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The Current Transcript for July 17, 2018

Host: Duncan McCue

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: I cannot think of a more Canadian thing for parliamentarians of all political stripe to do than to ask the government for a long term plan to deal with this so that Canadians and parliamentarians can have a debate.

DUNCAN MCCUE: And it's a debate that's heating up in Ottawa and across the country this summer. Asylum seekers entering Canada irregularly, including the many who have filed across the border at regular crossings like Quebec's Roxton road. They're coming over from the US, where they've already sought safe haven. Politicians from both sides of the spectrum are pushing for clarity on the government's policy on the issue. Provinces and cities are pushing for more financial assistance in dealing with newcomers. And for many, a hope that Canadian compassion doesn't get lost in the debate. That's where we're starting. Then, Emmett Till was just 14-years-old, a young black teen from Chicago, when he was lynched in Mississippi. His alleged offense was to have whistled at a white woman. That was in 1955 and all these years later, the woman finally broke her silence on what happened speaking to this author.

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VOICE: She said that nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him.

DM: That may be part of the reason that the case of Emmett Till has quietly been reopened after all these years, but some see ulterior motives in revisiting the harrowing cold case. We'll hear why in half an hour. After that, Donna Brazile stepped in as interim leader of the Democratic National Committee at one heck of a time.

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VOICE: There was an active campaign by the Russians to discredit us, discredit the nominee, destroy the Democratic Party. I walked into a huge mess.

DM: A feature interview with Donna Brazile in an hour. I'm Duncan McCue and this is the summer edition of The Current.

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Ottawa unlikely to scrap Safe Third Country Agreement with U.S., says immigration expert

Guest: Jenny Kwan, Adam Vaughan, Mireille Paquet

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VOICE 1: They've intentionally chosen to use false language with respect to so-called queue jumping. When we've told them over and over again there's no such thing. Asylum seekers are processed in a separate queue and conflating the two knowingly, is irresponsible, it's divisive, it's fear mongering and it's not Canadian.

VOICE 2: What I saw here today was an attempt to him calling me un-Canadian, which I take great offense to and I do hope he will apologize and reconsider his language. I also won't be bullied into accepting what the federal government is doing. His answer was directed at me to try and intimidate me and I will not be intimidated.

DM: A heated exchange last week between Canada's immigration minister Ahmed Hussen and Ontario's minister responsible for immigration, Lisa MacLeod. She says her province needs more assistance from the feds to help deal with the expenses of refugees and asylum seekers. So far Ottawa has pledged 50 million dollars to the provinces and municipalities to help offset the costs of irregular border crossings. But the Federal opposition parties are calling on the government to do more and be more transparent about it. Yesterday the Conservatives and the NDP called an emergency meeting of the House of Commons Citizenship and Immigration Committee about the issue. Here's Conservative MP Michelle Rempel.

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VOICE: The federal government hasn't really sat down with the provinces in any sort of coordinated way to understand what the long term needs of thousands of people entering the country this way means, how much money they're going to have to continue to spend outside of the budgetary cycle to support people who have already reached the United States. Many of whom by the government's own admission, have said will not have valid claims in this country.

DM: Well to help us unpack the growing political tensions around this issue, I'm joined by Jenny Kwan. She's the NDP's immigration critic and the Member of Parliament for Vancouver East. She joins us from Vancouver. Hello.

JENNY KWAN: Good morning.

DM: You were present at yesterday's emergency committee meeting, what happened?

JK: Well the committee ultimately passed the motion to study the issue over the summer and will be inviting ministers to the table and other witnesses as well. I think this has been a long time coming. In fact, a year ago I had tried to move a similar motion in at committee to have the committee study the issue, but unfortunately the Liberal members at that time consistently adjourned debate on my motion. So we were not able to study the issue. So now we actually have a real study not just a briefing from officials or the minister around this and maybe we can get down to work and come up with a plan that will address the issues. The Conservatives, their plan going forward of course, is to take a page out of Trump and to simply shut down the border, by using the Safe Third Country Agreement and applying it to the entire border in Canada. I however, from the NDP offer a different alternative and there's several components to it. One of course is that I think we need to stop forcing people, asylum seekers from crossing over through irregular crossings by suspending the Safe Third Country Agreement. This will eliminate I think the dangers that exist for both border communities, as well as for the asylum seekers.

DM: Jenny Kwan, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel said, she's calling it a border crisis, but according to the new numbers that are released, the numbers are going down. I mean the RCMP intercepted roughly 1200 people in June, compared to 1800 people in May. 2500 people in April. By referring to this as a crisis, convening emergency meetings, are opposition politicians inflating the scale of the problem here?

JK: Well I think that we do need to come up with a plan. I think that if this is not properly managed it could become a crisis. I think that the situation is such that we can anticipate the numbers to fluctuate over time. We've seen this coming, at least I've seen this coming since January of last year. When the Trump administration first was elected, we saw the travel ban came in and since that time the Trump administration at different points in time, it targeted different people in the United States, refugees and asylum seekers in the United States. And that has a impact and the result is that people who try to get to safety to Canada by crossing over irregularly. And so these numbers are going to keep on fluctuate, but the fact is as long as the Trump administration is in office the U.S. is not a safe country for asylum seekers. We need to acknowledge that.

DM: So you're calling for the suspending of the, you're calling for the suspending of the Safe Third Country Agreement. Relations between Ottawa and Washington are strained already, how how could suspending that agreement impact the relationship?

JK: Well the the agreement itself provides for provision for Canada to give notice in suspend it. And we can suspend it and then come up with a strategy and I think we need to work with the international community. Allies in the international community to really deal with the source of the problem, around the asylum seekers fleeing the United States and that being the Trump administration and their discriminatory policies that target the refugee community. And so if we don't do that we're going to keep on having this situation. Now over time in Canada, we've had influxes at different stages. Back in 2009, we sort of saw the height of refugee asylum seekers coming to Canada and then it dipped back down and now we're sort of seeing it climb back up. While the numbers are fluctuating now slightly, hadn't gone down from the last couple of months, with that being said I don't see the problem going away and we need a long term strategy to deal with it. The government, the federal government for the most part, what they've been doing is really a knee jerk reaction. When we see a situation emerging they'll come to the table to try to deal with it until it happens again. This by the way, the first wave came in was through Manitoba. Right in the dead of winter we had asylum seekers, risking literally life and limb to come to Canada and at that time the goverment was more taking a wait and see approach. Manitoba had asked for the federal government to come to the table to provide them with resources. When I visited the border there and talked to the NGOs and the communities on the ground, the federal government was not at the table and they were still trying to manage the situation on their own. Then we had Quebec dealing with the situation and then now we have Ontario. So this goes on and on and on and by the way in British Columbia, our numbers have also increased as well.

DM: Jenny Kwan we're going to put some of those questions to Adam Vaughan. So thank you very much for joining us.

JK: Thank you.

DM: Jenny Kwan is the federal NDP's immigration critic and the Member of Parliament for Vancouver East. She was in Vancouver. We've been hearing criticism of the government from both the right and the left on this issue, let's hear from someone with the Liberal Government. MP Adam Vaughan represents the Toronto riding of Spadina-Fort York and he's Parliamentary Secretary for Housing and Urban Affairs and he's on the line. Hello.

ADAM VAUGHAN: Good day.

DM: NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan is saying that the United States is no longer a safe third country. What's your response to that?

AV: Well we work very closely with United Nations High Commission on Refugees and assess the situation on a day to day basis. And we have no cause for concern at this moment around the safe third party agreement. It helps us manage, both countries manage a very you know delicate and a very tricky situation, but we're watching the situation very carefully to make sure that the asylum seekers are treated with respect to the law and international obligation and people seeking saftey get it.

DM: Well the United States has been separating children from their parents at the border. It's removed gang and domestic violence as grounds for asylum. Is the United States still a safe country for refugees?

AV: Well as I said, we're working with the United Nations and our officials are monitoring those situations daily. It's a very volatile and fluid situation in the United States. It changes day to day, but in terms of Canada, Canadians need to know that we are meeting our international obligations and we are making sure that Canada's rule of law is being followed to make sure we have an orderly processing of asylum claims. Claimants and those that have need for safety are settled and those that are making false claims are not entering the country.

DM: We did request an interview with conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel, she didn't give us a response, but yesterday at the committee meeting she said that the government appears to have made a policy decision to "normalise" a policy of irregular entries into Canada. What's your response to that?

AV: It's nothing that could be further from the truth. We're upholding Canadian laws and protecting Canadians, but we're also making sure we're meeting our international obligations. I think the key thing here is that we have a you know a relationship with our cities and our towns that are on the front lines of many of these interactions. And as a government, we are supporting those cities. We work with provinces where we can. In Quebec we have a very extensive triage system working with Montreal and Quebec City and the major centres to ensure the settlement is done in an orderly way. We've also invested heavily in processing capacity so that we're getting decisions in a quickly and a timely way, but also making sure the rule of law is being followed. And then in the case of Ontario, the province has decided not to participate in a collaborative way, we'll be funding cities directly. In fact, 11 million dollars was put as a down payment. The first installment to deal with some of the housing pressures that will now be delivered to Toronto directly as Queen's Park has indicated it doesn't want to participate.

DM: There concerns coming from the Conservatives.

AV: So we're working with our partners in an orderly way and it's not something which simply cropped up this year. Since taking office we've been addressing many of the issues that are contained in this challenge. For example, we restored 390 million dollars in border security agents and funding for stronger border controls that were cut by the previous government. Additionally, you know the issue here, we are managing the process and we've invested heavily in cutting wait times at the immigration department across all categories, but the issue that we're dealing with in Toronto is the housing crisis. And so when we took office, transfers to the cities and the provinces, they doubled in our first budget and the homelessness funding for shelters has tripled. And now we've locked in a 40 billion dollar, 10 year program because we are dealing with this systemically and making sure that the various pressure points along the system are properly funded, properly administered and and don't put Canadians at risk.

DM: The concern coming from the Conservatives is that the government isn't being transparent enough about its plans. What can you tell us about how concrete information about how the money that you're sharing with Toronto for example will be spent.

AV: Well Toronto has put forth a housing proposal and has been providing temporary shelter. We are now working with them to source new locations because we have two shelter facilities, which are being transferred back to schools in August. We're working to both fund and locate and use federal resources, where possible, to resolve that issue and move people into housing. We've also shortened processing times and are doing our due diligence on that. But where people are given have made claims and their claims are going to be heard by the Immigrant Refugee Board, which now having its work permits and support is being delivered to those individuals so that they can move into the regular housing market. Again, Toronto has had a shelter crisis for the better part of 10 years. It's had a housing crisis for the better part of 25. One of the reasons I left city council and ran for a federal seat was to get Ottawa back into the housing game. Because you know.

DM: So how does the federal government intend to deal with the new government in Ontario then, which seems to be, I mean you seem to be fundamentally at odds with how you're handling this issue.

AV: Look I mean you know there are some politicians that see somebody in need and want to help. There are other politicians that see people in need and ask where they're from or what their legal status is. We will work with politicians and governments and orders of government that want to collaborate. Those that don't, they can answer to their electorate on that. But at the end of the day, our job is to make sure that Canadians are protected, that asylum seekers are given due process and their rights are respected under both international and Canadian law and where we have to we will step up and partner with cities and communities. If we can't do it in collaboration with provinces and we'll fund those programs to make sure that it's done in an orderly and humane way. But the thing we have to come to terms with in this country is that displacement of populations, whether it's by climate change and things like forest fires in Fort McMurray or floods in New Brunswick or some of the challenges we have in Manitoba still, years after floods in the north, massive disruption of population patterns is the new normal. And whether it's, as I said, climate change or political upheaval, this is an issue we're going to have to come to terms with in this country. We need long term thinking on this, as well as immediate responses and the surge capacity in our emergency housing systems has to be rethought. We can't run shelters at 95 per cent capactiy and expect to handle and expect to handle problems like this.

DM: Thank you very much for joining us Adam Vaughan. Appreciate that. Adam Vaughan is a Liberal MP representing Spadina-Fort York. We reached him in New York. For another perspective on this we're joined by someone who studies the politics of immigration and the implications for both Ottawa and the provinces as this debate continues to unfold. Mireille Paquet is an associate professor of political science at Montreal's Concordia University and the author of The Federalization of Immigration and she's with us from Montreal. Hello.

MIREILLE PAQUET: Hello.

DM: Sounds like this debate is getting increasingly heated. What do you make of the politics at the federal level right now?

MP: I think there's two things to say. One of them is that I can understand the provinces being frustrated with the direction that Ottawa has been taking on this issue, which has been more of a wait and see approach and you can hear that in what Ms. Kwan has been saying, as well as what the Conservative has criticized as well right. This kind of non-action regarding the Third Safe Country Agreement and the management of pthese issues. On the other hand though what's really interesting in the debate that are coming up right now is how we're seeing that these issues of migration and the issues of movements as well across the border, aren't just short term issues, right. So we've been seeing a lot of people concerned about what's happening at the border, but a year and a half in what we're seeing right now is provinces realising that these movements will have long term to medium term costs on their areas of jurisdiction such as housing, education or healthcare.

DM: Mireille Paquet what do you make of the NDP's call for suspending the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States?

MP: Well they have been making this call for quite some time now and as far as I'm concerned it would be very surprising that Ottawa would go into that direction. Changing this agreement, well there are some potential to do it based on how the agreement is signed, would also send a very strong diplomatic message to Washington and as long as issues regarding NAFTA are still in negotiation, I don't think that Ottawa will make any move in that direction.

DM: The number of asylum seekers, according to Statistics Canada, the number of asylum seekers entering the country between ports of entry has been decreasing since April, but we're seeing the provinces becoming more vocal about it this summer. Why?

MP: Well I mean there's several things. We can't dismiss the fact that the government changed in Ontario and that obviously there's a new position in the province, when it comes to government. And as I was saying right, a lot of these issues have, a lot of these movements of people have medium to long term consequences. So it's one thing to actually get people in the border and process them, but then the process of integration into society takes a lot of time. In addition to that processing time are quite slow due to the increase of movement at the border, as well as limited resources in the institutions in charge of doing that, right. So we have a population that might not be processed as quickly as some politicians would like and they're thinking and they're realising the impact that this could have on their fiscal capacity.

DM: You just heard Adam Vaughan say that the Liberal government has a plan when it comes to asylum seekers. To what extent do you think the opposition parties are right to press the Liberal government for a more coherent, fully costed plan on migration?

MP: I think that it's a little bit maybe unfair to say that there hasn't been any discussion or meetings. There are some meetings and committees and provinces have been met, but I think that more transparency will not hurt at all, right. I think that this issue of immigration is a shared jurisdiction at the end of the day. Provinces should be made aware, communication lines should be open. Then whether provinces take up their responsibility on this issue is a whole other discussion, right. But I think that while it's unfair to say that there's been no meeting, there's been no communication, more communication for sure and discussion about the plan would be I think welcomed by all.

DM: It's tough not to ignore that the debates over immigration are playing out of course in the United States, but also across Europe. To what extent do you see the conversation that's unfolding here in Canada as a reaction to those debates?

MP: Well I think you can see a lot of resonance with things that are happening in the rest of world right now in the debate this week for sure. So this whole discussion of queue jumping for example that the Ontario government has put forward is very similar to the discussion we've had maybe two years ago when in Europe people were calling Syrian refugees economic migrants as opposed to genuine asylum seekers. And more generally what we're seeing is a trend of growing attention to immigration, whether there is an actual objective problem or whether there is simply just more anxiety. And this we can totally see happening this summer in Canada.

DM: Thank you for your analysis on this.

MP: It's a pleasure.

DM: Mireille Paquet is an associate professor of political science at Concordia University in Montreal, who studies the politics of immigration. She's also the author of The Federalization of Immigration. CBC News is next and then decades later, the death of Emmett Till still echoes in the United States. And now there's word that the Justice Department has reopened the case of the 14-year-old African-American boy, but what's to make of it? That discussion in our next half hour. I'm Duncan McCue and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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Lynching of Emmett Till no different than modern-day police shootings, argues law professor

Guest: Elliott Gorn, Gloria Browne-Marshall

DM: Hi. I'm Duncan McCue and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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DM: Still to come, it's safe to say that Donna Brazile is not your average politico.

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I have worked in 49 states and one more state, I would become Miss USA without the bikini.

DM: The lifelong Democratic political organizer had already had a storied career by the time she found herself in the middle of the biggest political story of our day, as interm head of a Democratic National Committee being hacked away at by Russian agents. Donna Brazile in half an hour. But first, justice delayed.

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DM: In August 1955, a young black man from Chicago was visiting family deep in the Mississippi Delta, when a white woman Carolyn Bryant accused him of whistling at her and making advances. His name was Emmett Till and the accusation led to his kidnapping, beating and murder. His body dumped in the Tallahatchie River. He was just 14-years-old. Two white men were charged in his death. They were later acquitted by an all white jury, but the death of Emmett Till couldn't be ignored. It helped spur the growing civil rights movement in the United States and through the decades, efforts to bring Emmett Till's killers to justice continued. The men accused of his death have since died, though Carolyn Bryant is still alive. And last week we learned that the Justice Department had quietly reopened the case citing new information. Deborah Watts is Emmett Till's cousin. She was a toddler at the time of his murder and is now the executive director of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation. Here she is speaking with NPR's All Things Considered about the case being reopened.

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VOICE: This is an opportunity for the truth to be told. You know we'd love to have Carolyn Bryant, to share her story publicly or to even have a conversation with our family and specifically to share the truth with the authorities as this investigation moves forward. The wound is very very deep. You know the country and Emmett Till generation, along with that family and others, this has impacted you know not only those of us in America, but across the world. So I think not only our family, but I think the public and relatives, the supporters and activists and others are just, we're just holding our breath that the right thing will be done. You know many individuals, particularly in the south were living under this terror and terroristic act. Many young men, other young men well before Emmett, were taken, beaten, killed. There are probably bodies and the blood spilled of many others in Mississippi, Florida, Georgia and other places that are like Emmett's, that are still there. And so what this did, it was a wake up call to not only our country, but to the world that, wow, this is what's happening. This is the face of what hate looks like in our country. And what are we going to do about it?

DM: Someone who's spent time thinking about that very question is Elliot Gorn. He's a history professor at Loyola University Chicago and the author of the forthcoming book, Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till. We reached him in Chicago. Hello.

ELLIOTT GORN: Good morning.

DM: What went through your head when you heard that the Justice Department was reopening the investigation into Emmett Till's murder?

EG: Well a few things. Like many Americans, I'm suspicious of anything this administration does. We have no evidence that there's that was simply a publicity ploy, but one thinks that way. You know, just listening to Emmett's cousin, it's hard to imagine exactly what the FBI will uncover, unless they do go and once again interview Carolyn Bryant. They spent several hours with her back in 2005-2006 and she was very close-mouthed then. I don't know if she'll open up now. She was forthcoming a little bit with the historian Tim Tyson a year ago. She apparently has written a memoir where she talks a little bit more about what happened, but one of the things she told Tyson also was that it's so long, there have been so many stories, that she can't even remember anymore what really happened.

DM: It has been so long Elliott Gorn. Take us back to August 1955. What happened to Emmett Till, as we know it today the story.

EG: You know, he probably almost certainly did whistle at Carolyn Bryant. His cousins who were there said that he did. Everything else that he was accused of is very problematic. No one else saw anything that he allegedly laid hands on her, propositioned her, intimated that this would be an assault or rape perhaps, as was accused, as was said in court by the defendant's attorneys, Milam and Bryant's attorneys. Probably it was just simply a southern Jim Crow era lynching.

DM: And can you take us back. I mean remind us what U.S. race politics was like at that time.

EG: Certainly in the state of Mississippi and most of the south, the Jim Crow order basically decreed a caste system. African-Americans were seen as inferior people. Where the case was tried for example in Tallahatchie County in Mississippi, that county was two thirds black and not a single African-American could vote. Not a single one and therefore of course could not serve on a jury. Voting, all kinds of rights, but even more than that the customs of Jim Crow that that if you're walking on a sidewalk, a white person approaches, the black person has to get off the sidewalk. Never look a white person in the eye. Never shake their hand. It's a whole caste system we forget and we talk about slavery, which of course is a terrible and important part of our history in America, but Jim Crow was just 50-60 years ago. It didn't go away, suddenly.

DM: The trial took place less than a month after the murder. What was the scene like at the courtroom?

EG: It was wild. A small southern courthouse. Something like 75 reporters, including some who were quite well known. David Halberstam was there for example. Reporters from the African-American Press. Hundreds of people packing the courthouse. It was headline news across America and when the verdict came down, it was actually headline news around the world.

DM: Emmett Till's mother chose an open casket for the funeral. Why was that?

EG: It was a brave thing to do, to let the world see. As she said, let the people see. She wanted, she knew that there was the possibility that that again the mourners would come and see it. About 200,000 people on the South Side of Chicago passed by Emmett Till's body and that there would be publicity because of it. Now this was not the first time someone had done that. Just a few months before, a voting rights worker, an African-American voting rights worker had been murdered in Belzoni, Mississippi and his wife did the same thing. But that was Mississippi. It got a little publicity in the African-American press, but it didn't make it into the mainstream press.

DM: So when Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, the two men who were accused of murdering Emmett Till, were acquitted, I mean there were rallies in New York and Detroit and Chicago and San Francisco, had the country ever really seen anything like that before?

EG: Ongoing rallies, week after week, month after month, in the civil rights movement was something new and they were really quite massive. Thousands of people in Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and even in southern cities that was really, really quite unique. Mostly African-Americans, but it was the beginning of not the beginning, I shouldn't say that. It was a new kind of organizing that was starting to really get going. It was something very new.

DM: The two men, Bryant and Milam, they did eventually admit to murdering Emmett Till. They showed no remorse for it when they did that. What was the effect of that?

EG: No, they did show no remorse and they took a few thousand dollars to do it. Their confession was in Look Magazine, just a few months after the murder itself. The reaction was mixed because of the way the article was written. It was written by a southern journalist, named William Bradford Huie and the way he wrote it, he basically accepted their account that Emmett Till was some sort of black militant who couldn't be cowed, who was in their faces and they killed him because he simply would not back down from saying I've had white women before, so what I'm as good as you are. Now there's no reason to believe any of that is true. But many, many people were willing to believe it and the effect of the article of the confession was really to make the Emmett Till story go away. All right, they confessed, but many people, many white people, could now think well yeah we understand now why this happened. We understand why they did it. And really the Till story went away for decades. It was not really revived for white people. African-Americans remembered. They took it with them into the civil rights movement. It wasn't really revived for white people until 1987, in the documentary, Eyes on the Prize.

DM: And then there was I mean the FBI investigation, extraordinary investigation, I mean ten thousand page dossier, but it didn't seem to be enough to bring around another trial. So what does that tell you?

EG: Well, you know that the FBI reopened the case 50 years later. That's a long time. There's a lot of people who are dead and memories are faded. It's a fascinating dossier to go through. I haven't seen even the whole thing. I'm not sure. I don't know if anyone has. You have to do an FOIA request to get the dossier itself, but you can find a summary that's really fascinating online just at fbi.gov and follow the links. What does it tell you? It tells you, as I say, that people die and memories fade. The prosecutor in Mississippi in Leflore County, Mississippi did go to the grand jury attempting to indict Carolyn Bryant, the woman who made the accusation. A very mixed jury, mixed by gender, mixed by race, would not do it. They did not think there was enough evidence to indict her. Doesn't mean she was innocent, it means they wouldn't indict her.

DM: Earlier this year, the Justice Department told Congress, I'm going to quote here, "Even with our best efforts, investigations into historic cases are exceptionally difficult and rarely will justice be reached inside of a courtroom." So if that's true and we know who did it and how, why not just let this case rest?

EG: I don't think that this is a case that should rest. I don't mean that the FBI will uncover new evidence and will really bring the guilty forward. I don't think, there are names that the FBI recovered in 2005-2006 that are implicated. Kin mostly and friends mostly of Milam and Bryant. The idea that we'll know for sure their role in the killing, that won't happen, but it matters that we remember. That's the thing that to me really matters, that we remember that this happened. I really think that Emmett Till in a way has become the Anne Frank of the United States. Anne Frank in the sense that, we Americans, white and black, white Americans especially, have to own this. We have to accept that this happened. That this happened in our country. A kind of responsibility that we have for it and remembering is a way to make sure it doesn't happen again in these horrible times.

DM: I mean it does continue to grip the American imagination for sure, the Emmett Till case. You've been writing a book for eight years about it, what does Emmett Till mean to you?

EG: I think the Emmett Till story for me was a way to, I was alive back then, but just a four-year-old when Emmett Till was killed. So I have no memory of it, but as I thought about doing this book, I thought more and more it was a way of getting to this to talk about this early part of the civil rights movement and the passions and the extraordinary courage and determination of African-Americans who as I say, they remember the story and they took it and they made it part of their movement. Again, that phrase, the Emmett Till generation, that describes people like Congressman John Lewis, Muhammad Ali and Moody, all of these people write about Till in their memoirs years later.

DM: Well thank you for joining us to share with us.

EG: My pleasure. Thank you.

DM: Elliott Gorn is a history professor at Loyola University Chicago and the author of, Let the People See: The story of Emmett Till, which is being published this fall. He's in Chicago. The murder of Emmett Till was an outrageous act of racial violence, but sadly just one of many in America's bloody history. Gloria Browne-Marshall is a professor of constitutional law at John Jay College in New York City. Her books include, "The Voting Rights War," "The NAACP and the Ongoing Struggle for Justice" and "Race, Law, and American Society 1607-Present." Gloria Browne-Marshall is in New York City. Hello.

GLORIA BROWNE-MARSHALL: Hello.

DM: What did you think when you heard that the U.S. Department of Justice was reopening the Emmett Till murder case?

GBM: I was very suspicious and cynical. Under Jeff Sessions, as U.S. Attorney General, I think it's necessary for us to really look at what the motivation is. Is this something just to take our eyes away from the mother investigation? The Russian conspiracy and everything else that's going on in this country by going back to 1955's murder case.

DM: Emmett Till was one of thousands of people lynched in the United States. Why does his death in particular have such a big impact on the civil rights movement?

GBM: Because he was 14. Because there was the combination of the north and the South. He was in Chicago and as it was, the custom back then, a lot of the southerners had taken root up north to have a better life, but they would send their children back down south to be with relatives to, you know stay connected in the family way and to carry on some of those Southern traditions. And this was the case of Emmett Till. He was sent down by his mother Mamie, to be with his great uncle and his cousin so they can stay family. And it was there, at 14-year-old that he was murdered and it happened so quickly that we not only had the national perspective, but we had someone from the north who was saying this couldn't happen and then you're going to get away with it. In the south, that Tallahatchie River is filled with bodies of lynched black men and some women. But you know, the northerners had decided, we're not going to sit back and just let this happen and carry on like this murder didn't take place.

DM: There have been bills in the United States, before Congress to outlaw lynching, tell us what happened to those bills.

GBM: They didn't pass. Congress would pass from the House and then the Senate wouldn't follow through and the Costigan Bill for example, the Costigan-Wagner bill of 1934, the Dyer Bill of earlier, 1922. We've had these bills come when there have been these sparks of race riots and we're talking about race riots. We're talking about thousands of whites attacking black neighborhoods, burning down black businesses. The Red Summer of 1919, we would have these upsurge of bills, but they would not pass. And one of the reasons why one of the bills didn't pass, the Costigan Bill was because the sheriff would be held responsible for not protecting the lives of black people and they did not want to do that. And that's why the trigger of the Voting Rights Act and the civil rights movement, all of this came with the symbolic murder of Emmett Till because it gave the opportunity for people to vote in those politicians who would better represent black interests.

DM: Why do you think that the Justice Department would reopen this case now? I mean it's under Jeff Sessions and many believe that he's hostile to some of the civil rights gains for African-Americans.

GBM: I'm going to say once again cynically, it may be because they found someone who's still alive and I probably would believe that person might be African-American, who knows. I've had my interactions with Jeff Sessions many years ago, when he was senator out of Alabama. I spent time in Alabama as a civil rights attorney and it's just not feasible for me to believe there's not type of political you know play going behind this that's going to make him seem like he's somewhat attuned to these issues. And let's just also raise the fact that Eric Garner, who was killed by police, and it's four years since that killing, the connection between Emmett Till that keeps us alive for the African-American community, is that not only were law enforcement not protecting black lives, but many of them were part of the downfall of black people. And there's a connection, a very clear connection for many people in the African-American community, between the Jim Crow era, the lynchings that took place there and the murders by police today, that unless as the other guest said, we look at this as Americans, that we're not going to go past Emmett Till is always going to haunt us.

DM: What is the connection? I mean you've written that there's a connection between the killing of Emmett Till and the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. How do you see that being connected?

GBM: Well many people study our police department as one that's like the Bobbies in London. That's not how our police department became. Our police department became our protectors of certain people because they began as militia. They began as slave catchers. They began as a people hunting down Native Americans and so after a while, you begin to see that history following through a clear path of those people who were not there to protect African-Americans, but were there to bring them back to the plantation, to stop them from leaving the south to go to the north to get away from terrorism. Those people who did not protect African-American lives and now they are part of the history of law enforcement in this country and we've never dealt with that very clear connection.

DM: But again, to go back to Trayvon Martin, I mean there are some differences between 1955 and the era now in which Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black boy was killed. Do you see it as being a direct connection between the two?

GBM: I see the direct connection being and that's why my book is Race, Law and American Society because American society and that's United States of American society, has never really seen their responsibility in accepting, not just lynching. How did people sit back and allow 4000 lynchings to take place? And when we had James Byrd lynched in the 1990s, we're really looking at how this society has accepted the cold blooded murder of African-Americans and allowed it to just be a part of life. That is the connection. The acceptance of this society, of this mechanism that the criminal justice system has been using for decades in undermining the rights of African-Americans to the point where they could be murdered. And as was pointed out, people go OK well maybe this black boy or man did something to cause it to happen, therefore we're going to accept it and the least likely excuse or rationale seems to be one that this society, the majority society is willing to embrace.

DM: As we discussed, the bills to outlaw lynching have been unsuccessful so far. Do you think we could see a return to the kinds of lynching that took place in America in the past?

GBM: It may be going on right around us. As far as I'm concerned, when black men and boys and some women are shot in the back by law enforcement, choked to death in front of us on video, all these things are happening right in front of us and I don't understand why society can't see it for what it is. If this was happening in another country, we would see it. And in a nation made up of immigrants, people fleeing from other countries because of oppression just like this and then they get here and for some reason pretend as though this is not the same thing. And I don't understand that part of our society, that color line that we can't see because it's happening to people of color, to me that's the important part that our nation needs to understand. We can't go forward. We can't heal when we continue to use certain people as a rationale for their own demise, like it's supposed to happen that way. They brought it on themselves.

DM: To go back to the specifics of the case though, I mean it has, memories have faded and so can there ever be justice for Emmett Till or has that time come and gone?

GBM: Justice for Emmett Till, there's no statute of limitation on murder and so there can be justice if they do find someone who is still alive. As what has happened with the four girls in the Birmingham church, the Medgar Evers case and others, people say well why don't we just let it go? Why don't you just let the dead stay dead? And it cannot. It haunts us. And since there's no statute of limitation in the law on murder and there's no closing of a wound without some type of feeling that justice has taken place, the life of Emmett Till and the murder of Emmett Till will haunt this country and be a symbol of how bad it can get if we don't do something about race relations.

DM: So going forward then, I mean what do you hope will be accomplished by reopening the case?

GBM: I hope that we can start talking about not just what happened in 1955, but what's continued to happen today. That there are murders, state murders, there's a difference. Of course there's crime in African-American community, there's crime in every community. There's black on black crime, there's white on white crime, but my concern is when you have law enforcement paid with our tax dollars, the bullets in their guns paid with our tax dollars and you have people who would, under any civilian definition, be murdered and then not have indictments brought. There's that clear connection between 67 minute trial of Emmett Till of people who only said it lasted 67 minutes of deliberation, only because they went out to get a soda pop and came back. When you can't get an indictment in the 21st century, when it's on video that someone has shot another person in the back and that person who's the shooter happens to be in law enforcement, then there is a clear connection between what happened then and what's going on now. And this country if it's not going to face it, then we're going to be looking 50 years from now and say Eric Garner, in the same way we said Emmett Till.

DM: Thank You for joining us.

GBM: Thank you.

DM: Gloria Browne-Marshall is a professor of constitutional law at John Jay College in New York City. Her books include, "Race, Law, and American Society 1607-Present." She's in New York City. Coming up, last Friday 12 Russian intelligence officers were indicted for hacking into the computers of the Democratic National Committee and Donna Brazile was interim leader of the DNC during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We'll revisit her conversation with Anna Maria in our next half hour. I'm Duncan McCue and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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Why Hillary Clinton lost the U.S. election: former DNC chair's insider account

Guest: Donna Brazile

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Tonight a major snag on the road to party unity. [Cheers] WikiLeaks releasing nearly 20,000 internal DNC e-mails including some that appear to show efforts to undercut the rise of Bernie Sanders. In one a communications official considered pushing the narrative that Bernie never ever had his act together that his campaign was a mess. In another a top official wonders can we get someone to ask his belief does he believe in God, adding my Southern Baptist peeps will draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist. The response: An amen.

AMT: Well that's a report from ABC News on July 23rd of 2016, the eve of the US Democratic National Convention. The release of those e-mails prompted an immediate resignation of the Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Donna Brazile, a longtime Democratic strategist and political pundit, was asked to step in to take over as interim DNC chair. And that put her in the middle of one of the dirtiest and most controversial elections in U.S. history. Now Donna Brazil has rocked the Democratic Party with her new book Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break Ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House. Donna Brazile joins me from Washington D.C. Hello.

DONNA BRAZILE: Hello. Thanks for having me on.

AMT: Well before we get to those e-mails let's give it a few things about Donna Brazile on the table. You're a long time Democrat. How many campaigns have you run?

DONNA BRAZILE: I have been actively involved in the Democratic Party since the age of nine. I have been active in non-presidential campaigns, as a staff member, starting in 1976 as a youth coordinator with Jimmy Carter to retire at age 40 as Al Gore's campaign manager. I've been involved in 11 presidential cycles. And the cycles include campaigns where I was not on staff but serve as either strategists or adviser, 21 mid-term cycles, 21 cycles in which your nonpresidential light states like Virginia, my home state of Louisiana and whenever we have House and Senate races. I've been involved in 56 congressional House and Senate campaigns. I've managed several of those I've worked on many others. and 19 state and local campaigns. I have worked in 49 states and one more state I would become Miss USA without the bikini.

AMT: [Laughing] And you're still standing.

DONNA BRAZILE: I am still standing. In two years I celebrate my 50th anniversary in American politics. I feel no ways tired.

AMT: Just a few more things you're no shrinking violet. You like to cuss.

DONNA BRAZILE: [Laughing] Well I tell people I have a little Tabasco on my tongue from time to time. I'm a Louisiana girl. I don't believe that you can see everything with some of the noun verbs adjectives and adverbs and try to put in some profanity and then some good stuff. Not bad.

AMT: And when you're angry what’s the name of your alter ego?

DONNA BRAZILE: Her name is Dolores and you don't want to step on her on her heels because she will use those heels to make you sit down.

AMT: Okay so now that we know all these things what went through your mind when those 20,000 stolen DNC e-mails were dumped onto the Internet by WikiLeaks?

DONNA BRAZILE: I panicked. I left home in Washington D.C. and I immediately got up to Philadelphia and began to look for the Sanders people. I mean what I know today I would have looked for both the Sanders and the Clinton people. But given what WikiLeaks did at that moment, which was to pour out all of the relevant e-mails involved in Bernie Sanders, I went up to them apologized profusely and told them that I will get to the bottom of it. I will learn more about what was going on at the DNC. I knew just a little bit about the hacking but not enough to give them any assurances and I promised him I would get to the bottom of it.

AMT: What did you inherit when you took over as chair of the DNC?

DONNA BRAZILE: Well I was shocked. I walked into a building. I'm very familiar with the DNC. I've been chair twice. I was chair previously in 2011. I walked in a building that was riddled in debt. Staff morale was very very low. And get this there was an active campaign by the Russians to discredit us, discredit the nominee, destroy the Democratic Party, to alter and to destroy our data and to harass our staff. So I walked into a huge mess. So one that and just go home and get back in bed and say next. But I love my party. I love my country. I wanted to Hillary Clinton to win. I supported President Obama. And so when the call was made of course I would step up quit all my other occupations and take on the role as a volunteer to serve as the chair of the Democratic Party for the second time in my life.

AMT: The DNC was heavily in debt. And what did you discover about who was controlling the money?

DONNA BRAZILE: Well the DNC had over $20 million in debt in large part because we took out loans in 2014 to help the House and Senate candidates, plus there were leftover. There was leftover debt from 2012 when President Obama won re-election. When I found out of the debt and the fact that there was a joint fundraising agreement signed by both candidates, but a memorandum of understanding between the Clinton campaign staff and the DNC staff that gave them control over the technology research and communications departments. I was very dismayed by that fact. I was also dismayed that there were literally no bid contracts where the DNC was paying consultants upwards of 25000 a month, when the party was broke. The party was broken. In exchange for helping us reduce the debt. Hillary Clinton campaign put us on a starvation died. That diet kept me from doing my job because I started raising money and I wanted to ensure that the DNC was not only helping her win which is very very important. I wanted to win the presidency but I was also concerned about races from the school board all the way up to Capitol Hill.

AMT: And because of what you saw with that agreement with the Clinton campaign and the DNC, you actually told Bernie Sanders you'd found the cancer.

DONNA BRAZILE: That was a very difficult thing to do because I promised Bernie's campaign in July that I would go over to the DNC and that I would conduct a very forensic examination, and while I found no evidence of rigging – and I've said that over and over repeatedly – what I did find was something that really disappointed me. When I was Al Gore's campaign manager I stepped aside as co-chair of the Rules and Bylaws Committee. We try you know on the DNC - I'm a member of the Democratic National Committee - we try to maintain our autonomy, our independence and what I found was that the Clinton campaign in exchange again for helping us reduce our deficit, had begun to utilize those resources to pay vendors, to set up operations that had no impact whatsoever on the primary. I found no evidence of that. She won fair and square. She won more than four million votes. She won more states, more pledged delegates as well as unpledged delegates but it's still broke my heart to see that they were utilizing the DNC in such a way before the primary ended to run the general election campaign.

AMT: And it wasn't the only run in you had with him at one point you have it out over that kind of control with the man running the Clinton campaign. What do you tell them to put on the table?

DONNA BRAZILE: I told them to put their dicks on the table. I said “why don't we all put our dicks on the table?” Well look I use that as a metaphor. If I offend anybody well I'm sorry. I'm a big girl. I've been involved in politics for a long time. Often the only woman or the only African-American in the room and I find it sometime insulting that women have to take a back seat to people with less experience simply because they are male and they have a “penis”. And so I would often tell you just put it on the table because I have the biggest one which means I have nothing to show for it. But I wanted them to understand that my voice matters. My experiences matter. My ideas matter. I don't have to wait for you guys to take a poll or to come back with some computer model when I have already visited the state three or four times. And so I push. In politics, you're fighting not just for your candidate to succeed but you're also fertilizing the country. You want to put resources so that people who are running for local races can also have their ideas out there. And this campaign was really focused on 270 electoral votes, again, which I firmly supported. But I also want to support things that were happening where people live, where they work, where they play and where they pray. I want to touch voters at the local level.

AMT: And of course as you try to do all that in the midst of that there is this email hack. How did you learn that Russia was behind the hacking of the DNC?

DONNA BRAZILE: Well on the day I took control of the party I had her Robby Mook on an earlier a TV show describe that it was Russians and I kept saying “Huh. That's the second time I've heard that. Let me investigate it.” I talked to Mark Elize one of the lawyers for the Clinton campaign and he gave me a little bit more background of what the DNC had found when the remediation started on April 29th. And by the 1st of May we had hired a company that had an expertise in this area and it told us about APT 28, APT 29, these active persistent mergers and threats Cozi bear and fancy bear. But still I had no idea because I personally don't ever want to encounter a bear in or out of a zoo or cage or in the wilderness. And so when they gave me the full background I was told by a friend of mine, who was the National Security Advisor at the time, to go and get a brief. She encouraged me, she pushed me, she persuaded me. When I went over and had my briefing at the FBI what I learned shocked me, scared me, frightened me. In fact when it was over with, I didn't want to go back to the DNC. I wanted to go to the Pentagon and say “What the hell am I doing going back to the DNC. I should be going to the Pentagon. We're under attack. We're at war. We can't fight the Russians. We are the Democratic National Committee. We barely can pay our bills.”

AMT: John Podesta the then chair of the Hillary Clinton campaign had his e-mail stolen again, and supposedly by Russia, leaked. How did the party deal with that constant drip of those e-mail leaks by WikiLeaks.

DONNA BRAZILE: I can tell you that it was problematic. You know the media fed on those e-mails as if it was bread from heaven. They stood up, they wrote about it. They tweeted it out. It became the driving narrative. On October 7, 2016 I thought Donald Trump would lose the election. And then the bots and trolls took over on that day. We had an assessment from the DNI the director of national intelligence and others DHS Department of Homeland Security, that indeed it was the Russians that were interfering in meddling election. And they also confirmed that the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee. Soon afterwards there was an Access Hollywood tape that came out where Donald Trump allegedly made - let's just say - offensive remarks regarding women. Then by late afternoon evening John Podesta's e-mails were leaked. John Podesta’s E-mails and they numbered into the tens of thousands. They were not just dumped out one day. They were leaked every day to amplify and to be used in such a way by social media platforms to illustrate and highlight what Donald Trump was saying every day on the campaign trail. So this hurt us. This was devastating because it was hard to get our message out a message where Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine. They were talking about jobs. They were talking about economic development but all the media wanted to talk about was whatever was leaked in that day's dump. So it was very very difficult and of course the other purpose in this propaganda information disinformation campaign was to sow discord and create chaos and to keep Americans fighting each other, as opposed to fighting what we all attempt to fight it when we're in elections. It's for our values to be heard.

AMT: You seem to be saying that you can really connect the dots between those leaks the Russians and the Trump campaign.

DONNA BRAZILE: You know before I left the DNC I was anxious to file a lawsuit. I thought no one would care and I believed that the party was greatly harmed by the hack in and the attempts to destroy our databases and to harass our staff. I saw a connection. I could not prove the collusion because of course I wasn't party to the Trump campaign. But there was there was almost a rhythm that I saw each day as a hack and occurred and the volatility of the race. And I wanted to connect all those dots. I hope the DNC will pursue this lawsuit before I left as chair at the end of February. We were ready to go but I thought it was on. It was the responsibility of the next chair not the interim chair to take that bowl of a move.

AMT: You became the subject of intense controversy when WikiLeaks included an e-mail that purported to show you giving a question from a town hall debate to Hillary Clinton at the expense of Bernie Sanders. What happened there?

DONNA BRAZILE: Well two days after I criticized email dumping and said Don't read anything postmarked from Russia, WikiLeaks sought to divide and promote more disinformation. There were active measures to split up the party and you may remember when Debbie Wasserman Schultz was the party chair. She decided that the DNC would only sponsor six debates. And there was a giant fight about that. There was enormous pressure to expand the debates in town hall meetings and I made a conscious effort to get diverse communities involved and get questions that had not been previously addressed into the debate; like the death penalty, like criminal justice reform, like what happened with the flint water crisis. I gave both campaigns a heads up about the questions about the topics. But WikiLeaks only addressed the e-mails to the Clinton campaign. And because my e-mails were corrupted I couldn't find the Bernie Sanders e-mails. That's what happened. And long before I wrote my book, I apologized because I lost- I could not find those e-mails. Of course I resign at CNN and I do believe that we have bigger fish to fry than Donna Brazile trying to dig dig dig dig dig define. I also write in a book that I shared stuff with Sean Spicer that's before he morphed into Melissa McCarthy. I shared stuff all the time with candidates. And look it wasn't because I was receiving information from CNN. CNN never shared anything with me other than the topics it was because I wanted to see these issues addressed and if I had to talk about Republicans which I often did on TV my transcripts are somewhere, I want to know what was going on. I mean part of being in in the field of punditry, a pundit is a partisan with a point of view, is to get that view across to the voter.

AMT: That's why you're there.

DONNA BRAZILE: Can you underline that?

AMT: Well you had a very long connection with CNN as a commentator and a political pundit. I have a clip of CNN's Anderson Cooper talking about you in the leaked e-mail and about your book. Listen to this.

SOUNDCLIP

So is this just about Donna Brazile trying to peddle a book. I mean because as Brianna mentioned, you know, somebody who didn't work at CNN she gained access to one town hall question and she gave that, or at least attempted to, or in an e-mail gave it to somebody in the Clinton campaign which is completely unethical. She lost her job. You know she I mean I frankly view it as a huge betrayal of everybody who worked at CNN and the fact that she did that.

AMT: Donna Brazile what do you think of the way CNN characterizes this?

DONNA BRAZILE: CNN never gave any of us access to anyone. We didn't have it. They had a vault. I never saw Anderson before a debate. I never saw the questions. And for them to even say that I thought it was just a bridge too far. But nevertheless I love CNN. I miss CNN in terms of you know being there with my friends. I stepped down the night that came out because I warned on CNN and said “Give me time to get home I'm in I'm in Atlanta. If you give me time I might be able to find it.” I wasn't afraid of what I found. I knew what I had done. I knew I gave people head up whatever. But when they didn't give me that and they wanted to put out a statement and I said to them and hear the exact words: “You're going to put my life in danger.” And by the time I got home and I saw that suspicious package on my steps, I sent an e-mail that evening and I said “I resign.” It is not worth it. My life is so much more important than the disinformation, propaganda, warfare, the WikiLeaks and the Russia.

AMT: You just mentioned a package. You were very concerned about your own safety during the election. What steps did you take to protect yourself in the end?

DONNA BRAZILE: I took extremely extremely cautious steps personally but also professionally to protect the entire headquarters of the DNC. We added additional security. We had our bill men swept and for any devices. We also made sure that everyone entering the building had the proper identification that no one from the outside could come in. I also took those additional steps at my home and other places. Because the threats that came in I was told by officials “don't brush them off take it seriously,” because of what was going on.

AMT: We don't have a lot of time left but I want to get into the actual run up when you were you were traveling around to various areas. And you saw a lot of problems with the way the Clinton campaign was moving forward. You said at one point that you were getting a whiff of defeat. What did you see on the ground that the Clinton campaign missed?

DONNA BRAZILE: I went from Florida to Colorado to Nevada and not once, multiple times, to Pennsylvania. I went to Northern Virginia. I went everywhere and I kept hearing is “Madam Chair We need more this we need more of this.” Madam Chair “When are you going to start doing the ads. Madam Chair. We need more surrogates. Madam Chair” and I keep hearing from people who should have had those resources already and it was September October, early, late October.

AMT: I really get the impression after reading your book that the Clinton campaign just didn't get it, that they almost handed it to Trump because of the way they chose to campaign. They were so caught up in their sterile rooms as you call them with their computers and their algorithms that they never thought to go out and meet the people.

DONNA BRAZILE: You know I describe it as being just they were arrogant. They were dismissive if they dislike my book write their own book, but don't throw shade on my book when all I'm trying to do is to open up this wound, to clean it all to dress it so that we can move forward in 2018 and beyond.

AMT: And so the scandal around the Russian interference in the 2006 election has only intensified in the years since Donald Trump has won. Special counsel Robert Mueller is digging into any collusion that might have taken place between the Trump campaign and Russia. Knowing what we know now do you think the Trump campaign worked with people associated with Russian intelligence?

DONNA BRAZILE: Here's what I know. The Russians tried to destroy our country and they took active measures to destabilize our democracy and to make Hillary lose. We need to figure out who help them. What role that they play. And the WikiLeaks dump. Who knew about the rubles and the advertisement on Twitter and face Facebook and who gave them the data and the information? How many state elections systems did they try to hack? How many voter registrations did they actually penetrate any of these systems? There are so many questions that have been answered. I am hopeful that these congressional investigators will finish their job and director Mueller will come to his conclusion and that we will all as a country of the United States of America agree that the hack in 2016 should never occur again and we need to prepare for 2018-2020 and beyond.

AMT: So what can Democrats learn from that 2016 presidential campaign?

DONNA BRAZILE: I would hope that this goes beyond the Democratic Party because while the Democratic Party was hacked in 2016 we know from previous attempts the Chinese tried to have both campaigns in 2008. The Democratic Party at least from this from my vantage point is already learning the lessons. We our cyber security has been strengthened. We have a new team of people protecting our digital apparatuses. And I do believe that our staff and our coworkers will have better cyber literacy so they understand how to keep our data safe. But as a country we need a president who will acknowledge that this happened and we need Congress to take active measures to prevent it from happening again in every state in the United States must also train its staff with cyber illiteracy in cyber hygiene as well.

AMT: And as Democrats, you need a candidate got one in mind?

DONNA BRAZILE: No I don't have a candidate but you know what I have. I have hope. I choose hope. I choose hope because I do believe that there is an awakening taking place all over this country. Young people are getting more engaged. They're getting involved. They're running for office. I saw evidence of it in Virginia in 2017. And I am sure that 2018 is going to be a great year for Democrats fall. We will have some little tailwind behind us and not the here that we face in 2016.

AMT: Or they'll have to face Delores.

[Laughter]

DONNA BRAZILE: Delores isn’t going nowhere. She's been with me. She's been a part of who I am because I am passionate about democracy I'm passionate about the Democratic Party. More importantly I am passionate in my call to serve.

AMT: Thank you. Thank you from Canada.

DONNA BRAZILE: Well I love Canada. And look from every now and then we need that cold front to push down that low pressure system that keeps the hurricanes away from New Orleans. Thank you. Bye bye.

AMT: Thank you. Bye bye.

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July 17, 2018 episode transcript

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