Our next guest stood alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Junior,
and has been fighting for civil rights his entire life.
Please welcome congressman John Lewis.
Hi.
Hi, Ellen.
Hi, congressman.
Thank you so much for being here.
I want to say, thank you for your time.
Thank you for everything you've done your entire life.
How are you feeling?
I know that you announced last year that you're
battling stage four pancreatic cancer, and what a time
that you're having to deal with all this.
Well, I'm doing well, seeing my doctor and my nurse.
And I'm coming along very well.
I'm glad to hear that.
I'm glad to hear that, so let's get right to this.
You've been fighting for civil rights your whole life.
This must be so incredibly, to say the least, frustrating,
much less heartbreaking.
But how is this different than what you experienced in
the '60s?
It is very frightening, frustrating.
It is unreal, unbelievable.
Sometimes, I feel like crying and just still in the way
and crying.
So why now?
Why again?
Some how and some way, I keep hearing Dr. King saying,
continue to push and pull, continue to stand up,
and speak up, and speak out, continue to fight.
And that's what I plan to do as long as I have breath.
Well, we are very fortunate to have you,
and that you marched alongside of him, and that you still
have that voice in your head pushing you along.
Why do you think we're still having the same issues
in this country?
Today, I think the growing forces in America,
they want to take us back to another time and another place.
They're trying to stop the movement for change,
the movement for progress.
And they must learn, and they must learn quickly
that we will not go back.
We will not turn back.
We will keep the faith.
We will keep our eyes on the prize,
and we will stand up and speak up and fight every moment
that we have.
Well, I think that you have, at least for me,
it looks to me like you have a lot more allies.
You have a lot of white people that
are realizing that we have not been
as supportive, or as understanding, or as helpful
as we should have been.
And it looks to me, at least, like speaking for myself,
I have a new mission in life.
And I hope that you see that there's more people
on this side of the right now.
Well, I've been moved and so gratified
by send hundreds, and thousands, and millions of people of color
and white, Asian-American, native
just getting out there, saying this is a part for me to play.
This is a role for me to play, and the American people
will not give up.
The American people, they happen to educate
not just the people of America, but people around the world
that we can do better.
We must do better, and we must stay just
for the piece of real estate we called earth for a generation
yet unborn.
Yep, well, and it is really to me
amazing to see that it is happening in other countries.
It's happening all around the world
to see the people that are marching in other countries.
It gives me hope, so all of the officers involved
have now been charged for killing George Floyd.
But there's a difference between being charged and being
convicted.
Do you think a conviction will happen?
I'd like to be hopeful and to be optimistic their conviction
will take place.
It's going to be hard.
It's going to be difficult, but it can happen.
We must not give in or give up.
Hang in there.
Yeah, I hope that they realize that, if they aren't convicted,
that's a whole next level thing.
I mean, that would be a horrible situation for everyone
involved, if they aren't convicted,
because it's so blatantly obvious what happened.
We just had a moment of silence here for eight minutes
and 46 seconds.
And to realize how long that is to sit-in silence for that long
and to realize how long that officer's knee was on his neck,
you can't deny that he knew what he was doing.
Well, in order to contemplate or think about what happened
and how it happened, it is so sad
to treat a fellow human being the way this man was treated.
History will not be kind to us, if we let this pass.
I agree.
We're going to take a break, and we're
going to come back and talk more with Congressman Lewis.
We'll be back.
Hi, I'm Andy.
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