Cori Bush — Congresswoman Cori Bush Breaks Down Sleeping Outside The Capitol on State of the Union

Welcome back

Speaker 1: to "State of the Union." For her, it's personal. This week, for several days and nights, Democratic Congresswoman Cori Bush, who once lived in a car with her two children, slept on

Speaker 2: the steps of the Capitol, pushing Congress and the president to help keep millions of Americans from facing eviction. And for something you don't see here in Washington very often: action. she joins me

Speaker 1: live now from st louis thank you so much congresswoman for joining me you've talked a lot over the last week about how personal a fight this was for you being evicted three times yourself including while you were raising two young children and i'm going to ask you about some of the details of what happened but before i can't help but wonder given

Speaker 3: the fact that you raised those kids now they're growing up what did they think

Speaker 4: of your

efforts And to them

Speaker 5: it's like this is what mom does, mom, you know, mom fights for everyone. And they've seen me do this, whether sleeping out on the street to help in my own community, you know, to raise awareness to what's happening to our unhoused community members, to fighting for justice for Michael Brown, you know, who the anniversary of his death is tomorrow. uh and so my children have seen this over and over again and they stand with me and it you know they've been radicalized too so they're this is

Speaker 6: this is who they want to see their mother you know this is who they know your

Speaker 7: efforts resulted in the cdc issuing a new 60-day eviction freeze for people

Speaker 1: living in areas with high or substantial covid transmission which basically covers almost the whole country right now. But as you know, even President Biden said he's not really sure whether this move is

Speaker 8: constitutional. It's already facing legal challenges. So if the courts ultimately strike it down, what's your next move

Well, so

Speaker 9: that's why I rushed back to St. Louis to make sure that and we've been telling we've been saying it nationally that we have to do the work now to get this money out. We have to do the

work to

Speaker 9: make sure that our states and our local governments are able to

um, to relieve

Speaker 9: lease this money, get this money out into the hands of the people who need it the most. So we're telling tenants, we're telling landlords to go online or show up at the clinics that are happening around the country and apply for this money. And for our local government and states, please get this money out. This has to happen. 60 days, we may not have. So we are pushing really hard to make sure that people apply and that's one thing that we keep hearing too too, is that especially locally, I've heard, well, people aren't

Speaker 5: applying. Well, we understand that there have been barriers to people applying and those resources being able to be moved. So we are working out those kinks right now. I

want to

Speaker 5: ask you about

Speaker 2: an op-ed that you wrote for CNN.com. And in it, you said, quote, now that we have again demonstrated what grassroots movements are capable of, there is no limit to what we can do. The change that we have been marching, organizing, and pushing for is within reach, we

just have

Speaker 2: to take it. House Speaker

Speaker 10: Nancy Pelosi seems to have taken a different stance

Speaker 1: On Friday, she drew a distinction. She's done this before between being an advocate and being a legislator. What's your response

I'm

Speaker 9: both. I'm both. I walked into Congress before I walked into Congress, after I won my primary, I started talking about being a politivist. I am a politivist. I think that it's okay to have both because when we legislate, yes, we have that power of the pen, the power

of

Speaker 9: of the purse. We're able to write bills. We're able to co-sponsor, send letters. All of that is wonderful. You need that. But the activist side of me, that advocate, is the one that remembers what it was like to be in positions where I felt overlooked and neglected and unheard. And so many others in our communities. I'm a nurse, so I am always advocating. That's what we do. And so having both of those, that's that pressure. The activist is going to bring the pressure. the activist

is going

Speaker 9: going to to highlight the issue so that the

Speaker 11: legislator can then hit the ball out of the park

Speaker 1: Congresswoman, I want to ask about the criticism that you're facing about comments you made

in

Speaker 12: an interview this past week. I want our viewers

to listen. I'm going

Speaker 13: to make sure I have security because I know I have had attempts on my life and I have

Speaker 14: too much work to do. There are too many people that need help right now for me to allow that. So if I end up spending $200,000, if I spend $10 more on it, you know what? I get to be here to do the work. So suck it up and defunding the police has to happen. We need to defund the police

So, I know

Speaker 3: you've seen that Republicans are pointing to the fact that you said you have your own security while almost in the same breath advocating

Speaker 1: for defunding the police. Now, I do want to emphasize, I understand you have security protection because you have received multiple death threats, but the clip that I just played is being used in attack ads against not you, but not just you, but other Democrats. So could those comments end up being harmful to your fellow

Speaker 7: Democrats, politically speaking

I think

Speaker 11: what we have to look at is the fact that I made it to Congress and

Speaker 9: in 2020 I was elected to Congress and we are still fighting this same fight. We're still fighting to save black lives. That was not that work was not done before I got here. This is the reason why I ran was to save lives, to save my son's life. It was because Michael Brown who we're fighting for can still trying to get justice for is because he didn't get justice and Von Derrick Meyers didn't get justice. Gene Powell didn't get justice and so many others. That is why. And because that was not that was not fixed before I got here to then come at me and say, you're the reason why we have these problems. No, the reason why we have these problems is because those that were in power and could have fixed this problem before now didn't and cost it cost lives. And so. Now that I'm here, I we just we just introduced the People's Response

Speaker 15: Act to make sure that we are looking at the money that money that should be going to social safety nets to make sure that our our community members who are living with mental health issues are are able to function and live in society the way that that anyone would ask to. So. I don't believe as far as my as far as my colleagues, you know, I absolutely empathize. I empathize. But you know what? The same thing that the Republicans will do, which is figure out how to work with this on a on a comms basis. That's what we have to do. My job is to save lives, the lives in my community, because when we're when we're talking about every single year, increasing the budget for police and then and then and then the budget for like health and human services continuing to shrink

And

Speaker 15: St. Louis being number one for police violence year after year after year. Number one, number two for homicides year and year after year

Speaker 16: So when we're adding more money to the police, but we're still dying. So

Speaker 17: something has to change. Yeah, and I hear what you're saying, but I also heard you say

Speaker 9: that you think it's a comms problem. Is it that? No, I'm saying that we can also, that's another way that you can tackle this. You have to tackle it from more than one place

Speaker 15: We have to work on what we want to say. What is our message? But then, We also have to understand that we have to save lives, too. St. Louis can't keep being put on the back burner at all. And I'm here to stand up for my community. Congresswoman

Speaker 18: Cori Bush, thank you so much for joining me this morning. Absolutely. Thank

Speaker 19: you