New book that could not have been more timely. Yuko wrote the book with erica greene who is an awardwinning reporter and was a finalist of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for breaking News Coverage of the death of ready gray and the events that followed. This book is just a beautiful way to understand what happened to freddie gray and baltimore, what happened in the lives of black america, how the lives that connect us in the untruth and the half spoken truth and the incomplete stories stop us from truly being one community and most important five days as a way to think about uprising in america and im just really pleased to be able to have this conversation with you. Thank you. Lets talk about the young man whose life was taken from us, freddie gray. The book begins, the entry point is your attending the funeral of freddie gray and leaving the funeral and seeing all the different part of Baltimore Society go back to their corners and you wanted to to paint a story that would really reflect the entirety of what was going on in baltimore and in the country but could you just talk a little bit about who freddie gray was and why his death rocked the city in the nation . He was a 25yearold young man who committed the crime of making eye contact with police and running. I think its important to start with that as a context that in certain neighborhoods and neighborhoods that are deemed to be high crime neighborhood, probable cause can be justified by making eye contact and running. Not in all neighborhoods. In certain neighborhood if you make eye contact and you run. [inaudible] but in his neighborhood that was probable cause for an arrest. Hes chased, caught, arrested and in our after hes arrested he is in a coma. A young man who, when they put handcuffs on him and placed him in the back of the police man, by the time he made it to the Maryland Medical Center to receive treatment he had three broken vertebrae and crushed legs. He stayed in a coma for a week and finally he died. This was something where, i remember the reality is when we think about baltimore and even just the two years prior, we also knew the names of Anthony Anderson, chris brown, tyrell west, similar situation, africanamerican men, contact with police, dead. So with ready, the thing that fascinated me about him, for people in baltimore, we know the story. There is a long line of this and along thread of this that continues but there was Something Different about freddie. There was Something Different that captured not only the citys attention but the worlds attention. This 25yearold young man who loses his life simply by having an interaction with police and i think there were a couple things that really struck me about why that moment and why there was Something Different about him. One was, of all those other instances that i mentioned he was the first one caught on camera and so theres importance to that in the idea that the, well what did you do to justify an argument was thrown out the window. The i know you mustve said something incorrect, or i know at some point you escalated the situation was incorrect when we are literally watching the officers put him in handcuffs and carry him to the back of the van and an hour later hes in a coma. The other thing was the appreciation that all of us have for this group called black lives matter and, i think about how years ago when black lives matter was first started by three black women and its important to acknowledge that three black women started black lives matter how when opal and alisha and patrice come up and say the statement that seems like it is basic but it causes this uproar about black lives matter, but the reason that became really important in the case of freddie as well as that black lives matter went from a to an active mobile organization that can move and disburse and activate quickly when these things happened around the country. Remember a little bit before that there was Michael Brown and they very quickly went from ferguson and into baltimore to mobilize. This rose the level of attention that in many ways in baltimore it did not drive, and so, i remember attending freddies funeral and going to the funeral in the morning and was actually that evening or the afternoon when everything jumped off and i attended his funeral in the morning and we were looking around the church and looking at the fact that when i was there was hundreds but it turned into thousands of people who showed up and it was the first o funeral ive ever attended where i didnt know the person and that really struck me because it was one of these things where i felt like, in many ways that was part of the problem. It was one of the things that made me truly understand my own complicity in all this and youre looking around the church and its like are any of us prepared to do what it would take to make sure Something Like what were watching right now actually doesnt happen again, and i also learned more in baltimore about the life they asked freddie to live and thats where i knew and i decided at that point i have to, i want to tell the story. I want to tell it through the eyes of individual people but i want to try to capture in my own mind and process in my own mind why it matters and why it should matter on a deeper level than just what we saw on one day. So tell me about those people that you decided to tell the story, its eight different people, tell me about some of them. If both baltimore is nothing else than the city of characters, and i found myself if youre talking to all these people from all these different stripes and places and everybody had ideas. Everybody had thoughts, everybody had their own hypothesis and conspiracy theories and all that kind of stuff and so one of the toughest parts of the book was going through in identifying who are the people, who are the stories that you want to tell out of the dozens of people youre talking to, which eight make the cut. Initially i decided to add one later on. I wanted to gather folks that represented different representatives. [inaudible] theres probably some of the book who you really resonate with and some you disagree with but thats human nature and thats kind of what i wanted to explain with that situation so as i was going through, deciding one of the people i knew you cannot tell a story about the history of policing in baltimore without including the name of wanda jones in it. She is a woman whose brother two years before freddie gray died in police custody. Every wednesday, literally yesterday i participated and yesterday was 360th wednesday were every wednesday she holds a protest demanding more from accountability for her brother. She has not missed a wednesday. Rain, sleet, snow, virtual she has not missed a wednesday and every wednesday she fights for her brother. She found herself in the middle of everything because freddies family knew about her story and asked her to help and she was humbled to do, but at the same time she was like i love baltimore standing up but where was this when my brother was here. I knew that i wanted to profile a guy named mark who was a police major and grew up in west baltimore and was one of the highest ranking american officers in the Baltimore Police force and found himself leaving the area where everything jumps off at and one of the fascinating things i had in this conversation with him was that he said to me, i know for a fact that none of my colleagues woke up that morning with homicide on their mind, but i also know that for those kids in west baltimore, i understand why they dont believe me and so he found himself really battling throughout these days of justifying both sides which, in a really fascinating way which i love exploring history , i love exploring the history of Anthony Williams who runs the shake and bake in the thing i love about anthony and his story was he would only hire kids who know enough to hire. He went after the kids with records and tattoos and everyone else would look at and say this is probably not the right thing for you and i love telling the story about his interpretation of everything on how it happened because his door shake and bake was right in the middle of everything that jumped off and seeing how both the response to shake and bake in that morning and the response to the uprising, i found fascinating. People like john angelos who is the owner of the Baltimore Orioles who made a final decision to play baseballs game with no fans but he wanted the world to see this and what happens when this racial divides implodes and explodes within a city so all these different characters, the basketball star term protester, the one on the cover of Time Magazine with the gas mask and his fist up and brought him to be a person being a top protester and then saying let it all burn down. I wanted to explore it through all these different lenses to help people understand and help people see the level of complexity of that situation, the level of seriousness in that situation and the fact that for each of them these rampant issues of race and poverty, how it showed itself all while this entire scene showed itself because we had yet to wrestle with our past, yet to wrestle with our history and then we dont these things just implode themselves. I want to get to the current moment but before that i want to say little bit in 2015 in those five days that you take for the title of the book, five days a fiery reckoning of the city, you have gone on to be a bestselling author and now you are the ceo of one of the nations largest antipoverty organizations, the robin hood foundation, what did the time you spent learning about freddie gray and learning about these final days and learning about baltimore in the five years since then, what did you learn . What changed your perspective. One of the things that really struck me about it was the natural unfairness of freddies life and how no one, how we spent so much time as a Larger Society talking about what happened in his death, which we should have, we spent a lot of time talking about the fact that despite he was a young man who now had a broken vertebrae and a crush learn except there is yet to be a single officer to be convicted for his crime. No one has been held responsible for what happened. The thing that i wanted to, that really hit me and actually it helped me think about the work that we do, i think about that week that freddie was in a coma, and the horror of it was that arguably that might have been one of the peacefu most peaceful weeks of his life because at that point he was surrounded by doctors and nurses. By that point he was surrounded by lawyers and activists. He was surrounded by people who knew his name. He was surrounded by people who cared if he lived or died and i cant argue for a single week in the 25 years prior where that was the case, where he had a city rooting for him and i think about what we think about the horror of what those 25 years, the horror of of the fact that at every single turn the world was telling him, screaming at him what they felt about him and how damning those 25 years were. Theres a part all read from real quick which is which one part of the book that really hit you and i say one part that hit me every school time is just the simple timeline of his life. Its just understanding from the time he was introduced into the world how the world viewed him and treated him and ill read this one part and its 1989. Gloria gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl. The twins are born two months premature. In her early 20s when she had the twins gloria had never attended high school. She could not read nor write and struggled with heroin addiction. Tiny and underweight freddie and his twin sister spent their first month in the hospital. After five months she brings them back to the housing project. 1992 freddie and his family moved to 1459 north carriage street. The house rents for 300 a mont month. In 2009 it and 480 other homes just like it would be named in a civil suit regarding the pandemic levels of lead paint throughout those homes. By age two Freddie Ennis twin sister had elevated levels of lead and there blood and suffer brain damage. They lived there until the twins are six years old. 1995 he starts Elementary School but because of lead poisoning his behavior poses difficulty to his teachers and he was in special education classes which he would never leave. By fifth grade he was for grades behind in reading driven out of the classroom by intellectual disability he spent his early years in nearby recreation centers. 1998 freddie is spending more time on the classroom experiencing long stretches out of school. He starts to migrate to the corners and begin dealing drugs. At home his father leaves for drug rehab because of his heroin addiction. Without his income freddies Home Experience doesnt have electricity or running water. His godmother takes freddie to church. Volunteers delivering meals to Senior Citizens and washing cars. 2008 Baltimore CityPublic Schools record his last attendance in school. He is 18. Hes in the tenth grade. 2009 freddie is arrested and spends four years in prison for two counts of drug possession with intent to distribute. 2011 hes paroled and back on the street, 2013 hes arrested again for drug possession and distribution, shortly thereafter his halfbrother raymond lee gordon, 31 years old his gun down near the harbor in downtown baltimore. That brings us to april 12 of 2015 when he makes eye contact with police where he is placed under arrest. By 859 mbyte 926 the City Fire Department responds to a call for paramedics to support an unconscious mail at the District Police station. April 14, freddie undergoes double surgery, its determined he has three broken vertebrae and an injured voicebox. April 18 word spreads and protest begin outside the police station. April 19, 2015, at 7 00 a. M. Freddie is declared dead. 25 years was his life and it haunts me because we spent so much time going over and thinking about justice for freddie and what justice for freddie means and it was really for this process that i know i came to take away that justice for freddie is not just what happened. Justice for freddie is making sure that we actually provided an environment where his life meant something and where society treated his life like it meant something. Justice for freddie shouldve started in the womb. Thats exactly right. When the mother was receiving treatment and Financial Support during that treatment. Thats exactly right, and not treating an addiction like its something criminalized which we repeatedly do and its not just a maryland thing where the city has more overdoses than the entire state combined and part of it is that we still have yet to get to a point where we can treat addiction which is an illness, one of my dearest friends lost the battle about a year ago now and he fought and repeatedly, and part of the reason that we actually were able to get him to a facility outofstate was because of the fact that his addiction was criminalized before so we couldnt leave the state. Why are we doing this. Youre absolutely right. This is something where his mother, Gloria Darden spent her entire life in poverty and we had this situation where part of the reason, and i feel the challenge of poverty is not even just that its there, its that its predictable, its that it is sticky, its the fact that if a child, particularly a black child is born into poverty, their probability of dying out of poverty are so monumental and thats something that i think again we as a society have to take a real count for because these are issues weve yet to wrestle with, yet to deal with, we made a devils bargain about how much pain we are willing to tolerate in other people. Used do such a beautiful job of taking the emblematic tour of a writer which is the individual story and then zooming out and tracing the public decision and the decision of the powerful shaped that individuals life. That is so much the conceit of your first book. I wonder what has changed, for those of us paying attention right now and who know the other less more, what was different about writing this book from writing the other. Great question. I think the other less more i was much more reluctant to tell that story m in part because it was a deeply personal story, even more so than baltimore this is like your life in someone elses life. I had known him for years and one of my dear friends, a woman named Terry Williams who is an author and a book writer , one of the best books ive ever read called black pain and she said to me she was always asking about him whenever we would get together and i would always give her the update and i think at that time, i personally met him when he was in year two or three of his life sentence. He still there now. She said to me i think you should really write about this. I think theres a story here to be told about these two guys and my first reaction to her was no. I said i dont want to dig that deep into his life for my own, i definitely dont want to share it and she was like i asked to have lunch with a dear friend of mine but then really having a conversation saying actually i think there is a story here but i went back and the first thing i did was talk to less about it. I said ive been approached about writing a story, what you think and without hesitation he said you should do it. I said why and he said ive wasted every opportunity that ive ever had and if you can do something to help people understand the neighborhood these decisions are being made in then you should do it. That really became the fire and the focus behind it but it was a very reluctant process for all the reasons i mentioned. I think for this month it was different, and for this when it was different because i felt the idea of the context around everything that was taking place here that we cannot miss the context of what was being said and expressed during those five days. I knew i wanted to get a journalistic approach and ive always respected ericas work. I remember having a conversation with her which i thought was really powerful and one of the ones where the kids were yelling at the police and it was what they were yelling that was fascinating. They want yelling justice for freddie. Freddie wasnt even being mentioned. They were yelling this is from our uncle buck, this is for the time you put your hands on my mother. This is for, it was like a time when you saw the city and particularly the citys children standing up for the first time and it was about much more than just what was happening or what happened to freddie. Freddie symbolize something bigger and a bigger problem that was existing within our community and so, as those days went by an early on through the process, thats when i thought i was more hesitant. [inaudible] i want people to understand the story is about how we deal with not just inequitable policing with the brutalization of black baltimore thats taking place, but the brutalization of black baltimore, its every aspect of our society which has had a hand to play in the brutalization of black baltimore at the history of redlining is the brutalization of block baltimore. All of it, the brutalization of black baltimore, and i wanted to be able to tell that story in a context of this narrative of this moment that captures all of our attention for this moment, but also demonstrating the fact that it was a Long Time Coming when we think about the measures of an equity that exist in the city. And so now here we are in this moment, you and i are talking in late june 2020, the year that god can just have back. Seriously. [laughter] we are in a moment of profound hate and grief where we have lost people disproportionately black to a manageable pandemic where tens of thousands of those lives did not need to be lost because our government betrayed us, and when the national sense of urgency around it from washington seemed to disappear as soon as it was clear who was bearing the brunt of this disease, and upon the back of that now into four months of a pandemic we have had the repeated witnessing on camera of the hunting, the discrimination, and then the murder of black people from Christian Cooper ahmad, george floyd that we did not see but we can imagine what it would be like, and emt, an emergency medical technician lying in your bed and having on uniformed Plainclothes Police knock on your door and start firing and kill you. All of this atrocity has fundamentally changed this country right now and what youve seen is still now three, almost four weeks of the same protest all over this country that is not just in innercity all tomorrow. Thats everywhere from Salt Lake City to Portland Maine to tuscaloosa that is in 95 white counties and 95 black counties with Median Income of under 20000 and over 200,000. In new york which was, no longer is but was the epicenter of the coronavirus and one of the largest sites for black lives protest and some of the most flagrant and violent oppression of peaceful demonstration, this is a moment where in so i do want to ask you, what you learned, what you think we should learn more importantly in reading five days for this moment. Those are five fiery days in baltimore that in my lifetime weve all seen the kind of urban uprising but now we are in what is truly a sustained, continue to be a protest somewhere in this country now whether its online protest or a tweet storm or this corporation is doing Something Differently, we were absolutely in a moment of mass uprising. What should we learn and what do you think could be different and what can the book tell us. One of the things that i think this moment has taught us, and honestly i give a tremendous amount of credit to you and your work because this is the exact thing that you have been so brilliantly containing the push on within our society with not only is it that race matters but acknowledgment matters and its something that we can still continue to miss, and i think about it in the context of 2020, and you are so right this year. I dont know if anybody could have predicted this year, it has been to genuine crises at our doorstep. The first was the introduction of a virus that was actually catastrophic and frankly implications that we still have not fully wrestled with. This is how catastrophic the implications are. And the other was a very unneeded reminder of how inequitable policing is in this community. And the reality is that these two crises, despite being different, they expose the very same truth that while covid19 impacted everybody, it did not impact everybody equally, that people of color contracted covid19 at twice the rate and died at christ the rate and while Police Reform might be necessary for all community, the reality is we watched mr. Floyd on camera take his last breath while handcuffed face down on the ground and watched his name being added to this whole litany of other names like Michael Brown and walter scott and eric gardner and breanna taylor, and more. We could literally just keep on naming names. But the twin crises exposed a singular truth and thats the role that race plays in all of this. Its the fact that dealing with covid is not simply going to be about the discovery of a vaccin vaccine. Dealing with inequitable policing is not just about the elimination of choke holds or no knock warrants. The protest we are seeing around the country are not simply about policing reform. They are about racism and how racism shows itself in so many different, in every single facet of our Society People say this is one of the most difficult issues that this country wrestles with, thats not true it is the most difficult issue and its one that we have tussled with in our history but weve yet to really get to actually defeating it. I think about what were some of the biggest Lessons Learned from those five days and what were seeing now, first its literally amazing recognizing. [inaudible] and even when people have said no this book is very timely, honestly my gut reaction is. [inaudible] and thats part of the problem. We been dealing with this since inception but when i think about the ideas of what would happen this time around, i think the bar has changed as to how we define progress in an important way. Theres this misconception that this thing that calm everything down in baltimore five years ago was the National Guard when the state is put into a state of emergency and thats not true because the reality is, that saturday after the uprising in baltimore, what supposed to be some of the largest protest, the thing that made that protest not happen and calmed everything down was not the fact of National Guard troops, what calmed everything down was when the states attorney came and announced charges against the six officers. I remember that day, there was almost this jubilant feeling of baltimore because we knew the name of Anthony Anderson and chris brown and we knew the trend. Theres a payout and people go about their business. But when they announced charges against those six officers, something changed because i think for a lot of people in baltimore, they actually felt all my gosh we actually could see officers being held accountable and now fastforward to the officers found not guilty and charges were dropped but that moment, that changed everything in the city of baltimore. I think of that reflects on whats taking place right now when i say the bar is higher, i think thats exactly, people arent okay with just charges being enough. They want convictions. People need to be held accountable for that. Its not just about well we now feel, we need to see this go to completion so the bar has been risen on that. The other thing that feels very different now is the conversation that people are having now isnt just about can we make sure Police Officers have body cameras. Its not just about how do we addon clauses to things like Law Enforcement order and Law Enforcement bill of rights or qualified immunity. Its not stopping there. The demands that we are seeing are actually dealing with Structural Racism and how exactly can we deal with all of these various issues and ways with a very real sense of sincerity in a very real sense of activation and movement. You talk about freddie gray where one thing that we should be talking about is the fact that why do we still have children who have to deal with lead poisoning. Weve known that lead is a toxin for a century. Weve just been very sensitive about what to deal with it. I feel like when im wondering about whats different. [inaudible] that was a big deal. In fairness, that was the first time it ever happened in baltimore. This was the Police Department that was placed under Consent Decree because of patterns and practice of racial difference where the d. O. J. Acknowledged no one has even been charged for it. That was such a big deal in baltimore, the fact that for the first time they are going to be charges filed about Police Interactions with citizens, but i also believe that as of now, thats not good enough. The charges are, thats bargainbasement because it really comes down to the fundamental sense of unfairness that so Many Americans half that theres just so much accountability for any mistakes or any. [inaudible] and that the people with the most power, theres just no accountability. There is just pure lawlessness. The idea that giving you a gun and a badge means that you get to break the law to the degree that you could take someones life and the function is going to be that thats okay, it strikes people as unfair, theres bipartisan support and theres just in an era where people want more accountability, more fairness in the system from the financial crash to the continued pollution of our air and water and just how many people with power continue to get away with poisoning us and killing us and thats why think you see so, a massive shift. They should say that the polling has shown that the last few weeks have seen black lives matter, the idea of movement get the majority support and just tremendous movement, 20point movement and approval which is a huge watershed thing. Your book is five days of demonstration, uprising, property damage, i think we should talk about that because this question of what is the identity of the protester, what good protest during the period of time in mid june what we saw was hundreds of thousands if not millions of people coming out protest with a very narrow unrelated man of some folks in some places who damage property or stole things from stores or set fires, and the response of a really multicity. [inaudible] because the First Amendment expression, the First Amendment right to assemble and protest is suddenly seen as a threat property, and then of course we have the infamous Lafayette Square where the President Donald Trump came out and deployed and ordered voices to deploy teargas on Peaceful Protesters in advance of any curfew, so were in this moment where urban unrest and the rights of protests and the reaction of police is absolutely at the forefront of our conversation for a country that was founded on protest and revolution, in fact violent protest and insurrection. I think theres a lot of stories that they tell about that so what did you learn and what can readers learn about reading five days in the very nature of protest and the importance of protests and what its like when that turns into anger and destruction of property. I thought about when the current president deployed the d airborne and have them in virginia ready to deploy if these protests continued to get larger in washington d. C. , and thats my old unit. Thats the unit i served in, and i remember thinking to myself the oath that i took when i first joined the military was to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. And it goes back to the questio question, and you just brilliantly stated that heather, what were they doing besides expressing their First Amendment right. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, if there were people and im all for the call for peace right there. I also know where is your frustration in the absence of justice and so, if we have people who are doing the violence and that kind of thing, that is also the job of police force to be able to take care that in the safety of not just the citizens but the protesters and the idea of calling in the military to be able to do this, i just found to be so so backwards and for a couple different reasons. One, its on this idea that never elevates the situation. Its one of the reasons why am very much against this idea of the hyper militarization of our force. Sometimes when you dress for combat, combat happens and so the idea of both the hyper militarization of our police force and having Police Forces that are dressed up or placing paratroopers or whoever else in american streets, your goal cannot be peace, and theres no way you can tell me your goal is peace when you are introducing tools of war inside of it. The second piece is thats not what these individuals signed up for. Its not why they put their hand to give charge to american cities. In fact, if you look at the law theres real restrictions against u. S. Forces being deployed on u. S. Streets. The third piece is this, if you look the street of this country, the president of the United States has only activated the National Guard 12 times. Ten of them had to do with race. Only two times it did not have to do with race. One was a postal worker strike in new york and the looting that took place in st. Croix after a hurricane. Every other time had to do with race and so my question is, we continue, we continue dealing with the fact instead of actually dealing with because and we continue coming up with a solution of saying well if theres action here, lets throw in the police. Lets throw in the military and its once again, its because were not dealing with causes that we keep on adding a military solution and so i applaud the people who are out there, and to your point have been out there for weeks now nonstop rain, wind, curfew, no curfew flash bang and still out there saying you will hear us this time and it is not just the american thing we can do, its not just a core principle, it is literally the First Amendment. The first thing they found to be important was freedom of Assembly Freedom of speech, literally the first thing. The principal, the foundation, and so watching people expressing that and then adding, whether its excessive policing or military forcing to be able to deal with it just shows in its nature a challenge and hypocrisy that i think we have to be able to contend with as a society and call that out when we see it as well. You talked about how we so often are just trying to address the effects and not getting to the root causes. What does that look like . What would change look like if we really addressed. I think we have to be as deliberate about a fundamental buildup as we have been about a fundamental breakdown. We been incredibly intentional about the way this breakdown looks and the way it shows itself and i think that every single place we have to be deliberate about what it means to actually rethink our society if we did not have that as our fundamental default. For example i think about all the people who have lost their job due to covid19. The reality is 23 of them were people who were living in poverty before covid19. The people who are the working poor. They were working multiple jobs and still living below the poverty line. We have to deem that as completely intolerable. We have to think about the fact that we have a Healthcare System that is largely based on employer healthcare. The problem is when you have 11 years of job growth going away in 11 weeks, we now have this gluttony of people were now fundamentally uncovered and just praying they dont get sick and frankly for everyone else were praying they dont get sick either because of what thats going to mean in terms of the cost because of the system we created. We have a Child Tax Credit system where we have to be able to ask and demand things like making the tax credit fully refundable when you consider the fact that 54 of the black children in this country do not qualify for the tax credit. We have a system to provide a safety net that provides no safety net. So i think what we have to do, were talking about what does it mean to restructure our society, it means that its going to this understanding that individual good deeds will always be insufficient if were not actually thinking about the other piece in the fact that weve had a federal and state and local government who have policies in place right now that are hurting people and keeping people in poverty. That needs to be completely changed. I am so excited that five days is now out, its out from the publisher, the wonderful black lives publishing imprint random house. [inaudible] the book will be coming out in a number of months. I cannot wait for this book. I cannot wait. Thank you. So Many Americans of all backgrounds are really trying to learn more right now and one world is a Publishing House that is dedicated to stories about race and racism and about who we are as human beings i in all of our various forms so check out one world and you will learn so much more. Its always so, such a joy to be with you. I cant wait for this book to hit the world and really remind us of where we were just five years ago when we had five days that showed us about where we can go forward from here. Thank you so much. We cannot wait for your book. Bless you and thank you sincerely for everything. Thank you. This program is available as a podcast. All after Words Program can be viewed on our website booktv that work. During a Virtual Author Program hosted by the free library of philadelphia, disability rights activists judith discussed her lifelong work to gain rights for disabled people. Heres a portion of the program. I cant think of the last time that ive seen on Major Television a story about disability rights and you actually point out that when we do see the disabled theyre never the romantic lead, theyre never the best person in the movie. [inaudible] he was a positive character, however he doesnt really have a disability and all these movies where there are positive messages, forrest gump,. [inaudible] i think one of the basic issues around why are we not see more is a combination. One is i think people are afraid of acquiring a disability themselves. They look at people like myself or whomever and they say i dont know how they do that, i couldnt do it. They dont really know what it is and they dont really know not only what it is we are doing, but they dont really also think about themselves and their future and the reason i say that, there was a little bit of a discussion that i have is that when you use the right able body and i say no i dont use the right ablebodied because i use it for a couple reasons. I dont like to use the word able because it implies that im not able and i dont. [inaudible] i think with the terminology of people using a bolt or disabled or whatever it may be, its maybe not intentional but i think the term we use is an issue. I also think as you were discussing not seeing and learning about disability and the way people are characterized and increasingly even when we are characterized, i think that also leaves people who have questions afraid of asking them so wings have gotten a little better in the following way, going down the street i use a motorized wheelchair so children will frequently be curious. They havent seen one and so in some cases they want to ask a question and we used to call it the potato chip issues so a child wants to ask you question the parents would pull the child away, distract them rather than asking the question. For me, and this is not true of everybody, some people do not like to be asked, for me i really dont mind if some of the asks and for children i really want to engage them. First of all when im going down the street and theres a baby carriage, we are more at the same eye level. I am definitely drawn to them because i watch their eyes and little boys look all the time, little girls, not so much, but talking to them and getting their parents engaged, some of their parents are totally aware there cool about it and will kneel down and all these others and the others are like please stop embarrassing me dont ask any more questions, you can just see it, but i think they have logical questions. , whether were blind or deaf or hard of hearing or have a physical disability, people need to understand. The Biggest Issue is. [inaudible] as people get older, their sight, their hearing, their ability to communicate or emulate but they may have other kinds of memory issues, and we tend to let that marginalized people. If we look at whats going on right now with the pandemic, both in the u. S. And around the world, some of the highest areas of death as a result of people acquiring the virus are people in institution and why are they there . They are there because their homes are not assessable, there dont have homes that are assessable, we dont look at need for personal assistant , i cant go to bed myself. I cant get up, i cant get dressed, i cant go to the bathroom, i cant do all these things but when im able to have someone help me, i can do all of those things so if people become invested in their future, not only in my future but in your own future, what do you need to be preparing for, these various things can happen. Not in a negative way but in a positive way what does one need to do in order to stay in their community and really be willing to look at some of the more difficult questions. To watch the rest of this discussion visit our website book tb. Org and search judith human for the title of her book being human. and the reagan i knew. And watch saturday, july 18th july 18th as we feature journalist and author malcolm gladwell, binge watch booktv all summer on cspan2. Now on booktv were live with author and retired admiral jameses stavridis. Taking your calls and comments. His becomes include the accidental admiral, sea power, and sailing true north, ten admirals and the voyage of