Since the death of george floyd in minneapolis and nationwide protests against Police Violence showing no sign of slowing down. In Southern California yesterday a number of processions led by hearses met for a Memorial Service in downtown los angeles. In portland, oregon, demonstrators shutdown an intersta interstate. Portlands chief of Police Stepping down, announcing she asked an africanamerican lieutenant to replace her. Outside the white house, protesters turned the fence around Lafayette Park into a living memorial with hundreds of signs and works of art. This comes as former Minneapolis Police officer derek chauvin, who is charged with murder in the death of george floyd made his First Court Appearance yesterday. The judge granted the prosecutions request for a 1. 25 million unconditional bail. All this set against the backdrop today of the private funeral for george floyd and the laying to rest of a man who was killed now 15 days ago in minneapolis. I mean, so many people commemorating his life across this country right now, the private funeral as you mentioned for george floyd being held in his native houston today. But before he is laid to rest, thousands joined his family yesterday to pay their final respects at a public viewing in the city. Floyds casket arrived at fountain of praise church where mourners braved 90 degree heat to wait outside before coming in for their personal tributes. Well wishers Wearing Masks as a precaution against the coronavirus filed into two lines as ushers directed them to floyds gold colored casket where they said their goodbyes. According to the church administrator, by 5 30 p. M. , more than 6,000 people had come to honor george floyd, including governor greg abbott, former Vice President joe biden who is pictured with floyds uncle, the familys attorney, and congressman sedge Rick Richmond and reverend al sharpton. The meeting lasted for more than an hour during this biden, quote, listened, heard their pain and followed in their woe. Floyds brother spoke to a crowd of attendees following the service. I love yall for giving my brother so much support. Yall could have been anywhere in the world but youre with us now. This is a blessing. This is bigger than george right now. Were going to stop everybody from being afraid of the police. We have good police, but we have bad police. You cant sort them out so we have to figure it out right now. 6,000 people stood in the 90 degree heat yesterday for the viewing of George Floyds body today. In houston will be the private service as yasmin just told us. You cant help but be struck and in awe of the crowds that continue to pour in the streets every single day. This is now two weeks of this. And it appears the enthusiasm, the passion, the fear, the anxiety, the anger, pent up over generations is not going to ebb anymore soon. You know, willie, i think thats absolutely right. When i look at the funeral or the viewing, it reminds me of emmitt till and his mother, and how important her open casket viewing was for the civil rights movement. It transformed a generation, it radicalized everyday ordinary black folks to step out and fight for their freedoms and citizenship. Here we have 6,000 people bearing 90 degree humid heat in houston to view the coffin of george floyd and that happens amid the backdrop of ongoing protests around the country. This was not a flash in the pan. This moment, right, is a moment to fundamentally transform how we police in this country and they need to address it with substance and not just simply symbol. So eddie, you saw the image yesterday of Democratic Congressional leaders, led by nancy pelosi, taking a knee for eight minutes and 46 seconds. The democrats put out a new proposal about policing in this country, the president is said to be considering some parts of it. Do you see a government now that is standing up to meet the demands of the people in the streets in a way that perhaps we didnt see after ferguson, for example. Or we didnt see after eric garner where there was passion and anger for a while and then the country sort of moved on. We are in the move now some two weeks later and seeing legislative steps being taken a as well. I think 2014 was an interesting moment. We saw the intensity of the ferguson protests, we saw a lot of young people put their lives on the line and nothing much changed after that. In some ways the biggest change was the election of 2016 when the country decided to put donald trump in the white house. In this moment, i think the frustrations around 2014, the fact that that generation who came of age with obama in the white house, theyre now 22, 23 years old, theyre now in the streets. Theyre going to demand change. Theyre going to continue to push for change because theyve in some ways come of age in a moment of ongoing catastrophes. So i think there is an opportunity for a significant shift, but were going to see it happening more so at the local level, at the state level, because it seems that in washington d. C. , substantive change has been gummed up by deep, divisive partisan. You have a democratic house, and a republican senate. Craig melvin will lead our coverage on msnbc of George Floyds funeral in houston. Among the proposals in the democratic legislation, no chokeholds, body cameras for all Police Officers, but one flash point in the country and within the Democratic Party has been this idea of defunding the police. Joe biden and Top Democrats on the hill are pushing back on calls from progressive activists to defund the police. The president and his allies now are using the movement to paint democrats as soft on crime. Here is the presumptive nominee, again explaining his opposition. You support defunding the police . No, i dont support defunding the police. I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness and able to demonstrate they can protect the community and everybody in the community. Multiple sources telling politico that Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina told democrats in a private call to avoid being drawn into the debate over defunding the police. So this discussion, obviously progressive activists have been talking about defunding the police, its been a semantic argument about what that means but when you look at the minneapolis city vote they said we want to dismantle the Police Department. So were not talking about just rerouting funds to social programs, but, in fact, dismantling the Police Department. Is this a dangerous place for the Democratic Party to be when they have Public Opinion on their side right now, when they have the energy in the streets to be talking about taking money away from the police entirely . It can be politically, willie, but it also reveals that we are just simply in the eye of the storm. That the divisions in the country are going to be made manifest as we continue to try to imagine a new america. Lets be clear, we have examples of disbanding Police Departments, one just recently in 2017 in camden, new jersey, and we have reports even in the New York Times about the way in which that move has impacted the notion of Public Safety, the experience of Public Safety in that very troubled city in some ways. Whats troubling about joe bidens response and jim clyburns response is that theyre not dealing with the substance of the claim theyre thinking about the politics and the optics, right. It seems that biden needs to be very, very clear that what defunding is about is a justice reinvestment movement, redirecting funds. To think about policing in the context of tough on crime, police in the context of the war on drug has led to an explosion of budgets. 54 of the budget in los angeles. We can go on and on. But when we think about Public Safety in a different way, not within the context of the war on drugs or tough on crime or the criminalization of a particular set of communities. When we begin to think of Public Safety more broadly we want to reinvest those moneys in education, Mental Health, in social work, in housing, and a range of policies that are not funded at the same level. That seems to me something that joe biden should embrace. So he might want to distance himself from the slogan, but he shouldnt distance himself from the substance of the policy it seems to me. Eddie, its interesting you bring up budgeting ending in 2019 over a fiveyear span, 40 billion going to the nypd, 6,000,000,007,000,000,000 going to homelessness and housing development. So you think about that comparison within the new York Police Department and why so many folks are in the streets youre asking for reallocating funds, at least here in new york, but you also have a lot of folks saying defunding the police is not going to achieve what protesters want. At least a professor in policing equity at the college of john jay criminal justice spoke to Rachel Maddow about the plans to dismantle the Police Departments and explains why simply defunding them would not produce the results many protesters are calling for. Watch this. Were seeing people move towards abolition, but its about not having no police, but making sure again that communities have the resources so that you can have less of a footprint of police. So ill give you an example. People have been asking me the last couple days if we defund the police what happens when you call 911 . If something is on fire you call 911, who shows up . Its the fire truck. And if somebody is having a heart attack, you call 911 and the emt shows up. So we have 911 giving lots of different emergency services. Imagine what would happen if someone was overdosing or a couple was having a disagreement they didnt know how to resolve or a kid wasnt feeling safe if you could call Mental Health, child protective resources, Substance Abuse resources, if the sources that people needed so they didnt rely on Law Enforcement were there, if 911 had more options, communities would feel safer and you wouldnt introduce a law and gun in situations that Law Enforcement cant be trained for in the first place and theyve been calling to get out of the business of for years. Thats what the majority of people that i talk to want, they want more resources for communities, so communities make the decision about when something has gotten violent enough that a badge and gun is appropriate. If you defund the Police Department and take away 50 of the personnel, right, which im hearing people say, slash it, 50 out. There is no Union Contract in the United States that says anything other than last in, also first out. That means, if youre trying to cut it, youre getting rid of the youngest officers who are also the most progressive, the most interested in culture change. So if you dont end up following a road map and looking for ways to cut the right officers and cut the right programs, youre going to end up with tragedy in black communities. So thats very well explained and well said. I think people in america are on the side of Police Reform if you look at the polling, especially now. But when they hear the word defund, which means to take funding away from the police, they think youre getting away from the Police Department. The camden, new jersey example thats been raised a lot and is interesting is more complicated because they have county Police Officers, they hired private security so there was a police force in the town, they just reinvested and redirected the funds to be used differently, social services on the municipal level. So what is the perfect model in your eye from where you sit . I think what dr. Goff just laid out is absolutely right. We want to think these sorts of solutions are just really very simple and direct and clear. The problems are complex, and i think the solutions to these problems will be complex and nuanced. Some combination of reform in the way in which we police and in some ways expanding services by reinvesting in education and housing and Mental Health services and the like. I think what dr. Goff laid out is what im hearing on the ground from activists as well. Willie, lets be clear. Itll be difficult to organize and rally around the slogan of redirect the funds of police to these things. So the slogan is a shorthand, and often times we find ourselves debate the slogan. We debated the slogan around black lives matter, people said all lives matter, blue lives matter, they thought it was a narrow utterance. People debated black power, didnt know what it meant. People debated freedom now in the context of the blacks freedom struggle with dr. King. So theres been an attention to the slogan used to mobilize folks in the street and some ways to divert our attention. We should be paying attention to whats happening beneath the slogan, what its pointing us to, and thats this, whenever police are involved in a situation, the potential use of deadly force come into view. In some instances, the idea of deadly force being possible is absolutely unnecessary, and we need to begin to shrink the police footprints in our communities because theyre not the sole responders to every problem we experience. Theyre not the sole question to the answer of Public Safety. You talk about the slogan. I heard some democrats yesterday, progressives, saying we need to work on the slogan because defund has a specific and literal meaning that the president is using to his advantage, he believes, at a Law Enforcement round table yesterday, President Trump pledged to maintain funding for police. Theres not going to be any disbanding of our police. Our police have been letting us live in peace, we want to make sure we dont have any bad actors in there, and sometimes youll see horrible things like we witnessed recently. But 99 i say 99. 9 but lets go with 99 of them are great, great people. Seeing some of the papers they want to end the Police Department, quote, end the Police Department in minneapolis. End it. What does that mean . End it. You might have some cities that want to try, but its going to be very a very sad situation if they did, because people arent going to be protected. Lets go to the white house right now, bringing in nbc news correspondent carol lee. Good morning, obviously the president believes hes onto something here, we heard it in his Public Comments yesterday, used it in tweets, saying the radical left democrats want to take money from police and get rid of Police Departments, using specifically minneapolis where the council said they want to dismantle the Police Departments. Hes struggling right now in any poll thats coming out. Is this his new law and order theme that hes going to go with the democrats want to take money away from the police, despite the fact that Vice President biden went on the record yesterday saying hes against defunding the police. Yes, were in the third week of this crisis and President Trump is now, what he thinks, found basically the argument that he can make on this, where he feels he stands on the strongest footing and he also has this opponent that he likes to have in these sorts of in these kinds of debates and that is that the democrats are trying to take away funding from Police Departments. And the whole reason for this is so that the president can cast himself as a an ally of police and Law Enforcement and say that democrats are antiLaw Enforcement. And this is where the president is going to lean into. It doesnt matter, as you said, whether joe biden says he doesnt support it or not. Every democrat is going to be asked whether or not they support this and the president is going to continue to try to make them own this because he feels and people around him feel this is his best argument in this, this law and order argument, thats his messaging plan. The question thats still hanging over the white house is whether the president is going to come up with any sort of substantive plan to deal with the concerns that these tens of thousands of protesters are voicing in the streets across the country. He has not said what he would do in terms of any Police Reforms, what he would support. He said theyre going to discuss some things the White House Press secretary said theyre looking at whats a state issue, a federal issue, what he might be able to support. But so far no specifics in that realm of this crisis. And weve seen the president repeatedly now, and youll hear a lot more of this in the coming days, hit this idea that demo