts of the community that are not safe and why . How should we look at our city budget . How should we prioritize . City of los angeles, the mayor decided to shift funds to address some of the problems in the community that are not directly law enforcement. In los angeles, we have a jail we call the twin towers. We say it is the nations most expensive mental institution. Yearse have done over the is we have systematically taken funding away from the safety net and supportive services, and we started criminalizing health problems. Mental illness should not be criminalized. Ago, we had mental institutions. People decided those are barbaric and we should not have those anymore. We made a commitment as a society that we were going to build communitybased institutions, and we reneged on that commute that commitment. That is obviously not the only reason people are helpless, but it is a contributing factor to the homeless situation. It should not be that a person with Mental Illness be at the point where they become violent. We should be sure they have the proper treatment and medication and whatever else they need so they do not reach the point of violence. I am not trying to say that you can send in the social worker to deal with a hostage situation. There are obviously times when you need Police Officers. But you do not need Police Officers to be marriage counselors. You do not need Police Officers if you took care of the problem on the front end. That is a little bit about transparency and community. Ok. Im curious to know more about how your work with senator tim scott. Your negotiations on the Police Reform matter. Can you give us a little insight into those discussions and what the next steps might be . Rep. Bass and let me correct something. Senator scott and i are not negotiating. We have talked. We came into congress together. A member of the house before he was in the senate. There are no formal negotiations going on. I am willing and interested to talk to a senator. I look forward to that again when i get back next week, but we essentially had a cordial meeting when we talked about the issue globally. But i have had a number of conversations with colleagues in the house. The republican colleagues that came up to me in the courts of conversations, we have been having conversations. They have talked about parts of the bill they feel good about, parts of the bill they have angst about, and they are presenting different ideas. I am willing to talk to whoever is interested in having a number station, but understand that my primary focus is trying to put the pressure on the senate to vote on the George Floyd Justice and policing act. That is the primary focus right now. We will see what happens. I am not pessimistic. I am optimistic. Anytime republican colleagues come up and say, there are parts of the bill i like, i will tell you something that i thought was funny. During the hearing, during the voting and committee on the colleaguesepublican talked about everything under the sun but the bill. They talked about everything. To me, i viewed that as, maybe there is an opportunity. To, especially where my republican colleagues tear apart the bill because they disagreed with it, instead, they express interest and support for different parts of the bill, but i cannot vote for it for x, nz. Ly x, y, and z. It would be an overstatement to say i am to go should with the senate considering i am with the house. Senator harris and senator booker have the George Floyd Justice and policing act in the senate, and i know they are working with their colleagues. Thank you for the clarification. We will remember you are only in conversations with some colleagues. Do you see senator scotts bill as a sincere effort, or Something Else entirely . Rep. Bass i saw his bill as a sincere effort, absolutely. Is ai talked to him, he black man in america and he understands the issue. He can account recount the numerous times he has been stopped. I know you are well aware of this. This is not just an issue for black men. Black women have the issue as well. We have conversations with our girls the same way we have conversations with our boys. Us fromlegacy issue for the time we arrived in this cant on this continent. How would you prepare the breach that is so apparent between the police and the black community, or communities of color in general . I have very specific ways of approaching it. Prior to being an elected official, 30 years ago, in 1990, i started a communitybased organization in the heart of South Central los angeles at the height of the crack cocaine crips and blood crisis going on. Had 1000 homicides in los angeles that year. I was so concerned about the issue because what i saw happening was, my background is in health care. I saw us criminalized addiction. Crack cocaine was a health issue. And then it was an economic issue because all of the factories closed, industries were leaving the area, nothing was replacing those jobs. I will never forget Newsweek Magazine calling crack cocaine an equal opportunity employer. As a health and economic issue that we refused to address and we criminalized it. I was doing grassroots organizing and trying to get my chief i the same police was talking about, i mentioned in 1973, we were still dealing with him in 1990. His solution to the problem was he started a program called operation hammer. What that was, is every weekend, they would just do mass arrests of black and latino youth. To me, that was not the way to deal with the problem. At the time, i was a fulltime member of the faculty at the university of Southern California medical school. I walked away from that and started an organization to try and come up with communitybased solutions to address crime that did not involve we were fighting against three strikes and all of beecher kony propositions happening in california. What we started doing is we started organizing the neighborhood. We started working with the active and former gang members. We talked about the fact that we wanted to keep the neighborhood safe without everybody going to jail. We had separate meetings with the police and worked with Police Officers until we found officers that did not have the warrior mentality of here on South Central, so we want to kick butt, as they would say, and we found officers interested in how we prevent crime and prevent this from happening. There are a lot of examples around the country of Community Safety patrols. In los angeles, i think maybe yesterday, they were talking about when the mayor shifted the money away from the Police Department, part of where he is shifting it to his programs that do this type of work. We are working with gang members, started working with young people, to divert them away from gang involvement. Younga was, can i get a person in middle school or high School Interested in politics . Can i get them inviting to improve the condition of schools . Is that a way to capture that adolescent energy into productive activism . Ago. Was 30 years they went away to college, came back, and are now running the organization. That is one example. Communities around the country are dealing with this issue. Something else i want to address, because this is often confused. Black people seem to be very orcerned about homicide murder when it is done by a Police Officer, but they do not seem to be concerned when it is done by another black person. That is not true. Representsentality is the basic ignorance of what is happening in our communities. There are people who work day in and day out to try and address the violence not associated with policing. But these organizations and people are never given the resources in a way to address these issues on scale, and they are never given the resources in a sustained manner. We will throw money for four or five years, the homicide rate and the homicide rate will go down and they will cut the funding. Part of the notion of looking at how we fund these issues really raises these kinds of questions. Why dont we make a commitment as a country to address the issues in a comprehensive and sustained manner . You mentioned health care as being something you are passionate about. And theut Coronavirus Impact it is having on your home state of california . What went wrong . I will tell you that i am not sure what went wrong. The leadership in our state, city, and county, were very of very aggressive in the beginning and did what they are supposed to do. A diverse state. 40 million people. So there are parts of california, for example, one hour away from los angeles is Orange County. They decided to reopen the schools without social distancing, without masks. So there are parts in our state that did that. I cannot tell you because i do not think the analysis has been done yet. I do not know if it if those factors were contributing to the upsurge we had, but it shows you how difficult the virus is. The lack of leadership from the leaderd now, we have a who basically decided to adopt magical thinking, and he will just wish it away. He will just say, the reason why we have so many cases is because we test. It is ludicrous and embarrassing. It is embarrassing on a world stage. With a Health Background and a foreign background foreignpolicy background, i remember when the Obama Administration faced ebola. Ebola could have been a pandemic. Ebola was concentrated in three countries in africa. It could have spread throughout all 54 countries. What did president obama do . He galvanized the entire world. We had the stature and the standing in the world at the time. Administration brought all of the countries together, and they were able to contain ebola in three countries. Two people died in the United States. A real if we had had leader who could lead domestically and internationally, maybe we would have worked with the chinese, maybe we would have galvanized the world to say, this is a potential pandemic and we have to stop it. Thing i believe deeply, there was no way in the world that 138,000 americans should be dead today if we had had better leadership that went after this aggressively, but understood it, and now, i mean, we are bearing the brunt of this because of the lack of leadership, now we are in another upsurge. They have politicized it. Those people who wear masks or sellouts, and if i wanted my constitutional freedoms, i should have the right to die and to kill other people. It is embarrassing. Rep. Bass representative bass host representative bass, you sent leadership quite a bit, leadership. Bass, maybe . T [laughter] rep. Bass you know, i dont know. I would tell you with those questions will have to be referred to the campaign. Host can you share us can you share with those where you are in the vetting process . Rep. Bass i have nothing to say, but this is what i will tell you is every four years, we always say this is the most important election of your lifetime. I believe because of covid, this election as a matter of life and death. We dont have the leadership to bring this under control. , we have tos of rush to open up the economy. Everyone wants to do that. I would love to be in front of the National Press club right now, i would love to go to a restaurant miller visit friends. You cannot just deny things and expected to get better. How on earth do start the economy to get back if you cant contain the virus . And what i believe the administration is doing without acknowledging, is really adopting a strategy of herd immunity, which means Everyone Needs to be exposed and we need to recognize that people will die, and i heard the president say this and it hurt my heart, he said the people who are dying or older with a lot of health problems. I was involved in the medical was first aids discovered. Ammonia wasof fact, affecting gay men and we did not know what to call it. I was working in the emergency room when we do not have protective gear. We did not even draw blood with gloves. We were not even trained to do that. I have complete empathy for those healthcare workers because we were afraid every single day. If you got a pinprick or anything, we did not know if we were exposing ourselves a me i we wereple die exposing ourselves, and i watched people die. We were able to get a hold of it, but it took years before we had the cocktail and before we day, wehiv a me to this dont have a vaccine, so we have to figure out, i hope we get a vaccine, but what if we dont . You cannot deny this and say we know we are going to lose some people, and we will have to deal with that, but we need the economy to come back. Us andld is looking at in some places we cannot even host i want to ask and we are getting quite a few questions in from people who are watching us online. Excuse me when i looked down to ask you some of these questions. This question comes to us from today. S wu with usa he right parties are a different end on the upcoming stimulus negotiation. Where is the middle ground between members of congress on issues like Unemployment Insurance and School Funding . Rep. Bass you know what . Imagine hard for me to that there is a middle ground. In terms of the heroes act, if you want to fund police, if you want to fund first responders, you need to pass the heroes act. Why will we put people through the psychological pain of knowing in the next few weeks, their unemployment check will run out, when you know you need to pass a bill. Why would you quibble over a 600 check when you take half a trillion dollars, and you dont even want to disclose what is going to happen without money. When you give nobid contracts protectiveo do equipment who have no experience doing that at all. We do not know what is happening with that money, and that is billions and billions of dollars, but yet, you are going to argue over a 600 check because you say, well, if a person gets that extra boost in their unemployment, they are not going to want to go to work . We want to force them to go to work. And we want to make sure that any employer that forces its folks back to work cannot be sued. Just think about that meatpacking places where they were ordered to go back to work, where the president used his power to force people to go back to work, but wont use his power to have massive testing, massive tracing, and massing treatment massive treatment. We will see. Those negotiations are going on, and im not a direct party to. 2019 since your 2019 first victims at past, do you know what this has had for trafficking survivors . Rep. Bass we need to get that reporting. Let me give background. I have been working on the Child Welfare system, transforming the Child Welfare system for the last 30 years. Every year i had been in congress. I formed a bipartisan caucus on Child Welfare because it is a very bipartisan issue. One of the casualties of our Child Welfare system is a number of the girls and boys, primarily females, but boys as well, get involved in sex trafficking to survive, survival sex. I hate to tell you this, but the average age of a girl traffic is 12 years old, and a lot of that trafficking takes place online, and so, we did pass legislation to address that, but one of the problems, and this is a universal problem, not just a problem with the area. Getting information out of this administration on anything is challenging. I mentioned we could not get the demographic information from the centers of disease control. Getting information from health and Human Services about how we are doing on that issue is very difficult as well. Coronavirus,ack to now that back in california again there is this new surge to rollback and rollback the reopening. What do you think about their plans overall for kids returning to school . You mentioned Orange County with kids going back with nothing. Is it good enough to adjust to Online Learning . Rep. Bass no, it is not. It is a real problem. First of all, i think what Orange County doing is absolutely terrible and it was possible. But looking at my own School District of the los angeles unified School District, where the superintendent said we are going to stick with Online Learning, i dont think there is a choice for that, but and one other things egg unified is doing that i think is really good is they have their own tv station, and so, they are also doing television. Let me give you an example. When i went to my grandsons when i went to pick up the laptop from his school, i thought about it for a minute because when you think about Online Learning, and you think about young people, you have this viewpoint that all young people know how to use computers. In los angeles, i dont have to worry about not having access to broadband because we do. That doesnt mean everybody can afford it though. It is here, but can you afford it . What about the parents . A fiveyearold doesnt innately know how to use a computer. The assumption when you think about young people and technology, you are thinking about adolescence. What about the Young Children whose parents might not know how to use that computer, or they are working three jobs, and they are central workers . So they are not at home. So i do think it is a real problem. I think l. A. Unified is doing the best they can. I like the idea of having television as a backup because, you know, people do have televisions. Covid, weow, before had a very serious achievement gap, right . What are we going to have after covid . The achievement gap is going to be really exacerbated. So one other things i think needs to happen, and again, because we are in one of these reflectione of these moments, maybe it is an opportunity when we are looking at systemic racism, the achievement gap is a manifestation of that. I think we are going to need to do something really aggressive when it comes to education. We are already dealing with the gap, and you are going to have kids who have essentially lost an entire year of education. Host i have to tell you i am getting lots of questions about you being Vice President , and i know you said that we should refer all questions to the me,aign, but could you tell what makes for a good Vice President . What are the qualifications of someone who would be working winsside joe biden, say he in this upcoming election . Rep. Bass sure. This is just my opinion. First of all, he is the leading experts, having been a Vice President , as to what he needs for a Vice President , but my opinion is, he needs a partner he needs somebody who is going to hunker down and say, we have multiple crisis. What i feel bad about is that january,s sworn in in and he just has to be when he is sworn in january, he will inherit an economy that lord knows where it will be in six months because of the negligence of this president , unless he wakes up tomorrow and decides to address this problem. 200,000 deadven be americans by that point, and a pandemic that is not under control at all. The good thing about the Vice President , if you want to say this is a good thing, remember when he was sworn in the last time . He inherited an economy that was a disaster. If anybody is equipped to figure out how to get out of this disaster, it is him, and i believe he needs a partner and that, somebody who is willing to say, i will take this piece, i will focus on this while you are putting the world back together. I think about his international credentials, and i think had he had been president at the beginning of this virus, he would have addressed this from an International Perspective first, and heat would have and he would have employed every possible resource in the United States to have aggressively dealt with that. I think number one, it is a partner. I also think it is somebody who can help heal because this nation is going to need healing. We have all been traumatized for the last three and a half years on a daily bases, and sometimes multiple times a day. When you think about Race Relations in this country, i mean, the president just a couple of days ago said he is worried about white people being killed by police. We know more white people are killed by police than anyone else because there are more white people in the United States. It is disproportionately by two to three times as many. That is what it is important. But he always goes to raise whenever he is in a tight spot. Host going back to the strength of a Vice President , one about strength in Foreign Relations . Today, it was all over the news that russia was trying to basically steal information on how to put together a vaccine for coronavirus from the United States and britain and others. How do you see a Vice President , or even in a new administration, dealing with a country like russia over an instance like that . Talk abouthink healing, we have to heal on the International Front because the president has embarrassed us repeatedly by publicly standing up and supporting putin when russia is causing problems and a lot of the european nations, breaking treaties. But if you look at the women that are being talked about, i mean, it is an incredible piece of women you have Tammy Duckworth who understands foreign policy. Ambassadort, former to the united nations, you know, kamala harris, who was on the Intelligence Committee and judiciary. Tammy baldwin. I mean, i think there are a variety of women who bring a tremendous background to this, and who could be a wonderful partner with the president. Host what would you bring to the table . Rep. Bass well, what i bring to ie table, regardless of where to do my deep commitment whatever is necessary to heal this country. To me, what is needed immediately is on the health front. That is more important than anything, and the economy to me is so intertwined with the crisis, you cant separate the two. In other problem we are facing now is the president keeps trying, lets just focus on the economy and let me sit here and pretend that the health issue will go away. Well, you cannot do that. In my opinion, i feel he spent 3. 5 years tearing this country apart in terms of Race Relations. He started with mexicans when you came down the escalator. Nativeinsulted americans, and now, of course, what he said about black americans from day one, but now, he is after asianamericans because by trying to blame china for covid, that has led to an increase in antiasian violence all over the country. If you think about the last election before 2018, you know we had four acts of domestic terrorism, four acts before the last election. He talked about the invasion i was coming from central america. You remember the man that put vin drapedin in trump paraffin yale . There was the white man wanted to kill black people. He killed two africanamericans in a store. There was the horrific attack on the synagogue, the worst attack in a synagogue in u. S. History he you remember when they arrested that man. He said the reason he attacked the synagogue was because jewish people were finding the invasion of central america. A couple of days later, there was an attack on women of color at a yoga studio. The election was two days later. One of our challenges in the country is we tend to have very short memories, but those attacks were preceded by the president on a daily basis, whipping up dissent, whipping up division, and we see him do this every time he needs to distract away from something, he is going police toe federal condemn confederate statues. People who work traders, people who tried to break up the country so they could continue enslaving my ancestors. That is who he wants to defend. All of that will have to be put back together again next year. Host curious what you think about what should be done in the case of Breonna Taylor . And how far that case has not gone locally, and what you think should be done next . All,bass well, first of and our bill, in the George Floyd Justice and policing at, we been no knock warrants for drugs. One of the reasons for no knock warrants is because we dont want the individual to flush the drugs down the toilet. Is that worth it . Over the last 10 years, no knock 94 people have died, 16 of them were Police Officers. Is that really the best way to go about it . So we been no knock, but i think those officers who have not been arrested. They have been fired. They should be arrested. I think until we show Police Officers that there is a consequence. When that man was killing george floyd, he had his hand and is pockets, and he was looking at the camera with complete impunity. He did not feel like anything was going to happen to him. It is that or the young man killed in colorado, and you saw the Police Officers reenacting the chokehold. As long as you have a culture and a Police Department that basically says that Police Officers can do whatever they want, so long as they are doing it in certain communities to certain people. I represent a district in los angeles where most of it is affluent and mostly white and another apart of my district is in south los angeles. When they go on one side of town, the police go to protect and serve. When they go to protect and serve, they go to knock heads. It is a warrior mentality instead of a guardian mentality, and Police Officers have told me that they have to deal with some of those officers out of the academy. We know the vast majority of Police Officers are not like this, and they protect and serve, but there are some that when they come out of the academy, request to go to South Central so they can earn their stripes, so they can knock heads. If that is how you come to a community, then why would you be surprised that the people in the community do not view the Police Officers as there to protect them at all, and fears of Police Officers. Ast some might say that question whether a few bad apples requires a complete overhaul of the system. What do you say to that . Rep. Bass i dont think there are a few bad apples. I think there are systemic problems, and one of the things Police Officers have done over the years, and conservative organizations because it is not necessarily Police Officers, but they passed state laws that essentially make them exempt from everything. The Police Culture that says, if there was a bad officer, lets circle our wagons. Case in point, the man that every body saw on tv, the older man in upstate new york that was a protester, and the police saw him, pushed him down, and they lied and said he tripped and fell. Something black people say all the time that the Police Officers lie, and people did not believe it. Well, everybody saw them push him down. You saw one officer leaning over to try to render aid and saw another officer pulling him away. When those officers got in trouble, and 57 officers resigned from that unit. That is the kind of mentality that reflects a culture that is very problematic, and by the way, last year, an africanamerican woman, who was an officer in that same department, she stopped one of her fellow officers in the middle of a chokehold because she thought he was going to kill someone. She got fired. In minneapolis, the police chief has said, he has fired bad officers, but the officers, because of their contract, have a process of arbitration, so he can fire an officer, the officer can go to arbitration and win and get put back on the force. The officer that killed george floyd had 17 different complaints. So, those are some structural things that happen and a lot of departments, were even when you have good officers, if they are functioning in a corrupt culture, they have to make a decision. They go along with that culture, or they leave. Because they understand that they. Might even be endangered we have heard those stories because haveunderstand that and we heard those stories. I dont think we can reduce it to a few bad apples. Host we are getting questions from so many people, and we are running out of time. I wanted to get to this. Getting a strand of emails asking about this question from dion moore in l. A. County. Your state. She asked, will black americans a person enslaved in the United States the reparations in your lifetime, and will the wealth gap be closed in your lifetime . That is a massive question. Rep. Bass let me just quickly say that the Congressional Black Caucus, after we passed the george floyd act, introduced and talked about legislation that we are dealing with to address systemic racism. We understand that policing is just one manifestation of systemic racism, but the wealth and achievement gap, all of those issues are apart of that same system that we need to root out the discrimination. A very we do have specific legislation to address those issues, in addition, we are preparing a massive piece of legislation called jobs and justice that does address many of the issues related to systemic racism. And in terms of reparations, there is hr40 that Sheila Jackson lee is leading the calls for the formation of a commission to study the impact that the period of enslavement had. I think that most americans, if you polled most americans and asked them how long slavery existed in the United States, very few would have the correct answer, which is 256 years. 100 years before we were even a country. Even fewer americans will understand that for 100 years lynchingsery, we had and jim crow. And to date, we have not been able to pass 2020, we have not been able to pass a federal law against lynching. Host you mentioned a bill that you are going to be introducing soon. You want to share a little bit with us about that . Rep. Bass i have been working on criminal Justice Reform for many, many years, but typically when you hear people talk about criminal Justice Reform, there really only talking about men. They are not talking about women, nor children. We are one of a few countries in the world that incarcerates kids. So, the bill i am working on is a bill that specifically looking at women who are pregnant and incarcerated. That is something a lot of people dont realize. We did have part of what we are trying to address past in the first step back. So we have had a brutal practice in our country. If you can imagine, a woman who is ready to deliver a baby and she is incarcerated, and we shackle her to the gurney during labor because, you know, woman nine months pregnant in the middle of labor and delivery is a flight risk. So we banned that because of the barbaric practice. But it does go on in some states. We banned it in federal institutions, but every aspect of women in the criminal Justice System is different than men. We will get to a comprehensive bill later, but the bill im working on now is about pregnant women who are incarcerated. You a final question for as we come to the end of the hour here. This question comes from gabrielle. How do you navigate the various political currents within the whatrship of the cbc, and is it mean when tim scott, the gops only black senator, is not a member of the Congressional Black Caucus . Rep. Bass 10 and i came in together and that was his choice tim and i came in together and that was his choice. Wanted i dont think he to be in a room with 50 plus democrats. Maybe that was the issue. Wasthe republican from utah a very active member of the black caucus. She is not there anymore, but certainly the door is open to tim anytime he would choose to be apart of the caucus. There are 55 members of the Congressional Black Caucus. It is very diverse politically, and how i navigated, we refer to it as a family. The same when you navigate your family. [laughter] host ok. Well, i think we have time for one more question, and im going to go back to the Vice President question. [laughter] if joe biden asked you to be his running mate, will you accept . You,bass let me just tell i am so concerned about him being elected, and him having a successful presidency, he could asked me to go volunteer at a ,ocal office and lick stamps walk precincts, whatever is needed, im ready. Host all righty then. We might have time for one more question. As well, that is too much of a question i think for the remaining minute that we have here. I want to thank you so much for joining us and having this conversation. Ande was so much to unpack, thank you so much for indulging us with all of the questions about a potential vice presidency. National, serving as a press club, im happy to offer you advice on being Vice President in the future should that happen for you. [laughter] i also would like to say that we typically offer our guests the National Press club mug, so if you were here, i would be handing this to you today, but we want to thank you so very, very much for joining us at the press club, and we want to let folks watching now that we are continuing with we intend to continue to make the club a place where things happen, so thank you again, representative bass, for all of your time and comments today. Rep. Bass thank you. It was an honor to be here and i look forward to getting that mug. Lisa absolutely. Thank you for joining us. During the summer months, reach out to your elected officials with cspans congressional directory. It contains all the Contact Information you need to stay in contact with members of congress and state governors. Order your copy online today at cspanstore. Org. Trump willpresident