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Given the long history of racial injustice and police brutality and the militarization of community policing in the United States there any number of tragic events that might have prompted this sort of sustained mass outrage that we've seen over the last month so I'd like to ask you all can you tell us why is it that you think this particular moment is different if you don't feel anything after watching that video of that white police officer have his neck on George Floyd's neck then you have nothing inside you not only the type of protest not only the expansion of protests protests taking place here in America but protests taking place and Berlin and London I mean it has grown this is a movement that we're experiencing we published in X Y now approach it X why not now why did it take so long initially after like I mean in the beginning days of the protests after Brianna Taylor and George Floyd I was kind of like here we go again sometimes especially as we've seen over the last five seven years and black lives matter movement we've seen a kind of initial outrage and protests happen and then like nothing institutionally or very little institutionally happened there was no there was no recitals to go to there was no vacations to escape to right there was no dinners and brunches y'all had to sit home and watch on the news right and it wasn't it was really hard to escape and my sense has always been when people are really confronted with deep and justices and have to sit with it and think about it at length they want to do something about it what strikes me the most when you ask what's different now um when I put it in historical comparison to where we've seen protests happening especially over the last four or five years which has been you know a time when we've seen in multiple cases over immigration issues over the Muslim ban the women's margins we've seen protests in lots of places this is a these protests have been taken up in an order of magnitude more places so that is stunning there's a geographic breadth of uptake which we haven't seen for anything certainly within my lifetime and never in this compressed space of time so in the state of Pennsylvania alone there are at least we've already counted like 260 different communities that have held protests and multiple ones of them have held multiple protests so that's not 260 events that's 260 different communities um and in those places as well we see um really consistently young black people stepping forward to lead and finding that they have allies to do so the initiative taken by young black leaders a real personal risk just can't be underestimated here to understand this moment means that we have to look at a range of different organizations who've been organizing on the ground most often in the shadows with little support from big philanthropy and/or from big donors but I'm thinking specifically about abolitionist organizing right and all of a sudden people are like what is defund the police mean what if a vilage things that have been on the fringes all of a sudden very quickly came to the center and that's because groups who haven't focused on abolition for decades right and developing those networks and that language like all of a sudden then people we were like oh where is that front and that's where that is from this is taken just taking place for quite some time now there's a continuation even to think about George Floyd protests as being a catalyst I wouldn't quite characterizes like that I would characterize it as being the crescendo of multiple protests that have taking place looking to push back on notions of inequity and racism and discrimination the silent majority is often being informed by protesters which I refer to as the loud minority they are understanding the issues they are understanding its various scenarios to understanding the various inequities that racial anthem I you just have to deal with the black community have to deal with and I sympathize to those sort of concerns there's no wonder that when protests on race occurs public opinion starts to go up along race and it's happening now it's also impacting and affecting Democratic candidates we see that protests has a rippling effect on the electoral process protests mobilizes turnout if you look at black lives matter effect and 2016 in places like Minneapolis where black lives matter protests occurred in high numbers black turnout actually increase from 2012 to 2016 and this is given that black turnout was down throughout the nation and then finally for electoral returns when liberal black protests occur democratic candidates receive a greater share of the tulle party vote in 2020 black people are still being killed in broad daylight by white vigilantes and by people of the state after we have all these black mayor's in office this is after we've had a black man offend the highest position in this country as president of the United States black people are still being killed we need a different type of politics perhaps we need to pay attention to a new set of leaders and one of the things that you definitely have seen play out in the primary process across this country is the deep frustration and dare I say they even rage with the Democrat Party people using an in harnessing a type of radical imagination about a set of democratic possibilities and saying just because we haven't seen them just because we haven't experienced them as a country as the people doesn't mean that a new way of operating a new set of like accountability and transparency it doesn't mean that that's not possible and so I'm just really excited to listen to kind of the dreams and the thinking of a new set of leaders.