wasn't to get to the bottom of it. it was to bury his head in the sand and hope it would all just go away. that's "hardball" for now thanks for being with us. "all in" with chris hayes starts right now. evening from new york, i'm chris hayes. as we promise you had last night, tonight, an "all in" ex-close inclusive. postracial world it is obama who sees race. >> race relations in this country have come a long way, just reelected a black president, our first. >> i have always made the argument over several years now that america, before the election of barack obama that we are in a postracial america. >> it's getting tiring. we have a black president. we have black senators. we have black heads of -- captains of business, companies, we have black entertainment channels. where -- is there racism? i don't think there's racism. >> you hear it all the time these days, the notion the country's election and re-election of a black president

represents a final break with racial harms. because of this one man, barack obama, the country's racial history has been redeemed and we are all living in a new country in a new era, untainted by all that unpleasantness from before. well, in an epic and masterful and highly controversial essay that everyone is talking about, perhaps the greatest essayist of our time, the cover piece for "thing there is" called "the case for reparations "tamahazi coats. america writes what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane, an america that looks away is ignoring just the sins of the past but the sins of the presence and since to of the future. coats chases the long dark history of economic blirnd that are essential features of america's tradition of white supremacy and higher a kirk not just in the days of slavery or reconstruction or the lynching era of the jim crow self, but up in the north in the boone years after the second world war, where government policy, private action and even mob violence all worked to destroy blackwellth.

what this essay does is tell a story about debt that has been accrued a real monetary debt, the displacement of wealth from one group of people used to fatten the pockets of another group of people. it's about america's tendency to not see injustice as an injustice when the perpetrators get away with it for enough time. for coats to ignore the fact that one of the oldest republics in the world was erected on a foundation of white soup people were mass so i pretend the problems of a dual society are the same as the problems of unregulated capitalism is to cover the sin of national plunder with the sin of natural like. and there's nothing more anathema to the conservative conversation on race than that inconvenient truth. joining me now is the one and only tam ma has zi coats. congratulations on the essay. >> thank you. thank you. >> you and i have been talking about this essay for two years. >> on the other show. >> yes. that's right. since i was on "on up." so, let's start out with what is the -- what's the days? what's the a until a nutshell for people that have not read the essay? what do you want people to walk away with?

>> the basic feature is really simple, defining our relationship between black america and white america is taking its plunder is stealing and this is obviously true, slavery a period of 250 years but continues after enslavement into debt, sharecropping in the south, into racial terrorism, when you are talking about the seizing of people's bodies, into through some of the most progressive policy that we erected during the 20th century throughout housing, legislation, throughout gi bill. basically, just a defining feature in terms of how the two communities have related in our history. >> you -- you tell the story in the beginning, and i think this is a really important point, because i think one of the ways we think about -- i will speak for myself. one way i had sort of been brought up to think about race and racism was as a problem of exclusion, of hatred. >> right. >> of people saying and doing mean things, of doing horrible, violent things and of con straining people's freedom, like you couldn't go to that water fountain, you couldn't go to that pool and that that was the

injury. and you really put a lot of emphasis on this on the fact that actually, no, no, it was taking stuff. >> right. >> taking stuff was the core feature. >> plunder. >> plunder. and you tell the story of a guy named clyde ross this is from the video that came out with the essay. this is clyde ross. take a listen. >> my name is clyde ross. i was born in clarksville, mississippi. i bought this house in 1958. paid $26,000 and the house was $12,000. that means i was overcharged quite a bit. >> we have been cheated out the right to be human beings in a society. we haven't been cheated out of buying homes at a decent price. >> that's -- that's clyde ross. he started down in mississippi and you tell the story of the plunder, just one individual person, the plunder he experienced. tell me that story. it starts with a horse. >> yeah well, it starts with -- clyde ross, let me just say, one of the i think unfortunate things that happens when we have this discussion is there's a focus on poverty as though

african-americans were "working class, middle class" have things, not themselves subject of plunder. you see the opposite of that in the case of clyde ross, they had funds, they had cows, they had mules, they had chickens, all of that was taking from them. >> this is back in mississippi. >> back in mississippi in the 1920s and clyde ross grew up under a situation where basically white folks in mississippi could take when they wanted to take, right down to his horse, his only possession as a child. >> explain, like, what, they just showed up one day? >> they literally just showed up one day and said we tant want that horse, took the horse and put it on the racetrack. yeah. yeah. got much worse than that his brother, for instance, who had epilepsy, had an epileptic fit in town, took him and pa put him in parchman prison. anybody who knows anything about parchman prison, 20th century slavery at that time. never saw his brother again. could never even recover the body. >> he was raised in a world, 1920s in mississippi, family had some assets, those assets up to and including the human life of the family member can be at any moment -- >> seized.

>> white people can show up and say yonk. that's ours. >> yonk is the feature of the story. should have been the headline. >> yonk. right? because eventually that is precisely the thing that pushes him up to the north a great line in there what's seeking is the protection of law. >> the protection of law which is the first thing he said to me and i did not understand what he was saying. when he outlined what was going on in the south which is no black lawyers new york black judges, no black prosecutors, no black people with any sort of stake in the legal process at all with any sort of positions of power in the state, that's no law if you're black. he comes to the north around he thinks he is going to get away with that on some level there is a change. i don't want to undersell that but he came to the north at a time when home buying was effectively being subsidized by the federal government. we think that, you know, our, you know, idea of homeownership something a matter of just rugged individualism, but the government engineered this, except for black people. and clyde ross was a part of that generation of folks who had jobs, who was working a job,

ended up working three jobs and could not get a legitimate mortgage to buy. >> federal housing authority basically invented redlining meaning, they were maps, federal housing authority said we will not underwrite mortgages in these neighborhoods because there are black people? >> that's right. and that practice then spread out to the private industry which, you know, didn't need much of a push, more of a collusion, in fact, and themselves, even without the push from the government said we will not give loans to black people. and i just want to, you know, push this point home. that didn't just affect black people. it affected white people. if you were an individual decided maybe you didn't want to be racist and you just had no problem with black people moving in, you had great incentive to leave anyway. because the property val news your neighborhood were going to decline. >> when black people moved in, the property values, partly because of federal housing policy would actually decline, whether you were racist or not, people move out. he buys on what is called a contract sale. >> yes. >> basically a straight hustle. again, yonk. >> yonk. all the problems of renting with

all of the problems of buying and none of the rewards of either. at any moment, should you miss a parnlgt the person who holds the lease can immediately take the home from you, keep the down payment, keep all the pages that you've made up to that point. they set it up is that is what actually happened. >> they are trying to, basically this person comes in, a contract sale, i am both the sanders the lender? >> right. right. don't tell you all that. >> you tell you that and you are now working your way out of debt debt to me. you missed a payment, you can say you missed a payment, paying all the back money, even if you paid 80% down on the house, equity of the house and i'm putting you out? >> that's exactly what happened. this is serious, add this quickly. i got a call from my mother this morning, i don't want to get emotional here, but i grew up in west baltimore, my grandmother lived in west baltimore. there was a home i went to every day after school. my grandmother bought that home on contract aged didn't even know that until my mother read the story and explained that to me. my grandmother was clyde ross, you know, basically came up, raised three kids in the projects, sent them to college,

worked cleaning white folks' floors and managed to buy a home and this is the only way she could do t very similar story. >> and so the accrued -- what the results of the plunder, right, the argument is we got -- we had slavery, you don't actually even linger on slavery that long. not that big a part of t >> you don't want to buy the reparations of slavery argument, come on. >> let's talk about plunder just in the 1950s, right? >> right. right. >> okay. what we have created is this wealth gap, right? and this great chris rock meditation on what wealth means i want to play because i think it really gets something key here. take a listen. >> right. >> i'm not talking about rich, i'm talking about wealth. 'cause wealth will set [ bleep ] free, okay? 'cause wealth is empowering. wealth can uplift communities from poverty, okay? wealth is passed down from generation to generation. you can't get rid of wealth. rich is [ bleep ] you can lose with a crazy drug habit.

>> right. wealth is this thing that there's stability to t one of the things we see is this unbelievable gap in household wealth between white people and black people, even -- even when you normalize for income. even people with masters degrees or law degrees, you normalize across these things. we see this persistent racial wealth gap. >> this is the thing, again, just to bang on this. you know, inequality is a very big problem in america than wealth. something that obviously believe in the fight against inequality. this is not just a matter of poverty. racism is an actual real thing with actual consequences and the wealth gap is the biggest illusion station of that. >> black graduates twice as likely to be unemployed as white college graduates. i saw a crazy statistic, all college graduates, same age wrapping, 12.4%, you go through all the ways in which race, not socioeconomic status, not poverty urge right -- >> see, chris, i think we are laboring under a dangerous illusion and this is really one of the motivating features for

this essay and that is that if you are black in this country and you play by the rules, you go to college, you get married, you know, you delay having kids, you will be okay. you probably will be okay but you won't be equal. inequality. that's not a solution for ending -- that's good advice for individuals, but that's not an anti-inequality. >> the argument you have gotten from barack obama on responding reparations, get from white liberals, from conservatives, from black liberals, from all sorts of people is basically anything like reparations is completely impracticable, a, and we have had all sorts of redistributive programs in this country, we had war on poverty,ed me karkd the great society, we have had all kinds of head start, we have had all kinds of redistributive policies that have redowneded disproportionately black americans, black people are disproportionately poor, we are doing it we are trying to, we are redistributing. >> first, just two quick things. the president gives the argument with all due respect to president obama, he gives the argument you expect president

obama to give. i don't expect president obama to come on and support reparation n terms of the impracticality argument, all i got to say to this-to-this is the following. in 1859, frederick douglass was arguing for the liquidation of, what, trillions of dollars of wealth in the form of human slaves, okay? i can't think of anything that was more impractical than what fred lick douglas was arguing for. it happened. they said frederick douglass had a correct and moral position. everybody would say that is the right and correct thing to do i'm not particularly swayed by it. >> you think the moral case is compelling enough here that whatever practicable aspects -- >> i think we can do what we want to do that's what i think. i think if we decide a world in which we decide -- >> what does that look like, right? >> the first step is outlined in the article is support john conyers bill hr 40 to study, to study enslavement and effects to of the legacy of enslavement and see what might possibly be there should we find something wrong. and a lot of people get frustrated with that they want me to have an outline. >> yeah.

yeah. >> exactly. but we haven't even studied it. you got to get your hands around the actual problem. i did what i could. i spent two years looking at this and tried to do the best that i could. but we need an actual serious study. i mean this is a huge thing. >> yes. >> i mean, to calculate not just enslavement but to calculate housing discrimination to calculate, you know, education, school segregation to calculate criminal justice policy, calculate all of that and figure out what the effect has been on african-americans and how much of that we can actually pass this is a huge deal this is not a small thing. >> right. >> so i did what i could. >> you got the one historical moment in the essay that i did not know at all was the very heated debate in israel, as a young nation, about reparations from germany. there was this huge conflagration over it. >> right. >> one of the things fascinating about it germany ended up paying reparation and that investment was key to a young nation in its electrical grid and all these things. investment and wealth, as chris rock said, wealth really does matter. tan nah has zi coats from the

atlantic, the piece is reparation, an absolute must read. >> thank you so much for having me and thank you for your help, chris. thank you. coming up, it's a he is not often we get to say we are going to talk to someone from americans for prosperity, the koch brothers funded outfit but we will talk to someone from americans pore prosperity about the bargain the city of detroit and americans have struck and what the koch brothers have to do with it, next. k you. the success of your small business depends on results. go vests! all organic, and there's tons of info on our website. that's why you rely on the best for your business. and verizon delivers the best devices on the best network. you're all big toes to me. so go ahead, stream and download with confidence on america's largest, most reliable 4glte network. coming up, it's a he is not for best results, use verizon. marge: you know, there's a more enjoyable way to get your fiber. try phillips fiber good gummies. they're delicious, and an excellent source of fiber to help support regularity. wife: mmmm husband: these are good!

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we have got good news out of places that need good news, unless and until the koch brothers manage to ruin it. the city of detroit and michigan have come to a deal to get detroit out of bankruptcy. rick scott, the governor speaker, michigan's house of representatives and the democratic minority leader all praise the deal. , michigan's house of representatives and the democratic minority leader all praise the dea o, michigan's ho representatives and the democratic minority leader all praise the deaf, michigan's houf representatives and the democratic minority leader all praise the dea michigan's house representatives and the democratic minority leader all praise the deaof michigan's hou representatives and the democratic minority leader all praise the deal. >> let's change the direction of detroit, the city is coming back in many ways but from a public sector perspective this helps create success. >> this is a day that serves the michigan citizens who are residents of detroit. and this is a day that protects the hard-working taxpayers all across the state of michigan. importantly, this legislation protects retirees, made sure that they are not forced into poverty due to draconian cuts to pensions, which would have occurred absent this legislation. >> the house vote on the main

bill passed by a vote of 103-7. all the republicans voted for it along with 43 of the 50 democrats. and it's kind of a miracle we have come to. this just a few months ago it looked like detroit was headed toward a cataclysmically nasty, drawn-out battle with lawsuits and counter suits. somehow against the odds, all the different stake hold verse been coming together. the big aist of the deal include nearly $195 million from the state from tobacco settlement money, $366 million from charitable foundation and $100 million from the detroit institute for the arts. now the deal would cut pensions for non-uniform retirees by 4.5%, reduce the cost of living adjustments for uniformed retirees as well as protect the valuable artwork at the detroit institute of the arts. the package of 11 bills would wipe out legal disputes stemming from the bankruptcy. it's deal supported by unions, bondholders and both parties, none of whom are easily brought into any kind of agreement. so, all good, right? not so fast. the bill still must pass michigan senate and americans for prosperity, which counts the koch brothers as one of their

funders wants to stop that cold, destroy the deal. its website, curiously screams "no more bailouts," yet michigan is threatening to run ads against republicans voting for the bill and reach 90,000 conservatives in the state to pressure lawmakers and blow it all up. joining me now, scott hager strom, a michigan state director for americans for prosperity. scott, if all these people, the bond holders, the biggest stakeholders, people whose livelihoods depend on this, if both parties agree, why are you going in to blow this up? >> we are not blowing this up. the fact is michigan taxpayers, hard-working taxpayers, do not need to be sending $195 million of their hard-earned money to detroit. >> your taxes are -- >> detroit is sitting on -- >> tobacco settlement money. >> it is not. actually out of the rainy day fund. they changed that at the last minute. they gutted pension reforms of the bill -- >> taxes are not going to go up. your taxes are not going to go up? >> we have a lot of priorities in michigan and detroit is sitting on over $3 billion in assets. >> just to be clear, your taxes are not going to go up? >> this money -- right.

the taxes are not going to go up. actually, that's not true, they are looking to raise taxes to fix roads. they could take this $195 million and fix the roads in michigan. >> they have a surplus. this $195 million matches almost dollar for dollar about the $200 million the state reneged on a promise in revenue sharing to a city of detroit that accounted for about one-third of the gap. >> detroit gets two to three times more in revenue sharing than any other city in the state of mich. detroit is sitting on over $3 billion in assets. it's not fair that they get to go in bankruptcy and not suffer any consequences, be able to keep those assets while pensioneers are going to take a cut. >> this is interesting to me, this sense of fairness. you want to see -- said they are not going to suffer any consequence who do you want to see suffer? >> we don't want to see anyone suffer. but -- >> you said they are not going to suffer consequences so who do you want to see suffer? >> the city of detroit is not going to -- the politicians, the leaders in the city of detroit through their bad behavior and many times criminal behavior are not going to suffer any consequences. >> the mayor of detroit is no

longer controls the city. he had an emergency manager appointed to take away all authority over the city. you don't think -- >> the city of detroit hired 38 people making six figures, gave hundreds of millions of tax cuts to build a new hockey stadium for a huge -- the illich family. one of the city council members got pulled of for illegal drugs in his car earlier this year and these are antics. nothing changing in the city they need to learn they need to change their behavior. we are just enabling bad boo he i have orby bailing them out. >> first of all, everyone is taking a haircut on this, including the pensioners, 100 million from detroit. >> that's not even necessary. >> i agree with you on the hockey stadium. you and i are in total agreement. ridiculous deal. absolutely ridiculous. i think we split done a segment about it or thought about doing a segment. but this issue of the art in the museum, right, my sense is you want them to sell all their art to cover this? >> they don't have to sell -- they have one painting, one painting, "the wedding dance" that could fetch as much as $200

million. so, michigan tax payers have already been senting a lot of money to the city of detroit. just a year and a half ago, they had a consent agreement, the governor agreed to send $120 million over 30 years to operate their largest park. so, you know what this isn't going to fix detroit. they will be back at the trough in two years, looking for more money. michigan taxpayers are sick of subsidizing detroit. detroit needs to grow up and take responsibility for their actions. >> they are adults there, i would note. there are two arguments you are making that seem to be some tension with each other. one is they can sell this one painting for the monetary amount that would cover the short gap, right? the other is that it seems to me that you're saying something deeper, right, that basically, you want to see some real grass and branch and root structural reform in detroit, that they are getting off easy. those two things aren't the same, right? are we talking about money that's not there or you want to see detroit punished, you want to see detroit changed in some deep way? >> i want to see the leadership in detroit change. and they are sitting on over $3 billion in assets. if you or me went into

bankruptcy or any other organization, we would have to sell assets. we couldn't just keep everything that we owned. it's not fair that the city of detroit. and then they go to michigan taxpayers and get $200 million. we have some of the worst roads in the state. >> but if you and i were in -- in bankruptcy, right, there's a difference between chapter 11 and chapter 13. and the question are you restructuring to continue running or do you want to see them liquidated? it sounds to me like you want to see is something closer to liquidation than restructuring. the question what detroit looks like after it comes out of this if you have the republican governor, you have republican been members of the house, got these huge margins, bondholders and pensioners who all say this is a good deal, seems like it might be a good deal. >> they haven't voted yet. you say they think say this is a good deal. they are in the process of voting. we don't know what the bondholders are saying, pensioners are voting. they are turning in their ballots. >> thanks for coming on, man. >> thank you. coming up, how the tack ticks of the open kerry movement are backfiring in the nra's face. ahead. new car!

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this monday night, after you finish with your memorial day celebration and memorializations, tune into showtime's "years of living dangerously" at 8 p.m. eastern for my report on life in the far rockaways after superstorm sandy. three months after sandy, over 7,000 people were still without power. >> it's a he is not our fault. >> as a society what do we want people to do when there's some natural disaster? >> this is my room that i've been waiting for two months. >> 8 p.m. on showtime monday night. the episode features reporting from actress jessica alba and

thomas friedman what that episode doesn't have is guns, any guns, really, lots of guns, your favorite fast food chains either. i will bring that to you, next.

it has now been 18 days since we first brought you the story of the effort by the national rifle association and its allies to top the sale of a smart gun with the potential to save lives. 18 days since new jersey state senator loretta weinberg came on this show and offered to repeal a law mandating the exclusive sale of smart guns in her state, if the nra would agree to finally stop blocking smart gun technology and let it come to market. 18 days of the nra simply refusing to acknowledge that offer of a truce or to respond at all. nra has a pr disaster on its hands and it's not just because everybody is now hip to the fact they are standing in the way of a gun that could save lives. it's because the gun rights movement increasingly looks like this. yeah. you see that photo?

those two fine chaps recently walked into a texas chipotle in search of a burrito and the chance to show off their love of the second amendment. of course, it makes it hard for everyone else to enjoy their burritos when there's dudes with enormous rifles at the next table. and this isn't just a one-off thing. it's part of a strategy increasingly at the forefront of the gun rights movement called the open carry movement. folks who believe the second amendment protects the right to carry whatever gun you want, wherever you want, whenever you want. these activists want to normalize the idea of giant guns in every day settings. so they make a point of exploiting lax gun laws around the country to show those guns off, sometimes with slurpees. and it's not just in places like chip pot his and mcdonald's. in georgia, parents stopped a little league game because according to a parent, a man was walking around saying "i've got a gun and there's nothing you can do about it" trying to frighten people. nearly two dozen people called the police about the man but authorities said they could neither arrest him nor ask him to leave the park because, in fact, georgia's new gun law says

if you want to brandish a gun at a kid's baseball game, that's your legal right. in fort worth, texas, police were called after open carry activists showed off their weapons at a jack in the box. >> everyone was nice at the jack in the box. we ordered. we received our food we walked back out. >> but by e-mail, police told us jack in the box employees were so scared, they hid in a cooler when the armed men went back outside. >> you get that, guys walk in with guns, they order burgers, they say hey, cool, awesome, that's just my gun, they go out. the people who served them are so terrified they go into the freezer around call the police. so,s here the thing. the greatest asset that those who want greater gun safety and saner gun laws and reasonable interpretation of the second amendment, the greatest asset they have are these guys. it turns out when you demonstrate the logical consequences of the laws the nra is pushing for, people aren't so psyched about having to eat their burger or watch their kid play little league with some yahoo brandishing a long gun a few feet away. chipotle and jack in the box now joined star bucks in declaring

guns u.n. welcomed at their stores and the open carry movement is recognizing its tactics are backfiring. open carry texas today announced it would immediately ceas taking guns in. our clients need a lot of attention. taking guns in. we're working deals all day. you get 10 gigabytes of data to share. what about expansion potential? add a line anytime for 15 bucks a month. low dues... great terms... let's close. introducing at&t mobile share value plans... ...with our best-ever pricing for business. ameriprise asked people a simple question: can you keep your lifestyle in retirement?

i don't want to think about the alternative. i don't even know how to answer that. i mean, no one knows how long their money is going to last. i try not to worry, but you worry. what happens when your paychecks stop? because everyone has retirement questions. ameriprise created the exclusive confident retirement approach. to get the real answers you need. start building your confident retirement today. coming up, our special series "all in america" continues tonight. we have been on the road in the conservative heartland this week and tonight, we are going to take a look at one woman's fight to provide women's health care in the shadow of terrorism. that story is next. i'm a messy person. i don't like cleaning. i love my son, but he never cleans up. always leaves a trail of crumbs behind. you're going to have a problem with getting a wife. uh, yeah, i guess. [ laughs ] this is ridiculous. christopher glenn! [ doorbell rings ] what is that? swiffer sweep & trap. i think i can use this. it picks up everything. i like this. that's a lot of dirt.

it's that easy! good job chris! i think a woman will probably come your way. [ both laugh ]

all this week, with every been bringing you stories from kansas as part of our "all in america" series. tucked away in the heartland under the super majority, kansas has become a laboratory for conservative ideas.

but long before the big conservative take jove earth past few years, kansas was famous as a flashpoint in the abortion wars of the 1990s. it became a mag nat for the modern extremist anti-abortion movement and that has not changed. >> in the state of kansas there is a doctor, george tiller who will execute babies for $5,000. dr. george tiller, known as tiller the baby killer, tiller the baby killer, as some call him. as we reported, tiller aborts thousands of babies pretty much for any reason. doesn't get worse than that. this is the absolute shame of america. >> the last person to run this clinic was assassinated. he was murdered by an anti-abortion activist. dr. george tiller was elevated to national prominence as the face of late-term abortion in america, not just by extremists who had targeted him for years, but also by mainstream abortion opponents. >> this man will terminate fetuses at any time for $5,000. >> dr. timor was one of only a

handful of doctors in the whole country who offered late-term abortion care. he ran a clinic in wichita, kansas, until he was shot to death five years ago. >> now we turn to the shooting death of a doctor in wichita, kansas, named george tiller. he had long been a target of anti-abortion demonstrators. he had been shot before. his clinic had been bombed and blockaded. >> after weathering years of attacks at his wichita home and abortion clinic, dr. george tiller was killed in his church. >> his wichita clinic closed and left the majority of the state of kansas without abortion services. >> if we don't have our rights as women in this country, you know, if all people, frankly, are not afforded their rights, then nothing else really seemed to make sense for me. >> julie burkhart worked for dr. tiller. in the five years since his death, she bought the building that housed his klink and retoechld south winds center is the first to operate in wichita

since tiller's murder. >> after his death, on a really personal level, i just felt really lost and i think a lot of people felt very lost. i just came the clonclusion tha this is a fight and a worthy fight. >> burkhart has to contend with an openly hostile governor and state legislature, intent on making as difficult as possible for women to get an abortion in the state. >> this is a pro-life state. we're not going back. >> governor sam brownback has personally led an anti-abortion march on the state capitol. he has compared clinic blockades to the abolition movement that helped end slavery. outside burkhart's clinic, there are activists stationed at the gates. >> runaway from that police of death. >> others have shown up outside her house, distributed fliers with her name, photo and home address. for dr. tiller, there were consequences to everyone knowing his face. >> people knew that the clinic was, when george tiller was here, they knew the klink was

tiller's clinic. julie burkhart is maybe a face they don't know. >> julie burkhart is the new face of this clinic. and last month, the south wind women's center celebrated its one-year anniversary. >> i try to stay very focused on what we're doing here, carrying out our vision and mission for this organization. and really try to stay focused and put my energy into that place. >> this is what it takes to provide a constitutionally protected medical service in wichita, kansas, in 2014. 41 years after roe this is what it looks like. kathy, you know, i think i think about the abortion wars of the '8 '90s as this period of conflagration outside the clinics and terroristic violence and laws passing and it all kind of ebbed. one of the things that struck me

so much about this report is right now, in wichita, you have got folks right outside that clinic who are holding signs of julie burkhart. this is one of them. i'm going to play you a little extended piece of sound from one of the protesters outside. take a listen. >> people knew that the clinic was, when george tiller was here, they knew the clinic was tiller's clinic. julie burkhart is maybe a face they don't know. she has tried to maybe, in my opinion, fool people into thinking that this is something more than an abortion clinic. it's an abortion clinic. >> now, even, and i will assume this man has nothing but the most non-violent, perfectly legal intentions in his heart and what he does and how he conducts himself, but for burkhart and for any other doctor, that violence looms large, doesn't it? >> it absolutely does. the man who murdered dr. tiller participated in just those kinds of protests outside the clinic. it turns out he claimed he was counseling women as they went into the clinic. what he was really doing was sur veiling dr. tiller's comings and

goings and assessing the security of the clinic until he could figure out where he would murder dr. tiller. the man, scott rotor, was part of an extremist network of anti-abortion extremists in this country that call themselves the army of god. this is a domestic terrorist movement who will use violence and even murder to try and get their political views enacted. and unfortunately, the state of kansas, even though the majority of people in kansas, by the way, are pro-choice, they want abortion to be safe. they want abortion to be legal. and they support this clinic there to be a health care provider for the women of kansas. but we've got a government there dominated by right-wing republicans who are out of touch with their own constituents, who have enacted law after law to try and cut off access is to women in kansas. >> we have seen -- take away this sort of terroreristic part of the movement, right, we are just talking about a fully legal, non-violent part of the

anti-abortion movement. it still is the case that there's just a -- you know, if you're going to run abortion clinic that is going to be your life, right, have people outside every day like what effect does that have on the way that care is given? >> you know, for many doctors that i've spoken to and health care providers that i have spoken to, it really makes them stronger. the reality is that julie burkhart is a saint. she is a compassionate, caring doctor. one in three women in kansas, like one in three women around the country, will have an abortion by the age of 45. julie burkhart is there as dr. tiller was there, to provide compassionate, excellent medical care for her parents. and by the way, as is true of all abortion clinics, it is a full-range of reproductive services that are provided at those clinics. >> right. >> so there's something really amazingly strong and special about all of this. >> but not everyone is saint and not everyone is strong and special. >> i know. >> it create just a disincent e

disincentive. if i'm thinking i'm in medical school, what kind of practice do i want to have and even if i'm a person who supports abortion rights, do i really -- it's like, you have to take on a cause, right? it's become -- it has to be a cause for you, it can't just be a medical service you provide because if it is just a medical service you can provide, lots of services you can do for people that are wonderful and rewarding that don't have people outside screaming at you. >> absolutely. and that is very much the intention of the -- including the individual that was interviewed there who was talking about it. his intent is to intimidate, to shut down, to stop health care providers from being willing to provide this kind of essential health care. >> kathy, layer aid top that of course, are the legal restrictions we have seen, it seems to me we are headed toward a real kind of breaking point in which it just simply is the case that abortion is available in some parts of the country and just not in other parts of the country there are now six states, north dakota, south dakota, arkansas, mississippi, wyoming, missouri, that have a single abortion provider in them, just one. it seems that we are headed

toward something that doesn't really look like a constitutionally guaranteed right but instead to kind of a federally, you know -- a federalist decision by the states about whether they will allow it or not. >> well there's no question that states across the country, especially in the south and midwest, have passed very detailed restrictions that have made access in some areas almost impossible. this so-called trap laws that targeted regulation of abortion providers, requiring doctors to have admitting privileges the local hospitals when many of the doctors that are providing abortion services at these clinics are having to fly in from a great distance because local doctors have been terrorized or ostracized by catholic-run hospitals, for example, until you have to fly doctors in. so, having admitting privilege as a requirement is cutting off access or the waiting periods. kansas has a 24-hour waiting

period. in some states, they want to make it almost three days that makes it a very difficult process for a woman who access this health care. >> also this way of erecting a whole layered set of obstacles, right, off waiting period and mandatory conversations with the doctor and then you have trap laws and -- >> exactly. and the more that happens, what's really interesting to me, is the more support for abortion rights increases in this country. these absolutely outrageous attacks, the trap laws, the transvaginal ultrasound laws, the admitting privileges, which is about to shrink louisiana's availability of abortion care to just one city, shreveport may be the last city alive with providing abortion care. as legislatures are doing that, they are running right against the grain of public opinion, which is increasing support for abortion rights. it is one of the most successful political movements of our time, the anti-abortion movement, public opinion hasn't

changed in the 30 or 40 years since roe. amorphous where it has been, the tangible policy gains are tangible. thank you both. >> thank you. coming up, we will wrap up our first week of "all in america" stories. if you missed any of them, now is your chance to catch up. stay with us. i saw this red, blistery, rash and i felt this horrible pain on one side of my back. i had 16 magic shows to do. i didn't know how i was going to be able to do these shows with this kind of pain that i was in. i told my wife what i had. she went on the internet and said "i think you have shingles."

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energy in their home state of kansas, efforts that are fail willing so far. >> the koch brothers are involved in the oil industry and they look at wind as being a direct competitor to them. >> they are very powerful people. i think they wanted to make an example of kansas and try to defeat wind here and then defeat it in other states. >> we also took an in-depth look what the governor sam brownback and the republican legislator have done in systematically slashing funding for kansas public education and what that means for communities now losing their schools. >> i've always said that kids can stay innocent a little longer in a small town. having a school is a drawing card. so, for a young family that's choosing to move here, you know, they may look at other options. >> when a town loses its school, you lose the town, you know? the next is the grocery store closes and this closes. >> you look at the towns that have lost their schools and you drive down their streets and there is just houses. there are no more businesses.

it's kind of -- i hate to say bare bones, but it is. they kind of turn into ghost towns fairly quickly. >> we met the republican insurance commission here is fighting her own party's refusal to expand medicaid. >> for me, it's not about the political party. for me, it's about doing what's best for the people of kansas. listen to what can sans have to say and are they really representing your interest as a voter? are they really looking out for what's in your best interest as a citizen of the state? >> we met the man who is helping turn kansas into a model state by stopping a law that sponsors local governments from regulating guns. >> the constitution gives us the right to free speech. we want our city to regulate our free speech? i don't think so what about our right to worship? we want them to regulate the right to worship? i don't think so >> and tonight, we highlighted the fight to provide women with health care in a state that has become a laboratory for ultraconservative ideas throughout the entire country. joining me now is digest it all, thomas frank, politics and culture columnist for salon.com and author quite famously of

what's the matter with kansas, how conservatives won the heart of america and also a native can san, i should add. tomorrow, we didn't get a chance to talk about this the other night. you wrote the book ten years ago and about the kind of upsurge, the lurch in the right in the state ten years ago. it has only gotten worse in the ten years since. how do you make sense of that? >> well, it's not -- how i do make sense of it? it just kept happening, man. it's not something that i'm happy to of been right about. but it's something that was -- that's just -- that was so utterly predictable, looking at america at the time of george w. bush that -- there's a line in the book where i said "out in kansas, the gravity of discontent pulls to the right and to the right and further to the right. ""and i like that line, the gravity of discontent. that is everywhere now. we just went through this wrenching financial crisis and where did the discontent go?

who grabbed hold of the discontent and ran with it, you know? the right, you know? >> yeah. >> and the other side of the book was about, i mean this is a failure of democrats to win places like kansas, to win, you know, all of these hard -- these places that are really -- have not done well by conservative economics, you know, places that have done real poorly because of them. and yet the democrats still can't make any traction, can't get any traction. look at west virginia, same deal, you know. >> so this is interesting, no, no, because there is sort of a programatic, a prescription in the book that basically talks about recapturing kind of progressive populism that when kansas was a bastion of populism, it was a kind of progressive populism and that's what you kind of recommend in the book, but then there's another arctic i think we are seeing in certain places, which is essentially standing up for moderation, right? standing up for prudence and hoping to fight to find of wage politics as a kind of, oh, let's

get back to the center. no really, that's very different than what you were recommending. >> i shouldn't laugh. i shouldn't -- i shouldn't laugh. but because it -- the people who say that are very well intentioned. >> you can't have a center if you don't have a left, mr. hayes, you know? it's almost likedon't have a le you know? it's almost like geometry almost. >> you cannot -- >> you can't be balance willing both sides if you don't have two sides, you know? if all the fire and the energy are concentrated on the right and there is no comparable movement on the left. you know? by the way, there are so many examples of this in "what's the matter with kansas" i got it out and went over it again the other day with where the right deliberately acts like a left wing movement and uses left wing language. >> yep. >> you saw this especially with the tea party movement, deliberately confusion the issue and, you know, appealing to people with old timey progressive and populist

language and they do this all the time. they have got -- they have got the discontent. they have captured it. and discontent, man that , that growing field, you know? >> one of the specific arguments of "what's the matter kansas" and i thought dying mostically right on the money was about the ways in which social issues were particularly used on the right. so, there's this great riff in there, it's vote -- vote to stick it to those godless atheists and get energy deregulation. vote for x, get yle. you go through the riff, vote on these culture war issues and you get these kind of economic conservatism, right? it down the seem like that is happening so much. in the past ten years, the st e states don't lean on the social issues but maybe they are and i'm not noticing as much. >> look at kansas, obviously, the cultural war issues are

still burning a bright flame there but brownback's main thrust has been sort of the crazy tax cutting, which has had all these other consequences and then there's -- i mean, all sorts of deregulations that he's done, war with the supreme court, all of the sort of standard political stuff, but the regulations have taken the league. if anything is going to bring him down that's what it's going to be. you can't starve the public schools. that's the beating heart of every community, as you know. a lot of things have changed since the book came out, during the tea party movement, the right insisted that economic issues were more important, remember this, and declared a crease fire on the culture wars? didn't last long. but they did t and meanwhile, our team, you know, the liberals, the left, have been winning request the cultural war issues in a huge watch you look at gay marriage which ten years ago, when i was writing "what's the matter with kansas," this was karl rove's calling card,

you remember that? >> amazingly -- >> shoe'sen at other foot. >> thomas frank from salon. always a pleasure, man. thanks so much. >> sure thing. that is "all in" for this each. i want to thank you for watching this week. our team put in a tremendous amount of work to bring you that -- those special stories from kansas. we are going to be doing a lot more of that through the spring and summer. keep tuned right here every night, 8 p.m. a special edition of the rachel maddow show starts right now. good night. good evening, thanks for being with us. let me say up front that this is not a story about north korea and that that's kind of the point. but on october 9, 2006, at around 10:30 a.m. local time urge the ground started to shake beneath a small village in the northeast corner of north korea. halfway around the world, back here in the u.s., seismologists recorded what looked to be a 4.3-magnitude earthquake. but what happened in north korea that morning was not an earthquake. it was a nuclear explosion. >> kimg-