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The Current Transcript for July 20, 2020

Host: Robyn Bresnahan

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: theme]

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VOICE: It's just a multitude of various emotions from a happy that we've gotten to this point, excited to worried, apprehensive, scared. I can't describe this feeling.

ROBYN BRESNAHAN: Well, you certainly can't fault Sarah al-Amiri for not being able to pinpoint an emotion. After all, she's only realizing a childhood dream and has just launched a spacecraft to Mars. In a moment, we'll hear about the United Arab Emirates' first interplanetary mission and what their research could mean for our understanding of the red planet. Then.

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VOICE: This is a disease that's only been around for months. Typically, when you're addressing a treatment for a disease or a vaccine, you know what you're treating. But in this case, we're developing a vaccine at the same pace we're understanding the disease itself.

RB: That's Bruce Clark. The Canadian pharmaceutical company he heads up is moving fast in the race for a COVID-19 vaccine. Later in the show, he'll share the secret to their success. And a hint, it's not something we typically think of as healthy. Plus, the civil rights giant who advocated for getting into a good, unnecessary kind of trouble. We'll remember John Lewis, who died on Friday. But first, we'll launch into the program with the Arab world's maiden mission to Mars. Good morning. I'm Robyn Bresnahan, sitting in for Matt Galloway all week. This is The Current.

[Music: theme]

UAE Mars mission a steppingstone to moving away from oil

Guests: Sarah al-Amiri, Sarah Stewart Johnson

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds from UAE space launch]

RB: Well, that is the sound of history being made. The United Arab Emirates launched its first mission to Mars earlier this morning from Japan. The probe, which is now on its way to the Red Planet, is aptly called Hope. This is the first interplanetary mission for the Arab world. And at the forefront of it is Sarah al-Amiri. She is the science lead for the mission, as well as the UAE's Minister of State for Advanced Technology. We reached her in Tanegashima, Japan, before the probe was launched, and she began by telling me why her team chose Mars for the mission.

SARAH AL-AMIRI: One, it's hard and it's very risky. Only half the missions who have attempted to get to Mars had succeeded. That in itself creates the shift that we wanted as a country, and that's transitioning from a country that is under 30 percent of its economy, is based on oil and gas to one that we know that demand for oil and gas is going to decline for energy. And we need to further diversify that by adding new industries and adding new sectors that are based on science technology. What this mission allowed us to do is develop an autonomous system. You can't operate a spacecraft around Mars in real time. You have to pre-program every single thing that could go right and then every single thing that could go wrong, because that spacecraft needs to think for itself and respond to situations. And those are the exact systems that we require for various industries here on Earth.

RB: I wonder if you could help us just picture the spacecraft. How big is it? I heard, I read it was the size of a Mini Cooper car.

SARAH AL-AMIRI: Yeah. It is the size of a Mini Cooper car and it weighs a 1380 kilograms. The interesting part is there's three instruments on it that are fulfilling our science objectives. And those are very sensitive instruments that are measuring various constituents in Mars and they're measuring them from very far out. So at our closest point, we're 20,000 kilometres from the surface of Mars. At our furthest points we're 43,000 kilometres from the surface of Mars. So you can only imagine how precise those instruments need to be to be able to pick up, for example, dust in the lower atmosphere, to be able to study the water vapour cycle, the ice clouds, to be able to understand how much of hydrogen and oxygen is being lost to space due to weather changes on the planet and be able to measure that throughout an entire year. It's had, I think, over 400 people's hearts and souls poured into it in terms of design and development. And I think we're all excited to get it to space, the natural environment that it's been designed and developed for.

RB: And all those things that you're talking about studying in terms of weather patterns on Mar,. I mean, what do you hope to learn from that?

SARAH AL-AMIRI: That gives us a better understanding of the weather in Mars throughout an entire day. We've studied weather on Mars and we do hear a lot of things, a lot of theories with regards to weather on Mars, but we've studied only during two times of the day and we've studied it sporadically across the planet. And that's the gap in knowledge that this mission is filling. We want to understand the day to night cycle. What happens from day to night? What happens at every hour of the day? How are dust storms formed? How do they cover the entire planet? Why do they go on for days?

RB: I think when one thinks about players, the big global players in the space race, it might be fair to say that the UAE doesn't come to mind at first. This is a pretty new territory for the United Arab Emirates. How come it's important for the UAE to be developing its own space program?

SARAH AL-AMIRI: So we started our space program in 2006 and one of the primary reasons for starting it is it was our first endeavour in science and technology. And why was space selected? Because you're able to develop, at least from an engineering point of view, almost all fields of engineering with one project. Through building satellites, you get the electrical engineer and the software engineer, the mechanical engineer, the thermal engineers and so on, working together in conjunction to deliver a program. And that was our primary objective with working on Earth observation satellites. Why did we go to Mars? Our Hope spacecraft is five times more complex than anything we've ever designed before and therefore, that has increased the team's capabilities almost five-fold.

RB: Can I hear about your own personal story? I mean, you grew up in Abu Dhabi. Can you tell us about the moment where you first became fascinated by space?

SARAH AL-AMIRI: So I was fascinated by the vastness of space very early on, but it was not, it wasn't an area that I ever dared to pursue. And the reason for that is I never imagined that we will have a space program. I never imagined that we would send a spacecraft to another planet. It was not something that my brain could comprehend was possible. And just being the person that I am wasn't a path that I went down. And very early on I dreamed of being a software developer and a computer engineer because that's something tangible. It's something that I knew that it was needed. I was lucky to fall into the space program completely by accident, as soon as I graduated early in 2009 and started working on the space projects prior to the launch of our first satellite and continued on there. Even then, so if you asked me, I started working on this project very early on in the late 2013. Even if you asked me in January of 2013, if we're ever going to send a spacecraft to Mars, I would have probably said no.

RB: Just talking about the significance of this mission, you have said that this is about much more than just the science. It's about inspiration. What did you mean by that?

SARAH AL-AMIRI: So I can speak with regards to what I've seen myself and how it's how it's changed dialogue and it's changed possibilities. And I'll compare it with myself at 10 years old when I thought that this was never possible and never thought to even dream or further explore it to my son, who I've had a conversation with him recently with regards to the delay on the launch, on our spacecraft, which was due to launch on the 14th of July. And he was asking questions with regards to why was the delay happening and what weather conditions are ideal for a launch. And when do we expect that to happen? And how are we looking at the forecasts and so on? And it's just been for a moment for me, it's been really interesting that this was possible for him to ask these questions, to be living at a time where this was possible.

RB: I've noticed that you talked about your son and I'm wondering, what about the young girls that there? Seeing you in a powerful and prominent role in the UAE, which has not always had the best of reputations for you know its roles for women, I mean, what does it mean for you to be a woman in the world of science and government in the UAE?

SARAH AL-AMIRI: So for us more and more each year, it's becoming less and less unnatural for that to happen. So within the Hope Mars mission, 34 percent of the team members are women. 50 percent of our leadership roles are filled by women. So we've got gender parity at leadership roles and that shows career progression, at least for anyone that looks onto the program, for any form of inspiration, there's various inspiring women that I work with on a daily basis that I am quite inspired by.

RB: But what was that like for you? What was that journey like? I mean, have you faced difficulties because of your gender?

SARAH AL-AMIRI: No, I'm glad I haven't. It's, I was recalling someone asked me when was the first time that you realized that science could be gender biased and it was the first time I was asked why I was studying engineering because it was a male dominant field was when I was 17. And I was told that line by an Australian friend of the family saying that this is what it's typically, in Australia there's not a lot of girls studying engineering. And she was just thinking that why was I doing this? And for us, it wasn't odd. I grew up in a household where my sister, my older sisters were studying medicine and engineering. My aunts had degrees in the sciences.

RB: When this finally goes ahead, you were saying that you've had a couple of false starts or you've had some delays because of weather problems, but in the seconds before takeoff, what do you reckon you're gonna be thinking about?

SARAH AL-AMIRI: It's just been a lot and an emotional roller coaster the last six years. This has not been easy at any one point. And at each point that you think that you've done everything that you can, especially now leading up to launch, we delivered the spacecraft ahead of schedule. The launch vehicle is completely and technically fine and then we have an entirely new weather front that this island hasn't experienced in quite a bit of time that nobody has control over. For me, it's just reflecting on what form of a learning journey this has been and the team that I've worked on from all across the world. Today I was talking to one of my colleagues and we were talking about all the places that we've been and and the different parts of the spacecraft have come from from around the world. This has been a true journey of discovery for all of us.

RB: Listen, I wish the mission and you all the best. Minister, thanks so much for your time today.

SARAH AL-AMIRI: Thank you.

RB: Sarah al-Amiri is the Minister of State for Advanced Technology for the United Arab Emirates. She is also the science lead on the mission to Mars. We spoke to her from Tanegashima, Japan, before the rocket made a successful launch early Monday morning Japanese time. It is the Arab world's first ever mission to Mars. Well, you might call this July, the month of Mars. In addition to the UAE's mission, there are others due to lift off from the United States and from China. Sarah Stewart Johnson is a planetary scientist at Georgetown University who has worked with NASA on its Mars missions. Her new book, The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World, looks at why so many of us earthlings are captivated by the Red Planet. Good morning, Sarah.

SARAH STEWART JOHNSON: Good morning.

RB: What were you thinking, as you heard from our first guest there, talk about the UAE's first mission to Mars?

SARAH STEWART JOHNSON: It's so incredibly cool. I watched the launch last night and I was cheering along the whole time. I'm really in awe with their efforts.

RB: What did you think when you were hearing her talk about inspiration, about inspiring young scientists, but also just young kids in the UAE to get involved in research in the STEM program, in science asin general?

SARAH STEWART JOHNSON: I think that's absolutely true. I was inspired. I think here's a country that didn't even have a space program six years ago and look what they've been able to accomplish. It's really inspiring. And if it feels this way for adults, I'm sure it's got to be a tremendous thing for young children.

RB: Let's talk about this month of Mars that we're apparently in. You've been involved in many of NASA's missions to Mars. How important is the one from the United States that's set to take off later this month?

SARAH STEWART JOHNSON: So Perseverance, the Perseverance rover is really kicking off this breathtakingly ambitious campaign to bring samples of Mars back to Earth. And it will take three missions in all for this to happen. You know, we'll have to go back with a fetch rover and then an ascent vehicle that will take the samples up into orbit will be collected and brought home. And that's going to happen in the future in partnership with other countries. But it's just it's a paradigm shift in the kind of work we do looking for bio signatures or traces of life instead of relying on remote data. We're going to have samples in our lab so we can really hit with everything we've got.

RB: We heard Sarah al-Amiri talk about the fact that they want to be studying the weather on Mars. How will the United States mission, how will that be different? What are they hoping to find out?

SARAH STEWART JOHNSON: So the United States is going to be exploring this place called Jezero Crater, where there's an exquisitely preserved river delta and so we're hoping to find out lots of fundamental things about the planet and its evolution. But we're also kind of finally transitioning from this idea of following the water and looking for habitability to finally really looking for traces of life.

RB: How could the research that the United States mission is doing, I mean, what might that mean for your particular research?

SARAH STEWART JOHNSON: So I'm an astrobiologist and a planetary scientist and this is how I spend my days, you know, looking into ancient rocks here on Earth and trying to think about the best tools and technologies that we could use to find and actually discover, discover life. And so I'm hopeful that my lab will be one of the labs that gets to look at these samples when they're eventually returned.

RB: China is also launching a mission to Mars this month. What do we know about that one?

SARAH STEWART JOHNSON: Well, China has been keeping its cards pretty close, but, you know, it's we know that the mission is now on the launchpad, where most of the Western media is speculating that the launch will happen on July 23rd. It's a huge technical feat for China. It's a very complex mission. It's an orbiter, a lander and a rover. There'll be 13 instruments in all and they'll all need to work together. And, you know, if they pull it off, it'll be just a real accomplishment. It'll be great.

RB: I'm wondering what scientists from different countries think when another country launches a mission to Mars. Is there a sense of competitiveness or is there a sense of the more the merrier, the more information we can get, the better?

SARAH STEWART JOHNSON: I think definitely amongst the scientists, that's the latter. You know, the more data, the better. And it's been hard, especially with sort of geopolitical considerations. It's very difficult for American scientists to work with Chinese scientists right now. And I really wish it wasn't the case.

RB: What about the timing of all these missions? I mean, how come they are all launching this month?

SARAH STEWART JOHNSON: Well, Mars and Earth only swing together on the same side of the sun once every 26 months. And so we have these launch opportunities about every two years that we can actually get to Mars.

RB: So this is the time. The time is now. When all these missions launch, I mean, what kinds of things, you were mentioning that you watched the UAE's mission early in the morning, Japanese time, kind of night time Canadian and American time. What kinds of things are you thinking about as a new mission takes off?

SARAH STEWART JOHNSON: Oh, I just I'm crossing all of my fingers hoping that it will actually go. You know, as Sarah mentioned, we've got, we've had a lot of, you know, failures on our way to Mars, almost half the missions. And sometimes they blow up on the launch pad. Sometimes they lose communications right before they get to the planet. Sometimes they crash. We had a huge, very embarrassing failure in the late 1990s when we had metric and English units mixed up. So we just have to, I mean there's a lot of bugs that goes into these things. And I'm just really hoping that everything gets off safely.

RB: Why do you think that earthlings continue to be so fascinated by the Red Planet?

SARAH STEWART JOHNSON: Well Mars, really, of all the planets that we've looked at and we've discovered in the night sky, we've never found one more similar to Earth. So Mars was warm up and wet early in its history, at least periodically, right around the time life was getting started here. We know it's a habitable world. It has all the sort of essential ingredients for life as we know it. It has the organic molecules, the building blocks of life, as we know it. And so if you're interested in this big question of whether or not we're alone in the universe, mars is a really great place to look.

RB: Sarah al-Amiri told me that for her the fascination with space started by opening a book, seeing a picture, and she just couldn't believe as a young kid, you know, seeing this, I understand that your fascination with space started with your dad. Tell us a bit about this.

SARAH STEWART JOHNSON: So I grew up in Kentucky and my dad, he was a bit of an amateur astronomer and an amateur geologist. He subscribed to Astronomy magazine and I remember as a child being back in the backyard and he had this big pair of binoculars and he pulled them steady for me and he'd point out things like planets. And I just remember those memories very fondly.

RB: But I understand that there were moments when you got a little bit fed up with it, where you tried to distance yourself from this love of space, but you just kept coming back to it.

SARAH STEWART JOHNSON: I did. Well, especially, I think by the time I was an adolescent, like, I just thought, oh my goodness. My father had this habit, we'd be driving along in the mountains and he'd pulled over and drag us out of the car to look at layers and rocks and things like that. And there was a period there where I thought, ugh this is so nerdy. And oh why is this happening and was really glad my friends weren't around to see it. But, you know, as soon as I got off to university, all of these things kind of came back to me and I found that I was gravitating to the exact same subject.

RB: As you were writing your new book I know that you were collecting objects and articles that you had come across, including one from a scientist named William Pickering. Tell us why his story resonated with you in particular.

SARAH STEWART JOHNSON: I've been thinking I guess a lot about Pickering in recent months. So he was, he was a scientist, and right around the eve of World War One, you know, Europe is having menace gathering all over it and these atrocities are sort of beginning to accumulate, he started writing weather reports from Mars. And he would just night after night sit out, he was in this high plateau in Jamaica, where he was doing his observing. And he would sit out there and he would write these reports and take all these notes about what he saw and imagined to be sort of the greening of the southern area and the high rise cumulus clouds sweeping the sky and these gargantuan floods and he really depicted Mars as this kind of wilderness, a sort of refuge that was free from suffering and from injustice. And I just find this really very poignant about that. He would write these reports and he would cable them back to the United States and you know it was the first time that, you know, the world was seeing these regular weather reports from Mars. But I find something very poignant about that, as this, it's almost a reflection of what he most wanted in his heart.

RB: And very poignant for today as well. Sarah, it was good to talk to you. Thank you.

SARAH STEWART JOHNSON: Oh, thanks so much for having me.

RB: That's Sarah Stewart Johnson. She is a planetary scientist at Georgetown University. Her new book is called, The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World. The CBC News is coming up next. And then we will hear about a Canadian company on the cutting edge of research for a COVID-19 vaccine. And though it is a healthful pursuit, it involves an ingredient that's typically related to a very unhealthy practce. Find out what it is when we come back. I'm Robyn Bresnahan and this is The Current.

[Music]

Why the drive for a COVID-19 vaccine is being helped by a cousin of the tobacco plant

Guests: Bruce Clark, Julian Ma

RB: Hello. I'm Robyn Bresnahan, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: theme]

RB: Still to come, a giant of the U.S. civil rights movement passed away on Friday. We'll be taking a look at the life and the legacy of John Lewis. But first, something that sounds like a flashback to the 1950s. We bring you a story about the health benefits of tobacco.

[Music: theme]

RB: For months, we have been hearing from scientists and policymakers that the health and economic crisis caused by COVID-19 will probably only be solved by vaccine. Researchers around the world are working on a variety of different approaches, including here in Canada. The Quebec based company Medicago has just gone to phase one of human trials for its vaccine. Bruce Clark is Medicago's president and CEO. Good morning.

BRUCE CLARK: Good morning.

RB: I understand that you just started injecting the first volunteers with your company's COVID-19 vaccine last week. What was your pitch to get them to sign up?

BRUCE CLARK: Well, it's done through a third parties who will help us recruits subjects with the help of university centres, but apparently we did not have much difficulty getting volunteers to sign up.

RB: Do you have any idea? I mean, why did they want to sign up? Why did they want to be a part of this?

BRUCE CLARK: Well, I think there's the ability to contribute to a very, very visible and real serious crisis. And I think people just in a sense of being good citizens have tried to see where they can pitch in and do something and they're motivated to participate in the study.

RB: How are things going so far with the trials?

BRUCE CLARK: I haven't heard anything since the initial announcement of the first subjects in, but seems to be everything is OK.

RB: Talk to us a little bit about your vaccine in particular, because you were using plants in the development of it. What are the advantages of using plants?

BRUCE CLARK: Well, a couple of things with plants. One is it's very rapid technology. It's a recombinant technology, meaning we don't work with live viruses. We don't need a particular protection or confinement facility to work with the virus. We just use the genetic sequence of interest. And once we have that genetic sequence of interest, we program our plants to produce the product of interest, which in this case is the vaccine. And for this product, for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, once we have the sequence that we were interested in, we were able to produce the virus like particles in our system within 20 days. So it's very rapid.

RB: I guess one of the things that people might find a little bit surprising is the plant that you are using in this vaccine is part of the tobacco family. Tell us about this.

BRUCE CLARK: It is. It's not your typical tobacco plant, it's a distant cousin, if you will. But it's been known for many years that it's very amenable to this kind of, if we call it manipulation and coopting the plants on machinery to produce proteins of interest program it to produce. So it's been understood for numbers of years now. We've picked it up as an appropriate we'll call it plant factory system, if you will, for our purposes and it works very well for producing vaccines on one hand and also antibodies on the other.

RB: Your company is actually part owned by Philip Morris International, which some people will know is a pretty big tobacco company. What role is it playing in the development of the vaccine?

BRUCE CLARK: So nothing directly other than they're a financial backer. They're a minor minority shareholder in the company. The majority shareholding is with Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma from Japan. But certainly they've been strong supporters of our initiatives and providing funding according to the needs for the various projects we have ongoing.

RB: You'll likely know that a number of leading science journals, including the British Medical Journal, have a policy against publishing research funded by tobacco companies. We reached out to Ruth Malone, who's the editor of BMJ Tobacco Control, about the role of tobacco companies in developing COVID vaccines. I just want you to take a listen to a bit of what she had to say.

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VOICE: I think it would be a brilliant thing, really, if Big Tobacco managed to develop something good to address COVID-19 instead of continuing to hawk the single most deadly consumer product in history, the cigarette. But I think given the industry's very long and well-documented history of manipulation of science and given their efforts to remake themselves as corporate responsible citizens in order to influence and interfere with tobacco control policy, I think anything they do should always be viewed with some caution.

RB: Bruce, I'll put to you. I mean what would you say to those people who might be wary of tobacco companies involvement in this type of research?

BRUCE CLARK: A couple of things, really. First is that the focus really does have to be on the data. So I agree with that. Any study from any company in any context needs to have the validation of relevant scientific community or regulatory community. And secondly, our audience really is the regulators. In the case of drug development or vaccine development, in this case, we have very clear criteria that a well-established, well communicated by the regulators on a global basis that we have to conform to. So we don't get to just independently make stuff up and pursue our own interests without direction, without guidance. We're overseen by the global health regulators, including Health Canada, that require us to meet certain standards of evidence on one hand, and also in this case, safety and efficacy for a new drug product.

RB: But can you understand why some people might be a little bit wary?

BRUCE CLARK: I can understand, you know, that history is what it is, but I think the data in our case are the data and they should stand on their own merit. And as we're demonstrating now, starting with phase 1 for the vaccine, we'll be moving to phase 2, phase 3 as prescribed by the regulators and providing the data and the analysis that gives them comfort that we're not skirting any issues of safety or efficacy.

RB: When will you know if these trials, I mean, if they prove to be safe and effective?

BRUCE CLARK: Well, we get different information at every stage, as I'm sure you're well aware. Phase 1 is primarily focused on safety, which is the first time in man. So you know the primary message here is do no harm. So we really want to watch for any safety signals or concerns that might arise and we get some indication of of how the product might be working. But it's not till we get to larger studies in phase 2 and 3, where we start looking at what doses we will choose and really getting a clear indication of the mechanism of action and efficacy. So for us, phase 1 will complete sometime near the end of August. We'll start phase 2 sometime in likely in September and our phase 3 program at the end of the year, December time frame. So early spring, we should have a good idea that we're on the way for a efficacious and safe vaccine.

RB: On a personal level, Bruce, I mean, what does this mean to you to be involved right now, whether in whole or in part with the development of a vaccine?

BRUCE CLARK: It's exciting. I won't deny that. It's an honour to be a part of a company that's taking this on and an industry that is putting energy towards it in an unprecedented fashion. I mean I think there's over 150 different companies developing vaccines, but I think it's really out of the intent of providing a solution to one of the world's biggest health crises that we have seen. So, you know, from a Canadian context too, I think all Canadians can be proud that this is in the tradition, the longstanding tradition of medical and scientific breakthroughs that some from in Canada, all the way from pablum to insulin to a T-cell identification. And, you know, this is part of a long history of major contributions to science and medicine that's coming out of Canada.

RB: Bruce, good to talk to you this morning. Thanks very much for your time.

BRUCE CLARK: My pleasure. Thank you.

RB: That's Bruce Clark. He's the CEO of Medicago. The Quebec based company's vaccine for COVID-19 is now in phase one human trials. Well, Medicago is not the only company exploring the pharmaceutical benefits of tobacco. A subsidiary of British American Tobacco is also using tobacco plants to develop a COVID-19 vaccine and the plant is showing promise in research for a number of other diseases as well. Julian Ma is a professor of molecular immunology and the director of the Institute for Infection and Immunity at St. George's University of London. He's one of the leading researchers in this area. Good morning, Julian.

JULIAN MA: Good morning. Thanks for having me on.

RB: I understand that you are also using tobacco plants in your own vaccine research. What kinds of diseases are they showing promise for?

JULIAN MA: So we have a number of diseases that we're working on, and I have to say the tobacco manufacturing platform works well for most of the things we're trying. I think obviously the hook for you guys and your public, of course, is the use of tobacco plants. But what people need to realise is that actually we're using the plant of them, a manufacturing factory, if you like, in the same way that we already use many different kinds of things as manufacturing platforms. So, you know for other drugs, we use bacteria, we use yeast. Actually, one of the new COVID vaccines, we're using a virus to produce the vaccine. So, you know, it's just another platform that we're using to make the drug that we want.

RB: What were you thinking as you were listening to Bruce Clark there and the promise of the Medicago COVID-19 vaccine?

JULIAN MA: Well, I'm terribly excited about this development, of course, and not just because it's in the field that I'm working in, but I think it's really important that we have a number of options with regards to COVID-19 vaccines. So, you know, around the world, there are over 150 candidates which are be investigated and several of those are going into clinical trial. And I'm pretty certain that we're going to need, not just one vaccine, we're going to need a lot of companies being successful in the space. We're going to need to provide sufficient capacity for the whole world and we're also going to need to guard against, you know, some manufacturing going down for whatever reason. So if we have, the more options we have, I think the better.

RB: You probably heard the reservations in the clip that we played from the editor of BMJ Tobacco Control. Has the involvement of tobacco companies in pharmaceutical research been any kind of barrier to your own research?

JULIAN MA: No, it hasn't, actually. And I think there is an acceptance that tobacco is a promising platform to use, but you also have to remember that we get similar arguments and some of them are also very correct about the involvement of Big Pharma in developing pharmaceuticals and vaccines, too, and their influence. So, you know, there's as Dr. Clark said, there is a big historic thing around tobacco, but just the involvement of large companies has always been problematic.

RB: I wonder if these tobacco vaccines live up to their promise. What do you think this could mean for the tobacco industry?

JULIAN MA: I'm not sure actually how much it does mean for the tobacco industry. So, as Dr. Clark mentioned, the tobacco he's using is not smoking tobacco. It's actually a very small weed, which was originally found in the Australian desert actually. And it doesn't grow to anything like the tobacco you might be used to seeing in fields. You know only grows to about four or five inches. And so for that reason, all of Medicago's work and all of the work in the same field is done in containment greenhouses, so in many factories. So, you know, it's not going to replace all the fields of smoking tobacco that have been cultivated over the years. It's not gonna, you know, provide replacement jobs for all of those tobacco farmers around the world either.

RB: I was just going to ask you, might it be a way for tobacco farmers to transition to making a less harmful product?

JULIAN MA: Well, I think there's going to be some opportunities for some because, of course, you know, agricultural knowledge is always helpful, but I don't think it's going to replace everything that we've previously invested into the tobacco industry.

RB: Julian, it was good to talk to you this morning. Thank you very much.

JULIAN MA: Thank you. My pleasure.

RB: That's Julian Ma. He's a professor of molecular immunology. He's also the director of the Institute for Infection and Immunity at St George's University of London.

[Music]

John Lewis would welcome Black Lives Matter's fight for a better world, says his friend Carol Anderson

Guests: Carol Anderson

RB: I'm Robyn Bresnahan and you are listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: We are tired. We are tired of being beaten by policemen. We are tired of seeing our people locked up in jail over and over again. And then you holler, be patient. How can we be patient? We want our freedom and we want it now.

RB: Well, that was part of John Lewis's speech from the March on Washington, 57 years ago. The U.S. congressman and towering figure of the civil rights movement passed away on Friday from pancreatic cancer. He was 80-years-old. Carol Anderson knew him, called him a friend. She is the Charles Howard Candler professor of African-American studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Carol, hello to you. And first of all, my sincere condolences for the loss of your friend.

CAROL ANDERSON: Thank you. Thank you. He was, he was more of my congressman. Yes. Thank you. We've lost a giant.

RB: Tell us what you were thinking as you listened to that clip there. I mean, John Lewis, he was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington. He was only 23-years-old at the time. What was going through your mind, as you heard that?

CAROL ANDERSON: How today we're talking about we are tired of being beaten by policemen and we are tired. And I heard the resonances of the movement of today in what John Lewis was talking about 57 years ago.

RB: When did you first meet him?

CAROL ANDERSON: I met him actually at Emory when he was our commencement speaker, and I was there to be his faculty host. That's how I met John Lewis. Just a great man. And then there was another moment when we were on the same plane and had the same connection, and so we had lunch together and with a woman and her daughter, her young daughter. And you saw again John Lewis's compassion and his brilliance, as he listened to this child speak of her dreams. Just and his humility. So it is just and I think of as well how we are in this battle for voting rights right now and how he was, again, in the middle of that battle decades ago. So the resonances are so vibrant.

RB: He was nicknamed Preacher because when he was young, he was responsible for taking care of the family chickens. He was one of 10 children in his family, and apparently he would be preaching to the poultry, reading them the Bible. What do you know, Carol, about the roots of his activism as he grew up? Where did they start?

CAROL ANDERSON: I believe that they started where a lot of black folks in the movement started: in the church. And you see how the language of non-violence, the language of community, the language of 'we are all in this together,' that never left him. That was always there. So we have just this year when he with pancreatic cancer was there on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, again in Selma, in that commemoration because of that ongoing continuing fight for a beloved community.

RB: Can we talk about Selma for a moment? Because, of course, John Lewis, very well known for being front and centre at the march from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights, that became known as a Bloody Sunday, as many people will know. Just set the scene for what happened that day.

CAROL ANDERSON: And so I'm going to go back just a hair because we lost another giant last week too on the same day, Reverend C.T. Vivian. And the Reverend C.T. Vivian was also at Selma and he was the one confronting Sheriff Jim Clark on the steps of the courthouse in Selma and saying, you know, we are not going to be following Nazis. And Sheriff Jim Clark hit Reverend Vivian, knocked him down the steps. He's bleeding. He stands up and he's, Reverend Vivian gets right in his face and says, we are willing to be beaten for democracy. That is the mindset and the frame that leads us to Bloody Sunday. Because in Selma, less than one percent of African-Americans had been able to register to vote. And that fight for the vote then was resonating through when Jimmie Lee Jackson had protected his mother from a beating by the police and was killed by the police during an earlier March. And so the protesters were going to symbolically carry Jimmie Lee Jackson's body from Selma to Montgomery. Now, SCLC was part of this, as was SNCC, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, but SNCC didn't want any part of it. John Lewis is the chair of SNCC and he's like, the organization may not march, but I will.

RB: Well, and he once said, you never become bitter. You never become hostile. You never demean your opposition. Did he manage to stick by that creed?

CAROL ANDERSON: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean what you see, he embodied the best of us. He embodied the vision, the commitment, the integrity. And so on that scene in Bloody Sunday, when he and Hosea Williams are leading non-violent protesters across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and they are facing Sheriff Jim Clark on horseback with bullwhips, and the Alabama police, state police and you see the tear gas, you see the horses trampling over people, the bullwhips cracking. The images. Mrs. Amelia Boynton from Selma is knocked out cold. And in the midst of all of that, you see, again, this sense of 'We are simply fighting for our rights as citizens.'

RB: I wonder how John Lewis's view of the modern-day protests, the ones that are going on right now, about Black Lives Matter, how did he see those protests?

CAROL ANDERSON: It was like coming home again, because what they are fighting for resonates. Fighting for equality, fighting for justice, fighting for the kind of fairness and fighting across racial lines. Saying that, again, we are all in this for a better America, for a better society.

RB: Did he feel disappointed, Carol, that that fight is still ongoing?

CAROL ANDERSON: Yes, and frankly, disappointed that, you know, when you think about what Bloody Sunday led to was the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and that was a game changer in American society. Because it put the weight of the federal government behind the voting rights of African-Americans, to stop these states from doing all kinds of horrible, horrible things to block black people from voting. When the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013 because they said racism was no longer a factor in American society, the states once again reared up. And that's how we ended up in this horrible moment now, with a regime put in power based on voter suppression, with the Voting Rights Act, a renewed Voting Rights Act just sitting on a Senate desk, not being renewed as states continue to try to figure out how to stop African-Americans and Latinos and Native Americans from voting. And so John Lewis welcomed that fight. He welcomed the energy of Black Lives Matter. He'd welcome the kind of vision of all of us fighting for a just world, fighting for a better world, a more humane world.

RB: Carol, I really appreciate your time today and thank you for helping us remember your friend and your congressman. Thank you.

CAROL ANDERSON: Thank you. Thank you.

RB: That was Carol Anderson. She is the Charles Howard Candler professor of African-American studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She's the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. And she knew John Lewis, not only as her congressman, but as a friend as well. Your regional update is coming up next. When we return, we will continue our remembrance of civil rights icon John Lewis with the interview that Anna Maria Tremonti did with him in 2017. So stay tuned for that encore presentation. I'm Robyn Bresnahan, The Current will be back in 90 seconds.

[Music]

Revisiting a conversation with John Lewis

Guests: John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell

RB: I'm Robyn Bresnahan and you are listening to The Current. Well, as you've just been hearing, Democratic Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis passed away on Friday from pancreatic cancer. He was 80-years-old. Three years ago. John Lewis wrote a graphic novel trilogy called March with co-authors Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell about the civil rights movement and his role in it. Former host of The Current, Anna Maria Tremonti, spoke with them then. Here's an encore presentation of that conversation.

SOUNDCLIP

AMT: August 28th of 1963, nearly 250,000 Americans had converged on Capitol Hill for what was called the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom”. It was the day Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous speech and the phrase I have a dream became instantly iconic, but the man we just heard was another speaker that day a 23 year old from Alabama named John Lewis.

JOHN LEWIS: If we do not get meaningful legislation in congress. The time will come where we will not confine our march into Washington. We will march to the south through the streets of Jackson, through the streets of Cambridge, through the streets of Birmingham.

[Sound: Applause]

JOHN LEWIS: We will march with the spirit of love and the spirit of dignity. By the forces of our determination and our numbers, we shall splinter the segregated south into a thousand pieces and put them together in the image of God and democracy. We must say wake up America, wake up, for we cannot stop and we will not and cannot be patient.

AMT: Two years after giving that speech John Lewis would be marching once more. This time on the bridge that crossed from Selma into Montgomery, Alabama. A day known as “Bloody Sunday” when state troopers beat protesters as they marched peacefully for the right to vote. John Lewis has continued his activism. He's a long-time Democratic congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is also the co-author of a graphic memoir series that recounts his life as an activist. The trilogy is simply called March and the final installment has become the first graphic novel to win a U.S. National Book Award. Civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis joins us from Washington. And with him co-author Andrew Aydin, who is also the digital director and policy adviser to Congressman Lewis and Nate Powell, the trilogies artist who is with us from Bloomington, Indiana. Hello to you all. Congratulations on the award.

JOHN LEWIS: Thank you very much. Good morning.

AMT: I want to talk to all of you, of course, but I'm going to start with you John Lewis. Just listening to you, you don't sound like a 23-year-old?

JOHN LEWIS: Well, I was 23. I had all of my hair and a few pounds lighter back in 1963. But I grew up I grew up very fast. I grew up in rural Alabama, very poor and as a young child I tasted the bitter fruits of segregation and racial discrimination. I didn't like it at an early age - when I was 15 - I heard Rosa Parks. I heard Martin Luther King Jr. And in 1957 I met Rosa Parks, the next year I met Martin Luther King Jr. And these two individuals inspired me to find a way to get in the way. When I was growing up I would ask my mother, my father, my grandparents and my great grandparents about segregation and racial discrimination. And they would say, “that's the way it is. Don't get in the way. Don't get in trouble.” But Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and others inspired me to get in trouble and I’ve been getting in trouble ever since. What I call “good trouble” – “necessary trouble”.

AMT: When you were a boy, your uncle Otis took you on a trip driving north from your home in Pike County, Alabama. It was 1951 I think. What did you learn on that trip up north?

JOHN LEWIS: We traveled from rural Alabama to Buffalo, New York. When we arrived in the city of Buffalo, I didn't see the signs that said “white waiting” or “coloured waiting”. White men, coloured men, white women, coloured women. I saw black people and white people living side by side sitting down and eating together, using the same water fountain, sitting together on a bus that we could not do in American South.

AMT: I was really struck in your story that on that trip your uncle Otis made sure he packed enough food to get you out of the South because he knew there would be no restaurants where black people could eat?

JOHN LEWIS: Well, we could not stop along the way in Alabama or in Tennessee or in the state of Kentucky. We couldn't stop until we arrive in the state of Ohio before we made it to Buffalo.

AMT: Well John Lewis, let's shoot ahead to 1965; you were at the bridge at Selma. What had you expected when you started to cross that bridge in that march?

JOHN LEWIS: When we were walking across the bridge - even before we arrive at the bridge. We thought it was a possibility that we would be arrested and taken to jail. We wanted to walk all the way from Selma to Montgomery to dramatize to the nation and to the world that people of colour wanted to register to vote. I was prepared to be arrested and go to jail on that day I was wearing a backpack packed before it became fashionable to wear backpacks. In that backpack I had two books. I wanted to have something to read while I was in jail. I had an apple and an orange. I wanted to have something to eat. I had toothpaste and a tooth brush, since I was going to be in jail with my friends and fellow protesters. I wanted to be able to brush my teeth. We get to the highest point on the bridge and down below we saw a sea of blue, Alabama state troopers. We came within hearing distance of the state troopers. A man spoke up, a major of the Alabama state troopers and said this is an unlawful march. It will not be allowed to continue. I’ll give you three minutes to disperse and return to your homes or to your church. And the young man walking beside me from Dr. King's organization by the name of Jose William said “Major, give us a moment to kneel and pray. And the major said troopers advance, there will be no word. He said there will be no word they came toward us beating us with nightsticks and trampling us with horses, releasing that tear gas. I was the first person to be, hit was hit in the head by a state trooper with the nightstick. I had a concussion at the bridge. I thought I was going to die, I thought I saw death. I thought it was the last nonviolent protest for me.

AMT: How badly injured were you?

JOHN LEWIS: Well, I had a concussion at the bridge. I was taken to the local hospital, but before going to the hospital. I went back to the church where we had left for him and I said something like, “I don't understand it how President Johnson can send troops to Vietnam and cannot send troops to Selma Alabama to protect people who only desires to register and vote?” And the next thing I knew I was being taken to the local hospital.

AMT: Andrew Aydin, how did the idea come about then to create a graphic biography comic to tell his story?

ANDREW AYDIN: Yeah, let's call it a comic book. Let’s come out, we can be proud for it now. Now it's won the National Book Award. You know it all started in 2008. It was the summer of hope and change, Barack Obama was sweeping through the Democratic primaries. And I was serving as Congressman Lewis’s press secretary on his re-election campaign that summer. And it was coming down to the end of the campaign and folks were starting to talk about what they were going to do afterwards. You know sort of the light at the end of the tunnel. Some folks said they're going to go to the beach. Some folks said they were going to go see their parents. I said I was going to a comic book convention. And when I said that everybody laughed at me except for one person, I heard a deep voice say don't laugh. There was a comic book during the movement and it was very influential. And it was John Lewis standing up for me as he stood up for so many of us. And once I heard about that comic book Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story I went home that night, I looked it up and I just became captivated by the idea of a comic book playing a role in the movement. And after I read it, it was beautiful it was 16 pages cover to cover. It was his house 50’s style. ItIntroduced the reader to Rosa Parks to Martin Luther King to Gandhi to the philosophy of nonviolence. I just couldn't shake the idea there should be a John Lewis comic book. And so the next day or a couple of days later when we started talking about how do we teach the movement to young people how do we teach nonviolence to young people how do we help them understand what was done during the civil rights movement? I was there with the suggestion each and every time. John Lewis, you should write a comic book. And at first he was very polite and he said oh well maybe, but I couldn't accept that and I couldn't give up on the idea. And so I kept asking and I kept asking. Finally one day the congressman turned to me and he said OK, I'll do it, but only if you write it with me. And that moment changed my life.

AMT: John Lewis we're comics important to you?

JOHN LEWIS: Well, I grew up in a family that couldn't afford a subscription to the local newspaper, especially the Sunday paper. But my grandfather would get the Sunday newspaper, but the daily also and when he would finish reading the newspaper he would pass it on to us. So I sold the comic strip from time to time I read. But one of my younger brother love comics and he would sometimes just be laughing or talking to himself. But the Martin Luther King story - that comic book - was the first comic book that I read from the cover to the back page because it taught me a way out - maybe in a way in.

AMT: You and Martin Luther King Jr. seem inextricably linked?

JOHN LEWIS: Well, he became my leader. He became in a real sense a hero, but he was also like a big brother. He was a wonderful friend, I admired him. I loved him. If he hadn't been for him I don't know what would have happened to me and so many others.

AMT: Nate Powell, you were brought in to create the images for this book. Was it at all daunting as a white American to be working on to be the illustrator for this?

NATE POWELL: Any anxiety or pressure was more specific to the real life figures that I had a responsibility to depict accurately, unflinchingly. So I'd say that there is a constant mindfulness of whether it is my privilege, my background or just my identity. But I'd say that most of the most of the pressure and anxiety came from specific representations of highly recognizable and influential people.

AMT: Together you've captured some fascinating detail in this series. John Lewis, you have to tell me about your chickens when you're growing up?

JOHN LEWIS: Well growing up on a farm during the 40’s and 50’s. I fell in love with raising chickens. It became my responsibility. It was like my calling and I became very good at it as a young child, but as a little child I wanted to be a minister. When I was very young, my uncle Otis had Santa Claus bring me the bible and I learned to read the Bible. So from time to time with the help of my brothers and sisters and cousins, we would gather all of our chickens together in the chicken yard and I would start speaking of preaching. And when I look back on it some of these chickens would bow their heads, shake their heads. They never quite stated amen, but I think some of those chickens that I preached to in the 40’s and 50’s tended to listen to me much better than some of my colleagues listen to me today.

[Sound: Laughing]

JOHN LEWIS: Some of the chickens was just a little over productive.

AMT: Andrew Aydin, this this book is based in fact. In all the research you did for the books what surprised you?

ANDREW AYDIN: The single most surprising fact is how none of the facts that we used were settled. You can read different accounts from amazing authors of the same period of time and get different stories from each one of them. And the deeper we dove, the more we found that people were interpreting or referencing different facts about the same period of time. And so when we had a question - things didn't match up - we actually had to go down to the primary documents. So we were able to go in and look at meeting minutes and after action reports and Watts line reports which was sort of this 1-800 number in Mississippi and other parts of the south where they could report violent incidents. And it was a tremendous help to us because you're showing a single moment you're not describing a feeling or portraying an emotion, but you're showing a single moment that actually happened. And so the amount of information you need to make that moment as accurate as humanly possible to give Nate the tools that he needs to draw the most accurate picture and to suss out the full breadth of those moments. Took a tremendous amount of work and was really surprising me how the history wasn't settled.

AMT: That’s so interesting and that just speaks to how politically charged it was and is?

ANDREW AYDIN: Oh, absolutely I mean I think facts themselves have always been up for debate. And I think it resonates more strongly today because we're seeing people use terms like “Law” and "State Rights” much in the same way that they did in the 1960’s and twisting facts to serve those needs. Much in the same way they did in the 1960’s.

AMT: So in your research Andrew how many how many documents? How many boxes of documents did you accumulate?

ANDREW AYDIN: I've probably got 14 or 15 just in my basement right now. But then it was also digital I mean you know we were combing through the FBI’s declassified records. They'd put a bunch out because of Freedom of Information Act requests. And so we will be going through these files that the FBI or the local authorities like the Sovereignty Commission or these different groups that we're based in Mississippi and Alabama to surveil the activists we were able to go through their documents as well which have been thankfully digitized. In fact, right up to the last just about the last scene of the book there was new facts being uncovered. Our editor In fact, found that Rosa Parks who was seen as the mother of the movement had spoken at the program on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol at the end of the Selma to Montgomery march. And in none of the other books we found that out except that we found a partial transcript of it from one of the Sovereignty Commission files.

AMT: John Lewis, why has it been important for you to tell your story now in a way that reaches young people?

JOHN LEWIS: I heard Dr. King. I met Martin Luther King JR. and I met Rosa Parks. These individuals inspired me. And not because of these two young men have spent so much time putting together March book one, book two and now book three generations of young people will grow up and it will help change America and in doing so change the world. People all over America all over the world today are reading March. When we finished book three it was so powerful so dramatic. I know the story so well because I lived it. But it moved me. I had to put it down, I kissed the book and cried. It is inspiring to me to see little children seven, eight, nine, ten years old, in high school and college students reading the books. Teachers teach in these books.

AMT: John Lewis, in the last few years, of course, we've seen the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. What has changed for black Americans in the decades since you were first marching?

JOHN LEWIS: Well we made a lot of progress. We made unbelievable progress. The signs that I saw when I was growing up, they are gone and the only places young people will see the signs today will be in a book, in a museum or on a video. But the scars and stains of racism still are deeply embedded in American society. So we have young people emerging some call themselves millennial, a new generation, but they're demanding action and they're demanding that politicians and thought leaders speak to our own circumstances. Their own conditions and they're going to help create a different movement. So our hope and our prayers that people will be guided by that philosophy and a discipline of nonviolence and be inspired by March book one, book two and book three to lead us to a better place and to create for Dr. King called “The Beloved Community” where we can respect the dignity and the worth of every human being.

AMT: You have not stopped protesting. Last year you let us sit in on the House floor. What were you protesting?

JOHN LEWIS: Well we were protesting the fact that the majority party refused to bring up a bill to deal with gun violence. We have too much violence in America, too many guns and we need to teach our people the way of peace the way of love and stop the proliferation of guns in our society.

AMT: And what did you accomplish in that sit in?

JOHN LEWIS: Well we help educate and sensitize many people. And that effort is not over. I will not be surprised that in the days and weeks and months to come that there will be other forms of action.

AMT: What do you make of the protests against Mr. Trump's choice of attorney general? Senator Jeff Sessions?

JOHN LEWIS: Well, it was gratifying to see people, young, middle-aged, older people and leaders at the NAACP local leaders in Alabama saying to Congress and to President-elect Trump that we're not going to stand by and not say anything to see this man become the attorney general of the United States of America. With his background I think there would be further protests. We need someone who's going to stand for justice stand for immigrants’ rights. Someone going to be fair.

AMT: We're talking about that. And at the same time we're talking about your trilogy and throughout the trilogy - the March trilogy - you take us back to President Obama's inauguration day January 20th of 2009. How do you look on that day now?

JOHN LEWIS: On that day here in Washington. First of all, it was a cold day was very very cold, but I think in our hearts we were warm. It was unreal. It was unbelievable to be there probably more than a million people and to see this young man taking the oath of office to become the President of the United States. I remember seeing him at that inauguration ceremony as he delivered his address. I asked him to sign something and he signed, “Because of you, John”. And when I saw him four years later a similar luncheon without me saying anything he said. “It is still because of you John”. He provided our country and people around the world a greater sense of hope. And when we leave in a few days I think we're going to miss him.

AMT: What are you thinking as you approach the next inauguration? Are you thinking about the movement that you were so instrumental in pushing forward?

JOHN LEWIS: Well, I'm probably going to try to hold back and not cry. When he was inaugurated I cried. The night that he was elected, I cried. And someone asked me why you crying so much? What are you going to do when he's inaugurated if I said if i have any ideas left, I’m going to cry some more. I cried because people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks and President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, both my mother and father and grandparents and great grandparents and hundreds and thousands and millions of people who struggled. Blacks and whites Latino Asian-American, Native American never lived to see this day.

AMT: So do you think the advances that have been made since those days when you first took to the streets are entrenched enough to withstand anyone pushing back against them now?

JOHN LEWIS: Well, I think there are forces that want to take us back, but we will not go back. We will resist. We will protest. We will organize. We will mobilize. We will not go back. You cannot turn people back when they made up their mind. Dr. King was there from time to time when we would be marching. There's nothing more powerful than the marching feet of a determined people, so all across America In a few days, people will be marching. Women march on a day after the inauguration. People will be marching in more than 100 cities in America. Standing up, speaking up, speaking out and this won't just be women and men or adults, but it will be young people. It will be students. It will be children because they’ve been reading March. They know what to do. They know how to do it. They know how to organize nonviolent protests.

AMT: John Lewis, you are the last of the six original leaders of that time who is still alive. Did you think that all these years later that there would still have to be a movement to push for rights?

JOHN LEWIS: Well, I felt and still feel today maybe we would have been much farther down that road toward the creation of Dr. King again called “The Beloved Community”. He used to speak of redeeming the soul of America. We still have a distance to go. Recent election tend to make me sad about what is happening in America but, it also gives me that stick-to-it-ness and the courage to press on and not to be patient as I said at the march on Washington, August 28, 1963. We cannot wait. We cannot be patient.

AMT: How will you work with the Trump administration? Will you be able to find middle ground?

JOHN LEWIS: Well, I think it's going to be very hard and very difficult. But I will not give up I will not give in. I would press on and have organized my colleagues to press on and travel around America. I just said we can do better, we must do better. We must not discriminate against people because of their history and their background. Their race, colour, place of origin, religion, sexual orientation or whatever Asa Philip Randolph, who is one of the leaders of the Big Six used to say from time to time when we were planning a march on Washington, “Maybe our foremothers and our forefathers all came to this great land in different ships. But we all in the same boat now.” And Dr. King put it another way. He said, “We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters. If not we will perish as fools.” So we cannot have someone in power to put people down because of their colour, their race, gender or because of their religion and we will stand up. We will speak out. We will resist. We will agitate.

AMT: I want to go back to that very first clip we heard of you as a young man. You were so eloquent even in your early days, but you said that we must say, “Wake up America”. Do you think America has woken up?

JOHN LEWIS: I think America is in that process of waking up. I think the election this past November shocked hundreds and thousands and millions of American and we will never be the same.

AMT: Gentlemen, we have to leave it there. Thank you all of you for your thoughts today.

JOHN LEWIS, ANDREW AYDIN, NATE POWEL: Thank you very much.

RB: That was the former host of The Current, Anna Maria Tremonti, in 2017, in conversation with civil rights leader and U.S. Congressman John Lewis and his co-authors Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, about their graphic novel trilogy, March. John Lewis died on Friday at the age of 80. Well, that is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Tom Power is joined by The Chicks, the band formerly known as the Dixie Chicks. You can hear what's behind the new name, the new music, coming up right after the CBC News. I'm Robyn Bresnahan. Thanks so much for listening to The Current.

[Music: theme]

July 20, 2020 episode transcript

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