is

also talking about dr. king at this time. dr. king left us a lot of tools with which to work and so did president obama because president obama grew it of dr. king's work. and he was very much like dr. king in terms of his patience, in terms of his wanting the nation to come together. so i believe we're going to be all right. dr. king and the president taught us not to be fearful when there was something out there to do and that we have to be a part of that change that we want to see so i think we're well equipped to hand it will new administration. >> stewart, what are your thoughts as we head into this week? >> i think that this is going to be a really, really new turn

having mr. obama, president obama, barack has been great when you understand the nature of the presidency and when you understand the structure of our governmental system. and so we had to go up against a lot of adversity in moving the balfol forward. i think -- one of the greatest things for me, i'm a returning citizen, so to see him do what he's done, at the end of his term, albeit, with looking at releasing some non-violent offenders i think was phenomenal. i think that that will be for me and individuals like myself a real piece of the presidency that we can cherish. on some other things, as i'm sure one of my colleagues will probably

have done more but we say that about everyone. >> bob? >> i think if anything what we'll see happen will continue to happen over the next year we'll see different marginalized communities looking to end racism, end poverty continue to find where the messages connect. we saw the dakota access pipeline galvanized so many people with from so many different backgrounds 24567. that's what king spoke to. he had a wide reaching message for those who believed in love, those who believed in caring for your neighbor and under the trump presidency more and more activist groups, progressive group, people that believe in king's message will be spurred and energized. do they have a new foe to take on? yes. but have the challenges changed much? i don't think so. and this country as well has to deal with a lot of our continuing inabilities to end our foreign militarism and large amount of spending on weapons and dropping bombs on other countries which king spoke about

war connecting that to racism and poverty here at home. president obama, like you said, remarkable man, remarkable what he did to advance the ball but he, too, had his hands tied by our continued desire to use weapon and to use force to create quote/unquote peace which he saw. however we see major problems of poverty. 40% of people live paycheck to paycheck, 50 million people are unable to get enough food on a daily basis across this country. so 2 challenges for me have not changed much but who we are having to work against has changed and i think there will be some greater challenges ahead. >> dr. williams, during president obama's farewell address he said that while it appears we take two steps forward and then one step back, he encouraged americans to continue to participate in the american experiment. there are many americans who feel that they can no longer participate and that dr.

dream is still just that -- a dream. >> i think if you're taking two forward and one back that means you've at least advanced one step. so that's what i see about the president. he advanced as much as he could and left with us the inspiration and motivation to get back to taking two steps or three steps forward. i think he's well equipped us with that. he's represented piece and love and inspiration and didn't yield to everything. i think bob mentioned, you know, the war, the continuing wars, well, certainly dr. king would not v not wanted that to happen. i don't think president obama wanted it to happen. when someone becomes president, we learn presidents don't control everything in the world and president obama should not have been expected to change everything for the better in the eight years that he was in office but he did a lot of things so i was inspired by his speech, yes, and i'm ready to go, not necessarily to fight but to work and to serve and to make those changes that he tried to make that he night have n

>> we have to take a break. we'll continue our discussion about the king holiday right after this.

welcome back. our discussion is about the king holiday. your peace walk and your parade have a theme this year, it's "we are one." what do you imagine dr. king might say to us as a nation as we are so deeply divided on so many issues -- race, gender, justice, politics, economics. >> i imagine -- and i'll jump right in -- that king is really rolling over in his grave that we -- you know, over 40 years away from his leaving us still grappling with those three evils bob talked about and racism being kind of like the one th

the forefront and the trump presidency helped to do that, to bring that realization to the awareness of the broader american society. some of us felt -- and i shouldn't say some of us, but some of us felt that racism wasn't really as much an issue today as it was in the '60s or before. and i wager and king would really probably stand with me in saying that racism is as much if not more of an issue for american society than it has ever been in this country. >> bob, would you agree with that? >> i don't know, it's tough. people often talk about the fact that trump is unprecedented and the level of disgust and, we need to remember our first presidents had slaved and owns av

in this country runs deep and to put it on a it's more now and more then i don't know how much that does to advance the ball when it's continued to be a problem and man i think if king would be to send one message it would be do not despair, keep fighting. to think about how i tired i get as a white man in america working on these issues and to think of what dr. king did, what obama did towards the level of racism, death threats, and yet these men continue to live their principles and values and fight for what they believe in, it's a remarkable lesson. we need to challenge ourselves to continue to do more and continue to fight racism as long as it's still there. but to ask me if it's more or less, i don't know, it's a hard question given our absolutely disgusting and abysmal legacy on racism in this country. >> well, whether there's more or less i think dr. king would agree that we have more tools with which to work today so we should be able to do a better job. we have more people willing to o

nationalities. it's no longer just black and white. we have other people of color who have challenges, too, and we can unite and i think we can do even more than dr. king was able to do. dr. king set a great tone for us and left us so much to work with in terms of love and peace and justice and connected it not just with black and white but also with our brothers and our sisters and other parts of the world so i think they're out there, they're standing to see what we are going to do here to help to resolve our challenges and bring them in to help to do the same, not only in the united states but in their countries. >> bob, how do you think dr. king would speak to issues like the pervasive crime problem that we see roiling cities in our country -- cities like chicago, like baltimore, maryland, or the gap in wealth between the rich and the poor? how do you think king would approach those kinds of issues today. >> you said bob but youok

>> i'm sorry, stewart. >> i know you were looking for a response from me. so i was sitting thinking and how to advance some of what has happened with technology and our ability to see more of what's happening. i think that dr. king would be really upset about the way law enforcement treats people of color. i think he would speak out against that in terms of the -- when we have the situation that we have, that we've had where a large percentage of the wealth in the country is owned by so few of us that we have a problem that breeds poverty and poverty drives criminality. and so too often our officials approach it from

crime is a problem. and that's the effect not the affect and we have to be able to get to the point where we address the effects that cause us people to go out and steal. and we can address that. i think king would be great in that. i had an opportunity to read about him. so often we talk about the dream and we don't look inside and really talk about the thought capacity of the man. >> bob, i want to get you to weigh in on that but i have to take a break first and then we'll get to bob. stay with us, we'll be right back.

welcome back z. bob, how do you think dr. king would address the issue of policing

for reform in policing, the black lives matter movement? >> i think he would alie quite close for the black lives matter movement. dr. king talked about intersection between education, health, shelter, jobs, talked about what it meant to live a dignified life and what happened when people took away the dignity from others who did not secure those basic human rights for others. the man was a champion for human rights as well as civil rights which is what he's known for. he would talk about the dream of what he hoped to be but the nightmare of the conditions so many people are living in today and i think king would have been much farther ahead than both of our major political parties who have not vocalized their support for the movement for black lives and i think king would have been a champion that we could greatly use. the movement needs more continuous leaders, sustainable actions that take people to the streets, continue to be seen, continue to be heard, continue to shake and awaken and

people unconfidentable with those messages, if people continue to be comfortable they won't change conditions around them and i thing king would have been out on the streets making people uncomfortable and being a champion for the movement writ large. >> dr. williams. >> and i think dr. king refers back to the reason the southern christian conference was organized, it was save the soul of america and when he made that speech, a time to -- the speech on time to change, it's time to break the silence and we have to speak out, i think it would be encouraging more of us to speak out about what is wrong and he would connect what he is trying to say about the vietnam war to the violence in our communities today. if america was one of the biggest purveyors of violence, what do we expect our young people to know? they know about violence. that's the way they -- and if they don't have jobs as my ot

supposed to do on the street? how are they supposed to live? it's a matter of what goes around comes around and it should motivate more of us to want to do the right thing, want to do the things dr. king worked for and want to bring his legacy back and be more positive. talk about it. i want everybody to read that speech, time to break the silence. when you read that speech there is no way you can blame those young people in communities about their violence because they got it from the adults. >> stuart, what does dr. king's dream and what does this holiday mean to young people today? young african-americans? >> and so there is a separation between the awareness of our young folk and the ideas of dr. king and so that's the purpose or the chief cause for which we come together to lift

king's life and legacy, to try to pass on as much knowledge about what he represented, what he stood for and how they should want to emulate his actions. so that's the purpose for the peace and the parade is to try to instill some of dr. king in our young people. but really there is this disconnect. you talk to our young -- because it's not taught in schools. civics is not taught in school. that's a problem. dr. king would have had a problem with the fact we're not teaching civic duty responsibility. and helping our fellow citizens. that's one of the things that's throughout a few of king's speeches. >> bob, what do you think the importance of dr. king's dream is to young white millennials? >> i think

reflect on the challenges of the black experience in this country through dr. king's speech and for somebody to continue to have a message that spoke to the great inequalities, that we need to be hyperconscious to it. and i don't want to just stop on the "i have a dream" speech because that is what's often fed to myself. i didn't know dr. king, how many times he had been arrested. i didn't know his radical messages. i didn't know that he erred more on the side of socialism than destructive capitalism that we have in the country. i don't want to get caught up in one speech because that's often what's fed to us. when we talk about we are one, i think of malcolm x another great leader who i was not taught about whatsoever as a young quite person growing up in the midwest so i think it's important to make sure white millennials hear the message but are challenged to what dr. king was saying, as dr. williams was saying the. speech he gave at the river front church one year before

assassination talked about militarism and how much of our resources are wasted abroad and so i think for white millennials they need to see not only the i have a dream speech but his entire career of what he was saying and even as was said before we started, the sanitation workers movement which we'll celebrate at this year's parade is extremely important when we look at the fight for 15 right now, the fight for the minimum wage increase and the other conversations that king was starting to start outside of racial equality but human dignity across the board. >> we'll be right back after this break. stay with us.

welcome back, so dr. williams, you are one of the grand marshalls of the parade. tell us about what that means, how you got chosen and that what will be happening. >> obviously i'm very pleased. it's a single honor to be a grand marshall. i'll be a grand marshall in cleveland, too. i'm rarely in town to be able to participate in the good things like this. i'm usually away talking with other people so this gives me an opportunity to be here, to work with the people in my community, my neighborhood, my town, so i'm very happy about that. in terms of dr. king and what makes the day great, i believe he would be pleased with the fact that we've

rather than a celebratory date. even the president -- the current president and his family have gone to places to provide service for our community and that is what dr. king had in mind all of his life. so we've gone back to what he wanted us to do is to serve our community, to bridge the gap between people and among people and do the things we can do to improve our own community. sometimes we talk about other people ought to do things. this is a day where we can do things in our own community. anybody can be great because greatness is based upon our service. >> stuart, tell us about the parade. >> okay. so first there's a peace walk so for those who want to come out to the peace walk. the peace walk will assemble 25900 martin luther king jr. avenue southeast washington, d.c. and that's right next door to the historic location, the united black fund. andid

fund, one of the founders, who was a part of the initial celebration of life and legacy of dr. king and that's calvin and wilhemina and the radio show icon mr. p. d. green. so they started this about 36 years ago celebrating the life and legacy of king so we tried to stay connected to that location for the historical relevance of that place. is at the peace walk. it's an opportunity for grass-roots organizations to speak up on what the life and legacy of dr. king is about and to be engaged in service activities as ms. williams just spoke about. so the peace walk will start at 10:00 a.m., step off at 10 a.m. >> first thing in the morning. >> first thing in the morning. i'll be probably working throughout the night. but we'll step off at 10:00 a.m.

and march from -- the peace a walkers where we will be -- principally bob and myself -- setting up the parade. once they arrive we will set the parade and then carry the parade down at 12:00. >> starting from the rise center, take the metro if you're traveling by transit and for the peace walk the anacostia metro. 75 groups will participate in the marge that will head from the rise center, up to 100 now stuart is telling me down to historic anacostia, a new parade route which is extremely important to go through that remarkable neighborhood that has such a history here in washington, d.c. >> and they will allow me to speak at the end of the march. i'll be able to talk about these things i've been talking about in other cities and the women in the movement. >> all right. dr. williams, bob, stuart, i wish we had another half hour. we have to g

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five days to go. lots of careful planning on tap. now on news 4 today, the precautions and final rehearsals as d.c. getting ready for the inauguration of donald trump. and the greatest show on earth coming to a close. why one of the most famous circus acts ever is ending after 146 years. a weather roller coaster to tell you about, from chilly to warm and sunny to more rain. storm team 4 tracking big changes coming up in the week ahead. but first, it is 6:00 on this sunday morning. good morning to you. i'm adam tuss. look who's here with me. >> forgive me. >> she's going to battle through today. >> it is the