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[ambient music]
[crowd chanting] No peace! No peace!
No peace!
[Janae] In geography, we have this term "thick places."
[rain pattering]
Thick places are places where, like, there are layers
and layers and layers of history,
or something huge happened there.
You feel it.
[sloshing]
South Carolina is a thick place.
[birds chirping]
I think in a lot of ways, if we can understand
what has happened in South Carolina,
it'll be a lens to understand
a whole host of racial issues across the country.
Social media circulating a new video
of alleged abuse by an officer.
It's a little bit difficult to watch.
Today, a sheriff's deputy in Columbia, South Carolina
forcibly removed a student from a classroom
at Spring Valley High School.
[thumps and crashes]
[indistinct dialogue]
18-year old Niya Kenny was in her math class
at Spring Valley High when she saw
school resource officer Ben Fields
forcibly remove her classmate.
[Niya] I was in disbelief,
I know this girl don't got nobody,
and I couldn't believe this was happening.
I'd never seen nothing like that in my life.
Like, a man use that much force on a little girl.
A big man, like, 300 pounds of full muscle.
I was like "No way, no way!"
Like, "You can't do that to no little girl."
[reporter 1] That shamefully shocking video is reprehensible
[reporter 2] A shocking confrontation witnessed
by a classroom full of students
[reporter 3] It's hard to explain that one.
[reporter 4] It is disturbing, to say the very least.
[reporter 5] I think that people should look at this video
and ask themselves, "Is this appropriate?
What if this were my child?"
[reporter 6] Hillary Clinton getting into the fray,
tweeting, "The assault at Spring Valley High
is unacceptable." Bernie Sanders,
"Welcome to the school-to-prison pipeline."
[Joy] The only weapon she had was a phone?
[Whoopi] Yes.
Isn't that a little bit overkill?
But, put your phones away.
-Put your phones away. -I wanna know
why the teacher felt it necessary
to call in a police officer to do this.
That's what I... that's the point I--
[woman] The teacher--
[Whoopi] Well, that's what I'm saying.
Deputy Fields did not follow proper training,
did not follow proper procedure
And approximately 20 minutes ago,
school resource officer Ben Fields was terminated
from the Richland County Sheriff's Department.
[reporter 7] Students in several classrooms walked out,
showing their support for former school resource officer
-Ben Fields. -He was a great guy,
like, he protected us and everything, like,
he was our resource officer.
[reporter 7] Some apparently were wearing
T-shirts that read, "Bring Back Fields,"
while others were chanting, "Free Fields."
[reporter 8] Last year, Fields received an honor
for being an exceptional role model.
A police officer lost his job for doing his job.
It's high time we start addressing
the root causes of all this, the disrespect of teachers,
this Black Lives Matter movement.
[Sheriff] This incident started with
a very disruptive student in a class.
The student was not allowing the teacher to teach,
was not allowing the students to learn.
This is ridiculous that people are going to fucking say
that the cop is in the wrongdoing.
We're dealing with a generation of kids
who do not respect authority.
This is an absolute ticket to anarchy,
Which is exactly what many in our country would like.
You know--you know how it is.
Even you just saying that has people saying, "racist."
Oh, I don't care, I don't care, I mean, you can call--
The problem of violence in school officers
is not a new problem.
This was the moment that documented
those complaints.
[dramatic music]
[Niya] It was a Monday morning.
I actually wasn't going to go to school that day.
[background chatter]
I don't know, I saw him just talking to her,
whispering to her, and initially, you know,
I didn't think it was a problem, because I knew that she was
just this quiet student in the class.
So, our teacher picks up his phone
and I kinda hear him say, "I need someone escorted
outta my class."
And I was like, "Uh, what did you do?
What could have happened that's getting you
kicked out of class?"
She didn't disrupt the class, so we had no idea
what was going on.
I hear him saying that he's gonna call the deputy,
and I was the only one who could see the door.
So, as soon as I saw Fields outside of the door,
I was like, "Ah, it's Fields!"
I was like, "Yo, get your cameras, get your cameras."
'Cause she's still sitting there like, "I'm not gonna move."
[indistinct remarks]
[Niya] I guess I encouraged the kids to take out their cameras
because I just knew that something could go,
you know, from zero to a hundred.
It definitely did.
[thudding]
[thumps and crashes]
[Ben] Put your hands behind your back.
Give me your hands, give me your hands.
Put your hands...
[grunting]
[indistinct dialogue]
[indistinct remarks]
[Niya] No, please.
[Ben] That's it.
[indistinct remarks]
[rustling]
[boy] Well, this is fucked, man.
[Niya] And the whole time she's still quiet,
you know, she didn't let out one sound.
Once they took her out, he came back
and he kinda, like, stood there
and kinda scaled the classroom, like, "Where is she?"
He said something like, "You have so much to say,
you're comin', too."
They took us downstairs and we sat there
for about an hour in handcuffs
before a paddy wagon came and got me,
and I, um...
I was taken off to jail.
Real jail.
[somber music]
I had a lot of time to think, you know,
in handcuffs, just sitting in a quiet room.
So, I was just like, "How could they
let me get arrested, like, for that?
You know, they're letting me go to jail right now."
I was like, "I'll never come back.
Promise, I'll never come back to this school,
I'm never coming back."
[rain pattering]
I think this incident is illustrative
of so many dynamics
that are relative in this moment.
As a white person, I'm gonna ask white people
to try a particular lens on.
I'm just gonna ask you to grapple with it.
This lens is whiteness.
Being raised as a white person in this society,
I was not raised to see myself in racial terms.
But whiteness is a race.
It is a particular position in the world.
It is a particular worldview and viewpoint.
How has being white shaped how you experience the world?
How does it shape
your perspective on this incident?
[Ben] Using force is never pretty.
It looks ugly, it looks bad.
It's hard, but necessary at times.
People are never gonna change their minds.
Some people will never change their minds about the video.
They think I was wrong, and that's it.
Some people think I was absolutely right,
and that's it.
But I don't... I can't get into that so much.
I think what we get into, what I want to get into more,
is just, hey look,
we're trained a certain way as police officers.
We're trained to deal with tough situations.
We're trained to follow the law, enforce the law.
And then, we have a use-of-force continuum
that we go by that we have to stay within.
And I did those things.
I've only watched this, like, one time.
The day that it took place.
You don't know me? Okay, just come with me
or I'm gonna have to make you.
[scuffling]
Put your hands behind your back
Give me your hands, give me your hands.
Put your hands...
[phone thuds]
I think when you...
I think as a cop, what you see is...
I mean, any time you're using force,
you're going quickly,
and you're trying to solve that problem
as quickly as possible so you don't get hurt,
the other person doesn't get hurt.
It was just a...
It was very quick, very quick situation.
Very fluid situation.
I think you go...
you know, like anything, you go over it.
I evaluate any time
you use force in law enforcement.
I think you evaluate the situation.
Evaluate if you made the best decision on it.
Would you have done anything differently?
And, uh...
You know, I don't wanna be consumed by it.
So, I just didn't get caught up in watching it.
I just didn't.
It was tough to watch.
[Bobby] Someone looks at the police officer and says,
"Here is law enforcement at its worst.
Clearly attacking,
abusing power and influence."
And then there are others who say,
"This is what's wrong with public schools.
Poorly behaved, undisciplined, Black children."
Two very different perceptions,
which I believe comes from a historical perspective.
What is the relationship between Black people
and police officers?
[Cuomo] It is important to note that this is not the first time
this officer has been accused of excessive force.
Army veteran Carlos Martin, says he recognized Ben Fields
the instant he saw that video, because Fields treated him
the exact same way, he says, ten years ago.
What he did to me is started making all these
racial comments, which is already documented.
So, he put you on the ground, then there's racial comments?
-Correct. -Were you fighting?
Not at all, I was laying on the ground,
as you can see, protecting myself.
I think that's public record, I believe,
as far as that goes.
But, yeah, I had been accused before
of excessive force, yes,
which was a lawsuit which they found in my favor,
and I'll just leave it at that.
[Cuomo] You believe this is just his instinct of how to act...
-[Martin] Correct, absolutely. -...in this situation?
[Martin] And I'm not even surprised
that his actions is that.
I'm more surprised that Sheriff Lott
continues to allow him to continue to do the same thing.
The reason why he's at the school that he's at
is because he beat me up, and then they moved him
to the school and put him around children.
Why would they take an officer who had a force issue
and put him in a school?
That is the question of the day.
[McDaniels] It's important that we acknowledge
that there were two chief complaints
that happened months before Spring Valley ever happened.
The Office of Civil Rights
within the Department of Juvenile Justice
received two chief complaints in May of 2015.
The first complaint was that the SRO program
at the Richland County Sheriff Department
were arresting African-American students
at a disproportionate rate.
88% of our arrests are African-American students.
You ask anyone, you know, 88%.
The majority of the arrests are African-American.
You can look at the prison system
and tell that.
That's not a new story, that's not a new narrative.
But it now filters into the school.
The second complaint was that we were engaging
with students who have a disability
from an uninformed position.
We did not have a policy in place
on how school resource officers
should deal with students with disabilities.
Visible and unseen disabilities.
[background chatter]
[clanking]
[cheers and applause]
I had a tremendous amount of support.
This community here that I live in,
I mean, they just wrapped their arms around me.
Back when Ben first started training at the gym,
we'd spend an hour and a half or two hours a day together,
three or four days a week,
and because of that time, he has always been
one of my absolute favorite people.
He's just a good human and I adore him.
[crowd cheering]
[man] Up!
One of our friends texted me the link and said,
"Did you see this? It doesn't look good for Ben."
And I watched the video and I said, "I don't care
what that video shows, that's not Ben.
He didn't do anything wrong."
And she texted back, "I don't know, you know,
it doesn't look good," and I said,
"I don't really care what it looks like.
The media's done something, because that is not Ben,
and he would not do that to a student."
[woman] Come on, Ben!
We know Ben, so something had to happen
for him to react that way.
[crowd cheering]
[cheering increases]
The need for cops in schools is tremendous,
and the need for cops to be supported in schools
is tremendous, and the need for cops to be able
to do their jobs in schools is tremendous.
'Cause you're still a cop in a school.
You can put a SRO on it, you can put security on it,
you can put whatever you want on it.
You're a cop, your job is to be a cop
at the end of the day, to enforce the law under...
you know, with your discretion,
but under the law.
The way I describe it to people is like you're the sheriff
of your own town, in some ways.
[Amanda] In a place like Columbia,
law and order is a core value,
you know, the idea that there is respect for authority,
that there is a way things are done and not done.
That is a deep value of not just the South,
but a lot of places around the world.
But it's stronger in the South, I think, in general,
than in the North of the U.S.
And on the one hand, law and order
is an important thing, you know,
and having respect for authority figures is important.
At the same time, it's also the case
that in the South, politicians used to talk about
segregation forever.
And when that became outlawed,
they started talking about law and order a lot more.
[door creaks]
[Vivian] I'm in my kitchen in Brooklyn.
I saw the video of Niya being interviewed
after she's been released from jail,
and they ask her, "What made you stand up?"
And that's when my whole life changed,
'cause here's a child that's saying,
"Nobody else is gonna stand for this child."
And I'm like, "What?"
And then I got enough courage to actually watch the video.
I must've cried all night.
I was angry.
I'm a member of Black Lives Matter
New York City. My piece was health and wellness
and, like, care.
This is visual of what we've been talking about.
A girl got physically assaulted. Two girls were arrested.
Oh, wait a minute, you got criminal charges.
These are two girls.
What happens when we start
pushing young people out of school?
We know what it means to silence trauma.
That's how we get all our "isms,"
our alcoholism, all our addictions.
That's my front line.
That's who we should be working with.
That's who our reach out should be to.
Kayla, Kayla.
I just wanna hug 'em.
I just wanna go hold these two girls
and let 'em know it's okay, and that, no, this should
never happen to any child.
It's a lot to take in, 'cause it's just like,
"Oh, it's my babies, these my babies
on top of my babies on top of my babies."
What does it mean to walk the walk?
Mm-mm, nope, gotta go, gotta go, gotta go.
After the assault at Spring Valley,
I came here to see how I could support
the girls and their families.
Call me and I can tell you about the different ways
that you can be involved.
And I'm Vivian.
I thought I really was walking into
a body of organizers.
I thought it was gonna be these massive protests,
all that stuff, and it's like, "Oh, we got a sis here
from New York City, who can house her?"
I really thought it was gonna be one of those things.
It just wasn't.
All right, all right.
Peace.
[inaudible]
[Leon] In the Spring Valley incident, I don't think
race played a part of it.
I think it was just a snapshot of, you know...
And it was a bad snapshot
of things that we do every day that are good,
and that was just a bad snapshot.
So, I think South Carolina is probably ahead of other places
because of the relationship that we had within the community
where they trust that law enforcement
was gonna do the right thing, you know.
We didn't have riots,
we didn't have major protests,
we didn't have problems over it.
And we haven't had people from the outside
whose main intent was to come in
and spread hate and violence.
We didn't allow...
And when I say "we," that's not law enforcement.
That's the community did not allow them to come in
and cause those problems.
[Vivian] Why are we content on punishing kids?
The police do not need to be in schools.
And we can call 'em SROs, but it's really
policing in schools.
My long-term goal is remove policing from schools
and create more socio-emotional,
trauma-informed care programmings
where kids are getting different levels
of social support, not just policing.
The video focused everyone's attention
on excessive force,
but we can't forget what brought that officer
into that classroom.
He was there enforcing a law
that made it a crime to, quote, disturb schools in any way.
That means any disturbance that any kid causes
in school is a crime.
[Amanda] Where did that law come from?
The original intent was to control young people.
The very, very original version of South Carolina's law
was a law against flirting,
and it was written in 1919.
And it was because a state lawmaker
was concerned by the amount of flirting
he saw going on near women's colleges,
a white women's college in his jurisdiction.
And then it was in the late 1960s
that that law was expanded to apply to all schools,
not just girls' and women's schools,
in the late 1960s.
So, what do you know, it was going on then.
You know, not coincidence.
Kids were protesting the Vietnam War,
kids were protesting civil rights violations,
and it was ugly, like, there was violence,
and it was a very scary time for many, many people.
So, this was very much an attempt by lawmakers
and educators to find more tools,
is the word that's always used,
more tools to control kids
at a time when the status quo was really threatened.
And in that case, it was designed
to be used against outside agitators,
was the phrase that was always used.
And in fact, what it was used against was,
you know, tens of thousands of kids at these schools.
They were not outsiders, right?
And disproportionately kids of color.
In the 1990s, this law started being used all the time
to prevent something else,
which is student misbehavior.
And you got to a point where,
I don't know, I think since 2000 something,
like 30,000 kids were charged with disturbing schools
in South Carolina.
[Shawn] The use of the disturbing schools law
was a harmful, but yet lawful form
of structural violence.
And so, we were utilizing that law
as a blanket law
to deal with school-house conflict.
[Bobby] Look at that classroom.
What's going on there?
What did Shakara do that morning on that day?
Similar with the officer.
There are more layers here to uncover.
What was the teacher doing?
Who called the officer to the classroom?
So, there is a context out of which this emerges.
[birds chirping]
-Kinda nervous. -[interviewer] Nervous?
[interviewer indistinct]
[soft chuckle]
[man] Okay, I'm leaving.
[woman] Those are the funny ones?
-[man] Nah, nah. -[chuckling]
[Shakara] One day I was just thinkin' about, okay,
it's time for me to, you know, open up, voice my opinion,
and just give people a clearer idea
of what happened and how to avoid it,
and how the situation could have went better.
I want other kids to be able to go to school
and, you know, get their education
and be safe, and feel like that's not gonna happen to them.
[somber music]
[indistinct dialogue]
[DiAngelo] It's like an octopus with tentacles.
That moment cannot happen
without all these other pieces in place,
and as you trace that moment,
you come into history,
you come into institutions,
you come into policies, practices.
We're bringing all of this into the schools.
[Shakara] I woke up that morning.
I was getting dressed for school and I was already tired,
because the night before I was up all night.
I couldn't sleep and I just had a lot of things on my mind.
I went to school.
I went to my resource teacher's class,
because I was supposed to check in with her every morning
and make sure she know that I'm at school.
She said, "How are you doing?"
I told her I was a good, a little bit stressed out
and had some problems with my mom.
I went to English that morning,
then after I got out of that class,
I went to Math.
The teacher, he was going over some stuff.
I know this is not gonna be a good day,
because I don't understand math, we've got a test.
I went to him and I was like, "Can you call
my resource teacher to see if I can go to her class,
so I can get some help?" And he was like,
"No, you gonna stay in here today."
I took it upon myself and I said,
"Okay, if he's not gonna ask her then I'll ask myself."
So, I got on my computer
and I was trying to send her an email.
And he kept closing me out of the app,
because he had this app on his computer
that he can control whatever we're doing on ours.
And I said, "Why did you close me out?"
He's like, "That's not appropriate for class."
And I said, "Well, I'm trying to send her an email."
So, I try to get back on.
But he came to me and he closed my Chromebook.
If I ask for help to call my resource teacher,
he was supposed to... like, that was in the IEP,
that he was supposed to let me go down there to her.
He handed out the test and I started it,
and I was like, "I do not understand this,
so I'm not even gonna try."
And I just put my head down and I was just, like,
messing with my nails or whatever,
and he came and kneeled beside me.
He said, "Why are you not taking the test?"
I said, "Because I don't understand it
and you won't let me go to my resource teacher."
So then, I kept slouching down
and I was just, like, had my head down,
doing like this, messing with my nails,
and then he came and sat beside me,
and he was like, "Give me your phone."
And I was like, "What phone?"
He said, "The one you have in your hand."
I said, "I don't have a phone."
He said, "I'm not gonna ask you again."
And I said, "I don't have a phone."
He said, "Okay, take this and go."
And I was like, "What is this?"
Him, "Oh I'm writing you up, because you wanna be
disrespectful and not put your phone away."
I was just like, "But I'm not going
because I didn't do anything, and you can't just send me
out of classroom for assuming that I have a phone."
I felt misunderstood.
[Josh] The teacher has a choice
about what to do at that moment.
Does he say, "Shakara, you know my cellphone policy.
I already asked you once, you've now got a detention,"
and then left it at there and dealt with it after class,
so it didn't disrupt everybody else
for that block.
Or does he call the assistant principal
and ask for backup?
Then you've got a similar set of questions
and discretion that the assistant principal has.
[Shakara] He called the assistant principal
and he asked what's the problem
and why didn't I put the phone up.
And I was like, "Because I don't have a phone.
You can ask anybody, I don't have a phone."
He said, "Okay, well, I'm gonna need you to come with me."
I didn't do nothing, I don't think I should...
To just send me out the classroom
for not doing anything.
Then the assistant principal decides to call in the SRO,
and this is, to my lawyer brain, that's the really big choice,
because that's making the SRO
the enforcer to school discipline, right?
Shakara's behavior hasn't gotten more disruptive.
Bringing the officer in is what makes it
more disruptive to the other students.
So somebody beside me was just like,
"Oh snap, he finna get Fields."
And I'm thinking like, "What they talking about?
Like, who is Fields?"
An administrator on the third floor
called for a deputy.
Not for me specifically, but for a deputy.
My office is on the first floor and I went ahead
and got up to the third floor.
He says that
he had a young lady who was refusing to leave class.
I said, "What do you mean she's refusing to leave class?"
"Well, she's refusing to leave class."
So, we tried to call her teacher,
because she was in one of these classes
where they get some extra help or whatever the case may be.
The teacher wasn't available.
[Josh] Then the officer does have a choice, right?
"What am I gonna do?"
It's the structure that puts SROs in a position
where every crime is supposed to be reported to them.
Any disturbance is a crime,
so lots of conduct is supposed to get reported to them,
and his duty is to enforce the law.
At that point in time I decide that
based on the circumstances of what we have,
that I'm gonna go in and remove her
from the classroom.
So, I walked in the classroom,
and when I saw her, right away I recognized her.
I'd dealt with her before on two prior fights
that she had had at Spring Valley.
And both of which I felt like
that she was picked on,
pushed into a corner a little bit,
and kinda fought her way out of.
Both of which I didn't arrest for.
Both of which I felt sorry
for the young lady in some ways,
because I knew she was dealing with some things.
So, I tell her, I say, "Young lady," I said,
"Get your stuff and come with me."
[tense music]
[indistinct dialogue]
[Ben] Young lady, are you gonna come with me or not?
[Shakara] The reason why I didn't get up
is 'cause I felt like I didn't do nothing wrong.
I wasn't, you know, fighting,
I wasn't arguing with the teacher,
I wasn't throwing things or being disruptive.
[indistinct dialogue]
[Ben] She goes, "I didn't do anything."
I said, "I'm not saying you did anything,
but I'm saying come with me and we can talk about it."
And I said, "Young lady, you know me,
you know I'm a fair guy." She goes, "I don't know you."
I treated you fair last year.
-[Shakara] I don't know you. -[Ben] You don't know me?
I already knew he was gonna try to move me,
so I just, you know, I was holding on to the desk.
[Ben] Okay, you're gonna come with me
or I'm gonna have to make you.
I approached her desk.
I'm gonna get you up.
And went to... I grabbed her left arm
and reached around to grab her right arm,
and she cracked me right here in the jaw.
[clattering]
I grabbed her left arm
and reached around to grab her right arm.
And she cracked me right here in the jaw.
[Shakara] At that moment, I was just trying to get
some, like, some... I was trying to hold on to something,
so then I wouldn't fly, or... and then, like,
it made it look like I hit him, but I...
No, I wasn't trying to hit him.
I was just trying to grab onto something
so I wouldn't be thrown like that.
[Ben] What I did was what we call muscling techniques.
I grabbed ahold of her, she was locked into the desk,
the desk tips backwards, I pull it back up,
I have her, pulling on her.
When she comes out, she comes flying out of the desk.
[Shakara] All I remember is the desk flipping over,
and now I'm all the way in the front of the classroom.
He had his knee in my neck and all,
and I could not breathe, I was like...
I was thinking, like, "Get off me."
[Ben] At that point in time, I'm giving her verbal commands,
"Put your hands behind your back.
Put your hands behind your back."
And I'm trying to get her...
She's still fighting, she's still punching me
in the chest while on the ground.
I finally get a handcuff on her, and she's still fighting.
So, at that point in time, I called for the other deputy,
who did respond and we were able to get her in handcuffs.
We got her up, he took her to her office.
Paperwork was signed
and I turned her over to her foster mom,
because she was a juvenile at the time, 16 years old.
Foster mom took her home or whatever the case may be.
Another video went viral on social media, and like always,
the left, they rush to judgment
Quick to blame the cops for using excessive force.
I'll tell you why it's not excessive.
He verbalized, he made contact, he was polite.
He put a hand on her, she escalated it from there.
We have this altercation
which she does not get really hurt in.
Can the officer do that?
-Yes, he can do that. -[man] Why?
[interviewer] Because you are under arrest,
you're failing to comply now.
He didn't kick her, he didn't hit her,
he didn't choke her, he will be cleared of this.
[Shakara] What was going on in his mind
that he had to throw me like that?
Maybe a problem at home or he didn't...
he was frustrated with something else
and then he... at the moment,
he just lost control.
Maybe he thought he was handling it the right way,
but he applied too much force.
The focus was, in fact, my use of force in this situation.
How I removed her from the chair
was the focus of the investigation.
From the word go.
Was it excessive?
If it was excessive, that would seem to me
that would be some type of criminal charge.
There was a memo that came out the day after the incident,
which was Tuesday, all right? So the incident took place
on a Monday, there's this memo that came out on Tuesday
from our training division.
What it basically says is, because of her act
of aggression in the situation, meaning her act of aggression
of her hitting me, that I had...
I could've used a taser, a K-9 dog, mace,
or a baton on her.
Think about it.
I just wanna stop and I want everyone
to just think about that for a minute.
Those are what I could've done.
If I had tased her, would that have looked good?
If I had took a baton out and hit her with it,
does that look good?
If I had called a K-9 dog on her,
does that look good?
What is this, 1960?
I did what I thought was best in the situation,
based on my training.
[scuffling]
[Geoffrey] The key element is threat.
The objective evidence here is that her arm,
and I can't tell if it's a fist, came up.
But is that a natural reaction of her falling back
and trying to gain some sort of balance?
The law might say, "She hit him,"
which then justifies a higher level of force.
But I don't see... I see her resisting.
I don't see her as a threat.
You know, he's a big guy.
She's locked in a chair.
She's no threat to him.
The officer never should've been put in that situation.
Why the police are there in the first place is beyond me.
A Texas school police officer has been put on leave
after video surfaced of a violent incident
-at a middle school. -The school police officer
body slamming a female high school student
has triggered outrage in a North Carolina community.
[reporter] This is not what any parent expects to happen
-to a child at school. -The arrest
of an Albuquerque student for burping in class--
[man] And was just etching his initials
-on the school sidewalk. -They said, "If you won't sign
the citation, we're bringing handcuffs."
[reporter 2] This cellphone video shows a struggle
between a school resource officer--
[reporter 3] Slamming a student to the ground.
[reporter 4] He arrests 6-year-old Kaia Rolle.
[reporter 5] This Kentucky sheriff handcuffs
an 8-year-old boy.
[officer] Okay, I've had enough of this.
Take your bag off.
Put your hands behind your back
[girl] What's wrong with you?
[crying]
[reporter 6] When a 17-year-old student on a suspended status
would not comply with direction
to leave the Helix High School here in La Mesa,
this resource officer twice forced the student
to the ground.
It wasn't an okay thing to do.
She's a student here and we're told that we are safe.
But seeing that, it doesn't make me feel safe.
[woman] She was supposed to be on campus,
this was an in-school suspension.
And not for behavior, for tardies only.
And we're tired of the police justifying this injustice
that they continually do to our youth,
and we're done, we're done.
They don't see the racism aspect of it at all.
They're just blind to that there's inequalities.
They see that something... that I was arrested,
and that I was thrown on the ground,
and that it wasn't a racism issue,
but that I must've did something wrong to deserve that.
I'm tired of trying to convince white people
that racism is wrong.
I'm sure you guys seen what happened
at Helix High School.
We're coming for all your schools next.
So, just get ready.
[applause]
[crickets chirping]
[Vivian] Niya said, "How many times should--"
And they were like, "Wait a minute,
wheel it back some, what you saying?"
Oh, yeah, you can be in high school and get arrested.
You can be in middle school and get arrested.
In some states, you can be 15 and go to an adult prison.
That's why I keep saying if we're not working
from system, we can do all the groundwork,
we not trying to have them, like, bump heads like that.
We not gonna get anywhere.
It would be two weeks in South Carolina,
go back to New York to handle some business.
Three weeks in South Carolina, go back to New York,
handle some business.
Including but not limited to policy advocacy.
So, eventually I just relocated, because there was
a bigger conversation,
and I just couldn't walk away from it.
[greetings from inside]
[laughing]
-Nice seeing you. -What's going on with y'all?
[Vivian] 'Cause I kept going back to watch the video.
You see the kids hiding their face.
And then I start talking to young people,
and they were like, "Why you tripping?
That happen all the time.
It's okay, that's the norm."
And I'm like, "No, it never should be the norm."
Black girls are lit.
-Learn from Niya. -I just wanna really, really...
[indistinct chatting]
I felt like it was a Pandora box that opened up.
They were two of, like, all these other kids
that I hadn't met yet.
So, whatever it looks like for you,
whatever your "what's next" looks like, create it.
Create it.
So, May of 2016,
we started a full organization, EveryBlackGirl.
Don't get stuck in where you are and where you come from.
You never know when your one word
can shift somebody else.
Like, Niya didn't know she was gonna have that impact.
And all she said was, "No, stop!"
Everything that you need, you actually have.
I'm saying I'm giving you permission to dream again.
[girl] And things can get better.
If you have faith and believe, then things will...
[Vivian] EveryBlackGirl started off as campaign
to get the charges dropped,
to start looking at how to shift school culture
when it comes to push-out,
and dismantle the disturbing the school law.
[indistinct chatter]
Yeah, 'cause we could put a table
and little chairs out here, so you can sit out here
in the sun and drink something.
[overlapping conversations]
I don't know, I didn't plan to relocate my life, right?
But I just couldn't walk away.
I said I was gonna do it, and I can't put a timetable
on what that looks like, so...
Do that mean I don't sit up some nights scared,
like, "Vivian, how you gonna pay rent?
How you gonna do this?" There's been many a night
where I'm like, "What did you just do?
What did you just do?"
If I let that be the louder voice,
I wouldn't be able to do the other stuff.
So, I don't make that the louder voice anymore.
Work ain't done.
Great job, ladies, gimme some.
[clapping]
[Ben] Once the investigation was on, they took everything
and they presented it to Dan Johnson,
who is the solicitor, who is the Chief Prosecutor
of Richland and Kershaw County.
He looked at the case to decide if, in fact,
there was enough to charge...
probable cause to charge me with a crime
in this particular situation.
All parties cleared me of any wrongdoing.
Even those who might grant that Ben acted inappropriately
would tend to isolate it to this one individual,
or this bad apple narrative.
He would not have behaved that way if he didn't feel confident
that the entire system was going to back him,
which it did,
even though he had a record of prior abuse.
This is an example of, it is a system,
and in order for white people to have what we perceive
as safe schools and safe neighborhoods,
it depended, in large part, on a police state
patrolling Black people and keeping them in their place.
[cheering]
[rustling]
[insects and birds chirping]
[Janae] Ooh, okay.
For my master's degree, I was at University of South Carolina.
I was looking at
how the land holds trauma.
There's trauma across this land,
and nature has taken it over.
But the issues still remain,
because history doesn't work the same way that nature does.
The past lives in the present.
Wow.
[Chris] You can see hundreds of acres
of rice field here, built on the backs
of the slave labor force.
-These African engineers... -[Janae] Right, right.
...that had been brought from the rice coast of Africa,
3,000 miles across the ocean.
I don't bring people here, you know, I brought you here
'cause you asked me to bring you.
Why here for you, why'd you wanna get here?
[sea gulls cawing]
As an African American,
you know, your history stops
at a point, you know,
because so much is not documented.
In the absence of records and names,
and in the absence of other ways
to connect to your history,
the land, you know?
This is how you connect to that history.
[rustling]
[twigs snapping]
Oh, wow.
[birds chirping]
It almost feels like
if you can let just nature
take it over, and just forget about it,
then let it be buried with just the natural processes
of the land, then the whole history
will just naturally be erased.
You can see the wear in...
and it's not just Black people,
but you can see, like, the neglect
and how it manifests in people,
in groups, in communities and cultures,
and how you go into some communities,
Black and Brown communities,
you see it's dilapidated like this, right?
[Chris] Yeah, yeah.
[Janae] I mean, you can see the lack of care,
the disinvestment, and the wear that accumulates
from that, yeah.
Murphy Island is a thick place,
and it holds a very ugly history,
but it's being conveniently washed away.
It's a willful neglect, I think.
It allows these ugly histories
to be ignored and to be swept under the rug.
We have to recognize that slavery
is white people's history, too.
[Bobby] Spring Valley scratched away the scab
of memories from 50 years ago.
Somehow, people assume that we had turned the corner,
and, at least in the public schools,
that we had gotten to a place where young people
would be taught and would be safe and secure.
Again, what we're talking about now
may not even have been a national story
if it'd not been caught on tape,
and if it not had emerged in the context of 2015,
particularly in South Carolina.
You find a young man in North Charleston
running from the police,
shot in the back.
And seared in the memories of people at that time
is the summer of 2015 at Mother Emanuel
in the state of South Carolina.
Nine people at bible study
shot because of their race.
Everyone is wondering, "Who are we?
What kind of nation is this?"
And then, in quick succession,
you see a young Black girl here in Columbia
being yanked by a policeman across her classroom.
I mean, this is only months after
the state had been compelled to finally take down
the Confederate flag, which had been defended
for a generation as an emblem of heritage, not hate.
I think unless you know all that history,
you don't understand why we face the current challenges
of policing in schools.
[officer] Ma'am, ma'am.
You gotta get off the pole. Now.
-Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am. -[officer 2] Come off the pole.
[Bree] You come against me with hatred
and oppression and violence.
I come against you in the name of God.
This flag comes down today.
[officer] You gotta get off the pole.
The Lord is my shepherd and I shall not want.
-[cheering] -He makes me lie down
in green pastures.
[crowd shouting]
[reporter] In the shadow of the South Carolina State House,
a heated confrontation over the Confederate flag.
Dueling protests led to a clash between people
for and against the display of the controversial banner.
The blood in my teeth, the blood on my hands is no comparison
to the southern blood that runs through my veins.
[Janae] When I first saw the Spring Valley incident,
that amount of rage and that amount of hatred
that just comes out like that, at once,
and to inflict that type of violence on a child...
on a child.
She was not a child in that moment.
She was not seen as a child,
and she was not seen as a human being.
[Shakara] People have a hard time hearing me,
so they'll be like,
"Speak up. Speak up" and I'll just be like,
"This is as loud as I talk," so I don't know.
You know just gotta work with what you got.
After the incident, somehow I got tagged in the video
on Facebook, so I started reading the comments.
I would wake up feeling depressed.
One day I was in the bathroom, and I don't know,
something just hit me, and I just got a belt
and wrapped it around my neck.
So the ambulance came and I was like,
"I got to stop, because, you know,
there's a lot of people that look up to me."
Oh, you think you're a big shot, huh?
[laughing]
I feel like I'm in a lot better place.
You know, I've been through a lot, but I mean,
I had to pull through.
Okay, come on.
There was a lot of times that I wanted to give up,
but I would talk to Vivian about it and she would tell me,
she was like, "Well, you need to keep going.
Don't let this situation hinder you and stop you
from doing what you want to do."
[Vivian] All right, how you doing?
[Shakara] She'll be like, "You deserve to be happy and free,
just like everyone else."
[Vivian] Oh, you got enough cough drops?
[Shakara] She told me that I can't continue
to let everybody else
determine the life I live and if there's something I want,
I need, you know, need to do it.
And that's another reason why I've started school, you know,
and started the CNA program.
She's very kindhearted and strong.
I feel like me and her connect because she's been through
some of the same things and she know how to deal with it.
And, you know, she's very helpful.
Everybody! Like, come on!
It ain't for me, this Black woman body, who, like,
when I tell you when Shakara hit that floor I thought,
I was a girl...
-Never mind. -[man] Go ahead, go ahead.
-Mm-hmm. -[man] Speak.
I lived that moment.
And this moment in time,
had I been born in this moment in time,
the moment that she lived, I lived.
I remember being so tired at school that day.
Mr. Smith said a math problem and I don't like math.
I didn't understand what he said, so I reached over
to my friend and I said, "What is he saying?
I don't understand what he want us to do."
He said, "Vivian, there you go again."
And I'm like, "No, I just don't understand what you said."
"You always get smart. You're always talking something.
You're always doing this."
I grew up in a time of corporal punishment, right?
And I was like, "No, you just don't make sense to me.
I don't understand." I actually know I got a smart mouth,
but I wasn't trying to smart. I just did not understand.
And that night I... That day I was really tired.
And he was like, "I got something for you."
And he pulled out the paddle, 'cause we used
to be able to get paddled.
And I was like, not today, y'all don't know what
I went through last night.
I ran from a brother all night.
I'm not... Nobody's touching me.
Nobody hitting me. Nothing.
That man had to race me around the whole classroom
until he got tired.
And then he said, "I'm tired of you. Leave."
The difference? A social worker caught me and said,
"Who hurt you?" Changed my relationship for school forever.
What if somebody just asked that girl?
Like, what if? Because I was her.
I remember like, no, I just got beat last night.
I got touched in places I never wanted to be touched.
What if somebody just asked this little girl
what was going on? Like...
I don't remember a time up to the age of 13
I wasn't fighting somebody off my Black body,
my Black female body.
Then I was punished because I wanted to dress in pants
because I'm like, shit if I got on pants
you can't get up there easy enough.
So when I saw that video, a lot of stuff came up for me
and I was like, no, they don't get to walk this alone.
I know what it means to walk it alone.
They don't get to have that.
No, and then you said, "No, you don't treat her like this"
and you get arrested?
Oh, come on, no, no, no, no, no.
Kids get to be beautiful and loved
and they get to feel their full expression of themselves
and not feel like, oh, if I'm not this, I'm not okay.
Like, they were born whole, perfect, and complete.
It's up to us to keep it like that, not them.
It's our responsibility.
-So... -[man] Right.
-Yo. -[Vivian] I know. I'm good.
[soft laughter]
So one of the things happening this week,
I'll be in a conversation with the officer
who assaulted Shakara in the classroom, Ben Fields.
Hoping that we can have a very clear and honest conversation.
Be honest, once you went in there, you saw a criminal.
You didn't see a little girl.
You didn't see this, you know... Own it.
But we'll see how open and honest he's ready to be
and where he looks at what's next.
You represent a system, and what needs to be changed
in that system from his perspective.
It, it's just, woo, it's a lot.
It's a lot.
[rain pattering]
Okay, there's an elephant in the room.
Be very clear, when this went down, was I like,
oh, there's a grown man who just assaulted a child?
Yes, I did.
For a girl who wouldn't get out of her chair.
-[Ben] Right, right. -That's a child.
Oh my God, this is a little girl.
Is there any other way that this could've gone down?
This is, like, just insane.
And I still can't understand why it hasn't been, like,
"Shakara, I apologize. It shoulda looked different."
There hasn't been an apology.
I think she is owed one.
Okay.
You're critical of the situation and critical of me.
I think that's fine. I was acting
as a uniformed police officer, obviously, I was terminated
for the incident for the use of force
because the sheriff felt like it was improper. Okay?
But certainly it wasn't, you know,
it wasn't an assault in any way, shape, or form.
You know, I was a political victim in this situation,
meaning I was cut loose because politically it made sense.
If I follow policy and procedure and I follow the law,
there's nothing more I can do,
because that's my responsibility,
that's the oath that I took.
I just, I continue to, on a law enforcement level,
I stand by what I did that day.
So you said you came in and from the eyes of a police officer
it didn't have to go that far, but if I'm looking at a criminal
and not a child, yeah, it can go that far.
Because I read the reports.
The class wasn't really interrupted until this teacher
got upset that she wouldn't leave.
Why not remove the other kids and handle her?
Because you've said you've known her before
so it was some deeper stuff.
So there could have been a like, "Shakara, what is it
that's making you not want to leave?"
Well, there's certainly-- and there's people close to me
that feel the same way you do about that situation
when you talk about classroom management and things like that.
So it's not the first time I've heard that and that's fair.
If I went to... If I was patrol and I got called
to a movie theater to remove somebody from the movie theater,
I wouldn't ask the movie theater to leave.
Or I went to a restaurant and needed to remove somebody
from a restaurant,
I wouldn't ask the restaurant to leave, right?
And so I viewed it from a police standpoint.
And that's where we keep going back to the system
that created this to happen.
You haven't been my focus.
The system has been my focus.
I don't believe police should be in schools.
There's no reason that you should've been called in period.
-All right, I got you. -Yeah.
So let me say a couple things.
One is I would say, obviously, you know, we know that SROs
in a school doesn't mean safety. I don't disagree with that.
One of the biggest issues for me right now
is they're sticking SROs in schools
who aren't even trained properly.
But you've got to move the goal post back a little bit.
It's okay to discipline kids.
It's okay to hold kids accountable.
I'm not saying kids don't get to be held accountable.
All we're saying is like, what does that accountability
look like? We should not have a law
where kids are being arrested for things
that they can't get arrested outside on the streets for.
Look at the system.
What system are you referring to?
You say the system, we need to change the system.
Help me understand that a little bit.
So, when I say system, I'm talking about governmental,
education, institutionalized racism, all the policies
that we create, all the laws that we create,
that's what I mean about the system.
Okay, so, you know, you know, the systematic racism
and all this kind of stuff, I think it's talking points.
I think it sounds really good on its face,
but it's one of those things where we're taking the onus
again off the kids and saying, "Hey, you're not responsible
for your bad behavior, what we're going to do is
we're going to blame it on the system."
And one of the things that, you know, we looked at with
the disturbing school law, it was brought up a lot,
was a disproportional amount of Black kids
were arrested to white kids, right?
And a disproportional amount of Black kids were suspended
to white kids, I mean, as you look at it as a whole.
I mean, you go to any school district
and that's going to be the case. Okay.
Why is that happening, in your opinion?
There is a tendency to think that Black kids
are automatically at fault.
This one was running the hallways and this one
was running the hallways, yet this one got
the discipline referral
and this one was like, "Well, you know
you can't do that." It's something going on.
There is a way that we're with young people
depending on if they're white versus children of color.
And that's been statistically proven.
In these schools where it was disproportional,
they also have Black deputies.
How do you explain that? Are these Black deputies
and these Black teachers, are they part of the system
that's hurting Black people?
Absolutely, then we talk about internalized oppression.
So if I see that I've been trained all my life
that this is better than this, I push that same narrative
and I act in accordance to, so yes.
We can go all day on the problems.
I can't talk about problems too much
because we already know they're there.
My focus is, how do we create solutions?
How do we create solutions?
And we keep talking about holding kids accountable,
but we get to hold adults accountable, too,
because we're responsible for the next generation.
-We really are. -Right. I think that's good.
I think that, going back to something,
I think you made a great point. I think classroom management...
[inaudible]
[Vivian] Lot to process.
It's a internal battle I'm having with myself
as I move forward and ask, am I doing stuff right?
Am I harming?
How do I sit and have a conversation
with a man who's created harm to somebody I love?
It's not going to make sense to everybody,
especially since half the time it don't make sense to me.
Do I feel like there's a piece of him
that can still be worked with?
If my womb spirit had told me, "No, it's not there,"
I would've like left it alone, but I saw that
you're a man willing to step into something new.
You're a man still grappling, because you've only gone
with all you knew,
and part of it is your white privilege.
So you think you did nothing wrong
because white privilege taught you that.
But if you want to be in a room with kids,
I do believe it's my responsibility to make sure
like, "Oh, I'm not going to let you just go there
without going through these things."
If those conversations aren't had,
then where do we go from there?
Because if I throw him aside, I don't know what other room
he going to walk into, right?
So, sitting with it a lot.
Just sitting.
[music on radio]
[Ben] I think I connect
with a lot of different communities well,
and I think it's because of the way I was raised.
In the home I grew up in it was never about anybody's race.
It was about people are valuable.
That's it. Nothing else matters.
Growing up I loved going down into the project areas
and being the only white boy.
There was something to that, because you were scared,
but at the same time you were like,
"Hey, this is what it is, right?"
And either you had to be able to ball or you're out.
[laughs] You know what I'm saying?
And you had to prove it.
You couldn't just walk in there. You had to prove it.
Let me see here.
I was kind of a hotdog, so I was running my mouth.
I had no chill to me, I was just like...
I would say things to the crowd and things like that.
So yeah, they would give it back to me.
Yeah, they would say stuff about my birthmark
and my face and things like that.
You know, I'm on the court and, oh yeah, they would go after me.
"Nice face. Did someone punch you?" Stuff like that.
The birthmark is one of the things that made me
a good cop even, I could sympathize
with victims and try to put myself in their shoes,
how they felt. That's me right there.
We all have these perceptions sometimes of ourselves
without any real reality that, hey,
this person's treating me in a certain way
because we're Black or they're treating me
in a certain way because I have a birthmark on my face
or because I look different than them.
But is that reality?
My situation was only about race narrative driven
when it was never remotely about race at all.
The idea that somehow it becomes a racial thing based on nothing
but just the visual of the arrest is just insane to me.
With no other facts that matter, it is a five second video,
and we're gonna dub this guy racist,
we're going to dub law enforcement racist,
we're going to dub the system racist,
is dangerous to me.
[Shawn] The most dangerous individual
who utilizes implicit biases unknowingly
are the ones who don't believe that they have them.
They say that they don't have implicit biases
because they have one or two Black friends.
I've even had one officer tell me,
"I know I have implicit biases,
but I don't want to be reminded of them."
I'll never forget that.
Everyone has them, you know, and unfortunately
we want to ignore them, you know.
And often times that may come out
in how you use your discretion.
This job calls for us to be human first.
You can't have this job and intentionally ignore
your own implicit biases.
This is Shauna Bell here, the way we know each other,
we used to work together at Spring Valley
eight years ago, somewhere in that range.
I was there for four years.
I was there two years before Ben got there and then two years...
Or my last two years was when he was there.
When did we date, 2009?
Yeah, we dated from 2009 to 2011,
-somewhere in that range there. -A friend of mine
actually called me to tell me that...
She was like, you know,
"Turn on the TV and turn to CNN."
And so it's shocking to see someone that you know
plastered all over TV and being talked about in a way
that you know isn't true, so my heart went out to him,
because I know that Ben is not what he was portrayed as.
I know that it was a lot of people who were making comments
about how it should've been handled,
and I feel like they weren't necessarily in a school
or haven't been in a school before.
As a teacher, you are one person in front of 20,
and if they ever decide that they aren't going to listen
to you anymore, you're outnumbered.
And so it is very imperative in the classroom
for you to set some type of boundaries for your kids,
or you're gone for the rest of the year.
[woman] I'd like for you to meet Ben Fields.
-[man] Ben, nice to meet you. -[Ben] Good to meet you as well.
So what are you speaking on today?
Just the book you wrote, I guess?
Yeah, the book, you know, the root cause
of the Parkland School shooting.
The tag line is that the Parkland School shooting
was the most avoidable mass murder in American history
and the policies that made it inevitable
have come to your kids' school.
You've seen this in the frontline, right?
The way that they strip SROs, strip teachers.
Absolutely, when we ignore crime and bad behavior
the very people that get hurt are the minority people.
You know, the school to prison pipeline
is one of the biggest hoax I've ever heard of.
It simply isn't true.
And yet, and yet, that's what they sell.
And it's disgraceful.
This issue I've been working on trying to expose the underside
of this discipline reform business, right?
Fight the school to prison pipeline
by reducing suspensions, expulsions, and arrests.
We get all those numbers down quite frequently
simply by systematically hiding misbehavior
or refusing to enforce the rules.
The Parkland shooter story.
If one single individual in the Broward County School District
made one single responsible decision about him,
it probably could've been averted,
but every irresponsible decision actually makes total sense
given the policies that govern the system.
I really appreciate your coming today, Max.
I'd also like to acknowledge that we have with us Ben Fields.
His claim to fame is he did his job,
and then they disagreed with him about how he did his job.
When I first saw the incident with Officer Fields
in Spring Valley High School, it mirrored incidents
that I had seen in the high schools that I had been in
and the incidents that had been described to me
by multiple teachers with out of control students
and students who came to school
and did not obey any directive of a teacher.
You can't allow two percent of the population to determine
the education for the whole.
When people say, you know, you need to be able to exclude
a student from a classroom, you need to be able to have
school resource officers present, or you need to have
police present in schools because you wanna make sure
that learning can take place, they should watch that video.
Because certainly no learning was taking place
while that girl was being dragged across the room.
Certainly no learning was taking place that day,
the week that followed, for the months that followed thereafter,
while those students have to live the aftermath
of witnessing that in school and wondering
if that will happen to them again.
I asked the young lady if she would get up and come with me.
She said, no, she hadn't done anything wrong.
To which my response was, "I hadn't said you did,
but get your stuff and come with me. You know me.
You know I'm a fair guy. I've dealt with you before."
To which again she refused.
And at that point in time I approached her
and went to place her under arrest and the fight was on.
She cracked me in the jaw.
She pulled away from me.
I got her out of the chair.
And the getting out of the chair part
is the part that went viral.
Schools need good, fair, firm discipline.
[reporter] Look towards me,
not the camera. I'll just get you to say
-and spell your name for me. -All right, Ben Fields,
B-E-N, last name, F-I-E-L-D-S.
Tell me why you wanted to be here?
We're not allowing teachers, administrators,
and for that matter,
police officers to do their jobs
to keep schools safe...
One of the things I talk about a lot is the whole race thing.
This thing is about race, right?
And so what happens is, you have Black and white people
who every day get along really well.
You have Black and white people who coexist on a daily basis.
They work together, they go to school together,
and they get along together.
And what happens is the media takes something
and they try to divide us,
meaning the regular, everyday working class person
who really makes this country tick,
and they try to make us think
that civil rights just ended yesterday,
that slavery just ended yesterday,
and that, you know, the racial disparities in this country
are so great.
My story was a good story because it was
a white deputy and a Black girl.
She made the decision to fight a uniformed officer that day.
And the only person that was ever punished that day was who?
Ben Fields. I lost my job.
Regardless of anything else,
Ben Fields was the only one punished out of that situation.
When you can't trace the past into the present,
you are left with deeply problematic explanations
for current conditions. Victim blaming explanations.
I'm thinking about Trayvon Martin and I saw an interview
with one of the jurors who said that George Zimmerman
just seemed like such a nice guy, so relatable.
And I think that's worth noting.
Trayvon Martin, he didn't seem like a nice child
or didn't seem relatable? He seemed threatening?
But George Zimmerman with a gun,
he seemed like a nice guy and relatable?
So because Black people are seen as inherently criminal,
Black children are also seen as inherently criminal.
The core concern I have is that we know now.
It's not an open question. We know conclusively
from research that Black kids do not engage
in more disciplinable type offenses in their schools.
It is not that there's a particular gene for Black kids
that makes them misbehave more. That's not accurate.
And so, we need to throw away that frankly racist notion
that kids of color are worse,
and educate all of our kids like we believe in them.
Educate all of our kids like they're valuable and treat them
like they are somebody's beloved baby in that classroom.
[Shakara] Mm, I'm just frustrated.
About a lot.
You know, I feel that every time I put
one step forward, I'm taking two back,
or like I can be on a good path
and then something just come and set me all the way back.
My sister.
Just being there for her, that was the whole reason.
[Vivian] Once again with the unhealed trauma.
If you talk to her, I often call it wisdom.
She's one of those people that your grandparents would be like,
"That's a wise child." Her dreams and her hope
and that passion that she has for certain things,
but all these barriers upon barriers.
[Vivian] That incident, it sheds a light
on how quickly we are to, like, just leave people.
There's a lot at stake.
Well, what we can do is we do like a practice test
on just maybe that section or just, you know,
work on that for a while until you really, really
feel like you have it.
[Shakara] Like, some of this is easy
because I know how to do the multiplication,
so that's how I do division,
but then when I get to, like, this, it's confusing.
[Aneatra] Okay.
Hopefully, just zone in.
The only pressure that you have is,
you know, whatever you put on yourself.
Like, you've already come so far, so, you know,
but especially getting that close
and you've only got one more piece.
I know you can do it.
Well, with these-- So with these...
And I'm assuming you don't get a calculator with this.
[Vivian] What was Charlotte?
What happened in Charlotte today?
Okay, so Charlotte today was an individual
from the Manhattan Institute who went down to Parkland
where the shooting took place.
And what he did is he took a look... and this all kind of
evolves around school safety and things like that,
some of the stuff I've been talking about.
This kid's criminal and bad behavior
-was ignored by administrators. -[Vivian] Right.
Constantly. And because it was, this kid was able to get
and buy guns because he had no criminal record.
And the shooting really could've been avoided in every way.
And what's happening is it's being ignored
because they want their arrest numbers down,
they want discipline numbers down,
and that's essentially what it's about.
We'll say his behavior
kept being ignored all this time.
I'm going to say a child kept being ignored all this time.
When you're talking a criminal, you're definitely
talking about a criminal, somebody who goes
and shoots everybody is a criminal,
no doubt about it.
But it looks as though when it starts with a teacher
calling for assistance 'cause a student
is not putting away their phone or closing their book
or being compliant with what they're saying
is the same as someone who would pick up a gun
and go shoot their classmates.
Obviously, there's no comparison between somebody
who kills 16 students, right?
And then somebody who was just--
Because Black girls aren't doing that.
Understand something, who was disrupting a classroom
and then resisted a lawful arrest,
which is what happened in my situation.
You can like it or not, but that's what happened.
My point is simply this, bad behavior
is being ignored in schools.
But if the automatic label is criminal,
there's already all these things.
Criminal behavior is criminal behavior.
[Vivian] It is not criminal for me to roll my eyes at a teacher.
Let's be human. There are certain people
who get the benefit of being humanized,
no matter how grotesque the behavior can be,
i.e. when we think about Dylann Roof.
Dude gets to go to Burger King and get a burger
after you have just murdered nine people.
[Ben] Those are conspiracy theories
and let me, let me, let me stop you--
[Carrie] Dylann Roof was a conspiracy theory?
Whoa, whoa, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.
[Carrie] You didn't see this on the news?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm not saying it's not the truth,
but what I'm saying is in interrogations
we give suspects food all the time.
That's not an uncommon thing to do.
[Carrie] He gets to be interrogated.
African Americans primarily get to be dead
before they're even questioned.
That's false, but okay.
-[Carrie] It's false, Ben? -It is false.
-[Carrie] How is it false? -That's a false statement.
[Carrie] Okay, Walter Scott.
Did he get to be interrogated?
You're making blanket statements about things
that you're not educated on, and I'm not--
What I'm getting at, you're missing my point, though.
The Walter Scott situation, where that cop shot and killed
Walter Scott, right?
He is now doing 20 years in prison, is he not?
Yeah, but Philando Castile, he says,
"I have a concealed weapon and I have a permit."
Shot and killed in his car--
[Ben] And that cop was charged.
Yeah, but the thing is, it occurred.
And you wanna keep... I'm not talking about the after.
Hear me, white kids and Black kids do the same things,
they get different levels of punishment, and that's the--
And we disagree on that, 100% disagree.
[Carrie] Yeah, you shouldn't be working with kids, I'm sorry.
[Ben] What I'm saying is...
Listen, do you understand what my...
And I said this, bad behavior's being ignored was the point.
-[Carrie] I said that's right. -This mass shooting
could have been avoided, that's my point.
And bad behavior, and I said,
bad behavior's being ignored among police.
-And you can't accept that. -Okay.
I want you to understand that where you were
and what Charlotte was about,
does color play into
how you think about what we're talking about?
I'm not even going to continue to try to explain that
because yeah, right, right.
You know, because I don't feel
this feeling from you that you actually really care.
You care, but the breadth of your reading
is confined within one area.
Because that supports the thoughts and the ideas
that you want to foster,
that's going to continue to tell you
that nothing you did was wrong in the situation with Shakara.
That's what we need to be.
So, I definitely didn't do anything wrong
in that situation, but here's the point,
we can disagree on it, so disagreeing is turning into
you attacking me personally now.
[Carrie] But that's what you've been doing all night.
I didn't say anything about you personally.
You've been slugging all night, dude!
Hmm, okay, all right.
I think this is a good example of the burden
that Black people bear in trying to educate White people.
This is one of the reasons you hear more and more Black people
saying, "White people, go talk to your own.
It's nowhere near as exhausting
and demoralizing as it is for us."
Defensiveness that functions to refuse any challenge
to your worldview, any growth,
any opening, that's white fragility.
And that's what we're seeing in Ben,
an absolute refusal in the face
of incredible opportunity for growth.
An opportunity to bear witness to the impact
that seeing this happen to this girl
had on so many Black people.
He refuses it.
-Yeah! -[woman] Thank you, guys!
Y'all give it up for Miss Vivian.
[cheering]
[Vivian] Oh my God, okay.
A little over two years ago, I came here to hug two girls,
who shoulda never experienced
what any child should experience.
And I literally only came here to stay for two days,
so to look out right now and to know what
we've been doing, and how many girls I got to hug,
I'm having a moment.
[cheering]
[stutters]
I will forever say, Black girl,
no matter what this world tells us,
you are loved,
you are supported,
and you are beyond magical.
We chose these grounds because the South got something to say,
and even more so, we got something to teach.
[cheers and applause]
I'm gonna bring your attention to
Miss Bree Newsome in the crowd.
Bree is the woman who climbed up the flagpole on these grounds
and brought down the flag.
Miss Bree Newsome!
[cheering]
I was, in that moment, representing everyone
who has contributed to the struggle for hundreds of years,
the struggle that has been going on.
I wasn't without fear, I just had a belief in something
that's greater than my fear, and I have a determination
to fight for it.
Come on, yes!
This is like a full circle moment for me in so many ways.
So, God bless all of you, and I wish you all the best.
Thank you.
Miss Bree, light her up.
[cheering]
And we want her to know, that no matter where you go,
-every Black girl got you. -Yes. I love it.
-The same way you had us. -Yes.
[clapping]
[Vivian] This is actually my favorite part
of the conferences,
when I get to celebrate and just acknowledge people.
Brianna Bell is a high school student
from San Diego, California.
Two months ago, she was assaulted
by a school resource officer.
After her assault, Brianna chose
that that was not gonna stop her,
she's gonna graduate this year,
but she also started mobilizing students
to remove officers from schools.
And now, there is a young lady in the room.
We're gonna have our first EveryBlackGirl
Black Girl Magic Award recipient, Shakara Murphy,
acknowledge Brianna, and present her with her award.
[applause]
Hello, my name is Shakara Murphy.
Most of you know me from a video that went viral
when I was assaulted...
[crying]
...by a school resource officer
at Spring Valley High School, in 2015.
I stand here today to honor another Black girl
who experienced what I experienced, Brianna Bell.
Brianna, I know that this journey has not been easy,
but I thank you for choosing to stand for yourself
and other students.
It is my honor, as the first EveryBlackGirl
Black Girl Magic Award recipient, to present to you
the 2018 EveryBlackGirl Black Girl Magic Award.
We stand with you.
Can you please come to the stage?
[cheering]
[Brianna] I'm just so honored to be
among so many women that understand
that they have to have their voices be heard.
So, I'm just so honored that so many people in this room
understand not only my struggle,
but they understand my need to not shut up, to not be quiet.
They understand that I need to have my voice heard.
[clapping]
When Shakara first came to us, I knew that there were
some challenges ahead.
She didn't wanna sit in the classroom
with her back toward the door.
So I had to rearrange my classroom to make sure
that she was comfortable, for her not to fear
of someone coming up behind her.
And she expressed that, "Hey, I'm not good in math."
And I told her, "Neither am I! I'm a reading teacher!"
But I told her, I said, "If you put your mind to it,
it's something that you can do."
It was almost two years that she had worked
to accomplish this goal.
She's had just so many challenges before,
she just wants someone to care, and once she figured out
that, hey, they care what I do, and it matters what I do,
that made all the difference.
[Vivian] Here we are.
I heard that even your teachers were crying
when they found out you passed.
Like, the number of people that's cheering you on.
Yeah.
And I stayed up a couple nights all night, just studying,
I was like, somehow Imma get it, I don't care how I do it,
-I'm just, I'm gonna pass. -Yup.
It was a long road, but you did it.
If you use this as evidence that no matter what life
throw at you, it ain't nothing that you
can't get past, it's nothing that you can't create.
I haven't really thought about the situation.
I'm trying to move forward because I know that was,
like, a really hard time in my life.
You know, I used to be a little bit more outgoing,
and I'm just trying to get back to that point
without dwelling on the past and thinking about it.
Yeah, and I have you to thank for a lot.
You've been, like, there.
There's times when I couldn't get to the doctor.
You was like a second mom, you made sure I got there.
You went outta your way, no matter what time of day it was,
to be there, you know, I can come to you
and tell you everything and, you know,
a lot of our talks made me keep going.
Thank you.
What happened to you should not happen to anybody,
but like I told you from the beginning,
you got me for life.
My life shifted, it totally changed.
All the thousands of Shakaras that we wouldn't have known
and been able to reach, we've been able to reach, right?
And I owe that to you, that's why I said,
so you got me for life.
My word is my bond, so.
Back to our top story, a Richland County deputy
and school resource officer now out of a job.
[reporter] A federal lawsuit claims
a Richland school resource officer
sexually assaulted a female student
at Spring Valley High School.
Today we arrested Jamel Bradley
He's charged with criminal sexual conduct, third degree.
This is an incident that occurred in 2018
with a student at Spring Valley High School.
Unfortunately, we had a monster that worked among us.
And that we did not know about.
But we do now know, and he has been arrested.
This is still a very active investigation,
but we felt like he needed to be arrested
and he needed to be arrested today.
Sheriff Lott says, "Oh my God, how could this happen?"
But I'm like, you do the same speech
and you make it about your SROs,
that's just one bad apple, that's one bad apple.
At some point you gonna have to be, like,
"Oh, I picked these apples."
Sheriff Lott said yesterday that RCSD learned
of the sexual abuse allegations that Bradley
has been charged with less than a week ago.
But RCSD told me today that there has been
five separate internal investigations into Bradley
during his decade-long career as a school resource officer.
[Chris] This is a real structure over here
that would have given them
something to get out of flood waters.
[birds chirping]
[Janae] There are many people in this country,
especially in South Carolina, who will say,
"Yeah, slavery's done. What's the big deal?" Right?
"Why do Black people act like they're still enslaved." Right?
Or, "Slavery was yesterday."
Like it just ended.
Nobody's owning people anymore.
But, we have inherited that mentality of racial oppression.
This idea that, within our society,
certain people belong in certain places.
Black people belong in a subjugated space,
like they belong in...
They're an underclass of people.
And if you're in the underclass,
then you do what you're told.
You don't challenge the system,
and your space is to make white people comfortable
by not talking about race,
by not acting out,
by changing the way we talk, and changing the way we act,
so that white people feel comfortable.
When those unsaid rules of who belongs where is challenged,
that's when the wrath is felt.
[crowd] I can't breathe!
I can't breathe!
[reporter] America has plunged into chaos.
The recent deaths of George Floyd,
Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery..
They're all fueling massive demonstrations nationwide.
Black lives matter!
[reporter] Protestors and activists
are demanding justice for Black Americans
that have been facing systemic racism for decades.
[crowd] Black lives matter!
Black lives matter!
Systematic oppression needs to end!
I can't breathe!
[Vivian] We always say children are the future.
The children are now the adults who get to lead.
Schools are a microcosm of what we see in our world.
Just like what happened in Spring Valley,
what brought us here to start this whole stuff around,
there was a 17-year-old girl who stood
watching three authority figures in a room harm a Black body
and say, "No, you can't do this."
George Floyd was killed
and a 17-year-old Black girl stood,
filmed the whole thing and said, "No, you can't do this."
And so, the nation just had enough.
[woman] This is what democracy looks like!
[crowd] This is what democracy looks like!
[woman] This is what democracy looks like!
[crowd] This is what democracy looks like!
[woman 2] Mama, I can't breathe!
Mama, I can't breathe.
Those are the words of a dying man.
[crowd chanting]
I keep saying it's not about Ben.
Once again, this is bigger than him.
He's a representation of what we see
on a larger scale with white America.
[girl] I need teachers that care
about me and my brothers and sisters!
I don't need to walk down the hallway and see a SRO
with his knee in somebody's back.
[applause]
He still doesn't understand the difference
between accountability and blame.
So as long as he thinks he's gonna be blamed,
he's never gonna say, "Oh, I see my role in this."
I'm with these people half of the day, for half of my life!
I don't need to worry about going to jail!
I am begging y'all, if y'all want change, change it!
[crowd cheering]
[Vivian] They say Ben was just one bad apple,
well, no, this whole barrel is contaminated.
As long as they're starting at the top,
and that's the place where it's been granted permission,
it's just gonna be another Ben on another day.
[crowd] Teachers matter!
Teachers matter!
[Vivian] I'm here today with a call to action.
We demand to divest from police and invest in our children.
This demand is not new.
Let's talk about Spring Valley, 2015,
when a school resource officer assaulted a child
for not giving her cell phone.
What is safe or resourceful about that?
Think about that when we're talking about
removing policing from schools.
I need each of you to contact your school boards, your mayor
and your governor, and tell them police officers
get to be removed and invest in social services,
education, our teachers, because our children's lives
depend on it, but also I'm very clear
and Imma get emotional, I know I am.
They don't have to keep showing up for the fight
that we shoulda already had for them a long time ago.
[cheering]
We're at the tipping point.
And I think we've actually tipped over.
We gonna change it now, or we'll never change it again.
This is the moment.
[crowd] Black students matter!
Black students matter!
-Our teachers matter! -Our teachers matter!
[reporter] Well, another protest today in downtown L.A.
This time by students.
They're pushing to eliminate the L.A. school police department.
[reporter 2] Young protesters led a march
through Oakland, California
on Tuesday to demand police-free schools.
[reporter 3] Now One Pennsylvania
and the Education Rights Network
are calling on the district to remove police from campuses.
[reporter 4] The Minneapolis school board
said it would no longer use
city police as school resource officers.
[Vivian] So I'm headed to Michigan
in the middle of a pandemic,
because a girl, who we are referring to as Grace,
was arrested for failing to complete her online schoolwork.
I prefer not to have to travel again, and the hope is
there won't even be an opportunity for me to go,
because there will be no more Shakaras and Graces.
This is the work towards transformation.
This is what it looks like to, you know,
be all in and put your ass on the line, so to speak.
Is it worth it for me?
It's the risk, right? So, risk it.
Is it worth it for you?
[somber music]