| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
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We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
| We are back here with Travis Smiley, syndicated talk show host and author. | ||
| Mr. Smiley, I want to begin with front page of USA Today, Juneteenth celebrations, communities keeping rich traditions alive. | ||
| What does Juneteenth mean to you and how do you celebrate? | ||
|
unidentified
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First of all, Greta, thank you for having me on. | |
| It's a pleasure to be with you once again. | ||
| Juneteenth is ultimately about freedom. | ||
| By any other definition, that's what it's really about, freedom. | ||
| And there will be all kinds of celebrations and commemorations all across the country today here in Los Angeles. | ||
| We are celebrating the fourth anniversary of this talk station, this black talk station. | ||
| There are thousands of talk stations across the country, but literally about five or six black-owned talk stations, black-operated talk stations. | ||
| We're pleased to be one of those, the only one, frankly, west of the Mississippi. | ||
| And so we launched this station four years ago on this day. | ||
| I figured if we're going to be a black talk station, we might as well launch on a day that has meaning and purpose and value. | ||
| And so today is literally literally the fourth anniversary of KBLA Talk 1580, based in LA, but heard across the country. | ||
| So we have a huge celebration today of the work and witness that we are attempting to do every single day, but also celebrating this day again, to my mind, in a word that is ultimately about freedom. | ||
| The scary part of these commemoration celebrations today is that one could argue that in many respects, Greta, this America that we now occupy is less free than it was even 10, 15, 20 years ago. | ||
| We are in the midst, as you well know, of the month of June, and all of these Supreme Court decisions starting yesterday are coming out. | ||
| We expect more of these rulings that we're watching live coverage of on C-SPAN over the next few weeks. | ||
| And this country is always at its best when it's expanding rights. | ||
| That's what Juneteenth was about, expanding the rights, expanding freedom for my people. | ||
| And so America is always at our best when we're expanding rights, not when we're shrinking. | ||
| But with each passing day, it seems, this Supreme Court, the Trump administration, and so many other ways, we see America contracting and not expanding when it comes to the rights of everyday people. | ||
| So on the one hand, it is a day of commemoration, a day of celebration. | ||
| On the other hand, a day of reminding us how far we have to go. | ||
| This democracy, in many ways, I believe, is fragile. | ||
| And it's up to us to save this experiment in democracy. | ||
| And now is a good time for us to take that mission more seriously, I think. | ||
| KBLA radio station out of Los Angeles, that's where you are this morning. | ||
| What are you hearing from your viewers, your listeners, on the immigration protests in that city? | ||
|
unidentified
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Last night, when we recorded this conversation that you and I will discuss later about climate justice plus black health, our second year doing a climate justice symposium on C-SPAN, and for that, we're grateful that C-SPAN covered this again this year. | |
| So last night, to your question, Greta, our mayor, Karen Bass, joined us to welcome the national audience. | ||
| You will see that program tonight on C-SPAN at 8 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| I know we'll talk about it later, but since you asked, we recorded it live here last night in LA in front of an amazing audience. | ||
| And Mayor Bass showed up last night and had a few words to say about this. | ||
| So the nation will hear her talk about this issue specifically as the mayor of the city tonight on C-SPAN. | ||
| But I can tell you now that she is none too happy with the way that the Trump administration moved against her wishes, against the wishes of the governor of this state, Gavin Newsom, to send those National Guards troops, to send those Marines here to Los Angeles. | ||
| It was just yesterday, I recall, that she finally canceled the curfew. | ||
| There had been a curfew, Greta, in downtown LA for some days, but she canceled that curfew yesterday. | ||
| So, you know, it's not as if things were ever out of control here anyway. | ||
| We've got thousands of sheriffs and thousands of police and thousands of state police. | ||
| We have more than enough law enforcement in this city, in this county, in this state to handle any protests that might have gotten out of control. | ||
| But Donald Trump, again, against the wishes of our democratically elected leaders, forced those troops down our throats. | ||
| And they were really doing much of nothing, just sitting around guarding federal buildings at which nothing was happening. | ||
| It was a horrible waste of taxpayer money. | ||
| You saw Pete Hegsteth here on C-SPAN, the Defense Secretary, talk about the fact that they were spending about $135 million to send those troops to LA, and we did not need them. | ||
| And so things were never completely out of control in the first place. | ||
| But things are as calm now as they ever have been. | ||
| Again, the curfew has ended. | ||
| And so it seems like we're making progress in this regard, but it shouldn't have taken the governor of California having to sue the Trump administration over these guards and Marines that we never wanted or needed here in the first place, Credit. | ||
| President Trump yesterday, once again, defended his decision to send the National Guard to Los Angeles. | ||
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unidentified
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This is what he had to say. | |
| I'll tell you one thing. | ||
| If I didn't bring in the military to Los Angeles, you wouldn't even have a city. | ||
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unidentified
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You probably wouldn't be here. | |
| You'd be covering the riots in Los Angeles right now. | ||
| And we got a great ruling, as you know, yesterday from this agenda. | ||
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unidentified
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The absolute right. | |
| If we didn't bring in the military in Los Angeles, you would have maybe no city. | ||
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unidentified
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You'd have just what you have with the housing burned to the ground. | |
| How will you ensure that? | ||
| Travis Miley, no city if he had not sent the National Guard. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, Donald Trump doing what Donald Trump does, this God complex he has, that he is the savior of all. | |
| And but for him, the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. | ||
| And so we should be thanking God today on Juneteenth that Donald Trump saved the city of Los Angeles. | ||
| That is the narrative, ridiculous as it, though, as ridiculous as it sounds, that is the narrative that Donald Trump wants to advance, that he saved the city of Los Angeles. | ||
| I'm not naive about this. | ||
| California is a big prize. | ||
| It's a big blue prize. | ||
| And Donald Trump has this penchant for taking on the biggest person, the biggest institution in the room, so as to make a point to others that if I can do it to them, I will do it to you. | ||
| It's the reason he's gone after Harvard in the way that he has, to take down the granddaddy of these academic institutions. | ||
| It's the reason why he's behaving or misbehaving, as it were, when it comes to California. | ||
| No naivete here. | ||
| Again, California is a huge political prize. | ||
| And so he has taken it upon himself to smack down California and our Democratic elected officials. | ||
| He has no love for California whatsoever. | ||
| And so for him to suggest that were it for these troops, were it for these Marines who absolutely did nothing, they did absolutely nothing. | ||
| So what he believes in his mind that he did to save the city of LA is absurd. | ||
| What he did was waste people's money. | ||
| $135 million, I repeat, was the initial number. | ||
| That number likely has gone up. | ||
| But that's what he did. | ||
| He wasted taxpayer money. | ||
| He wasted the time of these persons who, again, sat around and did much of anything, much of nothing. | ||
| And so again, it's just Donald Trump's Godplex, God complex, suggesting that were it not for him, America would just fall flat. | ||
| And so one has to take those words with a grain of salt, but it's just not true. | ||
| Donald Trump continues to be the liar in chief. | ||
| I'll leave it there. | ||
| As you said, Karen Bows, the LA mayor, attended your event on black health and climate yesterday evening. | ||
| We covered it, and that's going to air at 8 p.m. tonight on C-SPAN. | ||
| You can also watch it on C-SPAN Now or free video mobile app or online on demand at c-span.org. | ||
|
unidentified
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What is this event, Tavis Smiley? | |
| Thank you, Greta. | ||
| So last year, we assigned ourselves here in Los Angeles at this station, KBLA, to put climate justice, climate equity, climate resilience higher on the American agenda. | ||
| I believe that there are so many issues that threaten our democracy. | ||
| Dr. Cornell West, who you will see on C-SPAN as a part of this conversation tonight as well, wrote a book with me. | ||
| I was honored to write a book with him, I should say, some years ago. | ||
| That book was called The Rich and the Rest of Us. | ||
| It went to top of the New York Times bestseller list, I'm honored to say, a book about poverty that goes on the bestseller list. | ||
| So people were really fascinated by this issue some years ago. | ||
| And we argued in that book a number of things, not the least of which is that poverty is a threat to the very existence of this democracy. | ||
| And I tend to call it, Greta, more often an experiment in democracy. | ||
| To my mind, we have a Madisonian framework for democracy. | ||
| We've not quite as yet achieved that. | ||
| So it really is an experiment in democracy more than it is, in fact, a democracy. | ||
| That said, poverty is one of the greatest threats to our democracy. | ||
| And we wrote that book, I guess, over 10 or 12 years ago. | ||
| I could add to that list these days a number of issues that I also think are rather intractable in some ways that are threats to the existence of this very democracy. | ||
| Poverty is at the top of the list, but certainly climate justice, climate equity, climate resilience now has risen so much higher on that list. | ||
| One does not need to be a rocket scientist to look around every single day as we are now entering hurricane season, just reading about this new hurricane that's about to hit Mexico as a category four. | ||
| So we're going to see a busy hurricane season. |