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Baltimore Tensions; President Obama Discusses My Brother's Keeper Alliance. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired May 04, 2015 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:03] BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They're all pathways for success. And we're very proud of what they do.

You know, everything that we have done since I have been president the past six-and-a-half years, from rescuing the economy to giving more Americans access to affordable health care, to reforming our schools for all of our kids, it's been pursuit -- it's been in pursuit of that one goal, creating opportunity for everybody.

We can't guarantee everybody's success. But we do strive to guarantee an equal shot for everybody who's willing to work for it. But what we have also understood for too long is that some communities have consistently had the odds stacked against them, that there's a tragic history in this country that has made it tougher for some.

And folks living in those communities, and especially young people living in those communities, could use some help to change those odds. It's true of some rural communities where there's chronic poverty. It's true of some manufacturing communities that have suffered after factories they depended on closed their doors.

It's true for young people of color, especially boys and young men. You all know the numbers. By almost every measure, the life chances of the average young man of color is worse than his peers. Those opportunity gaps begin early, often at birth. And they compound over time, becoming harder and harder to bridge, making too many young men and women feel like, no matter how hard they try, they may never achieve their dreams.

And that sense of unfairness and of powerlessness, of people not hearing their voices, that's helped fuel some of the protests that we have seen in places like Baltimore and Ferguson and right here in New York.

The catalyst of those protests were the tragic deaths of young men and a feeling that law is not always applied evenly in this country. In too many places in this country, black boys and black men, Latino boys, Latino men, they experience being treated differently by law enforcement in stops and in arrests and in charges and in incarcerations. The statistics are clear up and down the criminal justice system. There's no dispute.

That's why one of the many things we did to address these issues was to put together a task force on community policing. And this task force was made up of law enforcement and of community activists, including some who had led protests in Ferguson, some who had led protests here in New York, young people whose voices needed to be heard.

And what was remarkable was, law enforcement and police chiefs and sheriffs and county officials, working with these young people, they came up with concrete proposals that, if implemented, would rebuild trust and help law enforcement officers do their jobs even better and keep them and their communities even safer.

And what was clear from this task force was the recognition that the overwhelming majority of police officers are good and honest and fair and care deeply about their communities. And they put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe. And their loved ones wait and worry until they come through that door at the end of their shift.

As many of you know, New York's finest lost one of its own today, officer Brian Moore, who was shot in the line of duty on Saturday night, passed away earlier today. He came from a family of police officers. And the family of fellow officers he joined in the NYPD and across the country deserve our gratitude and our prayers, not just today, but every day. They have got a tough job...

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: ... which is why, in addressing the issues in Baltimore or Ferguson or New York, the point I made was that, if we're just looking at policing, we're looking at it too narrowly.

If we ask the police to simply contain and control problems that we ourselves have been unwilling to invest and solve, that's not fair to the communities. It's not fair to the police.

[15:05:02]

What we gathered here to talk about today is something that goes deeper than policing. It speaks to who we are as a nation and what we're willing to do to make sure that equality of opportunity is not an empty word.

Across the country and in parts of New York and parts of New Jersey and parts of my hometown in Chicago, there are communities that don't have enough jobs, don't have enough investment, don't have enough opportunity. You have got communities with 30 or 40 or 50 percent unemployment. They have been struggling long before the economic crisis of 2007-2008, communities without enough role models, communities where too many men who could otherwise be leaders, who could provide guidance for young people, who could be good fathers and good neighbors and good fellow citizens are languishing in prison over minor nonviolent drug offenses.

Now, there's no shortage of people telling you who and what is to blame for the plight of these communities. But I'm not interested in blame. I'm interested in responsibility, and I'm interested in results. And that's why...

(APPLAUSE) OBAMA: That's why we have partnered with cities to get more kids access to quality early childhood education, no matter who they are or where they're born.

It's why we have partnered with cities to create Promise Zones, to give a booster shot to opportunity. That's why we have invested in ideas, from support for new moms, to summer jobs for young people, to helping more young people afford a college education.

And that's why, over a year ago, we launched something we call My Brother's Keeper, an initiative to address those persistent opportunity gaps and ensure that all of our young people, but particularly young men of color, have a chance to go as far as their dreams will take them.

It's an idea that we pursued in the wake of Trayvon Martin's death, because we wanted it -- the message sent from the White House in a sustained way that his life mattered, that the lives of the young men who are here today matter, that we care about your future, not just sometimes, but all the time.

In every community in America, there are young people with incredible drive and talent, and they just don't have the same kinds of chances that somebody like me had. They're just as talented as me, just as smart. They don't get a chance.

And because everyone has a part to play in this process, we brought everybody together. We brought business leaders and faith leaders, mayors, philanthropists, educators, entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, actors, all united around the simple idea of giving all our young people the tools they need to achieve their full potential.

And we were determined not to just do a feel-good exercise, to write a report that nobody would read, to do some announcement, and then, once the TV cameras have gone away and there weren't protests or riots, then somehow we went back to business as usual. We wanted something sustained.

And for more than a year, we have been working with experts to identify some of the key milestones that matter most in every young person's life, from whether they enter schools ready to learn to whether they graduate ready for a career. Are they getting suspended in school? Can we intervene there? Are they in danger of falling into the criminal justice system? Can we catch them before they do?

Key indicators that we know will make a difference -- if a child's reading by the third grade at grade level, we know they have got a chance of doing better. If they aren't involved with the criminal justice system and aren't suspended while they're in school, we know they have got a chance of doing better.

So there are certain things that we knew would make a difference. And we have looked at which programs and policies actually work in intervening at those key periods. Early childhood education works. Job apprenticeship programs work. Certain mentoring programs work. And we have identified which strategies make a difference in the lives

of young people, like mentoring, or violence prevention and intervention. And because we knew this couldn't be the work of just the federal government, we challenged every community in the country, big cities, small towns, rural counties, tribal nations, to publicly commit to implementing strategies to help all young people succeed.

[15:10:06]

And, as a result, we have already got more than 200 communities across the country who are focused on this issue. They're on board, and they're doing great work. They're sharing best practices. They're sharing ideas. All of this has happened just in the last year.

The response we have gotten in such a short amount of time, the enthusiasm and the passion we have seen from folks all around the country proves how much people care about this. You know, sometimes politics may be cynical. The debate in Washington may be cynical. But when you get on the ground and you talk to folks, folks care about this. They know that how well we do as a nation depends on whether our young people are succeeding.

That's our future work force. They know that, if you have got African-American or Latino men here in New York who, instead of going to jail, are going to college, those are going to be taxpayers. They're going to help build our communities. They will make our communities safer. They aren't part of the problem. They're potentially part of the solution, if we treat them as such.

So, we have made enormous progress over the last year, but, today, after months of great work on the part of a whole lot of people, we're taking another step forward, with people from the private sector coming together in a big way.

We're here for the launch of the My Brother's Keeper Alliance, which is a new nonprofit organization of private sector organizations and companies that have committed themselves to continue the work of opening doors for young people, all our young people, long after I have left office.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: It's a big deal.

I want to thank the former CEO of Deloitte Joe Echevarria, who has been involved for a long time. He's taken the lead on this alliance.

Joe, stand up. You have done an incredible job.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: Just like the My Brother's Keeper overall effort that we launched last year, Joe and My Brother's Keeper Alliance, they're all about getting results.

They have set clear goals to hold themselves accountable for getting those results, doubling the percentage of boys and young men of color who read at great grade level by the third grade, increasing their high school graduation rates by 20 percent, getting 50,000 more of those young men into post-secondary education or training.

They have already announced $80 million in commitments to make this happen. And that's just the beginning. And they have got a great team of young people who helped to work on this, a lot of them from Deloitte. We appreciate them so much. We're very proud of the great work that they did.

But here's what the business leaders who are here today -- and Joe certainly subscribes to this -- will tell you. They're not doing this out of charity. The organizations that are represented here, ranging as varied as from Sprint to BET, they're not doing it just to assuage society's guilt. They're doing this because they know that making sure all of our young people have the opportunity to succeed is an economic imperative.

These young men, all our youth, are part of our work force. If we don't make sure that our young people are safe and healthy and educated and prepared for the jobs of tomorrow, our businesses won't have the workers they need to compete in the 21st century global economy. Our society will lose in terms of productivity and potential.

America won't be operating at full capacity. And that hurts all of us. So, they know that there's an economic rationale for making this investment. But, frankly, this is also about more than just economics. It's about values. It's about who we are as a people.

Now, Joe grew up about a mile from here in the Bronx. And, as he and I were sitting there listening to some incredible young men in a roundtable discussion, many of them from this community, their stories were our stories. So, for Joe and I, this is personal, because, in these young men, we see ourselves. The stakes are clear, and these stakes are high. At the end of the day, what kind of society do we want to have?

[15:15:01]

What kind of country do we want to be? It's not enough to celebrate the ideals that we're built on, liberty for all and justice for all and equality for all. Those can't just be words on paper. The work of every generation is to make those ideals mean something, concrete in the lives of our children, all of our children.

And we won't get there as long as kids in Baltimore or Ferguson or New York or Appalachia or the Mississippi Delta or the Pine Ridge Reservation believe that their lives are somehow worth less. We won't get there when we have impoverished communities that have been stripped away of opportunity, and we're in the richest nation on Earth. Children are born into abject poverty.

We won't be living up to our ideals when their parents are struggling with substance abuse or are in prison or unemployed and when fathers are absent and schools are substandard and jobs are scarce and drugs are plentiful. We won't get there when there are communities where a young man is less likely to end up in college than jail or dead and feels like his country expects nothing else of him.

America's future depends on us caring about this. If we don't, then we will just keep on going through the same cycles of periodic conflict. When we ask police to go into communities where there's no hope, eventually, something happens because of the tensions between societies and these communities, and the police are just on the front lines of that.

And people tweet outrage, and the TV cameras come, and they focus more on somebody setting fire to something or turning over a car than the peaceful protests and the thoughtful discussions that are taking place.

And then some will argue, well, all these social programs don't make a difference. And we cast blame, and politicians talk about poverty and inequality, and then gut policies that help alleviate poverty or reverse inequality.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: And then we wait for the next outbreak or problem to flare up, and we go through the same pattern all over again, so that, in effect, we do nothing.

There are consequences to inaction. There are consequences to indifference. And they reverberate far beyond the walls of the projects, the borders of the barrio or the roads of the reservation. They sap us of our strength as a nation. It means we're not as good as we could be.

And, over time, it wears us out. Over time, it weakens our nation as a whole. The good news is, it doesn't have to be this way. We can have the courage to change. We can make a difference. We can remember that these kids are our kids. "For these are all our children," James Baldwin once wrote. We will all profit by or pay for whatever they become.

And that's what My Brother's Keeper is about. That's what this alliance is about. And we're in this for the long haul. We're going to keep doing our work at the White House on these issues. Sometimes, it won't be a lot of fanfare. I notice we don't always get a lot of reporting on this issue when there's not a crisis in some neighborhood.

But we're just going to keep on plugging away. And this will remain a mission for me and for Michelle, not just for the rest of my presidency, but for the rest of my life.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: And the reason is simple, like I said before. I know it's true for Joe. It's true for John Legend, who was part of our roundtable. It's true for Alonzo Mourning, who's here, part of our board. [15:20:03]

We see ourselves in these young men. I grew up without a dad. I grew up lost sometimes and adrift, not having a sense of a clear path. And the only difference between me and a lot of other young men in this neighborhood and all across the country is that I grew up in an environment that was a little more forgiving.

And, at some critical points, I had some people who cared enough about me to give me a second chance or a third chance or give me a little guidance when I needed it, or to open up a door that might otherwise have been closed. I was lucky.

Alex Santos is lucky too.

Where's Alex? Alex is here. Stand up, Alex.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: So -- so, Alex was born in Puerto Rico, grew up in Brooklyn, in the Bronx, in some tough neighborhoods. When he was 11, he saw his mom's best friend, a man he respected and looked up to, shot and killed.

His older brothers dropped out of school, got caught up in drugs and violence. So, Alex didn't see a whole lot of options for himself, couldn't envision a path to a better future. He then dropped out of school. But then his mom went back to school and got her GED. She set an example. That inspired Alex to go back and get his GED.

Actually, it's more like she stayed on him until he went back.

(LAUGHTER)

OBAMA: And I know, because just like I -- I was lucky I also had a mom who used to get on my case about my studies, so I could relate.

But this is what Alex says about his mom. "She made me realize that, no matter what, there's a second chance in life."

So, today, Alex is getting his GED. He's developed a passion for sports. His dream is to one day work with kids as a coach and set an example for them. He says he never thought he could go to college. Now he believes he can. All Alex wants to be is a good role model for his younger brothers, Carlos (ph) and John (ph), who are bright and hardworking and doing well in school.

And he says: "They matter so much to my life. And I matter to theirs."

So, Alex and his brothers and all the young people here, all the young ones who are out there struggling, the simple point to make is, you matter. You matter to us.

It was interesting. During the roundtable, we asked these young men, incredible, gifted young men, like Darinel (ph), asked them, what advice would you give us? And they talked about mentor programs, and they talked about, you know, counseling programs and guidance programs in schools.

And -- but one young man, Maliki (ph) -- Maliki -- he just talked about, we should talk about love, because Maliki...

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: Because Maliki and I shared the fact that our dad wasn't around, and that sometimes we wondered why he wasn't around and what had happened.

But, really, that's what this comes down to is, do we love these kids?

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: See, if we feel like, because they don't look like us or they don't talk like us or they don't live in the same neighborhood as us, that they're different, that they can't learn, or they don't deserve better, or it's OK if their schools are run down, or it's OK if the police are given a mission just to contain them, rather than to encourage them, then it's not surprising that we're going to lose a lot of them.

But that's not the kind of country I want to live in. That's not what America's about. So my message to Alex and Maliki and Darinel and all the young men out there and young boys who aren't in this room, haven't yet gotten that helping hand, haven't yet gotten that guidance, I want you to know, you matter. You matter to us. You matter to each other.

[15:25:07]

There's nothing, not a single thing that's more important to the future of America than whether or not you and young people all across this country can achieve their dreams. And we are one people, and we need each other. And we should love every single one of our kids. And then we should show that love, not just give lip service to it, not just talk about it in church and then ignore it, not just have a seminar about it and not deliver.

It's hard. We have got an accumulation of, not just decades, but, in some cases, centuries of trauma that we're having to overcome.

But if Alex is able to overcome what he's been through, then we, as a society, should be able to overcome what we have been through. If Alex can put the past behind him and look towards the future, we should be able to do the same.

I'm going to keep on fighting, and everybody here is going to keep on fighting to make sure that all of our kids have the opportunity to make of their lives what they will. Today is just the beginning. We're going to keep at this.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: You have been listening to President Obama here speaking at Lehman College in the Bronx, speaking about the launching of My Brother's Keeper Alliance, right, getting all these private organizations together to help young people, young people of color in communities such as West Baltimore.

And quite the juxtaposition. I know a lot of you have been tweeting me, what's going on in Baltimore? So, on the right side of your screen, these are live pictures. And this is right by -- they call it the Penn North area. This is the intersection of Penn and North streets, in which right around the corner is where the CVS was looted and burned down just two weekends ago.

Just to give you some perspective and the lay of the land, there has been an incident. But let's get specifics, because it's just early on. We need to be precise as far as what's happening here.

So, Evan Perez is our justice correspondent. And he's hopping on the phone with me.

Evan, what are police telling you what happened?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it was a very confusing situation, Brooke.

At this point now, police say that they were trying to arrest a suspect on what was an alleged handgun violation. At some point, he tried to -- this is according to the police. He tried to toss the handgun that he had with him, and the handgun went off.

Initially, we thought that he had accidentally or at least the police thought that maybe he had injured himself, but they now say that he fell, and they don't believe he has actually been injured by the -- by a gunshot.

Brooke, at first, people were tweeting and so on about that there was another police shooting and, obviously, this very tense situation in Baltimore. This is the last thing this city needs right now. But we're now told that the suspect was not injured in that incident, per se. He was taken to the hospital to make sure he was OK in the fall. But there was no gunshot.

BALDWIN: OK. Let me also just read a tweet, Evan, again, just reiterating this is again from the Baltimore police Twitter handle.

"The reports of a man being shot at North and Pennsylvania Avenue are not true. Officers have arrested a man for handgun at the location," as Evan was just reporting.

So this individual, it sounds like, because of his fall, was taken to the hospital.

But, Evan, again, just to reiterate, Baltimore police reporting he's OK. Obviously, though, a lot of people are looking at these pictures. Like you said, this is the last thing this city needs. You have police mobilized, police lines on the north and south sides of the street. Looks like cars not able to get in and out.

Do you know anything more about what's happening there on the ground? PEREZ: It's a very -- it's the last thing this city needs at this

moment, is another tense situation at that particular corner.

And, again, there's a lot of people on the street who were reacting. They thought this man was injured by the police. And that is not true, according to the police. They say that he was trying to toss the handgun that he had, and it did go off. And that's what the misunderstanding came from.

BALDWIN: OK.

PEREZ: But they say he appears to be fine, and this was just a simple arrest.

But, obviously, as you pointed out, nothing is normal right now in Baltimore, just given what -- what -- everything has gone down with police officers and this community, and particularly that community.

BALDWIN: Exactly.

Evan Perez, thank you so much with what you're hearing from Baltimore police.

I have got Tom Fuentes with me as well, former assistant director of the FBI, law enforcement analyst.

And, Tom, let me just bring you in, because I want you to explain to me some of what we're looking at. I mean, obviously, we're not on the ground. But when you see -- as I have been watching, it looks like there was this police line, and I think there still is, when the camera would really, you know, zoom out.