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Curfew Restores Order in Baltimore; Interview with Rep. Elijah Cummings; Report on Freddie Gray's Death Expected Friday; Orioles- White Sox Game Closed to Public. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired April 29, 2015 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: We have the story covered from all angles. Here's a night for you -- here's a look for you of what we saw last night.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[07:00:00] COMMISSIONER ANTHONY BATTS, BALTIMORE: Tonight, I think the biggest thing is that citizens are safe, the city is stable.

CUOMO (voice-over): Big crowds return to the streets Tuesday night, but this time joining them were more than 1,000 police and some 2,000 National Guardsmen.

STEPHANIE RAWLINGS-BLAKE, MAYOR OF BALTIMORE: Nobody needs to get arrested tonight. We want you all to go home.

CUOMO: As the clock nears the 10 p.m. curfew, the mayor's voice over the loud speaker, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, pleading with people to go home.

RAWLINGS-BLAKE: And we promised that we would be off the streets at 10 p.m. So please just go home.

CUOMO: Locals determined to encourage others to heed the call, but they are staying put.

(on camera): There are no real bullets hitting the -- hitting anybody here now.

(voice-over) Ten p.m. comes and goes, but it is not until a few bottles fly...

(on camera): See the area of concentration, where they're getting the bottles from.

(voice-over): ... that the police start a slow advance.

(on camera): You can see the flash bangs. They are not gas. This is not tear gas.

(voice-over): Restraint rules the day for both sides, though bottles and pepper bullets fly. Smoke canisters to push people off streets sometimes come back. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have several people.

CUOMO: Tense moments tick by. But only those challenging the line disappear into a wall of shields. A handful of arrests. Progress compared to the hundreds cuffed for looting and assault on officers just 24 hours before.

On this day, less water is thrown. A little boy instead offering water to police. Many agree it was the community who brought peace.

As today's Baltimore Orioles game is closed to the public for the first time in Major League history, fear of violence remains. But many here say there could be a better way. An amazing gathering of thousands at Empowerment Temple Church.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People think that it's us, but it's not.

CUOMO: Hundreds of mixed clergy promising to make nonviolence the way of showing they will not be silent in the face of oppression...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody can be met with love.

CUOMO: ... creating a love line between police and protesters, hoping their voices and presence are enough to get the change and justice they demand.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We need help. We asked them. We're begging you for help.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a bigger systemic problem that we've got to deal with.

CUOMO: Rival gangs -- the Bloods, Crips and the Black Guerrilla Gang [SIC] -- calling a truce for the first time in Baltimore history, according to gang members. The real problem, they say, decades of poverty and police brutality.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It started with Freddie Gray. Now we're going to take it to the next level.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: At the end of the day, you need to do what you need to do to take care of your kids.

CUOMO: Baltimore mothers also coming together to calm their kids, standing up in defense of the mom caught on camera trying to stop her son from becoming part of a riot.

TOYA GRAHAM, MOTHER: That's my only son. And at the end of the day, I don't want him to be a Freddie Gray.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO: You can dismiss the gang bangers. You can focus too much on the scenes of violence, but the issues here are real, and they go beyond any one police incident, even that of Freddie Gray. And the next big moment will not be today. It will be Friday. That's

when the Baltimore Police are handing over their report on Freddie Gray's death to prosecutors. It's called a preliminary investigative report, but the public is so hungry for some type of movement in this process. But the question is, will they get it on Friday?

CNN's Athena Jones has more on that. And there is reason for skepticism about Friday being a day of closure, is there not?

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Good morning, Chris.

The public is hungry for answers, but they're not going to get all of the answers to all of the questions about what happened to Freddie Gray on this Friday. This is just one step among many steps in what's likely to be a very long process. That police investigation continues. They hand over what they have to the state's attorney.

But it's not at all clear how much of that is going to become public. And certainly, they're not going to know all of the answers to those questions.

But I can tell you, Chris, that we're here in the center of things. This is a central intersection where a lot of the events have gone down over the last couple of days. Outside of the CVS you can see behind me, this is the CVS that was looted and burned on Monday night. The folks around here are still trying to pick up the pieces. That CVS now boarded up. It wasn't the case yesterday at this time.

And also the police are now beginning to turn their attention to tracking down the people who are responsible for the violence that we saw on Monday night using video, examining videotape, to find people responsible, for instance, for damaging police cars, setting cars on fire, that sort of thing.

And so on the one side trying to keep the city calm, maintain the calm that has emerged over the last several hours, and also begin to bring to justice the people responsible for the violence -- Chris.

CUOMO: All right, thank you very much, Athena. We'll watch the process, see what happens between now and then, of course, on Friday.

And then we have what's going on with baseball. It is a Major League first, and it's really not an auspicious occasion. Due to security concerns here in Baltimore, this afternoon's game between the Orioles and White Sox will be played but closed to the public. No fans. The entire stadium, almost 46,000 seats empty.

Joe Johns is at Camden Yards, the home of the Orioles. And he's got it all to himself, just like he would later on today -- Joe.

[07:05:12] JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Chris, a baseball game with no audience. It is a Major League first. And it's actually an improvement over what's happened here at this stadium over the past couple days. They've already postponed two games.

So why is this happening? Well, clearly there are issues of crowd control. And we do know that the officials with the team are saying they'd rather police resources that might be used for the game here be used elsewhere in the city.

But there's another reason, as well. On Saturday night there was a violent protest here, dozens of people arrested, six police officers injured, a couple cars torched. So there's a real safety concern, as well.

Meanwhile, the former Baltimore Ravens linebacker, Ray Lewis, is adding his voice to those who are calling for an end to the violence. Listen to this video that's now gone viral.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAY LEWIS, FORMER BALTIMORE RAVENS LINEBACKER: Young kids, you got to understand something. Get off the streets. Violence is not the answer. Violence has never been the answer.

Freddie Gray, we -- we don't do nothing for him doing this. We know there's a deeper issue. We know what the jungle looks like. But this isn't it. There's enough of us in the streets, trying to change what's going on. Baltimore, get off the streets. Kids, go home. Stay home!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: The Baltimore Orioles were also supposed to have a home stand here this weekend. They're now relocating that game to Tampa, even though it's going to count as a home game for the Orioles.

Chris, back to you.

CUOMO: All right, Joe, thank you very much. A bizarre situation there. But we're in somewhat of a bizarre time here in Baltimore.

So let's bring in Congressman Elijah Cummings. And not only is he a legend in Congress, but he is a local man made good. And he means a lot to the community here. Last night he was alone in the middle of this crowd. Many still hostile. And he was there right up until the moments of the curfew and then after.

Of course, Cummings is a Democrat. His district includes more than half of the city of Baltimore -- Congressman.

REP. ELIJAH CUMMINGS (D), MARYLAND: Good to see you.

CUOMO: Good to see you here. It was even better to see you last night. What brought you out onto those streets all alone like that?

CUMMINGS: Well, first of all, the incident happened four blocks from my house, where I've lived for 33 years. And I know a lot of these folks. And I know the pain.

And I did not want it to erupt into a melee that would have caused more people to get arrested. And I'm proud of Baltimore. And I also wanted them -- they know me. And I know them. And so I

wanted them to -- and so I wanted to say to them, "Look, we hear you." And that's what it is. We got a lot of people who are in a lot of pain. And a lot of our children -- you showed a clip a little bit earlier from the Empowerment Temple, where some 300 or 400 ministers have joined. And I was there.

But a young lady got up, and she said something that I will never forget. She says, "You see, I'm in a school where I'm reading from a book that was published in 1973."

And basically, what she was saying is, "It's my turn. I want to have an opportunity to be somebody."

And so we in Baltimore and across the nation, by the way, need to look at our young people, particularly young African-American folks. They just want a chance. They want -- I call it they want to be included. And we need to have an inclusion revolution.

CUOMO: It mattered that you were there last night. Obviously, you mean so much to the people here. You meant so much to how they treated the police, because that was your message. And I think you meant something to how the police treated them.

CUMMINGS: Yes.

CUOMO: Because they knew you were there. And they knew that the community had come out in force. And yet, you know, what's going on around the country right now when they focus on Baltimore. They say look at them violent destroying their own communities. They say the police are the problem. Clearly, they are the problem, these thugs. What's being missed?

CUMMINGS: I think they're missing the fact that, first of all, most of the children, 99 percent of them, weren't there last night. They were at home.

CUOMO: Uh-huh.

CUMMINGS: And they missed the point that earlier in the day yesterday, we must have had at least 1,000 kids in a peaceful demonstration. But they're also missing the pain.

You know, children -- one young man told me yesterday, he said, "Cummings, this was what was upsetting me." He said, "First, we don't get the kind of education we deserve. Then we can't function. Then we go to prison. Then we have a record, and then we can't get a job. And we're stuck."

And so some kind of way -- not just Baltimore, by the way, but the entire country needs to take a warning from this. We have got to do better by our children.

[07:10:03] And I say to all of my elected officials, I say to them, "We should want for these children what we want for our own." And they are not thugs. You got some people who took advantage --

opportunists who took advantage of a kind of chaotic situation. But that's basically what it amounted to.

CUOMO: When you've got gang bangers coming together to say, "We have problems in this community that need to be addressed," they don't need to be out there. They want this to go away, probably, faster than anybody else, because it's getting in the way of their business, to be honest about it.

But, you know, who wasn't there last night? And you can tell me I'm wrong to look at it this way, that it was a public safety thing. But you know, I know you're going on 40 years of age now. And you were there last night.

CUMMINGS: I wish.

CUOMO: The governor wasn't there. The mayor, we heard her voice, but she wasn't there. Do these communities deserve the respect of presence? Do you think that it's missing and it matters?

CUMMINGS: First of all, I really do think it matters. I can't speak for the people who weren't there, but I can tell you one thing, man. It makes me feel -- see, you got to feel people's pain.

And as the son of two former sharecroppers, one with a third grade education to rise up to be a member of Congress. See, when I see them, I see me. And I want them to be -- I want them to be the best they can be. And I want to -- I want to send them into a destiny of greatness. And they want to be great. But we as adults have to help them.

CUOMO: You know, we got a little compromise last night, because you were alone in that crowd. You're revered. I didn't worry about your safety. I worried about your emotional commitment to the people there. It hurts you.

CUMMINGS: Yes.

CUOMO: You know the numbers. You've taught them to us. A third of the people in those communities are in poverty. You see yourself in them. They see what they want to be in you.

CUMMINGS: Yes.

CUOMO: And they don't know if they're going to get it.

CUMMINGS: That's exactly right.

CUOMO: And they don't know people want them to have it.

CUMMINGS: That's exactly right.

CUOMO: What do you say -- you got almost all black elected leadership here already, and it hasn't changed the fate of these people. You got Martin O'Malley, who's thinking about running for president on the back of what he says he did for Baltimore, not the best record of accomplishment we're seeing here in what's being lived these days.

What do you say to people who say, "They're their own fault. They're their own problem. Look what they did to their own community"?

CUMMINGS: What I say to them is that, yes, we had some people who were opportunists. But we have got to do better. That's what I say. And then I say that to the kids. I tell them, we'll do better. That's why I got the respect that I got last night. I want to end with this.

CUOMO: Please.

CUMMINGS: I've often said, my favorite quote is, our children are the living messages we send to a future we will never see. With our young men, African-Americans being shot down, now I'm seeing it is our children that are sending their parents to a future they will never see. There's absolutely something wrong with that picture. And we can do better. And that's from the president straight on down to the city council, and society.

CUOMO: Now, listen, Elijah, I know that this situation literally brings tears to your eyes. I know that it hurts you because your life is about making that better.

CUMMINGS: Yes.

CUOMO: And it's hard.

CUMMINGS: Yes.

CUOMO: You have a big moment coming Friday.

CUMMINGS: Yes.

CUOMO: I don't want to hype the situation. You know, you've known me since I was a kid.

CUMMINGS: That's right.

CUOMO: I don't know that clarity comes on Friday.

CUMMINGS: Yes.

CUOMO: I don't know that you get charges on Friday. I'm not making a statement about the case.

CUMMINGS: Yes. I understand.

CUOMO: I think there's a misunderstanding of the process here.

CUMMINGS: Yes. And one of the things that I've said to everybody as a former criminal lawyer, to everybody, I'm talking about everybody charging and investigating, that do not -- make sure you make the public understand that what's going to happen on Friday is the police are going to present to the state's attorney what they have up until this point. The state's attorney's investigation, which by the way, is independent, is going on. The police commissioner's investigation is going on. So it may be weeks before, and if, any charges are filed.

But what I'm also saying to people is we live in a democracy. And we've got to be -- it's a fair process. We'll go through that process, and we will get there. But don't expect any charges next week.

CUOMO: Am I wrong on something, that when we were there with you last night -- and again I got to make it clear. We have security here very often in situations. One of the guy's a former D.C. cop, saw Representative Cummings, ran away from us like, you know, we weren't even there, because he wanted to make sure that Elijah was all right. I was only concerned because you were so committed to being there.

CUMMINGS: I love these people.

CUOMO: And it hurt you to see them. When that one young man was saying, "You need to hear me. You're either with me or you're not. You're either with me..."

CUMMINGS: Yes.

CUOMO: Some people in the media, some people turn away, "Oh, he's grandstanding." You didn't.

CUMMINGS: No.

CUOMO: You stayed locked onto that young man.

CUMMINGS: And he hugged me in the end.

CUOMO: And he was hugging you.

CUMMINGS: Right.

CUOMO: And it was a "don't leave me" hug.

CUMMINGS: Right, right, right.

CUOMO: How do you handle that?

CUMMINGS: I had my turn. I want them to get their turn. Simple as that.

[07:15:04] CUOMO: What can you do for them? What do you do for them, Congressman?

CUMMINGS: What I can do -- what I can do is fight for them. And I've got to make sure that people hear them. See, they feel as if nobody hears them. And I think we're beginning to get that.

But I'm telling you, Baltimore can happen anywhere. And you've got people looking at us right now saying, "Oh, that will never happen in my community." But yes, it will. But you've got to have people that will listen, and you've got to begin to act on it. You got to say, OK, school system, let's be honest: you cannot send children to the ninth grade reading on a third grade level.

CUOMO: But if he waits for everybody else, he's going to be waiting too long.

CUMMINGS: Going to be waiting too long.

CUOMO: What did you say to him when we left you guys alone and he was holding onto you? I saw how he was looking at you. I look at people -- my father...

CUMMINGS: The first thing I told him is, "I love you, man." I said, "I love you, man."

He said, "I love you back."

I said, "I promise you I'm not going to leave you behind. I promise you.

And he said, "Can I call your office?"

I said, "You know how to get ahold of me."

He said, "Done."

And so they want to -- but they want -- they don't want you just to hear them. They want to know that you're going to do something about their pain. And see, they're trying to get -- they're reaching for a future, and they're trying to get it. And they just -- it just seem like they just cannot touch it.

And so we as adults, we've got to say, "OK, how do we improve our schools?" How did the ones who missed getting the kind of education they really felt they deserved -- we've got to retrain, we've got to do remedial quests.

I worked with a high school here in Baltimore, and we -- a lot of it is remediation. But adults have got to deal with this. You know, we can help young people learn. We can help them discover their talents. But if we don't nurture those talents, and we don't support them, it's like any other kid.

Again, I say to every elected official, damn it, want for these children what you want for your own. You don't even have to tell me what it is.

CUOMO: Where's the fire come from?

CUMMINGS: My fire? My parents.

CUOMO: Because you were the only one there last night.

CUMMINGS: Yes.

CUOMO: And that was the place to be.

CUMMINGS: Yes. CUOMO: That's the metaphor, the CVS...

CUMMINGS: Yes.

CUOMO: ... the community that's eating its own. CVS didn't want to put it here, and now look what you did.

CUMMINGS: Yes.

CUOMO: That's where people are supposed to be. We heard the mayor's voice over the loudspeaker. I know you can't be everywhere, but that was kind of the place. Where are your people?

CUMMINGS: I can tell you, first of all, look, I was watching it on television. And I said, "I've got to be there." And so I went over. I kind of -- you know, my parents, God bless them, were two Pentecostal ministers. They didn't have much. But one of the things that they taught us is that we want you to go and get an education and get blessed so you can bless.

CUOMO: Get blessed so you can bless.

CUMMINGS: In other words, you know, become the lawyer so that you can represent people. Become the doctor so that you can heal people. And that's what it's all about.

And so, again, you said it a little bit earlier. It's -- you know, they do see something in me. But I see something in them. But if they can't get it out, it becomes trapped. And the next thing you know you have the explosions that we are seeing.

But again, most of our kids, the vast majority, 99 percent of our kids, are not -- are not what was shown in, by the way, what would be the equivalent of a third of a football field of the whole city.

CUOMO: There's no question. We were trying to be careful early on. Baltimore was burning, it was never the case.

CUMMINGS: Right.

CUOMO: You had small pockets where situations were bad.

CUMMINGS: Yes.

CUOMO: And there are areas that are ordinarily challenged. There's no question that people can exaggerate the view. We know that's why you were there. And I'm sorry it brings tears to your eyes, but I know that there's a trade on that, that it also fuels your passion.

CUMMINGS: Oh, yes. I've often said it is your pain that leads you to your passion to do your purpose. Your pain, passion, purpose.

CUOMO: I got it the first time. That's why (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

Congressman, thank you so much. Thank you for being with us.

CUMMINGS: All right, thank you. Thank you.

CUOMO: Representative Elijah Cummings showing what is the best of leadership on the streets of Baltimore right now. And it is certainly never been needed more than it is needed right now.

We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to have your news from all over the world, including what's happening on the streets of Baltimore.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[07:22:50] BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What those community leaders and clergy and others were doing, that is a statement. That's the kind of organizing that needs to take place if we're going to tackle this problem. And they deserve credit for it, and we should be lifting them up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: President Obama calling for soul searching after the violence in Baltimore. How can local leaders help maintain calm? How concerned should other cities be about the possibility of similar protests? And what action needs to be taken?

Joining us now, Reverend Robert White, the pastor for the Peace of Mind Church of Happiness in St. Louis. Good to have you back with us, Pastor. Reverend Michael Walrond, he is the senior pastor for the First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York, and he sits right beside me here in studio.

Pastor Mike, you said it's OK for me to call you that.

REV. MICHAEL WALROND, SENIOR PASTOR, FIRST CORINTHIAN BAPTIST CHURCH: It is.

PEREIRA: I know all our hearts are heavy as we see what's unfolding in Baltimore, about the unrest that we're seeing. But we also want to understand very well there's something behind the unrest. And this is where community leaders and religious leaders are coming into play.

You're probably talking about it in your church right now. What are you hearing from people?

WALROND: No question. I think there's a tremendous amount of dis- ease among people about the violence that took place on Monday. And -- but at the same time there's a tremendous amount of hopefulness and optimism, where you see the scenes from yesterday in Baltimore, where community leaders came together and clergy came together, gangs came together. People came together to really portray a different image.

PEREIRA: What is it that you could have those groups come together? You know, and when you think about it, that's extraordinary.

WALROND: Well, you know, what I've discovered in my own life is that, in times of despair and when people reach a point when they are weary of experiencing the forces that seem to mitigate against them, they will come together.

And so my real hope in this moment is that we, in this nation, move beyond a cursory glance of issues around poverty and income inequality and wealth polarization. That we begin to look seriously at the issues that impact cities like Baltimore on a consistent basis.

PEREIRA: Reverend White, we have been talking to you so much -- pardon me -- in light of Ferguson, and you were on the ground there. We saw how instrumental you were in the conversations with protesters, in the conversations with law enforcement and local officials.

[07:25:11] Really, I want to peg off of what the pastor said here about what we saw happen. And Chris was telling us about it. What happened in Baltimore.

Thousands gathering at the Empowerment Church praying, talking, asking questions. But also teaching the young people about nonviolence. That's a really important message. How do we get through to our teens to make them understand the cause is important, but the way you handle it is even more vital?

REV. ROBERT WHITE, PEACE OF MIND CHURCH OF HAPPINESS: Well, Michaela, as pastor Mike said, there is a dis-ease, but it really is a disease. This country is suffering from a disease that no one's paying attention to.

And that's what we see in Baltimore, what we saw in Ferguson in August and even last night is the disease that has gone untouched. These students are not equipped to be successful. The local leaders are not equipped to help. We're fighting a battle with an empty gun. And what we need...

PEREIRA: How do we bridge that gap, Pastor?

WHITE: Well, what we do is folks like the Honorable Elijah Cummings, who has put together and has been working for the last 30 years to have Congress get more involved. We need the government to get more involved, to make sure that city school systems like Baltimore are not as far behind as their counterparts in the county.

It's all over this country, where we're not being educated properly. Our jobs are being moved out of our neighborhoods. And so you have a powder keg that is eventually not only going to explode one city at a time, but if we don't do something about this disease, our entire country will go up in flames; because the young folk are unsatisfied with the lack of attention that they're getting.

The only time they get attention is if they decide to hit a police car, set a building on fire. But nobody's paying attention to what's going on in these schools and in these neighborhoods.

PEREIRA: A pivotal figure in what's been going on in Baltimore that has played out on screens and has gone viral is our mom. We've got to talk about Toya Graham. We saw how she handled her own kind of justice, family justice, by going down and finding her son and essentially giving him the whooping of his life.

I heard another mother say, "If you don't teach peace, they don't know peace."

So, Pastor, talking to our youth now is vital. These are teaching moments right now, to help them understand, especially black youth that want to be heard. You can't have this kind of unrest and believe that there isn't a problem. But how do you direct the message to something impactful?

WALROND: I think that, yes, these are teaching moments for our young people. And I think one way we begin to embrace and engage our young people is to be honest about the conditions in which many of our young people live, especially in Baltimore.

It is difficult to begin to talk about not being violent and not having an eruption of emotion when you experience in places like Baltimore and places in the village of Harlem like where I live, in some respects, where you see the criminalization of noncriminal behavior. When you see how one's very being and existence is being problematized in so many ways. When you experience the eclipse of opportunity, and you live in the environments, in cities and communities where an underserved communities and communities of color where you find this inequitable distribution of educational resources. You find that, in many ways, young people are dealing with the erosion of possibility, the erosion of dreams, the erosion of hope.

If we're not honest about that and honest about the conditions that cause that and create that, then we will always be living in this illusion that we will visit every now and again when something like this happens. And so we must transcend that moment and begin with honesty, conversation and then policy.

PEREIRA: Right.

WALROND: Because protest plus policy equals cultural shifting and transformation.

PEREIRA: And that's what we need.

WALROND: That's what we need.

PEREIRA: Reverend White, Pastor Mike, we know the clergy and faith leaders have been vital in this. In fact, they are suggesting one -- using the hashtag #OneBaltimore to change the dynamic of what is being seen about Baltimore right now. Thank you so much for joining us.

WALROND: Thank you.

PEREIRA: Alisyn.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Great conversation, Michaela. Thanks so much.

So what will happen on Friday when Baltimore Police turn over the findings of their investigation into the Freddie Gray's death to the state's attorney? We will talk with the city's former police commissioner about what comes next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)