Face The Nation Transcripts May 3, 2015: Brooks, Pugh, Ryan

(CBS News) -- Below is a transcript from the May 3, 2015, episode of "Face the Nation. Guests included Wyatt Andrews, NAACP President Cornell William Brooks, State Sen. Catherine Pugh (D-Maryland), Seth Doane, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Tavis Smiley, Sherrilyn Ifill, Ramesh Ponnuru, Julianne Malveaux, Michael Gerson and Michele Norris.

BOB SCHIEFFER: I'm Bob Schieffer. And today on FACE THE NATION what now after Baltimore? The stunning announcement came Friday.

MARILYN MOSBY: We have probable cause to file criminal charges.

BOB SCHIEFFER: The state's attorney charged six police officers in the death of Freddie Gray and of violence in the streets turned peaceful but the curfew continued overnight and the underlying problems remains. We'll have reports from Baltimore. We'll hear from NAACP President Cornell William Brooks and the panel of experts. And we'll talk with Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee about his plans to reduce poverty. Plus, the latest on the tragedy in Nepal and the good news from across The Pond, Britain has a new princess. It's all ahead because this is FACE THE NATION.

Good morning. And we begin in Baltimore with CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews. Wyatt.

WYATT ANDREWS (CBS News National Correspondent): Good morning, Bob. Related to the demonstrations here in Baltimore last night there was a much different attitude yesterday, especially compared to the violence that we saw on Monday night. The difference in that mood came directly from the charges that were filed against the police on Friday the six officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray.

(Begin VT)

WYATT ANDREWS: Thousands of people marched on Saturday first assembling around city hall, then occupying an intersection in northwest Baltimore close to Freddie Gray's home. Plenty of anger was expressed, but there was also celebration due to Friday's arrest of six police officers on charges that range from assault to second-degree murder. In a community not used to the arrest of police, Christine Forbes of Baltimore said it's about time.

CHRISTINE FORBES: A lot of times they don't be held accountable for their action. So it was a kind of surprise but justice was served. I believe it was served.

MARILYN MOSBY: I heard your call for no justice, no peace.

WYATT ANDREWS: When Baltimore's top prosecutor Marilyn Mosby announced that criminal charges were being filed, the reaction on the street was unreserved joy. But reaction from legal experts has been more critical. Defense attorneys familiar with the charges say Mosby faces an uphill climb in court.

BEN HERBST: I don't believe she has a slam dunk path to-- to a conviction here.

WYATT ANDREWS: Ben Herbst, a Baltimore defense attorney, says the toughest case to prove is against Caesar Goodson, the officer driving the van when Gray was fatally injured. Goodson was charged with second-degree depraved heart murder, a charge that requires the State to show that Goodson injured Gray on purpose.

BEN HERBST: So we know that the officer made extra actions that-- that showed a depraved heart. I don't believe he did at this moment.

WYATT ANDREWS: Extra actions like slamming on the brakes?

BEN HERBST: Yes.

WYATT ANDREWS: Still, the fact that charges were filed at all drained some of the anger from the streets. Baltimore's police commissioner is Anthony Batts.

ANTHONY BATTS: And now we'll have the confidence that the truth will come out and truth will overcome for all.

(End VT)

WYATT ANDREWS: The violence may be over but Baltimore will likely remain on edge, as these charges and these officers head toward trial. And now Freddie Gray, the man who simply ran from the police on the morning of his arrest, becomes the newest symbol in the national conversation about unequal justice. Bob.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Wyatt Andrews in Baltimore. Joining us now is the President of the NAACP Cornell William Brooks. He has spent most of the week in Baltimore. Mister Brooks, the police union says these men are innocent. We know that this arrest was illegal. It was said that he had a switch blade, in fact, he had a pocket knife. So what happens now?

CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS (NAACP President): What happens now is we have to weigh this criminal process and see what happens. But I'll note here that the family of Freddie Gray who lost their son, lost a brother, they have asked for justice. They have not rushed to judgment. So I would encourage the fraternal order of police to do the same. This is a moment where we're seeking the truth, we're seeking accountability. And so to-- to-- to rush to judgment is not warranted.

BOB SCHIEFFER: You know you were in Ferguson as well.

CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS: Yes.

BOB SCHIEFFER: There is a very different situation in Baltimore. You have a black mayor. You have a black police chief. Three of the officers who were charged were--

CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS: Yes.

BOB SCHIEFFER: --were African-Americans. What I'm wondering are we at the point in America where we have to have black officials to deal with black people and white officials to deal with white people. It seems to me there's still a great divide here.

CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS: Certainly, there's a great divide, but we need to be clear here. Racial profiling does not require that all the participants be white or black or anything else. The fact of the matter is this-- this process of profiling communities and people has a disproportionate effect on African-Americans. This was a-- Freddie Gray was a young man, who was detained, who was arrested where there was no probable cause. We live in a country where African-American young men are twenty-five times more likely to lose their lives at the hands of the police than their white counterparts. So the fact that the mayor is black and-- and the defendant-- some of the defendants are black, doesn't speak to the fact that we have a young man who had his vertebrae crushed, his spinal cord severed, and who is dead. And so the point being here is we have to focus on how do we change this modality and model of policing that is badly broken and ineffective. Racial profiling doesn't work.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Shall we start with racial profiling?

CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS: We start with the fact that we have a formal policing where people are suspected of minor offences subjected to-- to overwhelmingly major uses of force, often lethal. And so, that's what we have to focus on here. There is a federal End Racial Profiling Act, which has been introduced in the Senate and the House, which goes back to President George Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft. It needs to move. And we're calling on the President and a bipartisan coalition in Congress to move on it. We need to end this practice because it's harming and hurting, brutalizing communities.

BOB SCHIEFFER: What-- what else? Let's-- let's talk about it in a broader way. There does seem to be a-- you know, a difference in attitudes here.

CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS: Yes. I mean when we have grown comfortable with the notion that African-American people and poor people and young people can be brutalized at the hands of a minority fraction of the police, we-- we have to get away from that. We have a community, Sandtown-Winchester. Let me know here. Baltimore is the hometown of the NAACP. Sandtown-Winchester, the community in which Freddie Gray died, is the neighborhood, the community, the block that Thurgood Marshall lived in--our greatest hero and the first African-American on the Supreme Court. This hits home. This community is beset by poverty. One out of every four citizens in Baltimore lives below-- below the poverty-- poverty line, thirty-five percent of the children, chronic poverty in this community. So we have to look at housing, critical investments, and workforce development and job training. We have to invest in these communities because being-- being poor and under-resourced makes a community more vulnerable to profiling. And that's-- that's a conversation that we have to have and that Congress in the White House have to take action on.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mister Brooks, we want to thank you for joining us this morning.

CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS: Well, thank you.

BOB SCHIEFFER: And we appreciate the work you did all last week in Baltimore.

We want to go back to Baltimore now and Maryland State Senate Majority Leader, Catherine Pugh. She was on the streets much of the week dealing with all of this. Senator, thank you for joining us this morning.

STATE SENATOR CATHERINE PUGH (D-Maryland): Thank you. Thank you.

BOB SCHIEFFER: The curfew is in effect still. Is it time for the curfew to be over?

STATE SENATOR CATHERINE PUGH: Well, I think it is time for the curfew to be over. But, you know, I'm not the mayor, and I'm certainly not the governor but I believe that they're having conversations around lifting the curfew. And I think that they are pleased with what they've seen in Baltimore in terms of the peaceful demonstrations that have taken place in the last few days. I know they're in discussion and I'm looking forward to the outcome of those discussions.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, you were on the streets all week. Have you noticed a difference now? Obviously, the violence has stopped. It's quiet this morning. But what's your impression about the mindset of the people of Baltimore right now?

STATE SENATOR CATHERINE PUGH: Well, let me first just say for Maryland, mostly our state's attorney, I think she set the bar for the nation in terms of how these cases ought to be looked at. With the pulse in the community is-- is joyous in the sense that they feel that they've got some sense of justice, at least justice moving forward. Because, as you well know, Bob, what we've seen around the country is many of these cases never even come to-- come to trial. And now we at least see justice moving forward. And I think the mood is that, especially among the young people, that the justice system can work. And so we're asking people in Baltimore to, you know, let the process go forward. But I think it raises even greater question, Bob. And questions around race relations, conversations that need to be had about the distribution of wealth, what we need to do as it relates to police reform. One of the things I'm going to be advocating for, Bob, as the president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators is that we look at putting into place laws that will require ongoing, ongoing psychological-- psychological testing of police officers after they've been on the job for a certain number of years because when I was talking to a social worker, she said, you know, "Oftentimes I become incensed, desensitized to these kinds of conversation. So I can't imagine what police officers on our streets on a regular basis if you don't have that cultural diversity training, if you don't understand the psychology of the community then I think there ought to be this rotation of police officers over a period of time as it relates to them serving our communities, because, as you well know, they get paid through our tax dollars, they get paid to protect and serve and not to protect and-- and cause these kinds of situations that we see in Baltimore today and have seen around the country.

BOB SCHIEFFER: You know you have said that these demonstrations were effective but do you take that to mean or should we take that to mean that the violence was effective as well, is violence going to be the new call to action?

STATE SENATOR CATHERINE PUGH: No, no, no. I don't even think violence was the call to action. I think that what you saw on Monday were a few people who acted out of their own frustration or some people who took advantage of the-- of the opportunity to loot. But I think, for the most part, you saw displaced violence-- displaced anger from individuals in our community. But I think for the most part following that began the demonstrations. The demonstrations began as a result of what happened to Freddie Gray. And, unfortunately for Freddie Gray, he becomes the-- the martyr or-- or what you want to say, the person who sym-- it becomes symbolic of what has happened to many black men and people of color in this country for decades and had it not been for the advent of social media and the press shining their light on this particular situation, I don't know that we would even have gotten this far in terms of what is happening with Freddie Gray. And then with Marilyn Mosby, I believe state's attorney, elected for a time such as this, I think that you will see around the nation people having discussions around race relations, criminal justice reform, looking at communities like over in west Baltimore similar to communities in other part-- in other cities and other-- and in other states around the country. I think that you will see around the nation people having discussions around race relations, criminal justice reform, looking at communities like over in West Baltimore similar to communities in other part-- in other cities and other-- and in other states around the country. And I think that's why you saw the outbreak of demonstrations in various cities, Philadelphia, New York, because people realized that this is more than about Freddie Gray. It's about the injustice that has been applied to individuals across this country that has instilled fear in the eyes of individuals that you can't even look at a police officer and feel comfortable that you feel that you've got to run away. So we've got to have those discussions but we also have to have the discussion around income disparities that exist in neighborhoods.

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right.

STATE SENATOR CATHERINE PUGH: And what I want people to understand is that the African-American community is not monolithic. We have folks from the very, very poor to the very, very rich. I mean we're just a microcosm--

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right.

STATE SENATOR CATHERINE PUGH: --of America. And there are communities throughout this nation that we've got to fix and that's what we'll be working on.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Senator, thank you so much for joining us. We are going to have more on this situation in Baltimore but we want to turn now to the earthquake in Nepal where the death toll is now over seven thousand. Here is CBS News correspondent Seth Doane.

(Begin VT)

SETH DOANE (CBS News Correspondent): A week after the earthquake, a massive landslide stopped aid from getting in and showed what relief groups are up against. Traveling on bumpy dirt roads, we witnessed the challenge of simply getting around. We had to abandon our van and walk to the hard-hit village of Ranipani. The pace of recovery here is moving one brick at a time.

(Ranika Acharya speaking foreign language)

SETH DOANE: "The government should help us make shelters," Ranika Acharya told us, "but I don't have any hope they will." Aid has not reached here, so Acharya's nephew Surendra left college in Kathmandu to come home and help.

So your future is on hold?

SURENDRA: Yeah, future is I think totally cancelled.

SETH DOANE: A few hours away, a sign along the main road made the dire situation clear. Shyam Krishnapuri had a different future in mind for his three-year-old Moona.

This is your daughter's shoe. And this is all you have left?

(Shyam Krishnapuri speaking foreign language)

SETH DOANE: You have no pictures, just this?

SHYAM KRISHNAPURI: Yes.

SETH DOANE: "The home came and crashed on her," Puri told us. "I had this small daughter, now I have nothing."

In the wake of this disaster, we found lives upended and futures on hold as Nepalese try to grapple with an unbearable present. As that death toll has risen to incomprehensible numbers, we found people here focusing on the few remarkable stories of survival.

We were there when an elite USAID disaster assistance response team got the call that a teenager's voice was detected coming from the rubble. For hours we watched and wondered if it was possible that someone could survive for so long.

He is finally free, one hundred twenty hours after this earthquake.

Later, we found the fifteen-year-old in fine teenage form snacking on Oreos at a hospital. Andrew Olvera of the Los Angeles County Fire Department was involved in the rescue.

ANDREW OLVERA: It's amazing to see somebody be freed, it's amazing to be part of that. It is a miracle.

SETH DOANE: But miracles are few and challenges many. Aid groups struggle to reach the most remote regions. U.S. Marines have been brought in to try to manage a log jam of supplies and families living in tents wonder where to go next.

Despite the destruction, there is a sense that life here has to go on. There are signs of recovery, small vendors have appeared on the streets again and small shops have started to reopen. Eight days after this earthquake struck this country is limping back to life.

For FACE THE NATION, this is Seth Doane, reporting from Kathmandu, Nepal.

(End VT)

BOB SCHIEFFER: And we'll be back in one minute.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

BOB SCHIEFFER: We sat down with Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and spoke with him about the lessons of Baltimore.

(Begin VT)

REPRESENTATIVE PAUL RYAN (R-Wisconsin): Let's see if we can, all of us, try and learn different perspectives. Let's try and understand the anxieties that are underneath and beneath this. And that's why I think all of us need to engage more as Americans in these communities, where there is this anxiety, where there is this real despair, and let's see what we can take from that and learn from that and have the kind of conversations where we can help heal these communities.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, I know that after the 2012 campaign, you actually made a tour of-- of a lot of these communities. What-- what did you find?

REPRESENTATIVE PAUL RYAN: I found that there are incredible stories of redemption going on right now under our noses, in the poorest communities of America that are just absolutely jaw dropping and inspiring. And that there's a lot we can learn from that. There's that-- there's a miniseries called Comeback in OpportunityLives.com that you can watch to see these stories. And what these stories in my judgment are-- are the classic American principles being applied to the problems of the day, producing real solutions, getting people out of poverty. And so what I thought was after a fifty-year of war on poverty and trillions of dollars spent, we still have the same poverty rates. We have forty-five million people on poverty. So I think what we as a country, this isn't a Republican and Democrat thing, it's-- it's-- we as a country need to say that's not good enough. These-- we're not getting the results we need. What do we do to get results? And I think the best thing we can do is go listen to people who are fighting poverty right now and especially those who are overcoming it.

BOB SCHIEFFER: What can the federal government do?

REPRESENTATIVE PAUL RYAN: What the federal government is good at doing is providing resources. What the federal government is bad at doing is dictating solutions. And so what we have done at the federal government is we have measured success based on effort, input. How much money are we spending? How many programs are we creating? How many people are on the programs? Rather than measuring success based on results, outcomes. How many people are actually getting off of poverty and what I think the federal government has done is displaced local problem solving with top-down, one-size-fits-all and it's not working. And so we need to go to an outcome-based approach and rework our poverty fighting-- overhaul our poverty fighting strategies to be focused on results and outcomes and that means listening to people on the ground fighting poverty, not telling them how to overcome--

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, does it also mean the federal government needs to make more money available?

REPRESENTATIVE PAUL RYAN: It's really not a more money thing it's spend the money we have more effectively. So I think we need to do another round of welfare reform not to save money but to save lives. And so it's not a function of pumping more money into the same failed system because we'll just get the same failed result. It's-- it's rethinking how we actually attack the root causes of poverty. All we do these days, effectively, is treat the symptoms of poverty. Why don't we figure out how to go at the root causes of poverty trying to make a second one--

BOB SCHIEFFER: What-- what would be one thing you would do to attack the root causes?

REPRESENTATIVE PAUL RYAN: Well, I would consolidate many of our-- our-- our federal poverty programs into flexible programs to go to our states to customize a welfare benefit for person's particular need because what you do when you stack up all these poverty programs on top of each other, we have this thing called a poverty trap where we're actually disincentivizing a person from-- from getting on with their life and going to work. It-- it pays not to take that risk to take a job to go, help improve your life because of the benefits you lose.

BOB SCHIEFFER: How do you convince Republicans that it is in their interest because, as you well remember, Mitt Romney pretty well said, these are votes I'm never going to get?

REPRESENTATIVE PAUL RYAN: Yeah, I mean, that's not what is in Mitt's heart I can just tell you that. This is the right thing to do. I mean it's-- it's not the American idea if forty-five million people in our country don't believe in it. I mean the American idea is the condition of your birth doesn't determine the outcome of your life. Anybody in this country can overcome their current circumstances and make a better of life for themselves and their kids. We-- we were taught believing that. We believe that. There are a lot of people who don't believe that. I think that's one of the lessons you get from Baltimore.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Another issue you are heavily involved in is trade. The Japanese Prime Minister Abe was just here. He was, you know, pushing strongly for this big agreement--

REPRESENTATIVE PAUL RYAN: Right.

BOB SCHIEFFER: --trade agreement with the United States and-- and other countries in the-- in our hemisphere. You're working with the White House on this.

REPRESENTATIVE PAUL RYAN: Go figure. Look, this is very important for our country. First, we need to pass something called Trade Promotion Authority which empowers Congress to make sure that we get the best trade agreement possible. But in a world where ninety-five percent of the world's consumers live in other countries, not our country, we have to break down trade barriers so that we can have more jobs here at home making grow things in America to sell them overseas. And the problem is if you're standing still on trade, you're losing, you're falling behind. There have been forty-eight trade agreements in Asia since 2000. We were probably the two of them, only two. And as a result, our share of trade to Asia is going down forty-two percent. There could be 3.2 billion people in the middle class in Asia by the year 2030, an enormous market for us if we take advantage of it. The last point I would make is the rules of the global economy, Bob, are being written right now. There's no question about that. Question is who's going to write them. Are we going to write the rules with our allies or is China going to write them for China's benefit which is not in our interest? Those are the kinds of things that are occurring and being decided right now. And that is why we, on a bipartisan basis, need to engage on trade to make it fair, to make it more jobs, to help America get ahead but to help us set the standards. And so the kind of trade agreement we're trying to talk about here is bring other countries up to our standards so we can have a fair deal because these countries can already sell them to America pretty much unrestricted. We don't have the kind of access to their-- their markets that they have to ours and that's what we're trying to get with this trade agreement.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Paul Ryan, always a pleasure to have you.

REPRESENTATIVE PAUL RYAN: Thank you, Bob.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Thank you, Mister Chairman.

And I'll be back with some personal thoughts about all of this.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

BOB SCHIEFFER: It is the great wrong that we've been trying to make right since the founding of this country, the racial divide between black and white. It took a civil war and many lives, including that of President Lincoln to end slavery. It took more lives to end the segregation that came in the years after that. And this year, we marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Selma March, one of the great turning points of the Civil Rights Movement. But that was far from the end of it. There was Watts in 1965, the riots across the country after the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior; Los Angeles in '92; then Ferguson last year, and now Baltimore. The laws were changed but in too many places not the attitudes. The trials of O.J. Simpson forced us to recognize that whites and blacks can see the same things and come to different conclusions. Polls showed many whites thought Simpson guilty, many African-Americans had an opposite view. I'll always believe that people of goodwill on both sides want us to be one country, one great community where the whole is greater than the parts. But the lesson of Baltimore is we are not there, yet. This goes beyond a misunderstanding between police and African-Americans. This is about all of us. The divide remains and there is still much to do for people on both sides. Back in a minute.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

BOB SCHIEFFER: Some breaking news. We understand the curfew in Baltimore has now been lifted. Some of our stations are leaving now but we'll have more on that and other things when we come back.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

BOB SCHIEFFER: Welcome back to FACE THE NATION again. The news from Baltimore, the curfew has been lifted. We hope that will bring the city one step closer to getting things back to normal. We're going to devote most of the rest of our broadcast to Baltimore, what caused it, and what is to be learned from it. We are going first to Los Angeles and PBS's Tavis Smiley, who has spent many years studying the consequences of poverty. And, Tavis, thanks for-- for joining us this morning.

Do you think poverty is to blame for what happened in Baltimore?

TAVIS SMILEY (PBS): Bob, before I answer your question right quick, let me just say in case this is my last time on FACE THE NATION before you officially retire that in a world where too many of us in this business focus on narrow casting you are the epitome of what it means to be a true broadcast. I very quickly want to thank you for so many years of your high-quality work and witness. So thank you Bob Schieffer, I appreciate you doing this great work all these years.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Thank you. Thank you, Tavis.

TAVIS SMILEY: Now to your question, yes, poverty is certainly to blame for this. I was moved by your commentary about what we were enduring fifty years ago, we ought to be in moment of celebration now fifty years after the Voting Rights Act and fifty years after the Civil Rights Act. But what King, Doctor King, warned us about fifty years ago, Bob, we are still dealing with. King warned us fifty years ago about this triple threat that was facing our democracy--racism, poverty, and militarism. What do we see in Baltimore and Ferguson and beyond, racism, poverty, and militarism? And so poverty is clearly connected to this and my sense is that this is going to become the new normal. These kinds of uprisings and riots are going to happen a lot more if we can't get serious about jobs, jobs, jobs with a living wage for all fellow citizens.

BOB SCHIEFFER: What did you think of Paul Ryan's approach? He's now the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, one of the most powerful and influential posts on Capitol Hill. They control all the tax bills, as you well know. He says we-- we need to start thinking about what good are these programs doing. And he's, you know, combining a lot of these programs. But he says they ought to be, you know, results oriented. We ought to say, well, wait, this hasn't worked. And he notes that the poverty level is still very high despite all the money that has been pumped into it.

TAVIS SMILEY: We all want results and I celebrate the fact that Congressman Ryan and others for that matter, on the right, are at least starting to talk about this issue poverty, which I think is threatening our very democracy. I think poverty is now a matter of national security, in fact. At the same time, though, if the answer is to cut programs that's not the answer to the prayers my grandmother might say. And again, if we can't get a real, serious conversation about jobs with a living wage, then what's the answer going to be? My problem with these Republicans is that they don't-- they're-- they're against everything but they can't put on the table what they're really for when it comes to job creation. So for all the years that Barack Obama has been President and we've been debating this issue about how to-- how to get this economy started we can't get a serious conversation about jobs, Bob.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you think the President reacted properly at one point. Some of his people were saying this is a local problem here in Baltimore?

TAVIS SMILEY: Yeah. Barack Obama some years ago had a great line. He said that our destiny is not written for us, our destiny is written by us. I agree with President Obama in that. But I think that means that if we're going to write this next chapter correctly we have to be intentional about what, in fact, are we going to do. My problem with the President so far respectfully is that he has had a sort of hands-off approach to a hands-up crisis. And I don't think that's the answer to the prayer either. I think at the end of the day that we have to again be intentional. And I think that when you have police killings that are on the rise, we all saw that story, Bob, front page New York Times the other day, that police killings are on the rise. We're not monitoring this as we should. We don't have the data that we should. But the best guesstimate, the best estimate, is that we're seeing three fellow citizens' lives being lost every day to police killings. And I can't speak for anybody else on the panel. But, for me, that's a-- that's a-- that's an-- that's a problem. That's a-- that's a-- that's a pandemic. I think that our leaders ought to call a state of emergency. And in calling for a state of emergency, the President on down, we can then I think get a real conversation about police accountability, about civilian oversight and, again, about jobs for fellow citizens.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, Tavis, I want to thank you very much for joining us this morning. And added to the-- adding to the conversation, we look forward to reading your new book. By the way-- by the way, about one of my favorite people, the late poet Maya Angelou.

TAVIS SMILEY: Thank you, Bob.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Its title is My Journey with Maya. Now to continue this discussion, Sherrilyn Ifill is the president of the NAACP legal defense and educational fund. Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor at National Review. Julianne Malveaux, an economist and an author. We're also joined by Michele Norris, host and special correspondent for NPR where she leads The Race Card Project. And Washington Post columnist, our old friend Michael Gerson. Sherrilyn, let me start with you. You've lived in Baltimore for fifteen years, what happened?

SHERRILYN IFILL (NAACP Legal Defense Fund): Well, I think you're starting to see the results of what many people have been talking about and working on in Baltimore city for a long time. One piece of it is without question the issue of police violence and engagement with young African-American men. It's one of the reasons why I think what we do need now is for the civil rights division of the Department of Justice to engage in a pattern and practice investigation of policing in Baltimore city. Without question that's a real problem. But what we also see is the results of this longstanding segregation in the city of Baltimore. In 2005 when a federal district judge responded to a suit that many civil rights organizations brought about public housing, segregated public housing in Baltimore, he said that HUD had maintained public housing in Baltimore as an island reservation where the poor were just deposited. So what we're seeing when we look at those pictures on the camera, when we look at those neighborhoods, we're looking at the results of this enforced segregation. We're looking at the CVS, of course, but nobody is asking are there any supermarkets in that community? Why is this a food desert. We're looking at Toya Graham engaged with her son and talking about trying to raise her six children. But no one's asking about the failed transportation system in Baltimore that makes it difficult for mothers, like her, even when there are jobs, to be able to get to those jobs. So, infrastructure. I heard Congressman Ryan, you know, talk about what we could do and what the federal government can't do. What the federal government can do is exactly what it did when it decided it wanted to support white people and lift them out of poverty. It was infrastructure. It was federal housing loans. It was all of the apparatus of the federal government--transportation, housing, education.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Ramesh, are you concerned that some will now see violence as the way to make progress?

RAMESH PONNURU (National Review): Well, that is always something that needs to be resisted and combated. And I think that a lot of public officials have sounded the right notes on that. I think that the-- more that we see ways of positive change that don't involve violence, the less they will be likely to resort to that, and the less excuses are going to be made for that. And I think that there are a lot of things that can be done, not just by the federal government but also by state and local government.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Julianne, is it time--we now know they have lifted the curfew, and I think a lot of people said it-- it was time to do that, maybe-- maybe--

JULIANNE MALVEAUX (Economist): Overtime.

BOB SCHIEFFER: --one-- yesterday was one day too long, but I think they were just trying to be-- you know, be very careful about this. But I think this is-- is going to be greeted as good news by the folks in Baltimore.

JULIANNE MALVEAUX: Oh, absolutely. It's overtime. And small businesses lost a lot of money on Saturday night, a fight night, and, you know, people just weren't able to be out. So there's some dollars. And the business community is going-- going to pressure. But it almost seemed like a plantation at some level that the overseers are deciding that you can't go outside. Sherrilyn said even the legal observers were arrested. So it's time to lift the curfew, but it's also time-- is overtime to look at the whole underlying issue, as you spoke to with Tavis regarding jobs. And this is to me the most important thing. So to see Congressman Ryan come in and talk about what the federal government should not be doing, while at the same time he's proposed fourteen billion dollars in cuts in domestic spending, there's a budget. Fourteen billion dollars in cuts. And we know those cuts are going to come from prekindergarten education and from job training. And that's so ironic right now.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Michael, you were in Baltimore this week, you spoke with a lot of people in faith-based institutions, I-- I'd just be interested in knowing what they told you.

MICHAEL GERSON (Washington Post): Well, I'll tell what faith-based institutions contribute. First of all, they contribute a concern not just for victims but the victimizers. These are people that will have to come back into communities, will need a second chance, will need to be reached. That is I think an important role of the faith community in-- in these-- in these matters. There are bridge in the community when there are so many sources of division. You know, they-- they've talked with gang members after the funeral, at the church that night after the funeral trying to work through these issues. So I think they contribute something pretty unique in these circumstances. But there's a lot to be done at every level. That's I think one of the messages that we got.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, we all know the role that churches played in the civil rights movement in this country because back in those days there was no place for African-Americans to go and to be together. But in the churches and we know the remarkable impact that they had. Michele, what about this whole relationship between the police and especially African-American males. This is serious problem. How-- how do we fix that?

MICHELE NORRIS (NPR): It's-- it is a serious problem, Bob, and we know much more about it now not because it is a new problem but because we now have devices that record these images that bring those images into our lives, into our homes, into these small devices that we all carry with us.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm.

MICHELE NORRIS: And it's a serious problem that merits our attention. And we talk about lifting the curfew, I wonder if we as a nation need to lift the veil and face our history and figure out how we got to this moment. The policies that have led to the large numbers of people being cordoned off in certain areas of cities. Their poisonous relationship between the police department and the black community and the-- the lack of trust. That just didn't happen. That happened-- it didn't happen by accident, it happened through a series of intentional policies, decisions that were made. And in order to move forward it's like when you drive and you have in the rear-view mirror, objects look closer-- objects in your past look closer than they appear. That's a moment for us right now. We need to understand our history so.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, you know, I mean, I bring this up as one who likes cops. I mean my early years were spent as a newspaper reporter on the police beat in Fort Worth. And I came to understand how hard it is to be a good cop. But still having said that there is a lot of work to be done here.

RAMESH PONNURU: You know, well, I think that's an important point because we need to acknowledge that there have been major improvements in public safety over the last generation. And some of that has to be a result of what the police have been doing. And we need to acknowledge that as we also go about the very necessary task of reform.

JULIANNE MALVEAUX: But, you know, police officers are not, in my opinion, as an academician properly trained. There is no requirement for them to have, let's say, B.A. degree or even a community college degree. These folks don't know sociology, by and large, or psychology. So while they may be trained in the tactics of carrying a firearm, how have they've been trained in terms of interacting with people.

SHERRILYN IFILL: Well-- well, that's a-- that's a slippery slope, right? Because police officers and that job has been the job of the working class, right? And so on one hand you don't want to create a standard that leaves people out from the ability to serve as police. At the same time I absolutely agree with Julianne about the training. The-- the training I think that's missing is the training that helps police officers engage their own bias, bias that we all have implicit bias. Forget about explicit bias for a minute. Those officers should be purged from the police department if you are racist--

BOB SCHIEFFER: Yeah.

SHERRILYN IFILL: --if you are brutal, if you are corrupt--

BOB SCHIEFFER: And the good cops don't want them.

SHERRILYN IFILL: And the-- and the-- well, the good cops need to speak up about the bad cops. So the idea of the thin blue line and the wall of silence, that has to be breached by police-- good police officers who have to recognize that bad police officers are giving them a bad name. But then the police officers who want to do good have to be trained in de-escalation. Some of the incidents we've seen, the-- the, you know, rolling up on twelve-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland who is in the park with a gun and-- and shooting him within seconds, you know, rolling up on people who are mentally ill and shooting them within seconds. How do you engage with the mentally ill? How do you de-escalate an encounter, for example, with a teenager? How do you deal with your own racial bias that makes you believe that a young African-American man is a criminal? That's the training I think police officers across the country are missing and they have to have it.

RAMESH PONNURU: But without questioning the need for training, let's remember the Baltimore Police Department says they didn't follow the procedures about seatbelts. So you can have all the training you want, if you've got officers who are not actually following their training, there's going to be additional problems.

SHERRILYN IFILL: Well, if this was the first incident of a police-involved killing in Baltimore--

RAMESH PONNURU: Yes.

SHERRILYN IFILL: --or maybe the only incident, then that would be the solution to the problem. But last year Tyrone West was killed and the federal government was called by the Baltimore Police Department to begin an investigation. And before that it was Anthony Anderson and it wasn't rough rides in those cases. So we've got a real police violence issue that has to be addressed.

BOB SCHIEFFER: We're going to take a little break here. We'll come back because we have lot more to talk about, in a minute.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

BOB SCHIEFFER: We're back now with more from our panel. And I want to talk about Toya Graham. This is that mom who went out there and saw her kid and here you see him, and she said "you get over here." And she took him out of that picture. And I've got to say, I know it's-- even our staff here in Washington, some people think that was remarkable. Some say, well, you oughtn't be beating your children in public.

JULIANNE MALVEAUX: Well, there you have it.

BOB SCHIEFFER: But I've got to say, I thought my mother had come back. I mean I don't believe in reincarnation, but (AUDIO CUT) as we called her, I thought she was back.

JULIANNE MALVEAUX: You know, the-- if Tavis was around right now he might talk about how black mom would say I brought you in this world and I can take you out. And that was certainly an example of that. But Stacey Patton had a really great piece in the Washington Post this morning that talked about essentially beating. I mean this beating young people goes back to enslavement. And for a while I think Toya was absolutely right to, you know, basically chastise her son. This was a public humiliation of a young black man and it was excessive force.

SHERRILYN IFILL: But the-- but the reason for it is fear, and that's what we should be paying attention to. Toya Graham is a mom living in fear. She's in fear of losing her son to the streets in that particular circumstance where he said she didn't want me to become another Freddie Gray. She's in fear that the police will retaliate against him in a way that will kill him. So we should be asking the question, why should a mom like Toya Graham be living in that level of fear? That's what's motivating her-- her response.

MICHELLE NORRIS: You know I just want to go back to something we were talking about earlier in the policing in the city of Baltimore, and one of the issues here is just the chasm, the-- the Grand Canyon wide chasm between the police department and the community in Baltimore. And one thing we have to look at is how many of those police see Baltimore as their home?

SHERRILYN IFILL: Yes.

MICHELLE NORRIS: Many of them don't live in the city. There's-- there's got to be some way to build some measure of trust between the police department and the people that there are there to protect and to serve. And that is just not--

BOB SCHIEFFER: You know I would-- I would just add this in the conversation when going to something else. At my house, there was fear. We were fear-- we feared Momo. We didn't worry about the police. We feared our mother. And that's why we behaved ourselves. Michael, this is much broader than Baltimore and talk about this.

MICHAEL GERSON: Well, I think this debate is-- it's fortunate that it's happening at the same time that we have an important book that's just published Our Kids by Robert Putnam, sociologist at Harvard University that describes the experience of children in these circumstances and talks about a complex, difficult problem of the collapse of the blue-collar economy. The bifurcation of family structure in America and the decay of community, atomized communities; and how these all connect with one another in very complex ways, and how police and law enforcement doesn't respond to that. You can keep a minimal amount of order but it doesn't address those problems of institutional decay and failure. The question we need-- right now we need a virtuous-- competition in our politics of liberals and conservatives saying, this is the ideas to solve this. This is the approach to solve this. Let's subsidize wages. Let's encourage family tax reform. Let's take these measures. And we've had a pretty sterile discussion in the last few years. And I think that's what we need right now.

JULIANNE MALVEAUX: Well, now the economic issue, you're right on, you know, spot on in terms of talking about the economy. But the challenge there is that no one is looking at the structure of the economy even if we were to raise the minimum wages as a national debate about to fifteen dollars an hour which would be about thirty thousand dollars a year, which is, you know, solidly, blue collar, lower middle-class income. Even were we to do that, we have to talk about job generation and we haven't done that. Congressman Ryan talked about trade. But what he hasn't talked about was some of the traps of these trade agreements that will cost us jobs. They won't generate jobs. They will cost us job. And that's the conversation I think we have short-term-- short-term solutions to long-term problems. And Congress--

SHERRILYN IFILL: But we are also not dealing with the issue of concentrated poverty. You know, many of us grew up poor. I mean, we all-- all have these stories about how, you know, we were not people of means and we struggled through, that's because of the difference between being poor and living in concentrated poverty and what we call these distressed neighborhoods. When we brought this lawsuit, we were able to show the effect on children of living in what they call distressed neighborhoods. It's not just that some people are poor. It's that everyone is poor, is that there are no jobs, is that the infrastructure is terrible. It's the concentration. So when we look at what the federal government can do or local government can do or local business can do, we have to begin to talk about how you break up the concentration of poverty that has such a deleterious effect on children. And I, frankly, haven't heard any ambitious proposals that suggest how we do that. And I will return to the top, it's going to require transportation, education, housing, all of those pieces to break away something like what we see in west-- west Baltimore. It's terrible that it's burning, but it's the easy tobacco convenience mart. It's not a supermarket. It's not the kind of stores that are going to provide the-- the support and structure that that community needs.

BOB SCHIEFFER: That's a very interesting point.

MICHELE NORRIS: And it will. It's interesting. We're talking about urban America just wanted to make one point of order that you also see those concentrations of poverty--

SHERRILYN IFILL: That's right. That's right.

MICHELE NORRIS: --in rural America as well. And if you read the Kerner Report right now, go back and look at the Kerner Commission, much of that right now applies to rural and (INDISTINCT) America also.

RAMESH PONNURU: I think we have-- we are seeing conflict of visions about how you handle these problems. We saw from President Obama earlier this week at his press conference with Prime Minister Abe he said we know how to solve these problems. If we have the will, we could do it. We could make these investments. And you have got Chairman Ryan saying, actually, we don't know what to do and we have to encourage local innovation and experimentation. That's a very deep-seated debate. I think that if you look at the record, your odds of rising out of poverty if you are a poor child are not any higher than they were before the war on poverty started. And that I think suggests that Chairman Ryan is right about this that we don't know-- we-- it's not just a question of well, we need to have innovation and experimentation.

BOB SCHIEFFER: You know I don't agree with-- with everything that Chairman Ryan said. But, you know, the fact that he has recognized that at least there ought to be some engagement here it seems to me in-- that's-- that's some progress when we look back to the previous campaign--

SHERRILYN IFILL: But that's how--

BOB SCHIEFFER: --where the man at the top of his ticket who I think is a good man. I think Romney is a good person whose heart is in the right place. But when he comes out and says, you know, there's forty-something percent of the people in this country I'm just not ever going to get their vote. I think--

SHERRILYN IFILL: He wrote a--

BOB SCHIEFFER: --Congressman Ryan has moved from that.

RAMESH PONNURU: And he's highlighted some important specific issues. Maryland is one of the ten worst states in the country in terms of regulating people going into low-wage jobs, making it harder for them to do it. And that needs to be dismantled, that needs to be at least relaxed.

JULIANNE MALVEUX: Bob, at the same time--

MICHELE NORRIS: When we're talking about poverty and words count. And I wonder if we should be talking about security and opportunity because it-- it is a national security issue. And when you're talking about poverty one way to engage people who happen not to be living in poverty but should care about those who do is to talk about the security, not just of the people who live in these neighborhoods but our security as a nation. We need sort of a new framework to talk about.

SHERRILYN IFILL: You know when-- when Mitt Romney's father, who was then housing Secretary George Romney, saw those riots that you were talking about at the top. In 1968 he saw those cities burning and he said something has to be done. And he said the issue is segregation, and he worked very hard. He was ultimately ostracized in the Nixon administration and fired.

RAMESH PONNURU: Mm-Hm.

SHERRILYN IFILL: But he believed strongly and he never had the opportunity to fully execute his plan that housing segregation was the key issue. And I think that remains. We know that living separately will never bring us to the one America that you were talking about.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, that's where we have to end this. I'm sorry.

JULIANNE MALVEUX: Oh, I'm sorry.

BOB SCHIEFFER: I guess we have run out of time. What an engaging discussion. Thank you all so much.

SHERRILYN IFILL: Thank you.

JULIANNE MALVEUX: Thank you.

MICHELE NORRIS: Thank you.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

BOB SCHIEFFER: And the good news this weekend, it is a girl. Great Britain celebrated the birth of the new princess of Cambridge early Saturday morning. Big brother, George, here with dad Prince William, went to meet his new sister at the hospital yesterday afternoon. Later that evening, Prince William escorted his wife and baby daughter as they left the hospital and returned to their home at Kensington Palace. The name of the baby has not yet been announced but she's already got adoring fans. And from here, it looks like she can already handle a photo op. We'll be right back.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

BOB SCHIEFFER: That's it for us today. We'll be right back here next Sunday on FACE THE NATION. Thanks for watching.