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At This Hour

Protests Across America Over No Indictment in NYC in Garner's Death; Interview with Rev. Jesse Jackson; Diversity Among Protesters; The Dawn of Orion

Aired December 05, 2014 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MICHAELA PEREIRA : Good morning, I'm Michaela Pereira. John Berman is off today.

@THISHOUR, a growing sense that the chokehold death of a Staten Island man by police is bringing more America together, regardless of their race, and the decision not to indict the cop responsible has inspired more than just protests in New York City but a movement, rather, across the nation, demonstrators marching, staging sit-ins, die-ins, blockades, demanding change in the way police treat minorities.

On the heels of Ferguson, it's becoming clear that this is more about -- it's about, more, rather, than the NYPD and the late Eric Garner and more about the issue between black and white and about justice in America in 2014.

Our Brooke Baldwin was on the ground in Brooklyn. She was at a march there last night. She tells us that this was one of the most poignant moments, protesters lying down in the middle of a busy street, lying down with coffins.

What struck her, besides the symbolism, obviously, was their silence.

Our Alexandra Field joins us now from New York. Good to have you with me @THISHOUR, Alexandra. I appreciate it.

We know there were arrests last night, about 200 people arrested in New York. They are anticipating more protests in another dozen or so cities today. Boy, this has really touched a nerve.

ALEXANDREA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It really has for people not just in this city, all over the country as you point out, Michaela.

We saw this frustration, this anger really coming to the surface with the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, and what you're seeing now with the Eric Garner case how that sentiment has really rippled outward. People are really feeling it, and they are attaching themselves to it.

As soon as we heard that the grand jury had not indicted the officer involved in the death of Eric Garner, you saw people wanting to come out, wanting to speak, wanting to say things. One of the most powerful things I saw was in Union Square here in New York City. A couple people got together, and they just stood there in silence with their hands up. And more and more people kept joining the group, and maybe they didn't really know all the details of the Eric Garner case, but they felt there was a sentiment that they wanted to attach themselves to, and they felt these people being silent were speaking for them in some way.

PEREIRA: You know what's something else, Alexandra, that really has moved me about all of this, it's not just about black faces. When you look at the images of the protesters, you see people of all ages, all races. You get a sense they're from various economic groups. It's really interesting to see.

FIELD: Yeah, you know what, Michaela? Eric Garner's daughter, Erica Garner, said this is not a black and white issue, and I think she meant it in a very literal way, and we're seeing that reflected back to us when we're in the streets with these protesters the last two nights.

You will see this is really a diverse and eclectic group. It's kind of what you expect to encounter on the streets of New York City. And one of the interesting things we saw is that I was walking with this group that was marching from Union Square to Columbus Circle.

And it may have started as a concentrated group, but there were people saw this group marching and joined in for a few blocks. They would chant along with them. They would stop and reflect and then maybe they would peel off. But it just sort of this literal movement that was drawing people in who felt connected through these really broad concerns about how our communities, our police, and who's doing the policing, and who's overseeing the policing, where the accountability is.

PEREIRA: We've heard anecdotally from people who said, "I was inconvenienced on my way home last night, but it feels like this is something I don't mind that inconvenience for."

Alexandra Field, thanks so much. We appreciate it. I'm sure we'll be hearing more from you throughout the day here on CNN.

Eric Garner's mother joined us this morning on "NEW DAY." Gwen Carr said she can't understand how the grand jury failed to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo given the fact that the medical examiner ruled her son's death a homicide. She also flatly rejected Pantaleo's written apology.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GWEN CARR, ERIC GARNER'S MOTHER: I really wonder who wrote that paragraph.

I guess after the decision, his attorney probably told him, "We have to put something out there," and probably his secretary wrote it. He may have never even read what was written.

PEREIRA: You don't feel that it's genuine?

CARR: I really don't. And even if it was, how am I ever going to forgive someone who murdered my son so viciously? Left him on the hot pavement to die?

If you look at Pantaleo, he's a little man, and he sneaked up behind my son and grabbed him, which he didn't have to do that. My son was no threat at that time. If you look at the video, he's talking to them, but he has his hands up at all times. They know that he wasn't going to try to attack them or anything.

He wanted to be a hero, and he went behind him and put him in a chokehold and brought him down, and then he wouldn't let him go. As my son begged for his life, he still held on. So it was like a thrill kill.

People who I have never met before came up to me since this incident happened telling me things about my son I never even knew. A homeless man came up to my granddaughter when we were rallying and asked, "Is Eric Garner your father?" I mean, sorry, "Is Eric Garner your father?"

And she said that she replied yes. He said, "You know, your father fed me everyday." She said, "Really? I didn't even know that." "Yes, he fed me everyday. He would buy me a sandwich wherever I see him."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: Gwen Carr ,showing tremendous strength and courage, given the fact that she is grieving the death of her son.

The death of Eric Garner and the focus it had nation's attention on how police, especially some white officers, treat people in minority communities.

We have the honor of having the Reverend Jesse Jackson, civil rights leader and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition joining us @THISHOUR.

Very much a pleasure to have you here to discuss a lot of issues.

REVEREND JESSE JACKSON, PRESIDENT, RAINBOW PUSH COALITION: And the spirit is be fair, and be just.

PEREIRA: I appreciate you being here. We just heard from Eric Garner's mother, Gwen Carr. His daughter has said some interesting things.

They've been reacting here on CNN, talking about the fact that they don't necessarily believe the officers' actions were necessarily motivated by race and perhaps more by pride.

Do you think that's possible and would it change the national debate we're having right now about policing in minority neighborhoods?

JACKSON: Not likely. There is a pattern here and whether it is Medgar Evers in Mississippi back in the day or Trayvon Martin or Diallo in New York, or whether it's the case of Charles and Mike Brown in Ferguson, whether it's the case of, in New York, of this awful chokehold killing, it's a pattern, and it must be stopped.

It puts an awful burden upon the department of justice to stop these acts of terror against black men.

PEREIRA: You know, it's been interesting to see these calls for justice coming from people all racial backgrounds. I don't know if you had a chance to see the faces of the protesters in New York City. It's been really interesting to me to see how diverse the protesters are.

It's a group that is largely young. What do you make of that, that the youth are having this conversation and driving it? I know there are many voices contributing to these calls for justice? What do you make of this call for the youth?

JACKSON: This is real America showing its head. After all, that is the protest combination that President Barack won with. We've seen this awful ideological polarization the last six years and made us think this is the real America.

But the fact is we have the right to vote in 1965. Blacks couldn't vote. White women couldn't serve on juries. Eighteen-year-olds couldn't vote. You could not vote on college campuses. You could not vote bilingual.

It was that quotient, not a post-racial but a post-Selma generation that came into being the real America. So when I see them, I see the rainbow blossoming and doctor king's dream being realized.

PEREIRA: You referenced Selma. You were there. I'm wondering, I can't imagine, but I imagine you look at the current situation and your mind takes you back to Selma.

What changes do you see? I know you know there is room for so much change, and there needs to be reform, but compare and contrast it for me if you would.

JACKSON: Every time there's a forward move, Michaela, there's always a backlash. Swimming from England to France is not that far -- it's like 30 miles. It's the undercurrent that never stops.

And we've seen this undercurrent manifest itself in such awful ways in the last few years, calling President Obama a tar baby, calling him a liar, and getting (inaudible) from it, saying they have one objective -- to destroy him.

We've seen poor people turning against Medicaid, for example, when they need it so badly. We've seen the "awfulest" season of polarization. We deserve better leadership than that.

This is a throwback in time, but I think if we hold on and do not give loose, I think hope will defeat hate, and hope and healing will defeat hurt.

PEREIRA: Hope will defeat hate.

You know, it was interesting. Looking at these images of the protesters, and I think it's an important tool for change, right? We both know that nonviolent protests can be a tool for change.

JACKSON: Actually, I think, Michaela, we focus so much on police. They're simply the gatekeepers. What's behind that gate that's driving this?

Student loan, credit card debt, that group was in the streets. The 1 percents, the income disparity, they're behind that gate. Really Ferguson is a metaphor for abandoned and rejected America here you face such awful polarization gaps and this growing desperate.

So women fighting for gender equality, blacks fighting for racial justice, workers fighting for decent wages, students fighting for student loan debt to be forgiven.

Behind the gates where the police are is a lot of dissatisfaction. The difference between the surplus and the deficit culture has simply gotten wider.

PEREIRA: So what do we do? Where do we start? You've listed off a lot of ills in our society. How do we begin to right those wrongs?

JACKSON: First of all, enforcing the law becomes a fact. Take Ferguson. When police and fire departments receive federal funds, unless they comply with federal employment standards, they can lose their monies.

If you have the police department. there about 50 percent black and white and brown and male and female, that would be a different culture. That would be possible if civil rights laws are enforced, relative to employment as well as contracts. That's a step.

Second, we need to review the (inaudible) commission report because we've been here before. The disparity gaps is the fuel behind these explosions. On the black side, there are three times more unemployed than whites. Twelve percent -- twelve times more likely to be arrested, fifty-five percent of all those in jail.

There's a sinking feeling. People need their hope revived. So there is a deep hole. And putting cameras on police backs night not solve it because cameras saw Garner being choked. Cameras saw Rodney King being beaten. We need to fill that whole with jobs, education, and justice, not with camera lights.

PEREIRA: There's something else that I think is at the core of this. We've heard through several of these cases, and I'm wondering -- I've been searching for an answer for this for some time, and I wonder if you have any insight.

Why is it that you believe that there is a fear of the African- American male?

JACKSON: I'm not sure. Maybe it's a throwback in time even to slavery itself. After all, the African-American male was on the line, received treatment, it happened in wages and treatment. The woman was seen as the softer sex. This thing has deep roots, but I think that today we have the capacity to get beyond unfounded fears. We didn't know how good baseball could be, Michaela, until everybody could play. There was no basis for the fear. When blacks were able to vote and share power with women and people of color, the fears about black males are unfounded fears. I just hope that we'll remained disciplined, determined, bigger numbers, and non-violent. That process will run down the opposition we face today.

PEREIRA: My hope is that we can work to foster understanding, you know, I think there's more that unites us than separates us. That's my hope. I'm curios, final thought for you, sir, before we lose you, thank you so much for your time, you're being very generous. I'm curious, given all of this as we look forward, you know, I like to look forward at things, we're looking ahead to a national election in 2016. I'm curious how you think what is playing out right now and has been playing out for some time is going to affect the landscape of that.

JACKSON: Well, if we address the disparities and not try to wash them away. Why do we have such big exciting times at these weekend football games, when black and whites together there using uniform color, not skin color. Because the plan - and the rules are public, and the goals are clear, and the referees are fair, and the (INAUDIBLE) is transparent. Those rules of fairness, justice leads to peace, rubbing a sore raw leads to anarchy and crime. Let's choose justice as a key to peace. Let's choose jobs and health care. Not better police, less police, more teachers and more coaches and more jobs and more access to health care.

PEREIRA: The Reverend Jesse Jackson making time for us @THISHOUR. We appreciate it, sir. It's been quite a week here in America. We appreciate you making time for us, thank you.

JACKSON: Thank you.

PEREIRA: Ahead here, you're going hear from the daughter of Eric Garner. She tells CNN she does not think that her father's death after a police chokehold was an issue of race.

Later on, we have been watching this, Orion, the future of human space travel set to splash down this hour in the Pacific Ocean. We'll have the very latest on NASA's big test drive.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: I can't breathe! I can't breathe! I can't breathe! I can't breathe! I can't breathe! I can't breathe!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: Protesters chanting, "I can't breathe," lying down in the streets in Times Square, New York City. You can't help but notice the diversity. It's very much like that, we're seeing, in protests across the nation. Thousands of people of all ages, races, ethnicities uniting. They're demanding police and judicial reform after grand juries cleared white police officers who killed unarmed black men. The decision not to indict in the New York chokehold death of Eric Garner seemed to be kind of the last straw for many people.

Garner's daughter spoke to CNN about what she saw in the crowd.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERICA GARNER, DAUGHTER OF ERIC GARNER: This is not a black and white issue. This is a national crisis. I believe this is a crisis. I mean, for white people to come out and show how deeply they was hurt and, like, Asians and, you know, different people from different nations and different parts of the world to come out and show that they felt the same way I felt on that video, I greatly appreciate it. It's like a sense of I'm not the only one that feel this way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: Let's pick up from her comments there. I'd like to bring in Joe Hicks, Vice President of Community Advocates, Inc., along with our commentators Mel Robbins, L.Z. Granderson. Good morning everybody, and happy Friday. I know it's not necessarily been a happy week, but I sure am glad to have the three of you with me.

JOE HICKS, VICE PRESIDENT OF COMMUNITY ADVOCATES, INC.: Morning.

MEL ROBBINS, CNN COMMENTATOR: Great to see you, Michaela.

PEREIRA: It's nice to have us together here. I think togetherness is a nice thing, especially when we look at what's happening in the nation and we look at the protests. Mel, I know you were out there last night. In fact, rumor has it, you called what you saw, "a beautiful thing."

ROBBINS: Well, just to be clear, I was actually on with Don Lemon sitting here in Boston for three hours, although I am dragging my family out tonight. It was a beautiful thing. It looked more like a parade for human rights than it did a protest. The police were relaxed. They were mostly respectful and the protesters were so united, so powerful. That image that you showed earlier on CNN of folks lying down in the street silent next to coffins, it was just moving. I think what's so powerful is because of the tone, because of the video that we have in the Eric Garner case, people of all ages, including your kids, will watch this and understand that this is a pivotal moment that something's not right and that there is a way in this great country to fix it, Michaela.

PEREIRA: Joe, you're a community advocate. Do you feel like it's a pivotal moment, what you're seeing this week as opposed to maybe some of the scenes in the past while?

HICKS: Well, I think we can all certainly applaud and enjoy the fact that it has been peaceful. It's been very little for the cops to really direct themselves to, because they have been in the main, obviously very peaceful kind of protests. The comments about the racial diversity, frankly, we have to go back to Ferguson and remember what the crowds began to look in Ferguson toward the end.

And the reason why that is is because Occupy Wall Street and other kind of groupings who were in the main white protesters, flew in, joined those protests in Ferguson, we're obviously seeing that reignited there in New York City because that was ground zero for the Occupy Wall Street. And Reverend Jackson, in fact, I won't endorse some of his rhetoric, but he obviously noted that this has brought to light, again, the Old Occupy Wall Street, obviously combined with a lot of honest elements on the street who didn't like what they saw in the video, in terms of Eric Garner.

Now, is this a pivotal moment, if people are trying to claim this is some new kind of civil rights movement? I'm not going to go there. I don't think it is. I think that we've got people that are finding new ways to advance their agendas. The latest, of course, has been Ferguson, it's been now Eric Garner. So that is driving the street because it gives them another chance to advance what their particular agenda is and it isn't always simply about the facts around Eric Garner. So I don't think this is a new civil rights movement. It's simply, again, we see the Occupy Wall Street coming out and engaging again.

PEREIRA: That may have been a faction, but I'll tell you, I know from our colleagues that have been on the street down there, they heard of people leaving their jobs for the day and seeing what was going on and joining in the protests. They weren't necessarily the --

HICKS: Oh, I'm sure.

PEREIRA: -- the occupy folks. L.Z., I want to bring you in. Do you mind if I was poetic a little bit? One of our writers found this terrific quote from Benjamin Franklin, "Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are." L.Z., what's your reaction?

L.Z. GRANDERSON, CNN COMMENTATOR: One of the things that has really been wonderful to see from this is that because we have these videos now, white people now realize that black people were not crazy. That we weren't making this stuff up. That there was actually some disparities happening within our communities that were happening in the shadows, but we have been talking about for decades. Marvin Gaye, back in '71, talked about police brutally. We dismissed NWA's "F the Police," but they were talking about police brutality. So black people have been talking about this for decades and decades. It's just beautiful now because we have this video. Our brothers and sisters who weren't directly affected by this brutality are beginning to see and understand what we've been talking about.

PEREIRA: You get a sense that there's more thinking of arms. Mel, where do you think it's going? Where do you think we go from here?

ROBBINS: Well, you know, I listened to your interview with Reverend Jesse Jackson, and he said some things that I thought were absolutely right. You know, he referenced the fact that the police are just gatekeepers and behind that gate we have some serious social issues that must be addressed in this country. I was a public defender working for legal aid in Manhattan and saw the way in which, not only implicit bias that we've been talking about a lot, but the disparity between opportunity, education, the amount of jobs, training, those sorts of things, and the lack of it are driving lots of frustrations.

And so I think where we need to go is we need to have more protests to keep the conversation alive. We need to have nationwide training. We nee body cameras on police, not only to protect them and to let the public understand what police are facing every single day in a very difficult job, but also so we have this evidence. And we need a different system for investigating police when things go wrong, Michaela.

PEREIRA: Mel Robbins, Joe Hicks, L.Z. Granderson, happy Friday. Thank you for the civil discourse, I appreciate you bringing your opinions and your passion to the subject. Thanks so much, guys, have a great week.

GRANDERSON: Thank you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And liftoff at dawn. The dawn of Orion and a new era of American space exploration.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: You can hear the excitement in their voices with that. The Orion era begins, @THISHOUR, NASA taking its first step towards putting humans perhaps on Mars somebody. It sent up the Orion spacecraft up into orbit earlier this morning for an unmanned test flight and it should be reentering the Earth's atmosphere and splashing down in the Pacific at any moment.

Are these live images we're seeing, folks, from the booth? This is amazing! We are watching a new era of history unfold and, of course, the weather is not cooperating, but you can see some of these images coming in. I want to bring in Alina Machado, who is at the Kennedy Space Center to watch the launch. Really very exciting as we watch these parachutes deploy. Tell us about this moment. This is significant isn't it, Alina?

ALINA MACHADO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is incredibly significant, Michaela. What you're watching - and I keep looking away because I'm looking at a feed right now from NASA, the same thing that you guys are watching, showing these parachutes bringing Orion back to Earth. You have to remember that just about ten minutes ago Orion was traveling a speed of about 20,000 miles per hour and in that time frame, in 10 minutes, it has slowed down considerably. It's expected to splash down at any moment in the Pacific Ocean at a speed of about 20 miles per hour.

Just think about that. It's incredible to see happening as we're talking right now, Michaela.

PEREIRA: It's really interesting, too, because what we're going to see happen is a recovery mission that looks a lot -- if you were alive back then in the '60s and '70s, you might just remember the way the spacecraft, like the Apollo, the capsules, when they would have these water landings. Why don't we listen in to NASA right now and we can listen and watch this unfold.