- [Mike] My cousins in South Carolina
are now aware of who you are.
My cousins-in-law are calling me,
they're calling my wife,
who's from Savannah, Georgia,
and family's in--
- [Bernie] I was just
in Savannah yesterday.
- You brought it up.
I wasn't gonna mention Hillary,
and I'm not gonna talk long,
but are we in this country in danger
of creating essentially
monarchs of political families?
And is that dangerous?
I think it is.
- OK, here's what the
story is, in my view.
You're putting your finger,
I disagree with you just a little bit.
- [Mike] OK.
- On a huge issue.
- [Mike] OK.
- What does democracy mean?
Democracy really means,
it's not a complicated idea.
It's everybody has input,
everybody votes, right?
- Yup.
- That's what it means,
one person, one vote.
What you got now is a economy
which is largely rigged
in the sense that almost all
of the new wealth and income
is going to the top one percent.
- Gotcha, OK.
- And you have an incredibly
unequal distribution of wealth.
That's one reality.
And then you've got another reality,
and the reality is that the
folks who have the money,
they're not putting that
money under their mattress,
they want political power.
So, as a result of this
disastrous Citizens United
Supreme Court decision,
billionaires can now buy elections.
They can spend as much money as they want,
and that's what's happening.
When you have one family,
like the Koch brothers,
extreme right-wing billionaire family,
they and a few of their friends
are gonna spend $900 million
dollars on this campaign.
That is more money than
the Democrats will spend,
more money than the Republicans.
What does that sounds to you?
Does that sound like democracy?
- Definitely is not, but
it leads me to ask this:
I have a lyric where I say,
"Could it be the man behind
the man behind the man
"behind the throne?"
I consider you a good
man, with grand ideas,
but that pessimism and apathy
that seeps into my community,
into the general American community,
says don't go out and vote
because whether those
brothers buy Hillary,
or buy Trump, or buy
something, the seat's for sale.
I don't want to say how do
we know you're not for sale,
or the seat's for sale,
how do we know the presidency
of the United States
is not bought and paid
for to the point where
the grand ideas that you have,
that could help and radically
change this country,
won't get stifled because of the money?
- Well, first of all--
- [Mike] Even if--
- Every speech that I
give, that's what I say.
I say, "Hey, do you think
Bernie Sanders can do it alone?"
I can't.
Let's be very clear about this.
The powers that be: Wall
Street, corporate America,
the corporate media, campaign donors,
do you think if I go into the White House,
and I say, "Hey, Wall
Street, I got a great idea.
"I think you should pay
a tax on speculation,
"so that I can put all of our kids
"into college tuition-free."
What do you think they're
gonna say to me, Michael?
"Hey, that's a great idea, Bernie,
"why didn't we think of that idea?"
What they will do is go nuts, right?
How do we beat 'em?
You only beat 'em when all kinds
of people stand up and say,
"You know what, you guys?
"You are gonna have to
pay a tax on speculation
"so that young people in America
"have the opportunity to go to college."
I can't do it alone.
No president, so to answer your question,
I don't think I could do it alone.
- Gotcha.
- All right, but your good question is,
how do we get people involved?
People have been disappointed,
people have been hurt,
and when you talk about
the media, watching the TV,
I gotta tell you, I
think in many respects,
media does a awful job in
educating the American people
about the reality of what's going on.
And they got a reason to that, too.
You know something about
the media, I suppose.
- I do, I do, I do, I do.
You talked about the
education of Americans.
You seem to the only politician
that wants a smarter constituency.
You seem to be the only politician
that wants a smarter constituency,
and now I understand why.
Because you're one of the
first politicians I've heard
say, "it's a we, it is
a collective of people."
I believe that the people
who got fired up in 2008
about Barack Obama, the ideas,
not just the human being
who was tall, slender, cool,
had a cool-looking family like
The Cosby Show part three,
it really was, he set forth ideas
that we had been told for too
long, "Don't wish that high."
You are the natural evolution,
I think, of our feeling.
And I'm not saying, "He's
part two of Barack Obama."
In no way am I saying that.
I'm not saying that "he's here to carry on
"a political campaign started in 2008,"
I'm in no way saying that.
I'm saying that the feeling that I have,
of the hope and possibility of change,
you have come and voiced an actual policy
that you're willing to push through
for all of us to get behind.
Why aren't people seeing it that way?
- Mike, we are taking on the world.
- [Mike] Gotcha.
- We're taking on a corporate media,
which is much more interested
in looking at politics
as a baseball game or as a soap opera,
rather than dealing with the real issues.
Here, let me throw it out to you.
You tell me if you've seen this on TV.
As a result of technology,
the average worker in America
is producing a lot more, correct?
- Gotcha.
- OK, why is that person,
everything being equal,
earning less money?
Good question?
- Very good question.
- Why is the United States the
only major country on earth
that doesn't guarantee
healthcare to all people?
Good question?
- Very good question.
- [Bernie] Is it moral that the
top one-tenth of one percent
owns almost as much
wealth as the bottom 90%?
- Absolutely not moral.
- [Bernie] You hear that
discussion on CNN and NBC?
- No.
- Not too often.
So what we are trying to
do, and I'm very proud.
We're gonna have a whole,
many thousands of people
out here in Atlanta.
We had 27,000 people out in Los Angeles.
People are beginning to
hear it, but I'm not a fool,
and I know you don't change
this country overnight,
but the main thing is,
and let me repeat it,
nothing happens unless people stand up.
I just visited Dr. King's Center.
What was that whole thing about?
You think he said, "Hey,
I'm Dr. Martin Luther King.
"I'm a really smart
guy, I'm a great orator,
"I'm gonna change the world."
He was a profound organizer, correct?
- [Mike] Yes sir.
- That's what he did, and
that's what we have to do.
- You went to the King March,
you went to the "I Have a Dream" March,
you were there.
- [Bernie] I was there.
- And you have consistently,
you organized with SNCC.
(laughs) That's a pretty--
- I know, it makes it seem
like ancient history, I admit.
- That's some bomb shit.
That is absolutely dope.
- Look, this is what we felt.
We were in the north, we were in Chicago,
I was a student at the
University of Chicago,
and what we saw, if I
can use some "bomb shit"
is we saw our friends getting
the shit kicked out of 'em
and getting beaten to hell.
- [Mike] Gotcha.
- So we try to get some money.
They were the brave ones, not us,
we got to get money there.
And in Chicago, what we
worked on is the fact
that the school that I went to,
a great, prestigious university,
turns out that they owned
segregated housing, how's that?
So you know what we did?
We'd send a black couple
into an apartment,
they'd go in and say,
"Hi, do you have any
apartments available?"
- No.
- "Sorry, we just don't."
An hour later, we sent
the white couple in,
"Oh, yeah, let me show
you the three apartments
"that we have available."
So we kind of exposed that,
and we made an impact.
We got involved in segregated
schools in Chicago.
But the issue that I
love most about Dr. King
is not just that he helped
lead the Civil Rights movement,
and destroyed segregation and so forth.
This man was an incredibly courageous man.
You know why he was courageous?
If you were sitting in a sense,
all the media, everybody loved
you, look at what you did,
you got the Voting Rights Act
and you desegregated the South
what did he do next?
- Preached against the war in Vietnam.
- [Bernie] That's right.
- And poverty, he talked about poverty.
- [Bernie] That's exactly right.
- And then everybody
turned their back on him.
- And they said, you know
what they said to him?
They said, "You are an
African-American leader.
"Your job is to worry about Civil Rights.
"Who the hell are you, talking
about the war in Vietnam.
"Why are you talking about
distribution of wealth?"
But because this guy was a brilliant guy,
and this is what I love about him,
he began, his mind grew,
and grew, and grew.
That's a smart person,
you know what I mean?
You don't stay in the same
place your whole life.
- [Mike] Absolutely.
- And he began to understand, yeah,
so we broke down segregation
at a lunch counter,
what the hell difference does it mean
if you can't afford the hamburger?
If you can't afford to
send your kid to school?
And if you're talking about nonviolence,
and the United States
and the war in Vietnam
was the major perpetuater of violence,
you're a hypocrite if
you don't talk about it.
He was not a hypocrite, and
is an extraordinary man.
- And this is what I wanted to get to.
King is often,
and it's not by accident
that we're in a barber shop,
and it's not only because
I own the barber shop
and it's a great business
promotional opportunity.
Barber shops seem to
be the place in my life
that black men in particular
have been able to speak the truth
and not worry about getting killed.
It's a place where beyond black men,
working class men can come speak the truth
without worrying about the boss
cutting them off at the top.
A lot of union organizers
started happening
in the back of a barber shop
or whiskey house, you know?
You have been, besides Alice
Johnson, was a white woman,
my friend and mentor,
besides James Orange, who was
an organizer with Dr. King,
is featured in that movie
they did about Selma,
besides Joseph Lowery,
besides Andrew Young,
the people that I've met that I know
from the Civil Rights Movement,
you're the only person
who has dared to talk
about Dr. King's
connectivity, or connecting,
war and poverty, with
segregation and racism,
with the economy, with workers'
rights, with women's rights,
you're the only one in my 40
years that I've seen do this
on a national stage.
- [Bernie] Where was Dr. King
when he was assassinated?
- He was in Memphis.
- Doing what?
He was supporting a union effort
to improve wages and working conditions
for people who were terribly exploited.
That's what he was doing.
And what was he working on?
What was the big project
that he was working on
in the last months of his life?
A poor people's march.
That was not just African-Americans.
That was whites, that was
Hispanics, Native Americans--
- And that's exactly what I'm getting to.
You have been the only
candidate that I have seen
able to connect people
who were once disconnected
in this way.
I believe the disconnection
is something that is orchestrated.
I believe it's something
that's encouraged.
I believe it's something that,
for the last at least 40, 50 years,
there has been a political
agenda to make sure that
"people chose teams."
I often speak at colleges,
and the number one thing I tell kids is,
they brought me here to talk about racism
and to talk about police brutality
because they know that's my box.
I'm a black guy, I have to
think about those things
on a daily basis,
but what I need you to do
today, and I tell kids this,
is to tell yourself as
you come in the door,
I'm gonna put my team to the side,
and I'm gonna look at how
my team is interconnected
with these other teams, and
how can we as individuals
be different and help each other--
- Let me tell you a
story about that, Mike.
- Gotcha.
- In the 1950s, what state in this country
has the lowest paid white workers?
What state, take a guess?
- I would imagine Georgia or Alabama.
- Try Mississippi.
- That makes sense.
- What did the whole system
tell these white workers,
who were the lowest paid white workers
in the United States of
America, in other words,
these workers were being exploited.
What they said is "you can
go to that water fountain,
"and drink, and the black guy can't.
"You go into that bathroom,
you can go to that restaurant,
"man, you got it good."
Meanwhile, we're paying you nothing,
so you divided blacks from whites,
in this case, whites from blacks.
This is what they always do.
Then they go and they say,
"See that woman up there?
"She's an uppity woman,
she wants your job, man.
"You're not gonna let
that woman take your job,
"you gotta divide from her.
"And that guy's gay over there, man.
"You gotta hate him, it's
gonna destroy your marriage
"'cause he's gay, gotta hate him.
"Oh, and there's a person,
speaks with a Spanish,
"a little bit Spanish, came from Mexico,
"you're supposed to hate that man,
"you're not gonna work with those people."
That has been what the
ruling class has done
over and over again.
Why?
Because they understand
when we come together,
you fight for decent wages.
When you fight for
education for your kids.
You can fight to
strengthen social security.
We win, hands down.
But if they divide us up, they win.
- That's amazing, man.
The Democratic Socialist guy
uses the word "we" so much.
Everyone else is saying
the "I" or the "your."
It's "I have this" or "It's your problem."
I just wish to stay as angry as you.
There are days where I say,
"well, you can be relaxed,
"you know you're gonna
retire middle class,
"you know your kids are OK,"
and yet, I find a new reason
to get angry every year,
and I used to think that
it was gonna taper off,
I tell myself I'm gonna
retire to Jamaica in 10 years,
but I know it's a lie.
I know that whenever this
thing I do called rap,
and it's over and singing
and dancing is that
I'm gonna be angrily shouting
out of someone's office in Atlanta
- Mike, it's being human.
If you see stuff that's bad,
and you don't respond with,
what did King call it?
The urgency of the moment or something.
Then you're not alive.
So don't lose that anger.
(upbeat music)
