democratic presidential nomination. welcome back to meet the press. thank you, chuck. he said politicians won t have the answers because they can t agree on what the problem is. what do you think the problem is? i think the problem is the fact that we have built an economy that s leaving whole parts of baltimore, philadelphia, new york, so many citizens behind. a lot of people, i was giving out food there at st. peter s in the aftermath of this unrest. there are people in whole parts of our cities who are being totally left behind and disregarded. they are unheard. they are told they are unneeded by this economy. that extreme poverty breeds conditions for extreme violence. people are frustrated. they re angry and they feel like people aren t listening. 1999, martin o malley said this running for mayor, as much as we like to think poverty is the cause of crime, crime is the cause of poverty. people were talking about your focus that was on more policing to deal with the crim
welcome back to weekends with alex witt. with the occur tuesday being lift friday baltimore curfew being lifted in baltimore, resident say it s another stop toward healing the city. governor hogan visited a church and later spoke with reporters. let s listen to what he said about getting the city back to normal. it s been a really rough week. let s get back to normal in the city. get people back to work and back to school. get people coming back into the city to visit the shops that were really devastated this week and that small amount of mom and pop stores and restaurants, they need your help. we want to encourage everybody to come back to the city. it s safe. we ve got calm and peace something that we haven t seen in a little. joining me, baltimore security councilwoman helen holton. welcome to you, ma am. when you think about getting back to normal is it going to be a new normal or do you think you can get back to life as it was before this last week?
on the ground. we are going to make that decision. a state senator named bill ferguson, a baltimore democrat, i m sure you know him well. he said this, it is having a negative impact in our communities and businesses. it s transformed into another symbolic issue. the community expressed its desire to move peacefully and the public sector should respond in kind. what do you say to him? we try to be responsive to all the concerns. i heard from the community that said, look, we had these peaceful protests, we want to get back to normal, but the same way that you ramp up into a curfew in 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 there are public safety concerns today and something you re worried about tomorrow.
michael michael higgen bathambotham said that we have to agree there s a problem, identify it and move forward. how does society prevent further violence when it doesn t seem to agree on the cause of it? well that s an interesting point, alex, because you see there s kind of a disconnect there as to what is behind all of this frustration. and i think it speaks to perspective, and if your introduction to black lives matter or if your introduction to people of color in neighborhoods like freddie gray lives in in baltimore, if your introduction to that is seeing the cvs being burned on national television, if your introduction to that frustration is seeing a young teen put a bat through a police window, then you re going to be disconnected as to why they re doing that. but for black folks, for a lot of black folks, you know, that frustration is a symptom of something so much larger.
grandparents, aunts and uncles, an amazing string of role models and supporters. pastors and mentors. people told me the world is bigger than what was directly in front of me. my mom used to say kids need to think that you care before they care what you think. if we don t have children who understand and feel like people genuinely care about their future, they are going to care less about what comes out of their mouths and care less about what the policies we are trying to put in place to help them. kim, you write for business-oriented opinion page wall street journal. what should the business community be responding to baltimore? i think they want to be able to help in this situation. i was struck by what the governor said. he said we need a national agenda. tom said we need a marshal plan. there has been a common plan in a lot of these cities which john boehner has been referring to.