Washington Week with The Atlantic

Good evening and welcome to the Washington Week Extra. I'm Yamiche Alcinor. On February 26th the nation marked 10 years since the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin. Trayvon, a 17-year-old black teenager was killed in Florida by George Zimmerman, a volunteer neighborhood watchman. Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges in the shooting. Recently, MSNBC's Trymaine Lee interviewed Trayvon's father, Tracy Martin, about his life's mission since his son's death. -

Tracy

Vow to keep your son's name uplifted and to keep fighting for him. And so we all know that our culture isn't like great about hearing about our young black and brown boys gone too soon. But that motivates me, man. That don't stop me from saying my son's name or sharing his love and light everywhere I go. Moving to hear of Trayvon's father speaking of what his son's death has meant for him, meanwhile, last year, negotiations for his sweeping bipartisan police bill ended after Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on fundamental issues. One key point of the divide, police funding. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who was the Republican leader of the negotiations, suggested Democrats wanted to defund the police. But Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, pushed back, saying the bill would've added millions of dollars to police departments. This week, six months after the bill stalled and during his first day of the union address, President Biden said he does not support defunding the police. We should all agree. The answer is not to defund the police, it's to fund the police. (crowd applauding) Fund them with resources and training, (crowd applauding) resources and training, they need to protect their communities. Joining me tonight to discuss this and more, Trymaine Lee. He is a correspondent for MSNBC and the host of the "Into America" podcast. Leigh Ann Caldwell, Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News and Jeff Zeleny, chief national affairs correspondent for CNN. Thank you all for being here. Trymaine I of course, wanna start with you. You were the lead reporter in the nation after Trayvon's death you were working at the time for the Huff post. I remember reading your stories. Now that you look back a whole decade been gone by what do you think made his death so different from the rest of so many other deaths that we've seen young black men and black women go through? Yeah, I mean, I tell you what, it's hard to imagine that it's been 10 years and the Trayvon Martin right now would be 27 years old. Certainly from the very beginning, what resonated with me, I'm hearing what he had on him at the time, you know, a can of Arizona iced tea and some Skittles. But the fact that he was just so young and fresh faced his hoodie, his jeans just like so many us as young black men were black teenagers at one point. And I think the nature of the support that not just roses around Trayvon, that stood out differently in a way that we hadn't seen the generation. It was also on the other side, the support for George Zimmerman and how quick so many people were to label Trayvon Martin a thug, right? But of course the loss to his parent to think that your child leaves one day and just never returns home, I think that that touched so many of us whether you're working in media or outside that he was just a 17 year old boy cut down way too soon. It just reverberated in a way that we hadn't seen in a generation really, or two. It was a heartbreaking story, a story that really, I think stops so many people dead in their tracks when they thought about sort of a teenager just trying to walk home 'cause he was walking home to where his father and him were staying in that gated community. You talked to Tracy Martin, someone that we both have interviewed over the years. What sticks out in your mind about this conversation 10 years later? You know, there were so many moments during our conversation that touched me deeply. But I think there was one that I think stood out more than most as a father of a child, a nine year old girl. Tracy Martin said that he came across a backpack of Trayvon's in his garage and he hadn't opened it for, you know, the entire decade. And he said he opened that backpack and there was some clothes in it and he could still smell his boy. He could still smell Trayvon emanating from his clothing and if you're a parent or not, that kind of natural, innate connection that you have to your child and for your child to be taken in such a violent way and to go through the acquittal of his killer and then go through a federal investigation that found the killer having committed no legal wrongdoing, and you're carrying all that weight and the weight of a community, right? The weight of your family and to open that backpack and to smell your child. I mean, it just touched me in a way that, you know, few stories really touched me. It was just so touching. Oh, to think about that. That is just... That's heavy. I wanna ask you about former President Obama. He marked this decade and then going to talk to you Trymaine one more time before I ask others some questions. President Obama said this, "Luck might be the only thing that separated us." Talking about between who he was saying that he saw himself into in Trayvon and himself. What do you make of that? The idea of luck being the difference in the first black president's mind between him and a teenager being shot? Unfortunately we know in America, you know the violence that seeps from white supremacy and that white supremacy that is baked into every institution and structure in this country and how our bodies, our black bodies, our black male bodies are so often not only police differently, but they're ground up by the system every step of the way. And that, it's just a matter of your... The luck of your zip code, the luck of the parents you were born to determines a lot a split decision. You know that George Zimmerman Trayvon's killer, this volunteer neighborhood watch captain just happened to look at this young man, see a hoodie and think that he was criminal, that he shouldn't have been there, that he was some sort of thug that needed a dressing. So the luck of going about your way, making it home or not can be made in that split decision of someone who sees you as inherently violent, inherently criminal or inherently a threat. Jeff, you covered of course President Obama as a White House correspondent. President Obama said this also in marking the 10 years. He said he tried to figure out what my administration could do to address the systemic issues that led to this tragedy. Former President Obama has started My Brother's Keeper and a number of other initiatives. I'm wondering, talking to officials in the Obama administration, maybe having insight into what former President Obama is thinking himself, what do they think about the impact that they've been able to make 10 years later? Look, I mean, well, when former President Obama released a video to mark this anniversary, it just takes you back into time. I still remember the pain that the president at the time felt and really exuded talking about the death of this young man and talking about the luck at that time. Look so much has changed since then but that really was the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement which of course has evolved and grown as technology has evolved and grown. So I think that it is a great frustration of the former president and the people around him that this is one of the things he couldn't stop. He couldn't really do anything about it. And there have been countless examples of young black men and some women as well killed at the hands of police. But fast forward now to, you know, when I was also struck by just listening to President Biden talking about defunding the police, he said, no, we'll fund the police. This is an evolution of this entire political argument. So this is not the end, certainly, but the democratic party has come around to at least now under President Biden, that the idea of defunding the police is which wasn't always popular in many precincts of the democratic party including among many African American or rank and file citizens as well. Everyone needs police protection without a doubt. But I was struck that President Biden decided so hard to go aggressively saying fund the police. It was just an interesting bookend moment, you know, but for president, a former President Obama this is something that really haunted him at the time. And you could hear in that video, he released last weekend still does. Yeah and especially you can definitely see it that he's haunted by it. And Leigh Ann, Jeff just talked about the idea of President Biden, leaning really far into the idea of saying we want to fund the police, of course, defunding the police. Some people are saying some protestors wanna abolish the police all together. Some people say defunding the police just really means moving some resources into other areas like housing or mental health. But I wonder what you're hearing on Capitol Hill in response to what President Biden said. And when it comes to policing, we saw Cory Bush, pushed back and say that she didn't appreciate President Biden not talking about Black Lives Matter and black people being killed by the police as well. Yeah, so I think that there's a couple different things here. The first about defunding the police. There are very few Democrats who say that they support defunding the police. This became a big issue in the 2020 election where moderate Democrats who almost lost their reelections said that the defunding the police argument really, really hurt them. Getting back to the police reform negotiations that you mentioned when Senator Tim Scott that they said that they broke apart in part because Democrats wanted to defund the police. Though I covered the ins and outs of that debate every step of the way in those negotiations, that was completely disingenuous. You know, Senator Booker responded by saying actually they were trying to give tens of millions of dollars to police departments around the country, including for mental health which is what police departments have been wanting to be able to deal with their police officers a very trying, trying circumstances, but on the political front. So that really broke apart because the politics got too tricky. The rate of crime increased last summer and really they missed their moment. The politics had kind of moved away from them. And so now the president taking this position of making it very clear, I should say, that Democrats do not support defunding the police while it frustrated some on the far left, most Democrats are thrilled that he said that even though they say that police reform is still necessary and there still needs to be a lot of changes. And the white house, according to my sources was talking about executive orders regarding police reform to unveil them in February, perhaps but they haven't come out yet. Obviously there's been a lot of extraneous circumstances that perhaps prohibited that including the Supreme court including a war, including inflation, but it's those issues still do seem to be important to Democrats and important to President Biden but they have fallen down on the priority list. And Trymaine, what do you make of President Biden's remarks about funding the police, really trying to drag Democrats sort of more to this moderate tone of policing and and how does that sort of dovetail with Cory Bush saying, essentially I'll read part of it. He said with all due respect you didn't mention saving black lives once in this speech. That of course, again was representative Corey Bush who's a Democrat out of Missouri. This will, yeah, may be an example for so many people who say, you know, President Biden black folks in particular is who he has always been, a moderate who is going to appeal at all costs to this kind of mythical white center, right? Being fearful of offending them. Meanwhile, putting politics over the people, people will say you know, defunding, we know that it was a buzzword the Republicans were using as a casual to beat back any advance and progress by the Democrats, but re shifting resources, right? So when you're arriving at a home of someone who's in a mental health crisis, perhaps you can alleviate that by having funding aimed towards that, or if it's homelessness or it's crimes of poverty or hunger that we would address that in the front end. But again, and people are gonna say this is who the Democrats have always been. And they're gonna wonder why when they go to the black community and black folks aren't showing up and they're gonna wonder why they can play that clip. Well in the 30 seconds we have left here Trymaine, talk about this sort of pushback that we've seen from this inflection point after the murder of George Floyd where the nation wanted to talk about race and wanted to talk about all the different ways that discrimination could be eradicated. And then we've seen this really, really strong pushback to that. What do you make of where we are now? I think America has fallen back to its default position, right? So of certainly in a moment of great horror and watching a man being murdered by, you know, an officer of the law will shake folks up and it did shake folks into the streets. But again, as the dust has settled and we have a war and you have inflation, you have gas prices, the needs and demands and rising voices of black people are always silenced or muted. And so I think what we're seeing is America, you know, falling back towards default position and the pendulum swinging back the way it always has, right? After all this great progress and push and the sympathy and the desire to learn and read all the books that put all the books on a New York Times Bestsellers list. Now we're back and nothing much has changed with the stake of black life in America. And so that's going to be concerned for folks. And I think the Democrats, again, we see this every cycle. They're gonna come back around and wonder why there isn't quote unquote enthusiasm. And the enthusiasm is gonna be there, if the needs of the people aren't addressed and you don't stick to your word. A nomination of a black Supreme Court justice is great. But if you can't translate that into anything meaningful that respects black life on an everyday basis, then you know, what good is it? Many people will say that. Well, a powerful conversation. Thank you so much to all of you for being here. We'll have to leave it there tonight. Thank you so much to Trymaine, to Leigh Ann, and to Jeff for joining us and for sharing your reporting. And thank you for joining us. Good night from Washington. (tense music)