A Tennessee state lawmaker decided that maybe it's
a good idea to give the homeless people in the state.
Some inspiration by referencing an individual who actually murdered millions.
I'm not kidding, here is the video featuring Senator Frank Nicely,
a Republican from the state of Tennessee.
>> Wanna give you a little history on homelessness, 19 and ten,
Hitler decided to live on the streets for a while.
So for two years, Hitler lived on the streets and practiced his oratory and
his body language.
And how to connect with this and
then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books.
So a lot of these people that's not a dead end,
they can come out of these homeless camps.
And have a productive life or in Hitler's case, a very unproductive life.
I support this bill.
>> I just don't understand,
how anyone could think that is the right person to reference.
As a potential inspiration to people who are experiencing homelessness.
And to also specifically mention that Hitler made it in the history books.
Yeah, but what did he make it in the history books for?
Anyway, I'll give you more details about what's transpiring in Tennessee.
Because they're trying to criminalize poverty and homelessness.
And it's pretty gross.
But before we get to that, Dr Richie thoughts on
Frank Nicely who does not have an appropriate last name.
>> He's a dumb ass and he's racist.
So here's the thing, I have never in my life and
Anna I've heard a lot of crazy things, especially from the right.
But his whole message was, if Hitler can do it, you can too.
I have never heard anyone, say the inside part out loud because we
know many of them subscribe to the ideology of Hitler.
But he let the inside part go outside and I think what happened and
I believe he called himself at the end.
And he tried to clean it up slightly but he feels Hitler all right,
he's a Hitler guy all the way.
But once again it shows you the coach and
the atmosphere that permeates around elected officials today.
Where their bias is front and center and to be quite honest with you and
I actually prefer it this way.
Because when they are quote, it's very difficult to understand their bias and
to expose them.
But Jim Crow never went anywhere.
Now you just got Jim Crow esquire, they Jim Crow knows how to put on a suit.
Jim Crow knows how to hold a press conference, so it still exists and
is still here still prevalent.
But the issue that impacts us all is that these individuals are in policy
making authority.
They actually not only create policy, they influence policy and their bias is so
indoctrinated.
There is no way that their policy likes it.
So that's why it's important to all of us.
>> Yeah and I agree with you,
I appreciate the transparency because I remember a time.
When it was before the Trump era when we were covering the police
brutality stories.
When we were covering, all these stories pertaining to racism, discrimination.
And there would always be some portion of the viewers not our actual audience.
But people who would come across our content.
The argument that, we've combated all of this, we've got a black president,
let's move on.
And it would infuriate me because it was just this flat out rejection of
a reality in America.
Now, it's real hard to deny that reality when
you have people who say the quiet part out loud.
But there's also a downside to that.
And the downside is unfortunately it galvanized,
some of these people who believed the same things.
But we're kinda hiding in the shadows because it was so taboo.
To just openly admit how much hatred you have for
certain groups of people in the country.
>> Yeah, and I agree with that is always a double edged sword.
But here's what's happening with racist in America.
Because of our inability to deal with it authentically in this country,
racist people have always been here.
The confederate never went away because the ideology continued to remain.
If you go in Southern states, it looks like the confederate won the war.
All right, why is that?
Because they wanted the psychology to remain intact.
They wanted to teach the history by having statues and military installations and
streets named after racist killers and racist rapers.
They wanted this rapist.
They wanted this because it allowed their culture to continue.
But this is their last stand, Anna this is their last stand.
It's like a guy who's gasping for breath and
they're doing everything they can do to remain relevant and survive.
They're not willing to change.
They're not willing to transform.
And so you see them coming out of the woodwork because this is in my opinion.
The last opportunity for this country to redefine its very soul is very DNA.
And if we don't do it here at this crossroad,
this country is gonna take a turn that will not be able to change.
>> Yeah, I agree with you on that for sure.
I do wanna also talk about what prompted the statements that
we heard from Senator Frank Nicely.
They were debating a bill that would ban homeless encampments.
And so in by the way, I wanna give you some of his other statements,
including one in 2009.
He and three other Tennessee Republican lawmakers joined a legal effort.
To try to force President Barack Obama to turn over his birth certificate.
GI wonder why, in order to prove that he was born in the United States.
Nicely contended at the time that some of Obama's Kenyan relatives said
the president was born in that country.
And in 2017 he told ENE news, that carbon dioxide emissions
of which are a major driver of climate change is not a pollutant.
It's just as natural as oxygen.
Great, he should breathe it, go ahead and see what happens since it's
such a wonderful, since the natural is the oxygen.
It's great, now I do wanna get to SB 1610, that's the legislation they were debating.
It would classify camping on public property as a misdemeanor punishable by
a $50 fine or community service work.
So let's pause for a second.
This is what I don't understand.
Okay, I do understand wanting to do something about encampments.
I understand that.
Okay, but criminalizing them, or
they're homeless so you can find them all you want.
What do you think is gonna happen with that fine?
But more importantly, okay, you wanna ban homeless encampments.
Are you offering shelter or are you just,
what are they supposed to do if they have nowhere to go?
We need an answer to that, right?
You can't just move people around, or fourth, you get what I'm saying?
I just don't, and we see a little bit of this in California where,
some people are offered housing, they might refuse it.
And I do have a problem with that.
Just keeping it real, but if you don't offer housing,
you should not be forcing people.
Or you shouldn't be criminalizing people for living on the streets.
They have nowhere to go.
>> Yeah, 100% agreed.
And here's the thing, poverty exists because of policy.
This policy exists because of capitalism.
Capitalism requires, it mandates that you have a permanent underclass in order for
capitalism to actually thrive.
So let's go back to the genesis of all of this.
The genesis of this, is about how we value or
expressed the lack thereof as it relates to humanity.
That's what this is about.
Policy is typically the social or
the government contract between community and government, right?
So policy says, here's how we're supposed to treat you.
Well, good policy solves problems.
Bad policy simply kicks it down the road.
This is a bad policy because as you said Anna, if an individual is homeless,
think about the insanity of these people.
Think about how crazy it is for someone to create a policy to tell a homeless person,
you now have to pay money.
Hell they can't even pay money to have somewhere to live or eat, but
they're gonna pay your fee?
You're setting them up for failure intentionally.
Now, what do you want them to do?
Do you want them to fold under the pressure?
Do you want them to commit suicide?
Do you want them to just commit a crime and get locked up for
the rest of their lives?
You're forcing them into crimes of survival now.
That's what you're doing because all they're attempting to do is live.
And these particular crimes or
quote unquote crimes have been dealt with by some progressive leaders.
In particular cities around the country,
where they're trying to solve the underlying issues.
There's some jails, Anna 80% of the individuals
inside of them are there because of a mental health issue.
And underlying addiction connected to drugs and alcohol or
some level of crime of survival.
If that's trespassing, because they need somewhere to live stealing food
because they needed something to eat 80%.
That's a policy problem.
You can fix that through good policy.
These individuals don't value human life enough,
if that human life does not have a certain status.
And that's what you see unfolding in front of us.
>> Well, you don't see that unfolding in Tennessee.
The bill, which was later approved by the State Senate on a 22 to 10 vote.
Now heads to Republican Governor Bill Lee's desk.
It comes after the state made camping on state property a felony offense in 2020.
The bill enables local law enforcement of offices to punish.
People who are homeless at their discretion with the fine not being
mandatory.
It also allows for a citation for the first offense.
Now, critics are understandably and correctly concerned.
About how this will actually make it far more difficult for
people to get back on their own two feet.
Because if you're now dealing with a felony,
the likelihood of you getting hired.
And getting a gainful employment is incredibly difficult.
And also we should take a look at what kinda housing is available because
it turns out not much.
So the city's population of unsheltered people, this is the last graphic.
The city's population of unsheltered people has grown 80% since 2020.
With about 350 people sleeping in Chattanooga's streets each night.
Meanwhile, all of the city's 469 permanent supportive housing beds are full.
Meaning that there are no other options for these people, okay.
Each year 80 beds open up, but 300 to 400 chronically homeless
individuals are in need of those beds each year.
Meaning the city's resources lack the capacity to house them.
So that is the city's failure.
Okay, that is the state's failure.
That is it, you're right.
It is a policy failure.
So if the lawmakers are failing at offering or providing solutions
to something that leads to pain and misery and homelessness.
They can't then turn around add insult to injury,
to the very people who are out on the streets.
Thanks to policy failures that they engaged in the first place.
>> I wanna say something,
to those who proclaim to be people of faith.
The folks who are passing these policies
that are adversarial to common sense and humanity.
I bet you they go to church.
I bet they go to somebody's bible study, now, I'm a christian man personally.
That's my faith tradition.
But God gave me a brain before he gave me a book and I used it,
I used my brain quite well.
I wanna say this to any christian or
any person of faith who believes this is a good policy.
Don't forget that Jesus, Yehoshua was was an unarmed man of color.
Okay, Jesus, Yehoshua, was homeless, he was an immigrant.
He would be an immigrant here.
There was a time,
in the scripture that highlights a conversation where Jesus said.
Thank you for clothing me when I was naked for feeding me when I was hungry.
His disciples said, you're tripping.
We never did any of that for you.
And he said, yeah, but when you did it to the least of these you did it to me.
Now, the reason I bring this up,
it's because the folks who are passing these laws.
The individuals in charge of writing these policies proclaimed that
they subscribe to a value system held by that same man.
He said, when you do it to the least of these and
the coordinate Greek that means those who are of unequal status to others.
You did it to the least of these?
You did it to me,
why do we not see the personification of people's faith in these policies?
Why don't we see that?
Why is it that every time we see a religious bill, Anna or
religious person passing a bill is always antithetical to humanity?
And then those of us on the other side of the progressive side.
Which includes my atheist brothers and sisters were the ones fighting the so
called Christians.
To try to bring a value system that makes sense for actual humanity.
>> Yeah, this country was founded with calvinist values.
And I think that that informs a lot of the ideology that we see when it comes
to these types of cases.
Because they don't see individuals who are unhoused as a policy failure
on their part.
They see it as a problem that the individuals
on the street have brought onto themselves.
Because whatever they see it as a personal failing for the people living in poverty.
That's what they've been conditioned and
trained to think that is how they're able to sleep at night.
Because they have rationalized what they're seeing on the streets in their
own state.
They've rationalized that pain and suffering and
instead of taking personal responsibility as lawmakers.
They've instead decided to point to people,
who are honestly the most powerless in society and say it's your fault.
In fact, if you just work hard enough,
like Hitler according to this state senator.
Maybe you can pick yourself up by the bootstraps.
But that argument is also incredibly dominant in parts of
the country where manufacturing jobs were shot shipped abroad.
Where, you look at the rust belt for instance, and really,
is that a personal failure for people living in poverty?
Or is it how the market works?
>> Right, and why is it that we never flip the conversation right to
a multi millionaire billionaire who says?
They don't wanna pay their fair share in taxes, right?
Well, wait a minute.
I think you need to work harder, Mr billionaire.
I think you need to pull yourself up by your boot strap.
I think you need to own less yachts, spend less money on vacation and vacation homes.
You have to do this for you.
Just work harder and everything will work out for you.
But we accept the complaints of the millionaires and
the billionaires in ways we reject as it relates to those who are in poverty.