 Welcome to Vision, a weekly show about the trends, ideas, and disruptions that are affecting and changing the future of our democracy. This has obviously been a challenging, distressing, and pivotal moment for our democracy. On the one hand, there's nothing new. We were brutally reminded, again, of the ongoing costs of the way the toxin of racism continues to infect and penetrate every corner of our society. This is a cost that is in lives. Sometimes, this cost is sudden and direct, such as through the unjust killings of George Floyd and so many others like him, and too often, this cost is wrought slowly and insidiously through diminished opportunity, discrimination, and a thousand affronts to basic human dignity that are borne by people of color every day. On the other hand, so much of this past week did feel, if not new, at least full of a new kind of potential, the widespread calls to rise up, to be heard, and to show solidarity with the cause of justice, the cause of equality for all, and the cause of fighting racism in our country and in our society. And so many new voices are taking up that call, voices that have been on the sidelines. We still heard some voices defending an older world, but fewer of those voices than in the past, and they were overwhelmed this past week by those embracing a different vision of the future. Vision is a show about the future of our democracy, but sometimes past, present, and future collapse into a single moment. The past week has been a critical sobering and sometimes uncomfortable glimpse into where our democracy has been, where it is, and where it is going. In other words, a glimpse into the soul of who we are and who we want to be. To help us make sense of this pivotal moment, I sat down this week for a special conversation with Vanita Gupta. Vanita is the president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, one of America's most storied and longstanding civil rights institutions. Prior to that, she was the top civil rights enforcer at the Department of Justice, and she served in that role when Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri. I hope you enjoy our important discussion. Vanita, thank you so much for joining us today. We appreciate it. Thank you. I'm glad, really glad to be here. So this is, you know, obviously a momentous week in so many ways, but what's been interesting about it to me is, you know, one of the questions is, you know, is there anything different this time as we see people take to the streets in frustration and anger over the killing of George Floyd, over the killings of so many people? Do you, is there something different this time about what we're seeing in America? I think so. I have, you know, having lived through Ferguson as all of us did and, you know, understanding the nationwide protests after Ferguson, what feels different to me right now is that these killings happened amidst a time where there was another pandemic of COVID-19 and where Black and Brown communities are being disproportionately affected by the virus and there's the kind of structural inequalities that COVID-19 laid to bear is what's kind of the backdrop against which the structural racism and a longstanding issues around police brutality with Mr. Floyd's death, Breonna Taylor's death, you know, and more kind of are all happening at once. So I think of it as a confluence of two pandemics, but also happening in with a looming election and a president who frankly has been intent on, you know, declaring a war on democracy in so many ways and kind of the response that he and his administration showed to protesters so heavily militarized and the like, I think has made this really different. I think that the protests are, I was out there on Saturday in the middle of Washington DC with just this incredible energy, multi-racial. This is, you know, it is a little weird to see the mainstreaming of Black Lives Matter, but 16th Street being renamed and just the kind of level of energy. I think people are demanding a lot more in this time too and are not going to be satisfied with, you know, things that tinker at the edges and platitudes about racial equality. Like people want action and I think that that's taking a lot of different forms right now. And we'll talk a bit about the kind of action people are looking for. But tell us, you know, tell me more about why people, so many more people are able to see themselves in this moment. I mean, if I remember correctly, you were on the job at the Department of Justice for a matter of weeks when Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson and that certainly felt like a watershed moment at the time. National attention was fixed on what was happening there. But what do you think is enabling this sort of broadening of people to see themselves as a part of this cause, as allies, as upholding these cries for justice and for a different country? Well, you know, I think I got into the Justice Department actually two months after Michael Brown had been killed, but the Justice Department was investigating the Ferguson Police Department. And every week for the two and a half years that I served in that position as head of the Civil Rights Division, police violence, policing issues were the top the top thing that we were focusing on. But what feels different now, I mean, the kind of post Ferguson movement, I mean, that was the birthing of Black Lives Matter and the movement for Black Lives. And I think that the activism from those movements has been really what has changed the tenor of where we find ourselves today. There's been a lot of building of that work. But I also think the past few years under an administration that has kind of affirmatively sought to polarize, divide, use racism, both for kind of strategically, but also, you know, frankly, sadly, authentically for, you know, electoral purposes. It's been imbued in the policies that have been promoted. There's a real sense and I head up the leadership conference. It's a coalition of over 220 national civil and human rights groups. In this moment in the for the last several years, the level of solidarity that is being expressed across communities, across organizations is fairly unprecedented. And it's because I think there's a real sense that the fights that we are in right now are not about one group or, you know, one community, but are actually truly fundamentally about the soul of our country. And I think what you're seeing on the streets is energy that has been kind of built up in a level of solidarity that has been forced into existence because of the incredible onslaught of racism kind of being emboldened in the last several years. It isn't, though, I won't say. I don't think these obviously these are these issues around policing, police brutality, racial injustice, systemic racism were created by any they're not new. These have we've been saddled with these issues for so long, frankly, since the kind of birthing of this country. But what I do think is different now is both because of the movement building that's happened over the last several years and also this profound sense of how intertwined our fates are as communities of color in this country as, you know, with white allies who are fighting for a sense of a just and fair and inclusive America that there's this banding together that I think is is profoundly different than what I experienced and maybe saw even after Ferguson. Do you to what extent is though? Do you think this is or do you think this is generational? Because I it seems to me, I see the same thing that you see, particularly among young people, that I the the way in which so many see the movement for Black Lives as a movement that obligates and what I take out of your comments also implicates all of us in our shared fate. At the same time, you know, it seems to me the same forces that you're pointing to that have stoked and have brought out some of this movement are folks who do feel threatened, right? Who do feel like someone else's success is their failure. I think I think a critique of the kind of polarization we're seeing would say that this is all about fear of what some people are losing, you know, in their idea of we see that in the politics of immigration. I think so, you know, to what extent is this just about a new generation that has a different vision and version of what what the words justice and equality and equity ought to mean? So I think young people have always driven change in this country and have forced people to kind of think more boldly and transformative way to think to make the impossible actually possible. And and so I don't I think there certainly is kind of a level of energy that is different, you know, across generations. But I actually in my in my work over the last several years, I mean, I think there's also just a divide about among it that is that is beyond generational. Some of it breaks down racially, but but I think it's it's beyond that. What I when I'm saying about the level of solidarity that I am seeing expressed across communities, across, you know, age groups, across racial lines, across, you know, issues that people usually work on is just profound sense of like how we there are different representations about the future of this country and what and who belongs in America. And these aren't new questions. We've cyclically gone through this in our history. But it is so pitched right now. And so while I see young people kind of driving a much broader agenda for change, then perhaps folks that have been in this work feel comfortable with. I actually think that the level of, you know, desire to to define America for our communities, understanding the changing demographics, understanding how social change actually happens in this country. I think there's a lot of different factors that are kind of creating a big tent right now, demanding racial justice. So let's talk a bit about what what we need to do, particularly around policing, but in that context, which is that over the last two days, the policy side of this debate has evolved in ways that I think some have found really surprising. I think from on Saturday, you had Jacob Fry, the mayor of Minneapolis, you were just where I'm from, you know, booed out of a rally for not committing to defunding the police. And then on Sunday, you actually saw, you know, a majority, a veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council embrace apparently a real paradigm shift in the way they think about policing. I don't think they use the defunding term, but they did use words like disband. And then in the last two days, you know, the news has been a flurry of discussion about, you know, what does defunding mean? And so what how has how has this this energy, these new movements, this kind of solidarity around change in your mind shifted or influenced the contours of even what our aspirations are for how our communities change? I think a lot. I think the reality is that people have been frustrated by the limitations of police reform. And by police reform, I mean, you know, the efforts to change the culture of policing inside police departments. I will say that that work is essential. It is really important to continue to demand, you know, what is constitutional, but way more what is just what provides human dignity in policing for everyone working on things like, you know, banning chokeholds. This is the bill that the Leadership Conference worked on with Senators Booker and Harris and Congresswoman Karen Bass, that was introduced yesterday in Congress, Justice and Policing, containing provisions that, frankly, weeks ago were politically unthinkable. You know, ending the militarization transfer of military grade equipment to law enforcement, as I said, banning chokeholds, giving expanded prosecutorial charging authority to the Justice Department. There's a long list of things that the bill does, but that's all within the confines of a police reform strategy. And I think what's happening right now, and I will be the first to say it, as somebody who oversaw police reform at the Justice Department, that police reform alone is not going to solve the problems of police violence. It is really important, but it is highly insufficient. And that for the last several decades, as part of the kind of buildup in our policies on mass incarceration, we have over-criminalized and criminalized just about everything. We have, and so that there are in certain communities, mainly black, mainly brown communities, where police saturate these communities, where the level of interaction between police and residents is so much higher than in more affluent communities, where police are only called for very serious offenses, and these communities are called for living while black. And the kind of, and so the demand right now to say that you've got to shrink the footprint of policing, of the criminal legal system infrastructure in these communities. You've got to look at budgets, budgets are moral documents. What are the priorities in any city, in any jurisdiction, on the county level? How are local electives making decisions about what priorities there are, why have they so invested in this criminal legal system infrastructure, including policing at the expense? And while there's been systemic disinvestment from schools and health care and jobs and public transportation in a lot of these communities. When I was at the Justice Department and we would go, we would open an investigation, a lot of times the policing issues were just the tip of the spear. They were a critical incident, blue open unrest that was really seated because of massive frustration around a whole host of other failures of social systems and equity. And so I actually think right now there's a really important, critical, uncomfortable conversation to be had. I think there are people in the movement who are pushing abolition. And then there are a lot of people who are actually saying, look, we may not be abolitionists, but we profoundly criticize the model where that is so that skews so much towards policing and criminal legal infrastructure. And even within policing, where the priorities in policing are not shaped by the community, do not are not, you know, where the community doesn't have any kind of say. So I think there's a lot of a lot of parts of this conversation. But I absolutely think that there is a push on this frame right now that also makes this moment unique. And I would credit the activists. It's the Black Lives Matter folks. It's a movement for Black lives. It is folks that are really forcing us to think more holistically about what's happening. How do how do how do we manage this practically and politically, though, because I think there are there would be some who putting aside for a minute, like reactionary critics who say the system is fine or let's just tinker around the edges. It's a few bad apples, just putting those people completely aside. You know, I suspect there are many allies of not just police reform, but radical rethinking to your point of sort of the footprint of the justice system of criminalization, who would say, look, I mean, one of the signal achievements of the 20th century is that the social technology of the police gets to enter the home and think of think of how many incidents of domestic battery and domestic violence were able to interrupt because we've drawn. I mean, think of how much racially motivated crime, right? And the first half of the 20th century was considered a private community matter and the police would stand aside rather than saying our obligation in having a monopoly on force in the community is to protect protect rights, right? So much of the federalization of the use of federal authority, right, during the civil rights era is about the imprimatur of the state standing up for rights. So it yet it seems like we're in a moment where that to some, that level of discussion feels challenging. And if you if you if you aren't an abolitionist, if you don't advocate the most radical reform, it's hard to find common cause. What what would you say to folks who who really are who really want to stand with the ethos of the moment, but have these sorts of questions, which we may disagree about, but don't strike me as unreasonable or legitimate questions about what a more just system looks like. Well, I think there's actually a lot of people in that space. And I think it is it is OK. This is typical of social change movements to have people who are, you know, may want to do the abolition because they want to start. They want to do the kind of rethinking from the ground up. We'll see what happens in Minneapolis, right? Like they the city council made this announcement. Nobody I have a lot of questions about it. I think it is a fascinating and important move. But we don't know what the plan is right now. There are jurisdictions that have taken similar moves like Camden, New Jersey that have disbanded their police department after years of systemic corruption and misconduct and built a different public safety environment, but with a police department and just a very, you know, a very different culture of policing. And I think that there are a lot of folks who understand and are very sympathetic and are angry about the skewed kind of funding that's happening at the local level around policing versus everything else that would be positive systems that make sure are in place in in communities of color and who aren't, you know, pushing around abolition, but are saying we need to transform the culture of policing and we need to shrink the kind of the places where police show up. There's a lot of folks in in communities of color also that are underpoliced, as you said, where they make a 911 call and it takes 45 minutes for an officer to show up in a way that would never happen in an affluent community or you just don't hear of these stories. And we we heard of a lot of those stories when we were when I was at the Justice Department doing the investigation in the Chicago Police Department, that was a very big complaint about from Chicago residents in particular neighborhoods about the kind of they were overpoliced in many in many instances. And obviously the police brutality stuff was is iconic there. But but we're actually there were a lot of problems with underpolicing and under responsiveness in certain communities, too. And so I think that this is a complex issue. There's 18,000 police departments in this country. The you know, we have to understand that every community also has different needs, different populations, but it is also why the kind of ability for communities, community leaders to meaningfully engage with with their policing systems to meaningly influence them, to meaningfully influence the local officials who have authority over how public safety is defined in communities. Those are mayors, those are county commissioners, those are city council members. All of this becomes really important. There's, you know, the 18,000 police departments are bound by the US Constitution. And so it is important for Congress to take the kind of action that the justice and policing bill represents because it sets the floor for what is acceptable and how to change, you know, culture through some from some federal standards and federal accountability. But in the at the end of the day, so much of this work is at the local level. And it's we've got to be OK with the fact that it may look different in different communities, depending on kind of, you know, what the demands are in those communities and understanding that local communities need to drive that conversation. Where would you start, you know, if you were if you were you probably talk to mayors every day, if someone listening is a mayor or a city council member, seeing this is a moment to start to take on. As you point out sort of the tip of the iceberg and then get a little bit deeper. What would what would be some of the ways that that you would advise folks like leaders like that to get started? So I would I mean, I think for the first instance, it is really important for local elections to listen. And and to understand that maybe for years, they actually haven't been authentically listening. Some of that listening is really uncomfortable. And and so figuring out like kind of where those venues are to put yourself in to hear, you know, and there's anger and pain right now across the country that can sometimes make people and electeds feel like, oh, this isn't a constructive conversation. But sometimes just being there to listen to that anger and pain and grief is the first step because for so long, people have felt unheard and unseen by their by their government. And I think that that is just even as a first step. But then figuring out what is what how are you channeling this energy? How can there actually be meaningful, you know, engagement where as a local elected, you're going to feel pushed. And but to kind of think about, you know, expand the notion of what is possible and to also take a look at things that you took for granted every year about the, you know, you know, the city budget or your budget and figuring out how how how money has been distributed in your own jurisdiction. And I think that these are important things to to to have happened. I mean, the Justice Department has a role to play in setting priorities, funding all of these jurisdictions, but the vast majority of funding for public safety is from is at the state and local level. And so these are just some of the things that I think are really important in this moment. They're that much more important at a time where you also have a Justice Department that's, you know, walked away and advocated its own responsibility in helping to support these efforts. What when you when you when you were in the role of coming to a community and I I assume given the circumstances in which in which you were visiting a community already, you know, some grievous wrong had been committed, people were upset. And so not only do you have a populist that's at best divided and at worst, you're really frustrated. You've got a government that now has a federal authority coming in and implying that they either can't do it or can't do it alone. What was I assume sometimes it was more constructive than others. And what was what was the key to building a constructive relationship so that in a world where authority is not being advocated, we can have trust that this is going to work for everyone rather than be something that has to be endured or something that feels ephemeral, but rather a key just another catalyst that everyone is excited about. What makes it work when when federal and state and local authorities are working together in these? So I mean, the Justice Department actually has presence in all of the states. They have U.S. Attorney's offices, but they are often U.S. Attorney's offices can sometimes be seen as part of the criminal justice machinery because they also prosecute federal cases. But when I was at the Justice Department, there were a lot of U.S. Attorney's offices that were actually leading the charge on bringing and having those hard conversations with community members, bringing police chiefs, community leaders, civil rights activists together in a room. I think there's a lot more that could be done on that front. But I mean, yeah, there were times where the Civil Rights Division opened an investigation into a police department where actually the police commissioner, the mayor, frankly, were pleading for us to get involved because they realize the depth of distrust and broken relationships were so much so that there just wasn't any faith in a completely like local self-policing effort to to, you know, that would make things better. And so in those instances, we there were, you know, a lot more demands for the kind of pattern practice investigations than the Justice Department was able to meet. I mean, people think that it's this huge office at DOJ, there were about 25 folks working who were expert investigators and lawyers who were kind of singularly tasked with this work. In the eight years of the Obama administration, there were 25 investigations and 15 consent decrees in a nation with 18,000 police departments. That's not that many. It's a tool that's very judiciously used because it is fairly intrusive. But it is but it is used in very particular instances. It also these the consent decrees court court agreements that come out of these investigations are ones that police departments around the country used for modeling better practices. But but these efforts are times when like in Ferguson, it was very oppositional and the Ferguson City Council resisted the findings, resisted the agreement, resisted kind of at every turn. But that is where in some, you know, where actually the ability of the Justice Department to demand that change and to have a federal court that says, this is totally unconstitutional policing. And until you remedy and fix these issues, which doesn't happen overnight, culture change doesn't happen overnight in any institution. It's why most of these consent decrees are, you know, generally on average four or five years in duration because it takes a lot of time to kind of turn this around. And so but again, as I said, these interventions are limited, right? There's limited resources to do them. They're really they're important. And I think it is a travesty that this Justice Department has abdicated its responsibility in doing this work. But I also think that they don't these investigations, they help promote like in Seattle and Cleveland, we pushed a model where instead of police being the first responders for people in mental health crisis, where you saw a lot of, you know, both unintended consequences, use of force that that could have been mitigated loss of life. People dying where we actually pushed a model to pair police officers with mental health professionals to be first responders and change. I mean, that's just like one little example, but changing that model. There's a lot of police officers who say, look, 80 percent of our jobs is social work. And that is not what we signed up for either. And that they recognize the kind of systematic disinvestment from these communities around other positive social supports in some ways, more than a lot of other people. It's just like strange coming together in a way of they don't want their budgets cut, right? Like so that they're going to like draw the line there. But even yesterday, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, I saw issued a statement that actually said like we recognize this is the kind of systematic disinvestment of and in use of the criminal justice system to address things like homelessness, mental health, school discipline, substance use disorders in the drug war. And so they, you know, I do think that there is a really important conversation that is happening right now. And no amount of limited justice department involvement is going to be a silver bullet here. It's it's going to take all of us. So kind of a bigger picture question, but you've alluded to it is we've got there are there are pathways forward. There are communities that have an energy, you know, we haven't seen to to really commit themselves to a different vision. It seems to me there's a really big open question about whether our national politics can rise to that moment. And we see a level of division, it seems to me in our national political discourse that, you know, I I didn't I didn't think we'd see maybe that makes me naive. And, you know, at Knight Foundation, as you know, we invest in and study how people get access to information. And increasingly, we see people living in very different worlds of fact in the news that they consume. So they come at these questions with a very different basic understanding of what's happening in the world. In some cases, how do you I mean, are you an optimist? Do you think that the that the politics of the moment are going to to enable us to move forward? So I'm a civil rights advocate, so I am duty about optimists because you can't do this work and kind of feel like you're playing the long game without being optimistic and optimistic and having kind of a deep seated well of hope. But the only thing that has ever really created change in this country and this country's been through a lot, right? Like we I sometimes think it's important, even for me, I sometimes think it's important, even for myself in the most dire of moments to draw on the lessons of history and what it took to make change in this country. It has been painstaking. It has oftentimes been too slow. It has been a fragile progress. But the only thing that has ever made a difference is the sustained will and action of people, often motivated quite honestly by young people, again, to imagine and make possible what was perceived as as impossible before. But I do think that people we have to make sure that in this moment that there is actions that people are calling for and that we have kind of the ability to persist to see them through. I think there's a whole as we've talked about kind of in the policing realm, you know, the local activism that we're talking about kind of federal bills and both of like opportunity that the one that was introduced yesterday provides, but also the limitations and but how important it is to be able to articulate that. But I also think we are in a moment where we are five months away from an election and we have very different. You talked about how polarized the country is. I think there's a lot at stake with this election and making sure that people don't kind of just feel disillusioned and sit it out, but also understand that real people are in real harm's way and will be in even more harm's way, you know, depending on what the outcome of the election is. I'm telling so I'm telling people to check your voter registration and get ready to vote. I can't tell you who to vote for, but I can tell you what to vote for. I also think, you know, there are things like the census that are, you know, they seem like these technical things, but fill out the census. 2020census.gov, the census is going to determine how power gets allocated, not just not just in the U.S. House of Representatives, but actually at the local level, at the state level, it will be the basis for state redistricting. It's going to have a direct implication on local power for communities of color and vulnerable communities and also around the allocation of dollars. The census is the basis for that. So as we're talking about local policy and local change, the census filling that out and making sure that our communities are represented and not left out is actually really, really important to these broader conversations around policing and justice. And so, you know, so I think there's a lot of different things that people need to be doing in this moment, but I also think I cannot, you know, we've been directly challenging disinformation on social media platforms and the role of Facebook and responsibility that that social media platforms have to provide people with accurate information and fight disinformation and fight the kind of incitement to violence on the platforms, fight deliberate and intentional confusion and all of that. That is we're doing that because all of the stuff is actually connected and that if we are going to be able to see ourselves in the future of this country and have the power that we actually do have to be able to manifest it, we've got to be able to show up in these different ways. And so that's where, to me, it is easy to feel despair and believe me, I have had my moments, but despair is not going to save lives and in fact may dam us into the future. And it's why I think it's really important for people to kind of retain a sense of hopefulness because hopefulness will spur action. And that is truly what is needed in this moment to be able to create the kind of transformation that people are demanding. I know we got to let you go, but just one more question along those lines, which is, you know, you lead one of these storied civil rights organizations. I mean, when you talk about fragile progress, you know, the leadership conference has been so critical to shoring up the cracks when there are cracks into pushing that progress forward. When we've seen progress, does this moment demand something different from the civil rights movement in this country? What what what do you think is the role of the civil rights movement in in moving forward this if not new, renewed vision for a more just country? I think that we are always having to change and the demographics of the country are changing. The issues are changing. The needs of of, you know, our communities are changing. The the ways in which young people are continuously, I was young once, are continuously really changing the parameters of what was thought possible are always changing. And so for the leadership conference, the reason why we've been able to be around for 70 years and be relevant to today's discussion and to today's, you know, critical issues is because we have had to change continuously. And so the work that we do now, it has to be uplifting of the efforts at the local level and among the movement, among young people in the movement for Black Lives and other places. We understand everyone's got different roles to play. Everyone shows up in different spaces, but the ability to recognize that we are a part of a really rich, complex, but essential ecosystem that is pushing for change, I think is really important. And it is what keeps the leadership conference able to have, you know, longstanding relationships and new relationships with with groups that are helping to lead change. And so I think in this moment, this is our 70th anniversary. We look very different even than what we looked like before. And we have to be ever changing and evolving with the with the issues of the day in order to kind of retain our ability to make change. Well, Vinita, again, we know you're you're in high demand these days and we really appreciate you taking time with us during this incredibly critical moment in our country. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for joining us for this conversation. You can follow Vinita on Twitter at Vinita Gupta CR and you can follow the leadership conference at Civil Rights. Please join us at a regular time this Thursday as we continue our exploration into how to ensure an inclusive and successful election during these challenging times. Thank you for being with us.