welcome back for another live conversation.

It's a big one today, as big as they get.

You know, when we created this "Build Back Better" series

our thought was how could we address issues arising out of the pandemic,

how could we imagine building back from that.

But the events of this past week,

the horrific death of George Floyd and the daily protests that have followed,

I mean, they provided a new urgency

which we, of course, simply have to address.

I mean, can we build back better from this?

I think before we can even start to answer that question,

we just have to seek to understand the immensity of this moment.

Whitney Pennington Rodgers: That's right, Chris.

Right now, so many people in the United States and beyond

are grappling with feelings of anger and frustration, deep, deep sadness

and really helplessness.

No matter who you are,

you have questions about what to do now,

how to make things better.

And as we've seen,

violence like this unfolds for many, many years.

What is the path forward?

CA: So --

We're joined today by a group of activists,

organizers and leaders

known for their crucial work in social justice and civil rights.

We're so grateful to have them here to engage in a discussion

about racial injustice in America,

the unbearable acts of violence that we've --

Acts of violence against the black community

that we've witnessed,

the dangers to a nation riven by anger and fear.

And how on earth we can move forward from this

to something better.

So first, each of our four guests will share their thoughts

on how we move forward from this moment.

And then we'll engage as a group,

including you, the TED community.

WPR: And we'd like to thank our partner, the Project Management Institute.

Their generous support has helped make today's interviews possible,

and of course, as Chris mentioned,

we want you to take part in the conversation,

so please share your questions using our Ask a question feature

and continue to share your thoughts in the discussion thread.

CA: Thanks, Whitney.

OK, let's get this moving.

Our first guest.

Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff is the founder and CEO

of the Center for Policing Equity.

They work with police departments across America, including in Minneapolis,

to seek measurable responses to racial bias.

Phil, I can scarcely imagine

how the stress in the last week must have been for you.

Welcome, and over to you for your opening comments.

Phillip Atiba Goff: Thanks, Chris.

Yeah, this week has been a gut punch

to anybody who felt like we could be making progress

in the way that we put forward public safety that empowers

particularly vulnerable communities.

We started working in Minneapolis about five years ago.

At the time, it was, like most major cities in the United States,

a department that had a long history

of unaccounted for violence from law enforcement,

targeting the most vulnerable black communities.

And we tried to put into place a number of things that we know work.

Change the culture,

so that the culture can be accountable to the values of the community.

And what we saw was small but measurable progress.

We always knew,

with small and measurable progress,

that you're one tragic incident from going back to ground zero.

But the events of the last week and a half

haven't brought us back to ground zero,

they've torched ground zero, and we've dug a hole

that we have to dig ourselves out of.

What I hear from police chiefs who call me,

from activists I talk to,

from folks in the communities that are literally on fire right now,

I hear folks saying, I had one activist say to me

that the pain that he was feeling

was too large to fit into his body.

And without thinking about it, I said right back,

"That's because it's too large to fit into a lifetime."

What we're seeing isn't just the response to one gruesome,

cruel, public execution.

A lynching.

It's not just the reaction to three of them:

Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor

and then George Floyd.

What we're seeing is the bill come due

for the unpaid debts that this country owes

to its black residents.

And it comes due usually every 20 to 30 years.

It was Ferguson just six years ago,

but about 30 years before that,

it was in the streets of Los Angeles,

after the verdict that exonerated the police

that beat Rodney King on video.

It was Newark, it was Watts,

it was Chicago, it was Tulsa,

it was Chicago again.

If we don't take a full accounting of these debts that are owed,

then we're going to keep paying it.

Part of what I've been experiencing in the last week and a half,

and what I've been sharing with the people who do this work,

who are serious about it,

is the acknowledgment,

the soul-crushing reality

that at some point, when things stop being on fire,

the cameras are going to turn to something else.

And the history that we have in this country

is not just a history of vicious neglect

and a targeted abuse of black communities,

it's also one where we lose our attention for it.

And what that means for communities like in Baton Rouge,

for those who still grieve Alton Sterling,

and in Baltimore, for those who are still grieving Freddie Gray,

is that there is not just a chance, there's a likelihood

that we are a month or two months out from this

with no more to show for it than what we had to show

after Michael Brown Jr.

And holding the weight of that,

individually and collectively,

is just too much.

It's just too heavy a load

for a person or a people, or a generation to hold up.

What we're seeing is the unrepentant sins,

the unpaid debts.

And so the solution can't just be that we fix policing.

It can't be only incremental reform.

It can't be only systems of accountability

to catch cops after they've killed somebody.

Because there's no such thing as justice for George Floyd.

There's maybe accountability.

There's maybe some relief from the people who are still around, who loved him,

for his daughter who spoke out yesterday

and said, "My Daddy changed the world."

There won't be justice for a man who's dead

when he didn't have to be.

But we're not going to get to where we need to go

just by reforming police.

So in addition to the work that CPE is known for with the data,

we have been encouraging departments and cities

to take the money that should be going to invest in communities,

and take it from police budgets,

bring it to the communities.

People ask, "Well, what could it possibly look like?

How could we imagine it?"

And I tell people,

there is a place where we do this in the United States right now.

We've all heard about it, whispered,

some of us have even been there, some of us live there.

The place is called the suburbs,

where we already have enough resources

to give to people,

so they don't need the police for public safety in the first place.

If someone has a substance abuse issue, they can go to a clinic.

If somebody has a medical issue,

they've got insurance, they can go to a hospital.

If there's a domestic dispute, they have friends, they have support.

You don't need to enter a badge and a gun into it.

If we hadn't disinvested from all the public resources

that were available in communities that most needed those,

we wouldn't need police in the first place,

and many have been arguing, even more loudly recently,

that we don't.

If we would just take the money that we use to punish,

and instead invest it

in the promise and the genius of the community that could be there.

So I don't know all the ways we're going to get there.

I know it's going to take everything and.

It's going to need the kind of systemic change

and the management tools that we traditionally offer.

It's also going to need a quantum change

in the way that we think about public safety.

But mostly, this isn't just a policing problem.

This is the unpaid debts

that are owed to black America.

The bill is coming due.

And we need to start getting an accounting together,

so we're not just paying off the interest of the damn thing.

WPR: Thank you, Phil.

Rashad Robinson is the president of Color Of Change,

a civil rights organization

that advocates for racial justice for the black community.

To date, more than four million people have signed their petition

to arrest the officers involved in the murder of George Floyd.

And of course, one was arrested last week.

Thank you so much for being with us, Rashad, welcome.

Rashad Robinson: Thank you. And thank you for having me.

It's an opportunity that I'm taking today

to just tell you about how you can get involved.

How you can take action,

because right now, strategic action is critical

for all of us to do the work to change the rules

that far too often keep the systems in place

that hold us back.

Make no mistake,

the criminal justice system is not broken.

It is operating exactly the way it was designed.

At every single level,

the criminal justice system is not about providing justice,

but about ensuring that certain people, certain communities are protected,

while other communities are violated.

And so I wan to talk a little bit today about Color Of Change,

about activism, about the work that's happening on the ground

from other organizations all around the country,

and the way that you can channel this energy.

What we talk about at Color Of Change

is how do you channel presence into power.

Far too often we mistake presence and visibility for power,

presence retweets the stories of the movement,

people feeling passion about change

could sometimes make us feel like change is inevitable,

but power is actually the ability to change the rules.

And right now, every day, people are taking action,

and what we're trying to channel that energy into

is a couple of things.

First is a whole set of demands at the federal level

and at the local level.

As Phil described,

policing operates on many different channels.

And what we need to recognize

is that while there are a lot of things that can happen at the federal level,

locally all around the country

there are decisions that are being made in communities

around how policing is executed,

where community needs to hold a deeper level of accountability,

at the state level we need new laws.

So at Color Of Change,

we've built a whole platform around a set of demands

and are working to build more energy

for everyday people to take action.

We're fighting for justice

for Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd,

we're also fighting for justice

for other folks whose names you haven't heard,

Nina Pop and others,

whose stories of injustice