the issue of race and nationalism. and i think that is the issue of our time. in other words, how race is creating or influencing conversations that put communities into a corner and that divides our country and makes it difficult to have honest conversations about national security, about civil rights, about pluralism. about the economy, even. so, i'm just going to let you open with your remarks and then we'll take it from there. >> no pressure on the high level conversation, right? like the loquacious abilities after the last two panels. i've got to say this guy is intense, never met him and never seen him. i was just like, i don't want to play chess with that guy, never. [laughter] >> great. it was-- it's great and thank you for having me here. it's just interesting, i think, a week, maybe a few days more than that, we were at the wise up summit in washington d.c. with daisy khan also talking about samy topics and ideas that are affecting many communities, but primarily the muslim community and i will just be upfront and say while i'm not new to service work and working with some very difficult populations that typically involve around some sort of hate, violence and then not to mention the impact of those life styles and those places that those things lead, i am new to the muslim community and so i'm constantly learning, absorbing and spoking up as much as i can and as well as the jewish community. i have to say as i was listening to how the muslim community is being persecuted it reminds me of a time when the jewish community was being persecuted and almost word for word ways and laws in another country that eventually led to what we know now as the holocaust. having visited one of those places recently, it brought to mind of how similar things are today for many people. not just one persecuted group, there are many persecuted groups here. i was just in orange county at one of the universities there talking and a woman mentioned that the way that this last election has turned out was really a massive effort to restore the original binary that was at the root of how this country was established. and i took that, and i connected it with what i've been realizing in working with white supremacy for the last couple of years, in that what we're seeing right now is the backlash of 50 years of civil rights by people who are angry and who are dragged into the civil rights movement kicking and screaming who have now kind of regrouped and recovered from that, and are now starting to reestablish that, preexisting binary. so, i didn't know if it was by accident or they were just saving that conversation for right now, but you know, i started working with-- my origin tension was to work with youth who had survived, you know, abuse and found themselves in trouble. how did i become the executive director of an organization that is focused on combatting violent extremism from the far right here in the u.s.? i simply followed the bread crumbs. and as a social worker, i think that's your primary duty. and so, here i am following the bread krums crumbs and it keeps taking me closer and closer to the top of this country. and life after hate, and including basic community, has to have an invested interest in being a part of the solution, not just the conversation, but the solution, especially in the face of leadership that abdicates responsibilities to draw a clear line on what i would say are our basic human rights. >> yes, thank you. it's an honor to be here and send me your bill for tuition, the former two panels, the learning here is very rich. i'm a civil rights lawyer and what i see going on right now, it's a great thing bridging the divide, and i would just-- i don't want to be pessimistic, but i want to be realistic. it's one thing talking about bridging the divide when you can assume goodwill. the question is, what do you do about bridging the divide when fear and hatred are being weaponized to create power for a group or set of groups that fear the loss of their privilege and the only deal that they've been offered? the folks you're talking about in this country, which was begun as a slaveocracy, the only thing that poor whites were ever promised was that they were always have higher social status than africans, and that's right african-americans. and so, they woke up one day and found 50 years of civil rights, as you said, but also, and this doesn't explain the entire reason why we have politics of division, hatred and fear, which focus on immigration, the favorite bogeyman in the united states, the african-americans. that's been weaponized on steroids. the conversations we've been having the last 25 years, i think there's a different premise now because the division and the fear and the hatred are actually the point because they are the platform as a vehicle for power, for people who feel they're losing their power. and so, what you're doing here in this conference is extremely important because in my view, muslim-american, american-muslim communities and immigrant communities are going to be our salvation because the vision if you're going to put together, not just to explain all of the stupid questions you've got to answer, you know, the stuck on stupid, african-americans how do you comb your hair and stupid stuff like that and don't you have to follow fatwah, the dumb stuff, when they're not integrated. right now we have to ask how do you create cohesion behind the great principles that this country stands for and why immigrant groups always wanted to come here. rule of law, separation of powers, freedom of press, equality. just all of the tenets. e pluribus unum. and you are crafting a vision that doesn't just fight to preserve your place here in the united states, but you're actually going to be the key to solving one of the greatest fears against extreme violence, but i also think that the pay we are narrow casting and focusing on islamophobia and giving that a lot of oxygen, it's the key reason we're endangering ourselves. we're creating more and more of the problem and the biggest threat in the united states right now is not the horrific attacks with cars or anything else, charlottesville or south manhattan, it is the extreme violence of the folks who have the guns in this country. it is the extreme violence -- [applaus [applause] >> it is-- by narrow casting and focusing on, exaggerating the threat that's posed by folks who have taken islam and perverted it and weaponized it, instead we're ignoring. we talk about manhattan, well, when you talk about london, barcelona, when you talk about all of the places where we've had attacks by people who have perverted islam, and commit violence and murder in the name of islam, but we don't include vegas. we are a probably not going to include the shooting today. why? because they were done by white men. and so, i think that's very dangerous. actually white supremacy is the mortal threat to our constitution. [applause] >> and when you asked the question, how do you bridge the divide, i think that not just having a conversation, not just doing our panels, not just updating our facebook pages, not just marching, if we don't organize, this is a struggle for power to either install an autocracy or to preserve the precious freedoms in our constitution. he think the muslim-american community is going to be the vanguard of solving not just the international crisis over violent extremism, but in this country, i think this community is the key. [applaus [applause] >> on the issue much white supremacy and white nationalism, sammy, you deal with people who have gone through that process of radicalization, but they're white supremacists and something that i've heard before in terms of dealing with people who have radicalized to violent extremism is that you can't look at them as monsters, you have to look at them as human beings first. can you go-- can you walk us through that process of dealing with people? 'cause i think leak yourself, and i watched your youtube about your life story as a victim of rape and abuse growing up as a child, it was a very difficult video to watch, but it's a must-watch video, what goes on in the minds of people who radicalize along the lines of white supremacy and what do you do to try to help that person? >> first of all, i think it's important to recognize that we can't fall for the trick of the rebranding of racism and bigotry under the guise of white nationalism or civic nationalism. we're talking about racism. and so, i haven't met many criminals who acknowledge that they're criminals. i haven't met many racists who acknowledge that they're racists or alcoholics who are alcoholics. there's always another word for it than what it is. so i think we have to be careful not to allow the rebranding of what we're seeing from the far right be anything other than racism and bigotry and supremacy. if they want to call themselves white nationalists or anything else, that's for them, but we're-- we understand that we're dealing with supremacy issues, rooted in racism. they are looking, their ultimate goal is genocide or complete separatism and oppression of anyone else other than them and wondering if i'm american, in the way that it's being talked about, you know, and those many conversations we're hearing. and i do think it's important to acknowledge what happened in texas and just, you know, of course, waiting. some of us are bracing to try to understand what happened there. i think no one should practice the values of the people that they're condemning, and then see themselves as different. the reason i say that is because, we're-- i think the previous panel talked about it to a degree. we are at risk of hating the people that hate us. and that will only create more of the problem and more of the justification for people to dig in under opposite ends if, you ask me. the problem that we're witnessing from the left, so-called left side is that people are tired of having to turn the other cheek. and so, they're assuming that for the last a 50 years, us being the softies and the lefties, how they talk about people who are trying not to be violent, i think some people withen that group have gotten fed up and it's also a natural consequence of being oppressed and oppressed for a long time and for your voice not mattering, but i think we have to be careful not to cross over to that violence. part of our failure is that we don't stick with causes long enough. and we're running out of ideas on how to resist, that don't include violence and so, in many ways we're frustrated and i think we're reacting on that frustration. this is not a justification. i want to understand the left. just like life after hate tries to understand the right. we're trying to understand what's driving people to such depths of anger hatred and violence. radicalization in many ways, i believe, comes from unresolved experiences of trauma. you know, whether they're justified or not. if it's-- how do we know that something is a traumatic? the person feels it's traumatic. in many ways we're talking about a group of people who feel disenfranchised and who still, probably a group of privilege, but don't have full reign of that privilege over civil rights laws. they're feeling in some ways they're becoming the victims of civil rights in many ways and there's that denial and des nance built into that narrative. for us, we need to understand that's their narrative. don't have to agree with it, we're not getting away what we believe in and so we're not conceding to anything, but we're also not condemning in that way and we know that that's an important aspect of the work we do because in order to have dialog, you have to have a sense of a shared experience, created in the room with the person that you're trying to help. so, if that person doesn't feel that you're sharing with them that space, they'll reject anything you have to say or anything that you offer no matter how great it is. so, we're trying to position ourselves not in the middle, but we're trying to in many ways stretch our spirits around these issues so that we can envelope it, rather than have to choose to side. we're trying to embrace the sides out there as a whole and understand that, look, this person is not irredeemable. this person is not broken beyond repair. this person can be reached and we saw that in gainsville. and saying that with compassion and empathy, you can in the face of hate dismantle hate, but you can't respond in kind and expect to have some sort of improvement. so, when we saw those two men hugging and later become friends, we realized that, that is in many ways what the individual community, the individual person, has a responsibility to do. and it doesn't, again, mean that you're conceding or relinquishing your position, it means that you put humanity before your-- before your ego in many ways when we're addressing that's issues and we're finding success, and it's made up of 100% form of violent extremists who are now invested in doing service work and in also, trying to help others be redeemed in that movement. >> just real quickly, a quick follow-up. you were awarded $400,000 grant by the obama administration for combatting white supremism and then it was rescinded by the trump administration. what was the purported reason given to you and what are you doing to offset that loss in terms of trying to do the work that's so important. >> absolutely. we've been a nonprofit since 2011, in many ways we're the only ones doing what we do in the country right now and it was just a small group of us who decided we want today unravel and undo some harm that we caused through our own behaviors and with the exception of myself, everyone else in is a former white supremacist. i survived a race riot at 17 fighting white supremacists, here we are together doing this and the reasoning was, and i think it's important to understand, i think, what was-- what the real decision was hidden behind as that we no longer, after a new review, qualified for the funding. but that's like changing the questions, but stel grading it by the old answer sheet and we were never given an opportunity to respond, however, i think that no one would be surprised when i say that the priorities by this organization to focus on white supremacy disappeared under the new election so that, i think, was a final-- was just a final sweeping gesture of taking that off the table as a point of conversation. the data does not support focusing on isis-related type terrorism in this country. it's a factor of 2-1 that majority of violent extremist attacks after 9/11 have been by far right violent groups, not by men or women hiding behind some sort of religious component of islam or faiths related to muslims. it has nothing to do with that and in many ways i think that it's what's inspired vegas. it's what inspires-- we're hoping doesn't turn out to be related to anything that's going to cause more condemnation of groups of people here in texas. they doesn't have to be a part of those movements to be inspired by those movements. if you've ever been around somebody in a bad mood and found yourself in a bad mood, you kind of understand the dynamic, but on a larger scale. [applaus [applause] >> you've been working with law enforcement, with civil rights groups for quite some time and at first, you would go in and sue and then you realized you needed to change strategies in terms of suing law enforcement and can you caulk r walk us through. we american-muslims are going through the same things, protests, and those are important strategies, but what can you tell us in terms of what you learned how to deal with the policies that at the core, they are not-- they're inequitiable, they're biased in terms of racial ooiii the policy and how do we achieve more equity. >> you always need inside and outside strategies. even in south africa where the oppressed folks were the majority, they found a way not to-- a lot of people died, but they found a way not to go to a nuclear level where it would have been armageddon and i think the same is true in this country. the nonviolent movement has gotten us more-- let me put it this way. martin luther king, jr. achieved a whole lot more and thurgood marshall, harriot tubman, all of the great leaders, that helps emancipate us along with the quakers, and those ended slavery and jim crowe, when you look at the history. it's a matter of timing. harriot tubman may not have been able to end slavery, she did get them out on the railroad. she did what she could at the time. the reason why i have the privilege of moving inside. i sued every police department, i had a wake up every day and sue a police department. and i sued so many at l.a.p.d., is she with us or not, we can't tell anymore. once the department hit rock bottom those of us had been-- i happened to come along at the end of 70-year war against abusive policing and knew what to do to move inside. so a few of us moved inside and yes, i do have a parking space and yes, i get excoriated for it, but somebody had to get in there and listen. somebody had to get in there and empathize. when i'm with the cops now i don't talk about civil rights, i talk about here is what's going to get you home safely at the end of your shift. okay? in your interest, this is why you need to do this, this is why you need the trust of the poorest communities. this is why you need to stop alienating people with stop and frisk and everybody is in a pair of baggie pants and gold chains, no, no, you've endangered yourself and your community and you're violating your own mission and let's talk in terms of your culture what you need. the same thing has got to be done here. what you do is extremely admirable and brings me back to the days when i was representing klansmen on death row and they called me such creative racial epithets, i had to write them down so i didn't forget them, but why did i represent klansmen on death row because i thought it was immoral to do a nationwide moratorium against the death penalty, when that moratorium left you could not just represent african-americans on death row because when you represent a class of people on death row, that's immoral. when i brought that up with naacp, they gave me the klansmen, that's how that happened. here is the thing and i think you bring up extremely valid points about reaching out, understanding, listening. let's not conflate everybody who voted in this last election with 5% maybe who belong to breitbart and who are white supremacists with the new garb. they now wear khakis, right? >> tiki torches. >> and tiki torches, get some flame throwers, let's not get violent. when they conflate, i studied for a while after the election. i'd been ill for a while and when i'd come back and i felt like rip van winkle. i came back after three years and i looked at the voter files for folks who voted once or twice for president obama and then switched to trump because they're not with the-- necessarily with the white supremacists they could have never voted for obama. so my question was are they globalization refugees? are they-- what was going on here? are they folks who just decided that, and i finally figured out that, no, well, it's not that they don't have any racialized ideas or might be slightly racist. they're probably interracially clueless bike like most americans. they voted for obama because they were so tired of being put through the wood chippers. white folks in this country have lost working income and roto tilled and the opioid crisis. and of course, when it was african-american that's crack and let's have that for the record. that didn't diminish the pain of p whites and working class whites. we've sold everybody who .1%. i live with the .1%. my law partner is molly munger, i live on her estate. i've been with the rich for a long time, a fly on the wall watching a very privileged group. with that said, for most americans, the dream is slipping because we are not defending our basic values. we have not given a vision that includes everybody. and the political parties that are bankrupt right now and disintegrating, they have failed to offer any kind of vision for the future that includes opportunity and upward mobility for all of our tribes, e pluribus unum. if the many don't move together and get left behind, you get after 50 years of a southern strategy, which was built on racist ideology, and neo confederate ideology, you get that and you compound it with the fear of an international threat that's been hyped, and now you've got new scapegoats. and so, let's figure out a way to translate into the interests of the folks who fear a non-white dominated or non-european dominated culture. fear 200 languages spoken in l.a. unified, doesn't even count the dialects or ebonics. three, understand that we have got to advocate for the policies that create the problems we're fighting ideological war with nation state military apparatus and we can't do that. we need the muslim-american community to help us figure out what are the arguments that can win over the disaffected, that can win over the left behind, not just white males, not just african-americans, but all of our tribes that have been left behind and if we give that vision, connected to our fundamental constitutional principles that all of us came here to enjoy, we'll have something. but, again, getting that vision in a time when there's a hurricane of chaos and hate is going to be very difficult to get that message across and that's what we need to be focusing on. what's the vision, how do we connect it to language and values that speak to the people who are threatened by us. not that we have to keep turning the other cheek, but we have to offer a future, and if none of us is in that future, we're all going to disintegrate. the democracy will perish and none of us will never have any of the promise of what this country offers. [applaus [applause]. >> time has flown by. we are at 5:00 and i wish we had another hour to talk, so, i'm just going to let you give any final comments and then we are going to have a comment, i think, by the mayor's office p. >> right there. okay, afterwards. if you, why don't you go and gave your final comments. >> i -- yeah, what she said. [laughter] >> and i do think, you know, i'm the founder of an organization called formers anonymous, a 12-step spin on being addicted to certain life styles that are hard to walk away from and i actually, we actually got asked to leave one church that we were in because they needed the space that we were taking up on the day that we were using it. so i reached out to another church and i won't go into denominations or anything like that, but it was a population that has been condemned and marginalized, it's well-known, well documented and that church heard me out, wished me well, and then sent me an e-mail and basically refused us a space in their church primarily because of the criminal backgrounds of the men and women that we're trying to help. and my response to them was, it is difficult to stand with the condemned, i understand, and so, in many ways i think we, as victims, start to take on some of those hard lines and become condemning in our approaches to many so of those things. we have to be a receptacle. we have to be in some ways, in the position to receive people who are lost to hate because they come out more often than we think, but if we're not there to highlight the exit strategy for these men and women lost in hate, where do they go? right? and so, i think it's important for all of us to kind of embrace and adopt the idea that we have to make space for the people that we don't like, also, otherwise we become a lot like the people that we feel, you know, have done this to us, you know, and it's sad to watch that, but we, i think we forget where we've come from at times and how hard we fought to get where we're at and frustrated with others who haven't gotten out the same page, the same way we have. again, no one is irreparable, and if we become hopeless about a group or person, that respects our hopelessness and our frustration with our inability to come up with a viable solution rather than the person that we're kind of projected that onto. so, i think it's for us to insert a narrative of hope even in the face of pessimism and face of hopelessness, we have to maintain the balance in the face of hate with hope. that's the only way i can see us going through this the long-term. >> thank you for being the hope. >> absolutely. [applause] >> i absolutely agree with everything you've said and thank you for everything you've done to try to transform hate into love. i also think that we're in an exst exstential battle right now. not just for the american democracy, constitutional democracy that we're trying to create and prove and make a better union out of, but we need to understand that this is an extraordinary time of chaos and disruption, dislocation... sclooep e pluribus unum vision. i guarantee you i talk or see well when and the question of how do you maintain fealty to your values enshrined in the constitution, the values of inclusion and tolerance when you are faced with an opponent who destroys the rules, destroys the norms, will lie, will cheat, because that is the only way they can win. we actually have truth on our side. we have truth and we have a collection of humanity attached to a set of values that are some of the best you can have. and i think what impact represents, you represent one of the most important platforms for an act did not envision, putting it on a platform with wheels and jet fuel. but folks, this is about power. we can't fight a cultural war with policy in light papers. if we don't get ourselves organized, this constitutional democracy can go very quickly because the founding fathers and mothers assumed that at the pillars upon which our constitution rests are rational, fraud and truth and right now those are being put in the wood chipper. so when you are faced with that situation, the words of martin luther king played by our nonviolence but we have to find a different strategy and innovation that addresses the cultural fears in the deep anxiety of all of our tribes or we will perish separately. so, i am leaving you with a message, yes, of hope. i hope about power isn't going to save us. [applause] >> thank you, so much. >> phillie branscum a former senior adviser to hillary clinton today discusses the 2016 presidential campaign, the trump administration and the 2020 election cycle. watch it live 11:00 a.m. eastern here on cease and two. >> as a judge of 45 years having gone from making decisions and going to court and advocating a case to judging, was that a difficult transition for you and did you ever miss the life about a few so to speak? >> it wasn't difficult. i've known people who became judge is and so dislikes the decision-making process that they left the bench. i was an advocate. i was glad to be an advocate. i found a decision-making process while his different, enormously challenging, enormously satisfying. i love being a judge because the opportunity to resolve disputes large and small, they'll matter to somebody, as some have large public significant and that's the very satisfying role.

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