- [Nicholas] I'm Nicholas Kristof.

My wife Sheryl and I, have worked together for decades covering some of the greatest injustices of our time.

But we become increasingly shocked by what's been taking place here in America.

- [Sheryl] Now, Nick and I are traveling across the country into the heart of communities battling despair.

We are the richest country on the planet with the worst poverty.

That's who we are.

(soft music) - [Nicholas] One of my most powerful memories from childhood is the number six school bus.

(soft music) Early each morning, it would weave through the hills and valleys surrounding Yamhill, Oregon picking me and my friends and eventually dropping us off first at Yamhill Grade School, and then later at Yamhill Carlton High School, a little down the road.

(indistinct chattering) (soft music) But this memory is also tinted with sadness, because today about a quarter of the kids who rode that bus with me are no longer alive.

(soft music) (upbeat piano music) I'm Nicholas Kristof.

My career as a journalist has taken me all over the world reporting stories of inequality, suffering, and humanitarian disaster.

My wife Sheryl and I, have worked together for decades covering some of the greatest injustices of our time.

- [Woman] Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.

Their coverage won in the Pulitzer Prize which will be presented to them today.

- [Nicholas] But we increasingly shocked by what's been taking place here in America.

- [Sheryl] Life expectancy is dropping.

Drug addiction is rising and more people are homeless than ever before.

- America is unique when it comes to inequality.

We are the richest country on the planet with the worst poverty.

That's who we are.

- The big question is whether or not there will continue to be opportunity for everyone.

Or even the ability to have the American Dream.

That's the question that we're facing right now as a nation.

(soft music) - [Nicholas] For me, the story of inequality in America has become increasingly personal.

It really hit home when my high school buddy, Kevin Green died age 54.

(soft music) Kevin and I rode that number six school bus together.

I wrote a column about him in The New York Times.

Kevin's story seemed to touch a nerve and I was struck by the lack of empathy in many of the comments.

(soft music) But what happened to Kevin wasn't just his own failure.

It's part of a much bigger issue happening across America.

But these stories are largely hidden from view.

- [Sheryl] Now, Nick and I are traveling across the country into the heart of communities battling despair.

How many of you know someone for is affected by addiction in any way?

- We can get prostitutes, we can get drugs and sit right here.

This is no place for a child to be even an adult.

- Honestly, it just sucks, man.

I had everything I wanted in my early twenties.

I have nothing now, I'm 32 years old.

- [Sheryl] We want to understand how so many people fell through the cracks and what can be done to change things.

- If I had enough ability to help everybody who wanted to achieve their dream, I would do that.

- It just kind of warms my heart to see you clean, being a great dad.

You are heavy kid.

- What color is that?

- Blue.

- Blue?

Wow!

- [Sheryl] How do we help people?

How do we give them a better chance?

And what kind of country do we want to live in?

(soft music) - In our country today there are neighborhoods where the American trait of self-reliance, has been blotted out by government dependency.

You know, as Milton Friedman, the economist said, "If you start paying people to be poor, you're gonna have a lot of poor people."

(soft music) - [Nicholas] There's an idea that's been gaining ground in American politics for the last 50 years.

That poverty is just the result of individuals making poor choices.

- True poverty is being driven by personal behavior, not an unfair economic system.

- [Nicholas] And that all we need to get ahead in life is to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps.

- The reason we're a great country, and we are a great country, is not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves.

- [Nicholas] This story of self reliance is nothing new.

The idea of the rugged individual is deeply rooted in the American imagination.

- First of all, the government doesn't have any responsibility.

People have responsibility.

- [Nicholas] But politicians began exploiting this idea to slash welfare and other antipoverty measures across the country.

- A long time ago, I concluded that the current welfare system undermines the basic values of work, responsibility and family.

- [Nicholas] Central to this story of self reliance is the idea of a golden age.

When the family was the foundation of American life.

Hard work was richly rewarded and the government involvement was minimal.

I was familiar with this story.

It reminded me of my hometown in Oregon.

(air whooshing) - And here we are in Yamhill and don't blink or you'll miss it.

Here's the school.

- [Nicholas] Yamhill is a little farm town, Southwest of Portland with one traffic light, four churches, and families who have lived here for generations.

(soft music) I remember the Yamhill of my youth as a place of opportunity, good union jobs in timber and manufacturing.

Yamhill was a place where a young family could purchase a plot of land and a stake in the American dream.

(soft music) This is where I learned to drive.

- [Sheryl] Right down this road.

- Right on this same road.

(soft music) (dog barking) - [Nicholas] My parents moved here in 1971.

My mom still lives in the same farmhouse.

Yeah.

Okay.

I put my mom on.

- I could alternate five milligrams one day and 10 the next.

Nicholas?

- Yeah.

- She's- - We don't take that, we don't take that.

- A little problem.

- [Nicholas] My parents were both college professors.

In Yamhillm that was unheard of.

Most of my friend's parents worked in local industry and farming.

We shared the expectation of a better future than our parents.

But it didn't always work out that way.

(soft music) - [Sheryl] I've been coming to Yamhill with Nick for over 30 years.

(soft music) - I don't think you've seen my all yearbooks.

- Nope.

- It's been a- - During that time, I've been shocked by the declining health of his friends and neighbors who have come to know so well.

(soft music) I grew up in New York, the grandchild of Chinese immigrants.

I've lost friends over the years, but nothing on the scale that Nick has experienced.

- So many of the people in my high school class are dead or have had been problems with addictions.

- I've never seen these, this is pretty amazing.

- Everybody looks so happy and innocent and carefree, and it was just a time of hope.

The theme for our prom with stairway to heaven, and it was this- - Yeah, wow, wow.

- It really did seem like we were on a stairway.

Life here had gotten so much better over the last few decades.

Everybody seemed to be living a much better life than their parents had lived, and then it just kind of blew up.

Recognize that guy?

- Oh yeah, that's number two.

(Nicholas laughing) - Well, but it looks like I'm about to pass him.

(both laughing) They just took a picture of him with too soon.

So, oh, there's Kevin, that's Kevin Green.

Then front leading the way.

- He was a good runner.

- [Nicholas] Kevin and his brother, Clayton Green, were close neighbors of ours.

Kevin was a good buddy.

We ran cross country and track together in high school.

When I moved to New York, he would check in on my parents as they got older.

After my dad died, he and Clayton made sure my mom was taken care of when I couldn't be there.

- And then let me show you our sister, Cindy, you remember Cindy?

- Oh, yeah yeah!

- She used to bake.

- She used to bake, make jam too.

- She was incredible.

Incredible homemaker.

- That's Cindy.

- That's Cindy.

- I guess she kind of looks like Kevin.

- So she died and she was probably 54, 55.

- So sad.

- And Kevin died at about the same age, two years later.

Here's Clayton Green.

Clayton is not in good shape and I just hope he doesn't follow the path of Kevin.

(wooden sticks clanging) (soft music) - Kevin was really nice guy.

So left a big hole in the world.

Left one in my heart too.

(soft music) - Caroline calls this meth road.

- I know.

So they have five acres.

- Five acres.

So it's very small farm, but they can grow.

- I know they can grow food for themselves and if they have this place, the whole family would be in- - No, I mean.

- [Nicholas] Such a difficulty life.

- [Sheryl] Thanks to their dad who bought the place.

- Yeah he got a good blue collar job and supported his family and able to buy a five acre farm.

(soft music) Hi, good morning.

- Morning.

- Good morning.

- Probably be best to come over here.

(dog barking) All those photos.

- Hi Clayton.

- Hi Clayton, it good to see you.

- Great to see you.

- There's Kevin.

- [Sheryl] Oh, that's Kevin, that's a good picture of him.

- [Nicholas] Yeah, that's good one.

So you guys moved here in 1970, you said?

- '72.

- '72.

(soft music) - One of the reasons we moved to Oregon in the first place is because their father was out of the work for six months and we used up all our savings and we had friends that had moved here and they said there was lots of work up here, come on up.

And then we've been here ever since.

- [Nicholas] The early 1970s did indeed seem to be the golden age we Americans had been promised.

Where through hard work and determination, people could make it on their own.

(soft music) But we Americans were not on our own.

- [Sheryl] The postwar economy was fueled by substantial government investment.

And Irene and Tom Green and millions like them were riding the wave of prosperity that followed.

(soft music) Policies like the GI Bill offered grants for housing and education.

And huge spending on infrastructure lifted the fortunes of the generation.

So what job did he have?

He actually, he was a senior mason.

- He worked on the Fremont Bridge and places like that.

- And too that was a union, that was a union job union pay?

- Yes, it was.

It's actually being where I base it.

I worked at the Camry for 25 years too.

So put it together and then we had this all paid off in no time.

(soft music) (birds chirping) - We just thought this was the greatest thing in the world when we first got out here.

We were fairly young, Tom was six years older than me.

- [Nicholas] How old was he when he died?

- [Woman] He wasn't quite 64 yet.

- [Nicholas] And it was a heart attack all of sudden?

- [Woman] Yeah, right in the backyard.

(soft music) - [Nicholas] Tom's death marked the end of an era.

Shortly after Kevin and I graduated from high school, union jobs began to disappear.

- In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.

(audience applauding) - [Nicholas] The election of president Reagan in 1980, initiated a mass transfer of wealth and power away from ordinary Americans.

(crowd shouting) - They are in violation of the law, and if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated.

- [Nicholas] Worker protections were removed.

Unions were broken and the business world became more powerful.

A 50 year stagnation of working wages followed.

- I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, I am from the government and I am here to help.

- [Nicholas] People didn't need government, they were told they could make it on their own.

(machine roaring) In Yamhill, farms consolidated and invested in labor saving technologies.

And in 1994, the biggest local employer, the Glove Factory, closed it's stores.

Is it fair to say that Kevin never got the well paying job that his dad had had?

- [Woman] I think he wanted to be an architect, but it never panned out.

We didn't feel that we could afford to put him through school.

So he figured he didn't have much of a chance.

- [Nicholas] Kevin struggled to make ends meet.

And eventually his girlfriend left with their children.

- His kids were his whole life other than fishing.

- Looking back is that kind of when a downhill slide began when she left and the kids left?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

When she kicked him out.

- She just was not happy with what he was presenting her with.

I think she dumped him because he wasn't able to make enough to get a place to live.

I don't think Kevin thought too well of himself.

I think he thought he wasn't worth much.

- [Nicholas] Kevin self-medicated with drugs and alcohol.

His weight ballooned and his health began to fail.

- His organs were just deteriorated 'cause they was working too hard.

His heart, his lungs, everything was working too hard.

- Shutting down.

- Shutting down on him.

They only gave him, what, two weeks.

- Christmas day I took him to hospice.

I went in there and he was all welled up.

I go, " What are you crying about?"

He goes " I only have two and half weeks to live" - [Woman] Yeah, but he didn't live two weeks.

It was a shot, a real shock.

I knew he wasn't well, but I didn't expect that.

- It just so hard for me to understand the path from this.

(soft music) - [Sheryl] Park right here.

- [Nicholas] Like the rest of America, Yamhill has seen a devastating rise in drug use over the last 20 years.

Hey, Rhonda?

- Hi.

- [Nicholas] Rhonda Kroeker is a minister and a longtime friend of the Green family.

- We really appreciate it.

Hi there, good to see you.

- Hi Rhonda.

- Doing Kevin's funeral was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life.

- Oh, wow!

- Because I knew that the reason why his body ultimately shut down was because of drug use.

And that church was absolutely packed out.

You could not, there was standing room only.

- Kevin was a too good at a heart, did people like that?

- He was the best guy in the world, he would walk 10 miles literally.

He would walk 10 miles to help you.

His children were there sobbing and his mother and his brothers, all of these people that have been affected by him.

But I could see all of these other people that are heading down the same road.

And I told them, "You've got to take a look at how you're living your life, because I don't want to be standing up here and have you be the next person that's in this little wooden box."

- [Sheryl] So glad you said that.

- It wasn't easy.

It was so hard because I feel a certain way, I feel an anger.

- [Nicholas] Rhonda has a right to be angry.

I'm angry too.

(soft music) As a country, we abandoned communities like Yamhill at the moment they needed us most.

- Zealan died first.

Fell asleep drunk in the trailer house.

Burned himself up.

And Farlan, he in the river fishing and ruptured his spleen.

Nathan died.

- And I hear he sort of blew himself up making meth?

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah.

Farlan's daughter died.

- Daughter died.

- Yeah, she was 20, or 32 or whatever.

And her sister, she died of cancer two years ago now.

- When you just think through, the people on the bus, I mean, it's kind of devastating.

So you said the Lawson's Willie killed himself?

- No, Mike did.

- Mike was the youngest.

Jeff Collins.

- [Nicholas] Jeff Collins?

- [Clayston] Yeah, he was my age.

- It's kind of striking how, whenever I learn about an old classmate, so often it's bad news.

(soft music) (indistinct chattering) Hi Irene, Nick Kristof.

I just wanted to check in and see how Clayton was doing.

- [Nicholas] Just a few days after visiting Clayton, I called his mother Irene.

Tried to check in and see what was going on.

- And what happened?

- Clayton is staying overnight in the hospital because he's having, I guess, heart failure last night.

His brother more or less had heart failure, and his legs looked like Clayton's legs.

Like Clayton's legs look are a deep maroon color, almost up to his knees and they're about twice the size as they should be.

That stuff is oozing out of his legs right now.

He's got so much fluid and he had fluid on the lungs and fluid on his heart in there.

That's what they're doing is pumping the fluid out.

(air whooshing) (soft music) - [Sheryl] What's happening in Yamhill, isn't just happening here.

It's being repeated in homes across the country.

For the first time in a century life expectancy in America has fallen for three years in a row.

To understand what's causing many of these deaths, we're leaving Oregon and heading across the country to a city that's struggling with a crisis of its own.

(soft music) (man coughs) - [Man] I'm a heroin addict.

I really need help, ma'am.

- [Woman] Okay.

I've been using for a while like 25 years now.

- [Sheryl] Okay.

what are you using?

- [Man] I'm using heroin and cocaine.

- [Sheryl] Okay.

- Drug overdose is now the leading cause of death for adults under 50 in the US.

We've come to Baltimore, which has one of the highest opioid addiction rates in the country.

- There's a whole lot of people doing drug on his blog.

There's people strung out, laying on the ground all the time, there's always fighting going on.

- Baltimore was ground zero for one of the greatest mistakes that America has made in the last 50 years, which is the war on drugs.

It's now ground zero for a process of undoing some of that damage.

(soft music) - [Sheryl] This is the neighborhood where you worked, right?

- This is the neighborhood that I worked and grew up in.

- [Sheryl] Major.

Neill Franklin is retired, but he spent 34 years with the police.

A number of them undercover in narcotics.

- When I grew up child of the '60s here, it was a great neighborhood.

Employment was extremely high in Baltimore city.

We had ship building.

We had our huge steel mill.

Vacant homes didn't exist.

We had a whole bunch of little shops, family owned, community owned stores.

- [Sheryl] It's all been torn down, what happened?

- Well, as you move forward into the 1970s, jobs started leaving, going overseas and elsewhere.

(soft music) When you have a city where people don't have jobs, can't get jobs, there's one industry, one business that will hire you, that's the drug trade.

- [Nicholas] At the same time, Richard Nixon had launched the war on drugs.

- America's public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse.

In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all out offensive.

- Starting in the '70s, going into the '80s in the height of the war on drugs, we started arresting literally hundreds, if not thousands of black men.

- [Sheryl] From 1980 to 1989, the percentage of African Americans arrested for drug offenses, increased over 300%.

- I know you rose through the ranks, and you were very senior, but can you remember back to those days when you were on the street, how you saw this play out?

- I went into policing at a very early age.

The age of 18, right out of high school as a cadet.

And you're taught to believe that anyone who used these drugs or had anything to do with these drugs are evil people.

And we've got to do something about that.

And it's your job as a cop to go out and find these people and arrest these people and bring them to justice.

You're not taught or told or given any indication that these are people who are dealing with health issues.

These were people who are dealing with addiction.

And now decades later, you come to realize that you were tasked with doing something that was extremely detrimental to your community.

What we have done we've criminalized large swabs of our citizens.

- [Sheryl] Major Neil Franklin now works with a law enforcement action partnership.

Seeking to end the war on drugs and advocating for policy reform.

- I'm trying to make amends in a work that I do now in trying to change policy.

This is a way for me to reconcile the harms that I did in the past working as a police officer.

We still have not yet begun to make the appropriate shift from a law enforcement criminal justice centered approach, to dealing with what is clearly a health and mental health issue.

(soft music) - [Sheryl] Today, the war on drugs is generally acknowledged as a failure.

The government has spent over $80 billion locking people up, and yet more Americans are addicted to drugs than ever before.

This spike in addiction is doing large part to a crisis that began over 20 years ago.

- Once you found the right doctor, and have told him or her about your pain, don't be afraid to take what they give you.

- [Nicholas] In the 1990s, pharmaceutical companies began to market opioids as a safe solution to pain management.

Some patients may be afraid of taking opioids because they're perceived as too strong or addictive.

But that is far from actual fact.

- [Nicholas] By 2012, doctors were writing more than 250 million opioid prescriptions a year.

(air whooshing) - [Danielle] I knew for a while, I had an issue, you know what I mean?

But I didn't wanna stop.

(soft music) I wanted to quit bad, but the whole time in the back of my head, I wanted to use.

it's like an itch you can't scratch.

(soft music) - [Nicholas] Baltimore station is a housing shelter that offers a recovery program for homeless veterans.

(soft music) - [Woman] Good luck, have fun.

- Good, you can make mine extra stuffed.

(soft music) (indistinct chattering) - [Danielle] I just got out of jail and didn't have anywhere to go.

So Baltimore station basically gave me a home.

(soft music) - Danielle.

- Hey, how're you doing?

- Nick Kristof.

- How're you doing?

- I know a little bit about your background, but if you don't mind giving me the backstory, your pathway here.

- [Danielle] I was fast tracking through the military.

I ended up becoming a Sergeant before almost everybody else.

I deployed to Afghanistan in 2006.

(soft music) We were in a convoy and Taliban had buried a pressure plate, we drove over it and blew the front of the truck up.

(debris thundering) The boom happened and I remember it was slow motion and all you saw was smoke and at the time, like my legs hurt so bad that I remember just like, I didn't know if I had my legs.

So I had reached down because I couldn't see anything and I felt my legs and I was like, in my head I was like, "Thank God I didn't lose my legs or nothing like that."

(soldier cheering) After that, I got stationed at Fort Jackson.

(soldier cheering) I was having serious issues with my knees at the time, so I went, saw a doctor.

I started taking oxycodone and eventually it ended up to be like oxycodone 30s and oxycontin 80s.

And I was getting a ton of them a month.

- Did addiction began with prescription painkillers as a result of when you were in the military?

- Yes, it definitely did.

I ended up going to a different pain management doctor and the first time seeing him, he was like, "You're on more medication than somebody with terminal cancer would be on."

So the doctor cut me down like big time, like half of what I was getting.

So I was going through my pills like crazy 'cause I always said I was never gonna shoot up, use a needle.

Me being me, I was like, all right, let me try it one time.

I just wanna fell see what it feels like, and I'm not gonna do it again.

But after that first one, I never stopped.

That's when I became a full time user of heroin.

When I first became a problem, my son was probably about four or five.

He didn't deserve that.

I ended up going to jail.

My first charge was the distribution of heroin.

I was gonna be a career soldier.

That's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

I see where I was and now where I'm at now, and I feel like that *beep * just ruined my life.

Oh, yes.

A decade later, I have nothing.

- Yeah, I'm sure you acted in ways that were self destructive.

- Oh yeah!

- But I think they acted in ways that were pretty destructive too.

I found Daniel really interesting because here we are in Baltimore city that has this long history of underground drug trade.

And yet the people who got Danielle addicted, weren't drug dealers on the street corner, they were pharmaceutical company executives.

They were doctors in lab coats.

And it just felt so tragic that here's a guy who is out risking his life for the country getting shot at, and it feels like the country kind of let him down.

- [Sheryl] Like Danielle, 80% of heroin users began with prescription painkillers.

And the effects are devastating.

Today, every 11 minutes, another American dies of an opioid overdose.

- It's a historic national crisis.

An unprecedented historical phenomenon.

You have to go back 100 years to World War I and the great Influenza pandemic of 1918.

Young people in America are dying in unprecedented rate from pills, heroin, and fentanyl overdose.

- How many of you know someone who is affected by addiction in any way?

It could be opioids, it could be alcohol benzodiazepines.

Really, I think it's all of us.

That's why the work that you all do is so important because you really are the front lines.

- [Sheryl] Baltimore's health commissioner, Dr. Leana Wen is pioneering a public health approach to the opioid crisis.

I think back to all of the individuals who came into the ER, who I prescribed without thinking about it, because this was just what I was taught to do.

I would routinely prescribe 10, 15, 20 oxycodones, Percocet, vicodins to my patients coming in with dental pain and back pain, without thinking about what's the possibility of overdose.

- What is preventing people from getting the help that they need?

- There is huge stigma surrounding addiction.

Even though the science is unequivocal, that addiction is a disease that treatment exists and millions of people around the country are in longterm recovery, people still think that it's a choice.

And to add on top of that, there just aren't enough doctors who can treat the disease of addiction, hospitals who are able to treat it.

If this were an epidemic for any other illness, there would be no question that we would be requiring physicians to treat their patients.

- How do you know if somebody is overdosing?

What might be some signs?

And feel free to shout it out.

- They just look really out of it, like they're not there.

- Here in Baltimore, we are standardizing addiction treatment, bringing it into the hospital and health system where it should be.

How many of you have not yet received the training for saving lives using naloxone?

How many of you have not and want it?

Naloxone is an opioid antidote that if given to somebody who is overdosing, it will reverse the overdose, and in fact, that person will be walking and talking within 30 seconds or a minute.

It's just like flonase.

But first, we need to get naloxone in the hands of everyone, because this is an emergency where people are dying.

Second we need increased access to treatment.

And third, we have to focus on preventing stigma and preventing addiction in the first place.

(soft music) - [Sheryl] Dr. Wen's approach seems to be working.

Since 2015, nearly 3000 lives have been saved in Baltimore alone using Naloxone.

Her success is due in large part to collaboration and collective action.

- Here in Baltimore, there is the recognition among all involved, including the police department and the state's attorney's office and law enforcement officials that the war on drugs has not worked.

That public health and public safety need to come together.

Because even though our approaches are different and sometimes are in conflict with each other, maybe there is a way for us to work together that's positive.

There is a pilot that we started in Baltimore called Law Enforcement Assistance Diversion or LEAD.

Individuals who are caught with small amounts of drugs, are now being offered treatment instead of arrest prosecution and incarceration.

- This is Matt.

He's a new guys recently homeless.

- And he's LEAD?

- He's one of the ones I've been trying to.

Hey, Matt.

You good, bud?

- Yeah, I'm good, how you doing in there?

- Did you eat today?

- Yeah, some lady brought me at Barnes and Noble.

- Barnes and Noble?

Okay.

You need some sunscreen brother.

- I know, I've got a huge tan.

- I see that man.

(Steve laughing) All right man.

- Have a good day.

- Hey, listen.

I still want you.

- Thank you, I appreciate the concern - Doing this for the last year and five months.

I've gotten a real good feel of when people are ready to talk.

- Are ready.

- And he's in the mood to go.

Mr. Vaughn.

What's going on, man?

Are you good?

He's a deal, all right?

State's attorney wants me to try and press charges on you, now that you've been so resistant to the LEAD program.

- I know.

- It's right down the street.

And all I want you to do is talk to them about what your needs are.

- [Nicholas] Lieutenant Steve Olson had witnessed firsthand how an aggressive arrest strategy has failed to prevent drug crime.

He has arrested hundreds of people only to see them come back through the system over and over again.

- What the program does for me is it enables me to take somebody into custody, assess and address what needs immediate or longterm they might have and refer them to case managers and social workers, if appropriate.

- So essentially you're responding to low level users, not with handcuffs, but with guidance, support, direction.

- At the very beginning handcuffs maybe part of it.

It isn't the end of it.

- [Nicholas] You see this through the prism of law enforcement, but you also see it through the prism of a family.

My brother, he was 34 years old when he passed.

And by the time I found out that my brother was using, he was up to $300 a day in heroin.

In fact, I found out that my little brother was buying dope in the exact neighborhood that I was policing.

I was out of the country.

So I didn't know that he had dropped off the face of the earth.

What I did know is, I knew what a text message meant.

My wife said, "Please call me."

That's all she wrote.

That text message, I knew my brother was dead.

- I'm so sorry.

- When my brother first started down this road, he did something wrong.

He broke the law.

He made a decision and that was a moral decision.

And somewhere down the line, during his course of addiction, during his, the way he lived his life, it stopped being a moral issue, it started being a health issue.

Who are we to judge?

When you feel as though you're lost, as my brother felt, you're not going to seek the resources and it's not made easy.

The barriers to healthcare, the barriers to the support that people need are large.

They're not big for you and me, but we are not motivated by an internal pain, a feeling of illness, a mental block of "People don't love me, I don't deserve this."

The biggest barrier is realizing that you are wanted, you are needed.

- If we wanna truly end the opioid crisis, we need to understand the basic causes of suffering and pain in America.

And those are profound.

We don't address those, we don't address the root suffering of Americans.

Even if you took every opioid pill away, that suffering will manifest into another social and public health problem.

(soft music) - [Nicholas] Since our last visit, Clayton has been in and out of hospital, still coming over to check on my mom when he can and becoming increasingly isolated.

(soft music) - Hi, how are you doing?

Have you been outside?

It's just a gorgeous day out.

- Oh yeah, beautiful!

(dog barking) I didn't know what had happened.

I didn't know that he collapsed there in hospital and the doctor told me, he said, "Well, Clayton was very ill and he may not make it through the night."

- And you had water in your lungs.

- Yeah, congestive heart failure.

Is what they call it.

(soft music) - I like to come up here and look out across the valley.

When I get aggravated at something that was going on or wasn't happy with, I would sit down here close to that oak tree down there until I could calm down.

- [Nicholas] What about Clayton?

I worry about how he's doing.

- I don't think he's getting any better, really I don't.

And he tried to put up a big show right now, but I think he feels it a lot.

- He's struggling.

- I help him put his shoes on, I help him put his socks on, and sometimes I even have to help him put his jeans on.

He has fallen at least four times since he'd been out of the hospital.

And when he fell with the jack, the people had to pick him up with a tractor.

And his doctor told me he didn't think that he understood exactly how ill he is, but he came home this time and he started raking up a paper saying what he wanted people to have that belonged to him.

- [Nicholas] So he's making out a will.

- Yeah, well more or less yes.

- I didn't even put on a lot of weight until like three years ago after Kevin died.

That's when I just started putting on weight more and more and more.

- Was that because you were- - Depressed.

- Upset about Kevin's dead end?

Yeah.

And then you've had a lot to be depressed about.

Cindy dies, Kevin dies.

- Kevin dies.

- Rick Shay.

- Rick Shay.

Tom.

I have a whole list of people, almost like 100 people.

- [Nicholas] Those who died?

- Yeah, in the last five, 10 years.

That I'm really close to.

(soft music) - [Nicholas] I'm struck by the amount of loss the Clayton has experienced and the pain this has caused.

But like so many men of my generation, Clayton has learned not to be vulnerable, always willing and ready to help other people, he refuses to accept help himself.

I'm worried that this stubborn self-reliance maybe killing him.

- To the school days, the number six bus, does that seem a long, long, long time ago, a different world?

- No, not really.

I was always in trouble for one thing or another.

- You had to sit up front and the bus, right?

'Cause you were a fighter.

- Yeah, I was the instigator of everything.

- I think you were a real headache to the school, but I think they made a terrible mistake pushing you out.

And I know you're smart and I know Kevin was smart and I know you work hard and I.

- School was boring, at least at a certain point.

You liked it a lot better than everybody else.

- [Nicholas] I did like it, I really did.

- I always remember you dragging two backpacks full of books and stuff everywhere.

(Nicholas laughing) - I quit school because I got kicked out for fighting and stuff.

My dad goes, "Well, if ain't going to school you're going to get a job."

I said, "Good, find me a job."

And three days later he goes, "Well, you're going to work, get up at four o'clock the morning and go with me."

I said, "Great."

So I started my job.

- [Nicholas] And then that promise never held up, 'cause the kind of jobs your dad had went away.

- Yeah.

The business, like being in concrete and buildings and stuff, all slowed down big time up there.

And everyone was on unemployment and *beep *.

- Families broke up.

- Yeah.

- People turned to alcohol and meth.

- Drugs.

- And I think if you'd been able to go on to college, I think you could have had a different five years.

- If I'd had the opportunity to go to automotive school I'd have been a lot better.

That was something I was really interested in.

- [Nicholas] I mean, I do think that drugs were kind of a problem that you, in retrospect made some mistakes in the drug world that probably held you back.

Would you agree with that or disagree?

- Well, I started smoking pot when I was in sixth grade.

- [Nicholas] And what about meth in the area?

- Yeah, a lot of people thought they were with me, they thought I knew how to make it and stuff.

There were only a handful of people that really knew how to make it.

- In the early 2000s, Clayton earned $125,000 making meth.

Do you have any regrets about that side of things?

- No, not really.

I was on probation and stuff for it.

My probation officer had me go to chemical dependency class and stuff.

- Well, what strikes me about you is you've been an incredibly loya friend to our whole family and- - You guys are good people, man.

- You looked after our farm really well and looked after my mom, after my dad died and help protect her in what became kind of a rough neighborhood.

- Like I said, you're just the same as I am.

You're a Yamhill kid just like me and no matter how far in life you go or where you go to, you're still part of Yamhill, you stick right there.

Your mom, she's like my mom and grandma combined.

And I've told her that a couple of times and stuff.

- And she loves you.

- Yeah.

I feel the same for her too.

- A lot of my reporting career has been about trying to shine a light on.

So now it's really terrible things, genocide, sex trafficking happening, but I have an armor, I come and talk to the Greens and I don't have any armor and it's painful to see these things unfolding in people who I care a lot about.

I think the best explanation for what happened is so many people around here is deaths of despair that the death certificate may talk about suicide or liver failure, heart failure, but fundamentally people lost hope.

And once they lost hope their behavior changed, became reckless, they died of all kinds of media causes, but fundamentally it was despair and hopelessness that killed them.

(soft music) - [Sheryl] Tragically, deaths like these are happening all over America.

(soft music) I've come to meet economist Professor Angus Deaton.

In 2015, he and his wife Anne Case published a groundbreaking study, which showed that deaths among non college educated whites were rising dramatically.

(soft music) They call these deaths, deaths of despair.

What do you mean by the term, deaths of despair?

- Well, originally the label was just attached to a very precise thing, which was if you're dying of a drug overdose, if you're dying from suicide or if you're dying from alcoholic liver disease that counted as the death of despair.

And the deaths of despair are happening all through the age distribution and the real thing that stratifies them is whether you have a BA or not.

So there's actually very little rise in these deaths among people who have a four year degree.

If you don't have a four year degree, these really bad things are happening to you.

- If you look at African Americans and people have said, "Well, African American mortality rates are consistently high."

Then all of a sudden, when something happens to white men and women, their mortality rates, we write about it.

- There's been a huge and rapid welcomed decline in black mortality in the United States.

The black-white gap is narrowing.

But people were not noticing that some of that black-white gap was narrowing, because white mortality was rising as well as black mortality falling very rapidly.

So we've made it clear all the time that black mortality is higher than white mortality.

Black mortality has been making a lot more progress and white mortality, the progress has stopped and started going in the wrong direction.

- Right.

So automation, globalization ruined the working wages of a lot of people.

What are we facing in the future?

- A lot of people put this down to globalization, but the thing about globalization is it's global.

And none of this stuff is happening in Germany or in France or in Spain.

That's just not happening in Europe.

And so something's happening here.

And I think there's just been, over the last 40 years, a lot of policy that's directed against the working class.

- Can you give some examples?

- Well, there are no unions anymore.

And that's been largely a matter of policy.

And unions did a lot of stuff for people.

I mean, they got them higher wages, they fought politically for measures that were pro worker.

And I think the balance of political power in the US is much more anti working people than is true in Europe.

And I think that makes a big difference.

There really is a safety net in Europe that looks after people when they're in distress, including healthcare and including unemployment benefit all the rest of it, disability stuff, that's much, much weaker here.

If you get this place in Denmark, they look after you and try to retrain you and find you another job.

And that really doesn't happen here to the same extent.

We want globalization, we want automation and what we want and don't have are policies that will allow people to come through that in a way that stops them being really harmed.

- Right.

Have you seen anything in your studies, that point to why some people make it out of the deaths of despair and others don't?

- Two of the big deaths of despair are alcoholism and opioid addiction.

Getting out of addiction is an enormously hard thing, but people do it all the time.

(soft music) (water splashing) - I have offload my way through a lot of my life when I was younger.

(soft music) And everything I did in my past, I haven't been able to make amends to those people, but I'm having faith that I can succeed now.

- [Nicholas] Drew Goff is currently living in housing for men recovering from addiction.

He's been here for nine months with his son, Ashton.

- I'm trying to live man, I'm trying to do do better.

And the progress that I've made now is more than before.

So more than before is better.

(soft music) - [Nicholas] Drew's dad, Ricochet, was a close friend of mine.

In 2014, I wrote an article about Ricochet.

He died a year later, following decades of using and abusing drugs and alcohol.

- Hey man.

- What's up, man?

How's the going?

- How are you doing?

- Welcome, come in.

- Hey there, Ashton?

- Say hi, Ashton.

- Hi there?

- Say, hi.

Say hi, Nicholas.

- [Nicholas] I had heard that his son, Drew, was also struggling with addiction and he was serving time in prison.

Sheryl and I wrote to drew and sent him the article.

You are a happy kid.

I might trade you one of mine for this age.

- Not for sale.

(Nicholas laughs) Not for trade barter and sale today.

- So tell me about this place.

What's it like?

- For one it's like home, it's pretty homey, but it's a transitional house for dads that are trying to get their kids back from DHS care.

- [Nicholas] Today, Drew is rebuilding his life and I want to understand how he has made that shift from addiction to recovery.

- This is our spot right here.

- All right.

You've come such a long way since prison days.

- Yeah, it's been an adventure.

I'm always going through my letters and stuff and I found the article you sent me.

- Ashton, that's your grandpa.

He used to be my buddy.

Yeah, yeah!

(dew laughs) He had a cool name too.

His nickname was Ricochet.

(Ashton whining) - I Started using as a teenager.

I started skipping school, hanging out with other people that were using found out I could steal and people would buy the *beep * that I stole, whether it was from my family or anything.

So that's basically how my addiction was all the way until nine months ago.

- And your first felony conviction was?

- My first felony conviction was when I was 18.

I went to adult prison, got out and violated my parole I don't know, 10 times probably.

As adult, I don't know, I have 15 or 16 felonies.

- Felonies?

- Yes.

- 15 or 16?

- Something like that, yeah.

- Oh wow!

I was just a miserable person.

- [Nicholas] How did you end up at Provoking Hope?

- My mom worked there, she hooked me up, and right after I got the letter from you, my mom was like, "Hey, I've got a job at this really cool outreach place and they can help you with substance abuse and they have resources, what do you wanna do?"

I'm like.

"Sign me up."

At that point I was willing.

- The very first time he walked in, he was so skinny and there wasn't much life in his eyes.

He was set in that faulty believes that he was an addict.

He was a criminal, and that's what he was.

- Saw Matt there.

Here you go.

- Thanks.

Hi Diane.

- How are you, Ben?

- How's it going?

- Good to see you.

- Good to see you too.

- So how is our friend?

- [Nicholas] Provoking Hope, offers guidance and resources for people suffering from addiction.

Diane Reynolds is the founder and director.

- We're teaching them how to come home out of their addiction, out of that dark place they found ourselves in.

- And you're opening doors?

- Yeah, opening doors for them.

And I call myself the chief floor scrubber.

I'll scrub the floor off, I'll scrub the toilet, and it teaches them they can scrub the floor and they can scrub a toilet.

It gives them back just a little moment of hope that they're valuable and they can have a purpose.

And that will pull them up out of that place that they've gotten their selves into quickest of anything that I know of.

(speaking indistinctly) It wasn't something I studied for.

I didn't go to college to learn how to do it.

I just had a deep passion to be a part of a solution for people who were losing their children, losing their moms, losing their dads.

One of the things that I'd absolutely love to do, somebody who's come in, maybe a month, I'm convinced they're not using, we're talking to probation.

We know that they're doing their steps and I'll hand my car keys over to them and I'll say, "I need you to take my car keys and take my car and here's my credit card.

(Diane laughs) And I need you to go down to Blankety Blanks Store and buy whatever it is that I need.

- Does your bank or your car insurance company know about this, Diane?

(both laughing) - They just action out.

They literally lose all the color in their face.

"You want me, do you know what my crimes are?"

Of course I know what their crimes are and I said, "I don't have any reason not to trust you."

I believe in you.

They're here to get help.

And that in my opinion, and in my mind is a societal shift that needs to happen.

- [Nicholas] In many ways, Drew has been lucky.

His town is well served by state and county funded resources to help aid his recovery.

Not everyone is so fortunate.

In America, fewer than 20% of those who need treatment for substance abuse, get it.

(soft music) On a personal level, I was surprised by how much Sheryl and I are taking an interest in Drew had meant to him.

- When I got the letter, I was at Snake River.

I had been in prison for two years at the time.

You said, "I was a friend of your dad's I did an article on him, I hope you're doing well."

And like I was feeling forgotten, like honestly I was feeling like I'm hopeless and forgotten and I was lost.

And that little bit of time that you took out, was actually important to me.

(soft music) 'Cause at that point I had given up.

My dad had passed away, he was like confident, like he was my dad, you know what I mean?

I mean, just that little piece of like I was able to remember him a little bit.

So it was *beep * important.

(soft music) - Yeah, I did it because I really liked and admired your dad and I felt his loss and I knew that you meant an awful lot to him.

And I think he would be so happy to know that you followed a path that has brought you clean and has made you a great dad.

- I think he'd be happy too, I appreciate those words.

(soft music) Hello.

Hey, I'm at work right now let me call you back.

Bye.

Hi.

So I'm fortunate enough to be a janitor at a local tattoo shop.

So it's brand new, but it's a good experience.

This is the first time I've been in a state of mind like this have a solid job.

All right, I'm gonna clean.

- [Pam] All right.

- I'm gonna go.

Lower bottom of the cabin.

- Do you want the receipts?

Both of them are here.

- Please.

- Yes, I'll write that up for you.

- We got them.

- I have a band of misfits in the shop and almost every single person who works here has shown up on my doorstep through circumstances that were not the greatest.

I told every single one, I don't care what you've been through, I care what you're going to do.

Before I hired Drew to help me out here, I knew that he had been incarcerated in one way or another.

I knew that he had been addicted to drugs and I knew that he was currently in recovery and that he was making strides towards a better life.

And that's pretty much most of what I need to know about a person.

- I was talking to somebody about you earlier today.

They asked me a question about like what's it like trying to get a job and this and that.

I was like, well, matter of fact, I happened to know somebody that believes in people.

I was like, this is like important to me and I do appreciate you.

- Yeah, well, you're good people and you deserve good things.

- Yeah.

You're pretty kick ass yourself.

- Some days.

- Yeah, I'm gonna say most.

(Pam laughs) - I'm not rich, I have two roommates.

I don't own my house, I barely own a running car, but there needs to be people that are willing to say, "Hey, let me help you."

Why are we just looking at each other like if they're not doing as well or better than I am, why are those people, the bane of our existence?"

Like, why?

- Pam.

- Nice meeting you.

- [Nicholas] Good to meet you.

- Yeah, all right.

- I will see you later.

I had enough ability to help everybody who wanted to achieve their dream, I would do that.

(soft music) - [Nicholas] In many ways it's the kindness of the people around Drew that's helping him thrive.

I'm reminded that there was a time when as a country we made the decision to be less judgmental of each other and more supportive of what they need.

- The test of our progress is not whether we add more, through abundance of those who have much.

It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

(debris thundering) - [Nicholas] Throughout much of the 20th century, we pioneered efforts to create opportunity.

- [Man] The CCC and the WPA, bringing jobs to 9 million unemployed.

Fair labor standards laws, setting minimum wages and maximum hours.

- This social security measure gives at least some protection.

- [Nicholas] In the 1930s during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, Congress approved the most comprehensive set of social safety net programs the country had ever seen.

- [Announcer] Destined to become the most popular card in America, it is the most valuable piece of pasteboard you will ever own.

- [Nicholas] In the 1940s, the GI Bill vastly expanded educational opportunities and home ownership in America.

These efforts ushered white workers into the middle class, but African Americans were often excluded.

(soft music) - We must make sure that every family in America lives in a home of dignity.

- [Nicholas] In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson established a new government agency, Housing and Urban Development or HUD.

This act pledged to address the country's housing problems.

It represented the belief that affordable housing was a fundamental right and essential to the wellbeing of every American, regardless of race or income.

- On years to come, I believe this act will become known as the single most valuable power of the legislation in our history.

- [Nicholas] Johnson, massively expanded funding for federal programs, putting millions of people into affordable housing.

But less than 20 years later, the political atmosphere changed.

(crowd applauding) - President Reagan cut HUD funding by a tremendous amount.

(crowd applauding) - [Nicholas] The effect of Reagan's cuts lasted for decades, and we're still living with that legacy today.

- We saw this kind of gutting of public housing, the dynamiting of public housing complexes.

(building debris thundering) (soft music) - [Nicholas] Successive administrations had failed to restore a federal housing funding, and today America has a shortage of more than 7 million affordable homes.

- We're in the worst affordable housing crisis we've seen in years, maybe decades.

Incomes for many Americans have been flat, but housing costs have soared.

And also we should think of folks that aren't homeless, but are just very close.

If you're a single dad or a single mom and you're spending 75 or 80% of your income on rent, something very small can cast you into homelessness.

In Virginia, for example, I think one in 10 evictions are for less than $350.

So it means families are getting evicted for peanuts.

When we picture the typical homeless person, we often think of maybe an older man on the street holding a sign.

And that's certainly a piece of the problem.

But the face of our housing crisis is really moms with kids.

- As a child, I was fortunate to have two parents with very good jobs.

So we did a lot of traveling.

And we stayed in very nice luxurious hotels.

So I grew up saying, "When I get older, I'm gonna live in a hotel."

I could call room service and then the lady comes and she cleans and they were making the towels and the washcloth to fold them, to make them look like doves.

And my dream came true.

I'm living in a hotel.

but I'm the one folding the washcloths.

- [Nicholas] Kathleen Jones is 59 years old.

She works 40 hours a week as a custodial supervisor at the local elementary school.

She's currently supporting her daughter and four grandchildren and they're living in a motel.

Teddy bears, anonymous, I don't know.

(all laughing) - Hey.

Why are you still crying, Batman?

- You see his cap?

- Now give me that.

- Stop being rude.

Hey, hey, little boy!

- Give me this!

- Please do not leave anything in school today.

- Okay.

- 'Cause you won't be back in the school until Monday.

- Until Monday.

- Monday.

- Yeah, so make sure you bring home all your jackets and your coats and your hats and whatever else in you book bag.

They're ready.

(children chattering) - Ours goes to school.

We're gonna be late.

- Your bus is gone.

Mommy, come with the other bus.

- Yeah, that's the bus.

Hey Andrew, calm down!

Wait a minute, daah, wait.

Bye y'all, love you.

- Bye mommy!

- See you later.

Love you kids.

- Bye.

- See you later.

- You can tell me anything!

- I will.

(soft music) (bus engine roaring) (soft music) - [Nicholas] Chesterfield County is an affluent suburb of Richmond.

It's also home to a growing number of America's hidden homeless.

Families living in motels.

- The housing crisis isn't just in Seattle, New York and San Francisco, it's much broader than that.

We're seeing eviction affects suburban communities and rural communities.

Some of the top evicting cities in America are Tulsa, Oklahoma, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Richmond, Virginia.

Who's talking about these cities when it comes to the housing crisis.

We absolutely should be 'cause the housing crisis is there too.

- [Nicholas] So tell me what we're seeing.

Tell me about the area.

- This is Jeff Davis highway, 95 runs from New York to Florida.

So this is where you came if you were going on vacation or whatever.

So that's where all of these motels came from.

- [Nicholas] Pamela Steele is a local real estate broker.

She understands firsthand the lack of affordable housing in the area.

So these were an example of actual economic development in the highways?

- Yes, yes.

This was the middle class vacation experience.

- [Nicholas] 50 Years later, these motels have become temporary shelters for the homeless.

Many of them, families with young children.

Why are so many people living in the motels?

- I mean, you think about it when I was a kid, people said, "I wanna make $15 an hour."

And I'm 59 years old.

And there are still people who do not make $15 an hour.

And some of those people in America have to go somewhere.

Think how fast you could go through your savings if you lost your job or if you were sick, how long would it take and how long could you last?

- [Nicholas] For the last five years, Pamela has been working with a local charity that offers food and shelter to the homeless population.

And what do you think when you see a whole family in a motel room?

- Well, I mean that's one of the things that first attracted me to this type of work, this type of volunteer work is when I saw school buses picking up children at motels.

That was a heartbreaking thing to see.

Little children waiting in front of a motel for a school bus or being dropped off.

And this is one of our trailer parks.

My biggest fear, and I mean, it is a heat really, I pray about it every night, is that they'll close it down and where will they go?

'Cause I mean, this is not a way to live, but we've seen people be evicted where we had to give them a tent and I would prefer them to be here than in a tent.

- And a lot of the people who live here have kids?

There are a lot of kids in those rooms?

- A lot of them have kids.

A lot of them have kids.

The biggest thing is I wonder whether or not they have, what their dreams are.

When they're coming from this.

And in the motels, these are children who have been raised, they're doing their homework, they're coming home from school, they're playing.

They're thinking about the things kids are supposed to think about.

And they've got a drug dealer in one room and they've got a prostitute and the other room, they see all that.

They see it every day.

Oh, there's a cabana.

They split them and they rent out a little portion of a single wide trailer.

- So four families living in a single wide?

- Yes.

And that right there breaks my heart.

- There has never been a better time to start living the American Dream.

So to every citizen watching at home tonight, no matter where you've been or where you've come from, this is your time.

If you work hard, if you believe in yourself, if you believe in America, then you can dream anything.

You can be anything.

And together we can achieve as- - [Nicholas] As Americans, we're taught to believe that if we just work hard, we'll achieve success and prosperity.

But for too many people, it's not working out that way.

(soft music) (doors knocks) - They heard him, he said, "Who?"

He's saying, "Who?"

who's at the door?

Hi!

- I bet you're Kathleen.

- Yes, how are you?

- Hi, Nick Kristof.

Really nice to meet you.

- The same here.

- Howdy, how are you?

- That's my daughter.

Her name is Kathleen too.

- Nice to meet you, Nick.

- Nice to meet you too.

- And my two- - And who are you?

- My grandsons, this is Emeer.

- Emeer, nice to meet you.

- And Anthony.

- Anthony, nice to meet you.

(both laughing) You've been here since May, is that right?

- That's correct.

- [Nicholas] The Jones family has been living in this single motel room for more than nine months.

I bet you're eager to see the last of this room.

- Yes.

- Yes, yes.

- Yeah, we keep trying to come up out of this room and it's so hard to do.

- Yeah, six people, one room and two beds.

that's a struggle.

- When my granddaughters were with us, the girls was in bed with me and the boys stayed in the bed with their mother.

- [Nicholas] After her oldest granddaughter graduated from high school, Kathleen sent the girls to live with her other daughter in Oklahoma.

- And that's hard.

- And so for a while you've had eight people living in one room?

- Mm hm!

- Boy, that's a squeeze.

- [Woman] Aha, yes!

- Yeah.

- I'll fight over the bathroom, do I, Beth?

- Oh my God.

- Yes, yes.

(all laughing) - My dream house- - Especially with my daughters, yes.

- My dream house is to have a two bathroom.

- Yeah.

- We stand on line and take a number.

We don't even have a tub.

So it doesn't really make it too easy for us when it comes to the smaller children.

- [Nicholas] I see a roach over there on the wall.

- They're all over all over the place.

- [Nicholas] You never lost your home before, ever?

- No.

- [Nicholas] This is the first time?

- Yes, and this is terrible.

- [Nicholas] Yeah.

- This is terrible.

- [Nicholas] And you have a job?

- Yes, and I'm a supervisor.

- Yeah, you know it's, yeah.

- I'm the supervisor and I cannot get out of this room.

- Nick will get you to the backyard.

(soft music) I had a townhouse in Richmond.

It was only 600 a month.

And one morning we heard a whole lot of commotion going on outside.

When I got up and when I opened up my front door, there was a notice on it.

And when I read the notice, I see why my neighbors were having a fit.

They raised the rent to $350 more.

And we had like less than a month to come up with this amount of money.

My granddaughter was getting ready to graduate.

So I'm like, let her stay here with her friends, let her graduate from the school with people she knows.

So we say, "Well, we can deal with this for a month, when the kids get out of school, we can move."

And that was that was the plan, but it didn't work like that.

(soft music) - [Nicholas] So how much did this place cost?

- This is $1,185 a month.

- [Nicholas] Kathleen earns 1,125 an hour.

That's $4 more than the federal minimum wage, but with a monthly cost of the motel, she can't save enough for a deposit on a rental apartment.

- Even in fairly low cost housing markets, income still haven't kept up with rents.

If minimum wage, for example, were tied to productivity, it would be over $20 an hour.

Now not the $7 and 25 cent poverty wage it currently is.

So there has been a disinvestment, not from jobs per se, but from good jobs for having jobs that pay a living wage, that support families with time off for sick days and that provide benefits.

Those kinds of jobs have faded in the American economy.

- The schools are being taken over by contractors now.

You get no paid vacation.

You have no benefits.

This job, it's not going like I want it to and I feel like I'm wasting my time every day.

I mean, I'm working hard like a man and I'm not getting nowhere.

(soft music) - [Nicholas] The burden of homelessness in America, falls most heavily on people of color.

African Americans make up 40% of the homeless population, but only 13% of the general population.

- To tell a full story about poverty in America and housing instability, you also have to tell a story about racial inequality and our history of discrimination.

And so if you just take the African American experience, for example, it happened with the federal government insuring mortgages saying, "Okay, banks, if you lend in these areas and there's a default, we've got your back."

But they drew lines and they said, "We're gonna insure mortgages, but we're not gonna insure them in majority black neighborhoods."

They literally drew red lines around those neighborhoods and moved those neighborhoods off of home ownership opportunities.

And then there's the GI Bill.

World War II veterans returned home and started buying homes through GI mortgages when that was impossible before.

But the GI Bill was generally denied to black veterans coming home because it was executed through racist VA offices.

So a federal policy that allowed my grandfather to buy a house, for example, and to leave my dad with a bit of inheritance, allows my dad to cash that in to move into a better neighborhood, to allow me to go to a good high school, to get me into a good college.

The legacies of red lining and the legacy that the GI Bill and how that cut across racial lines.

They're not just reverberating softly in our background they're directly impacting the lives of families today.

- [Nicholas] How are you feeling with Thanksgiving approaching?

- Miserable.

In my own home, we did the kitchen and the friends was coming by, and every Thanksgiving it's like a tradition that we watch the Thanksgiving day parade.

Okay, we got the chairs to watch at this Thanksgiving, but there's two missing.

There's two of us missing, my granddaughters.

(soft music) - The home is the center of life.

It's our refuge from work and the pressures of school.

In languages spoken all over the world, the word for home doesn't just mean shelter, it means warmth and family and community.

(soft music) Should safe affordable housing be part of what it means to live here, to be in America?

Show me an argument that says housing isn't fundamental to human dignity and flourishing.

I think housing should be right.

Without stable shelter, everything else falls apart.

(soft music) (air whooshing) - [Kathleen] Love, the prayer's starting, sit down.

I wanna hold for my sister.

- Yeah!

- But that aint my sister.

He wants it back.

- That's the new one.

- Are we gonna see Santa Claus at the end?

- Yeah.

Every year I'm amazed, they come out there half-dressed and know it's freezing outside.

- [Beth] All that moving around they doing they don't feel it.

(Anthony crying) - Don't start your dinner without calling us.

I wanna see what your turkey looks like this year.

- [Beth] Yes, please.

And I wanna see, let me see.

- Emeer needs his pie.

- Apple pie and the macaroni and cheese.

- [Nicholas] In the absence of government assistance, the local community is stepping in to help.

I'm on my way to meet with Pamela again and her friend, Melissa Morgan.

Melissa is the founder of A Place of Miracles Cafe, a charity that offers food and other services to the homeless population of Chesterfield County.

- Good morning, everyone.

Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule, to be a blessing to the community.

- [Nicholas] How did this begin?

How did Miracles Cafe get started?

We have no emergency shelters here.

There is no grocery stores that they can even walk to.

It's a food desert.

My husband and I were at a local 7-Eleven, and we saw a father with a small child walk in with a book bag and I didn't see him purchasing anything and walked back over to the motel.

I realized that the dad was shoplifting for his child.

And so it broke my heart.

My husband came back to the car and he was like, "You were okay when I left, why are you crying?"

And I told him that there's just a huge need and we need to see what we can do about it.

And we started with just giving out bread.

Then we started doing school supplies and toys and clothes, and then I found a building and we started operating out of it.

- I'm sure a lot of people would say, "Well, let somebody else help these folks in the motels."

And instead, despite your own needs, you wade in, why?

- I remember somebody brought me groceries one time when I first got a divorce and I had a lot of need and was wondering how I was gonna make it.

A little family, they brought me a bag of groceries and there was an envelope in the bottom of the bag with $100 bill.

And they were not wealthy people, they were struggling people as well, but they had felt it upon their heart to do that for me.

Sometimes the people that help you are the people who can least afford to help you.

(soft music) We're having a Thanksgiving dinner, we would love for you to come and join us.

- Definitely, I definitely will.

- So tell me about your Thanksgiving plans.

- We are expecting 500 people coming to Thanksgiving dinner.

- Come on!

Emeer got scared!

- And we're also having buses that will go out for some of the families that have no transportation.

So they don't have to walk to the location.

(soft music) We have volunteers that serve and we have a lot of women that's cooking, making pies.

So it's like a big extended family.

It's a lot of fun.

- I'm optimistic that there are organizations and activists all around this country, just putting in work.

Their works have been thankless and in the trenches and not the cool social issue to deal with.

It's inspiring.

(indistinct chattering) - Thank you.

- You're welcome!

- Thank you, guys!

- One of the wonderful things about having the Thanksgiving is having a warm environment filled with love and family.

- It's wonderful to see them sit with their families at the tables and really enjoy that and really be able to relax and sit back at a table and be served Thanksgiving and have that as a family and as a community.

- Happy Thanksgiving.

- Happy Thankgiving.

- Everything is delicious, Melissa.

- I'm glad you enjoy it.

- My daughter told me y'all did, what?

Something like 16 turkeys?

- 30.

- 30 turkeys?

- Yeah.

(soft music) (children playing) - [Beth] Why would you punch the Turkey?

- [Jone] Why did y'all do that?

- [Beth] Come on Anton!

Y'all are mean, come here!

Now the turkey's sad.

Look what you did to the turkey.

- [Melissa] Makes me sad to think about other communities, other places, where there are people that will not have a chance to have a nice Thanksgiving or even Christmas.

- Thank you.

- Enjoy, have fun!

- Enjoy the rest of the evening.

- [Nicholas] Pamela and Melissa are doing their best to heal their communities because they understand the corrosive effects of homelessness and poverty especially on children.

I was struck by something that Pamela told me at the end of our drive.

- Homelessness is trauma because it's embarrassing.

And I know this because I've experienced it.

To be poor in America, in some people's eyes is shameful.

I was ashamed of mine, my children were ashamed of it.

To be homeless and poor in America is a shameful thing in some people's eyes.

So that's trauma right there all by itself.

(soft music) - [Sheryl] The child poverty rate in the United States is among the highest in the developed world.

Today, almost one in five children live in poverty.

(soft music) We're only just beginning to understand how deeply early experiences affect us as adults.

(soft music) I've come to meet Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, a pediatrician specializing in how childhood trauma influences our longterm health.

(soft music) There were just so many patients that I was seeing that had significant exposures to traumatic events.

And I was seeing the impact on their health.

Generally, you can see the focus is on play therapy.

- Yeah, it looks very inviting.

- Yes exactly- One of the cases that really was a game changer for me.

I was in clinic, my regular pediatric practice, and I had a patient who was referred actually by his school for behavioral concerns and they were worried about attention deficit.

And when I saw him, I actually, when I looked at his medical chart, I actually had to double check myself because this was a seven year old boy, but his height was the average for a four year old.

And as I was talking to his mom and I said, "When did you notice he started having behavioral problems?"

She became tearful.

And she explained to me that he really began having these behavior problems after he had experienced a sexual assault at the age of four.

And so when I spoke to the hormone specialist, I said, "You know what?

This may sound nuts, but is it possible that this child's growth arrest could be a result of the severe trauma that he experienced with the sexual assault?"

And she said, "Yes."

(soft music) We use doll houses so that kids can model some of the experiences, things that may be scary for them that are either going- - A year after making this connection, Dr. Burke Harris came across a research study that seemed to confirm what she was noticing in her patients.

- The term ACEs comes from the adverse childhood experiences study.

They asked almost 17 and a half thousand adults about their histories of 10 categories of adverse childhood experiences.

And these were physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, physical or emotional neglect, having a parent who was mentally ill, substance dependent, incarcerated, if there's parental separation or divorce or domestic violence.

Then they correlated these ACE scores against health outcomes.

The two things that they found was number one, ACEs are incredibly common.

And the higher your ACE score, the higher your risk of mental health problems or substance dependence, but also things that folks hadn't previously been associating with childhood adversity.

For example, someone with four or more adverse childhood experiences has more than double the risk for heart disease.

Two and a half times, the risk of stroke, triple the risk of chronic lung disease.

And so adverse childhood experiences are incredibly common, and the more you have the greater your risk of the most common and deadly conditions in America.

And what we now understand right, is that when we are exposed to adversity in childhood, that activates our stress response.

And if we have too great of an exposure to adversity without the buffering care of a nurturing caregiver, that that can lead to an overactivity of the stress response that can affect brain function, it can affect hormonal function, it can affect the immune system and even the way our DNA is read and transcribed.

And these biological changes are what is now known as toxic stress.

(soft music) - [Sheryl] A key part of Dr. Burke Harris' mission is to share this information.

- This is a movement.

Our goal was to get the message out to families, to get medical providers learning about this information and engage.

We can educate parents and caregivers and help them understand that their role is to provide that buffering environment.

Because if there's one thing that the science is showing us is that healing is possible.

And that's what I would like to bring to children all across America.

(soft music) - [Sheryl] If we want to change things for the next generation, early childhood intervention is key.

I've come to Richmond, Virginia.

Where an innovative preschool is highlighting just how powerful this type of intervention can be.

- [Tim] Jay.

- [Jay] Yes.

- [Tim] Come here.

I though you was gonna help me.

(soft music) - [Sheryl] Three year old Jay has been living with his uncle, Tim and his family for the last two years.

- He has candy!

- Who has candy?

- [Sheryl] Both of Jay's parents are addicted to drugs.

And he was born with drugs in his system.

- Out of the bathroom.

- Out of the bathroom?

- No!

- That's what you said.

You said out of the bathroom.

- Hello?

- Hello, how are you?

- Are you Timothy?

- I am.

- I'm Sheryl, very nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you also, please come in.

- Thank you.

- This is my oldest son, Christopher.

- Hi Christopher.

- Say, hello.

- Hello, how are you?

Great to meet you.

- This is Jay.

- Oh, hello Jay, hello.

- And then this is Nicholas.

- Oh, hi Nicholas, how are you?

- Who is currently stuck in between the wall and the table.

- How are you?

- Go around please.

- Hi, Rebecca very nice to meet you, I'm Sheryl.

- Nice to meet you too.

- Yes.

- Hi there, how are you?

- Very good.

So Jay, that's nice, what's that?

- How does this go over, Jay?

- Hey Jay.

What color was this?

- Brown!

- Brown, right, brown.

- And this is hard.

What color is this?

- Green.

- Green!

Oh, that's good.

(soft music) How did you come to start looking after Jay?

- My brother and his girlfriend who were on drugs before Jay was born and during the birth, got Jay taken away from them a week, maybe two weeks after he was born.

And my mother who had stage, at that time, three cancer took custody of Jay after a couple of weeks of Jay going from house to house.

And it got determined when the finally realized that she wasn't gonna be able to watch Jay anymore.

- What was Jay like at that time?

- He would get in trouble all throughout the day.

He would always be in time out.

He would always get things taken away from him.

He would always be crying and screaming and just very angry and upset.

And then I think once my mom passed, it got a lot worse.

- Yeah.

- No one was really there to be able to be a part of his life continuously for the first year of his life.

So it was just very difficult to be able to live a normal life when you have a child that has trauma.

Rebecca found Ms. Kathy in the Circle Preschool.

And then that's when we started talking to her and going to classes and learning a bunch of stuff that was able to help us pinpoint things, issues that he were having that we saw but we didn't understand because we didn't know any better.

- Not only are the children getting a general education, but they're getting the help that they need also with dealing with anger.

I don't really know of any other programs in Richmond like that.

(soft music) - Ms. Denise, would you check in with Tim?

Hi, Tim, how are you doing today?

- This is on you?

- Yeah.

- What about another?

Do you want another?

- I love that.

- He had a rough morning this morning.

- We did have a rough, are you mad?

- I swear he was never getting up and wanna come to school.

- A lot of things feel different right now.

Jay, daddy's gonna say goodbye.

- I'ma pick you up today.

- [Sheryl] You're doing a great job.

You're doing a great job.

That's from you heart.

- Circle Preschool as a part of Greater Richmond SCAN, which has an agency dedicated to supporting children who've experienced early trauma.

About nine years ago, SCAN got some folks together to do a study on why there were so many preschool expulsions.

And what they found is that there was a high correlation between children who were getting expelled from preschool and experiences of early trauma.

We realized that these children really needed a place where they could come to heal.

The impact of the trauma can be huge, or it can be even subtle and can build over time.

So without treating it or healing experiences that can really continue into adulthood.

- [Sheryl] what is it that Circle Preschool does that is different from what other preschools do?

- We one, have a very different set of practices within the classroom itself.

So we have all been trained in how to respond to trauma, to support children and to support healing with trauma.

I'm noticing Jay is looking at that kind face and his mouth is smiling at it.

Today in our journals, we are going to draw a picture of you feeling kind to your friends.

We have a way of talking with them that is much calmer than typically you would hear in a school.

My hair, can you draw my hair?

- Oh yeah I can.

- It's also very focused on their feelings and what their reactions are when they're having a difficult time, we want to help them to develop a voice, to talk about what's going on for them inside.

- How do you build trust with the children?

You don't know them when they first start here, how do you build trust with them?

- We're very responsive to the children's needs as opposed to reactive.

They might be sad, they might be angry or having huge tantrums.

And our goal is to help those children be able to have those feelings as they need to be, whether they're angry or sad and help them to learn safe ways to manage that.

I'm gonna move this over for you Jay.

Do you want that part or the bottom part?

Good, try your brocolli, your rice in it.

(Jay crying) - Or your rice?

- I am mad at my rice.

- No rice.

(Jay crying) Do you want brocolli in your plate?

- I want more than that.

- I'll see if there's more chicken.

- I want more chicken.

- Are you all done?

- No.

- Can you talk a little bit about how you've seen changes in Jay over the past few months that he's been here?

- When he first came in, he had so many tantrums with just minor shifts, minor changes in the day.

So we would go to the park and it would be time to leave and he just would fall out and would cry for 20 to 30 minutes, just crying and sobbing.

And he was not really soothable, it was very hard to soothe him.

And now he can make those transitions, he can leave the park, he can clean up without having a tantrum.

Another way that he's changed a lot is that his play has gotten more expansive.

He is engaging with other children more, the content of his play is not all about shooting and killing, it was initially.

- Now you work with caregivers, can you talk a little bit about what you do with caregivers?

- My job with the caregivers is really to understand their perspective and then to begin to see if there's a way that they can embed a safer response to the child to help the child learn to hear the limits, the typical limits of a caregiver would have for the child as well as to feel the nurturance that they need.

So what happened this morning?

- He didn't wanna take a bath or wash up he didn't want to wash his face, he didn't wanna go to school.

He wanted to stay at home by himself and- - Oh, man!

- Not be bothered.

- What'd you do to help him?

- Just talked to him.

And started playing Baby Shark.

- Baby Shark?

- It usually gets him up out and ready to go.

- That will do it each time.

- Most parents are working two jobs, they're stressed out, they've got other kids and then they have a child who's been through some trauma.

And so to be calm and to be very measured in the way they respond to a child can be very difficult that I would imagine.

- Absolutely.

The other thing that we try to help parents to see and to do a lot is to take care of themselves.

If we are genuinely empathic with the parent's experience, that will help them to learn how to be empathic with their child's experience.

- He is right there!

There he is.

We gonna play with those feathers again.

- That is different!

- Say again.

- It's different.

- Yes, it's different.

Wow!

Gentle, gentle claps.

(Tim clapping) Oh, you caught it!

- What also is helping Jay be on to Kathy and the Circle Preschool was the knowledge that they've given us for us to use at home to be able to calm him down and talk to him, and understand more of what he's feeling and dealing with.

- [Sheryl] Are you optimistic about Jay's future?

- Yes, very much.

They have taught him how to express himself.

He feels hurt and without Circle Preschool, that would have never happened.

(all clapping) - There is this narrative that if something's wrong with you, you need to pull yourself up by the bootstraps.

What do you think about that?

- Well, I think that if you're a healthy child and you have a lot of internal resources and resiliency that that can work, but our children don't have that.

They don't have an inner voice that can say, "You can do this.

you can, you have the confidence."

And so what you hope to do with the treatment is to shift that narrative, internal narrative into one of there is a possibility.

It's about responding to people who are hurting and valuing that and saying, we can help.

We can help as a community.

- I like this morning.

- [Tim] I know you like it, I got you.

- [Sheryl] It's clear that early childhood programs like Circle Preschool work.

They change lives.

They don't just prevent suffering, they save millions of dollars in health, crime, and prison costs.

And yet due to a lack of funding, they're incredibly rare.

(soft music) - The situation of children is truly grim across the country.

Some 18% of children in the United States are living in poverty.

You could not be making a worse investment than bringing up children who are malnourished, poorly educated, not looked after and not equipped for the workforce.

Certainly the 21st century.

It's very damaging in terms of the economic future of the United States.

(soft music) (birds chirping) - Clayton really tried to help me, especially after my husband died.

He was exceptionally competent.

Always tried to help get our machinery going.

If there was an emergency, you could depend upon him.

I mean, he was a good friend.

So that's what I liked about him.

I wish we were coming under half year circumstances, Irene.

- Yeah me too.

- I really do.

- I'll be glad when tomorrow's over.

- I can imagine.

- Three days he'd be here, three days he'd be in hospital and three days he'd be here and be back in the hospital.

As he kept passing out.

And then the last night he couldn't get him out from between his bed and the dresser.

And he stopped breathing in the ambulance.

Yeah, it's kind of like we're in days we're all working, doing our thing, but we're still kind of like, "He's here somewhere."

(soft music) (rain pouring) - And it's too bad.

Clayton, really so much wanted to help tear down the orchard and be involved in the new one and didn't make it.

- Right.

(soft music) (birds chirping) (soft music) - Okay.

- Okay.

(soft music) - I remember coming home on a real snowy day and Clayton was over getting the snow off the Rochelle drive.

- [Nicholas] Oh yeah?

- Yeah.

And I remember he wouldn't let me go up further until the ice was cleared.

(soft music) - What I'd like to say first is Nick Clayton was a good man.

Honest, unless he was telling me some story he wanted to see how long would it take me to figure out that it was just a joke.

You saw the pictures where he was all gussied up in the suit, that was my wedding day.

He was the best man at our wedding.

And he was a good man.

He was a good friend as stubborn as a mule and in his honor is a bull out during wet season and a big teddy bear.

Clayton used to say all he needed to make him happy is his bike, his car and his dog.

But a lot of us knows that was beers.

- If you were his friend, he was a rock of loyalty.

I think that's why we're here.

- I got to know more of the tenderness of him, the love and affection that he had for his mother and his father was unreal and his son, Ethan, he loved you more than you even know.

I'm really sorry, we're saying goodbye so soon.

We're sending prayer.

This should have been very packed with people, way more than it was today, but we have some families that have lost a good percentage of their children.

Irene, she's buried four kids, not all of them because of drugs, but four out of five.

We've got other families like that with five out of the six are gone.

He was doing it clear through the end.

He using the methamphetamine clear through the end.

Is it easy to talk about these things?

No, it is not.

It feels almost disloyal.

But the truth is more important.

If it's happening in Yamhill, Carlton, it's happening everywhere.

We're a tiny little burg, teeny tiny of no importance and we have a huge problem.

- [Sheryl] For all the independence and self reliance that Clayton seemed to stand for outwardly, inwardly he really leaned on people, he also provided a helping hand to a lot of people.

We forget in America that we do depend upon other people and that it's not a sign of weakness to depend upon other people, but it's a sign of strength and relationships and friendships and what we live for, which is love thy neighbor.

(soft music) - Like many people, Clayton made mistakes, but so have we as a society and America's a weaker nation as a result.

The solutions to so many of our problems already exist.

And yet they're not being implemented nationally.

And while money continues to flow to the wealthiest in our country, people at the bottom are often deprived of help meeting their most basic needs.

But we know that if people do get a helping hand, they can break the cycle of poverty, addiction and incarceration and change things for the next generation.

- Good job.

(Ashton whining) Look at you handsome boy.

(upbeat kid's music) (door bell rings) One second.

- Hey, man.

- What's up Nick, how're doing?

- How are you?

- Doing good, how's the going?

- Hey.

- Come in.

- Hey there, Ashton?

- Come on in.

- You are not surprisingly bigger and more capable.

So tell me about to deal with this place.

So it was Ashton's grandma's house and I'm just staying here until I find another apartment.

I got a housing voucher, so that can take some time, especially with my criminal history.

- And you are almost a year clean, right?

- Yeah, Sunday.

- Congratulations.

- Sunday, thank you.

I'm excited about it, it's pretty awesome.

- That's a hard one anniversary.

- Yeah, it's a milestone.

- Do I get to pick you up?

- Yeah.

- Oh!

It's been awhile, Ashton.

It's been awhile.

(soft music) - [Nicholas] Drew and I are going to drop Ashton off a daycare before heading to my old high school where Drew is gonna talk about his life.

(soft music) - So at first I had separation anxiety.

Like I didn't wanna leave him.

I didn't know those people that well.

- It's supposed to be the kid who has separation anxiety not the dad.

- That's right.

Right, he wasn't a year old yet and then I'm facing going to a job.

- [Nicholas] You're working at the hotel?

- [Drew] Yep.

Actually it's a good job.

- [Nicholas] Is this the longest you've held a job?

I mean, since- - Never ever.

- Ever, wow.

- [Drew] I've never had a job for 90 days in my life.

- [Nicholas] Wow!

- It's true that is this.

- [Nicholas] That's fantastic.

- I have an amazing support system.

I couldn't do what I'm doing today if it wasn't for my family and people in the community that reach out and help.

And that I can reach out and ask for help too.

(soft music) - [Nicholas] I mean, I think your dad was just an incredibly good man and smart, but I think if he had some help then things it might've been a more supportive environment for you when you were a kid.

- Right.

And then if his parents would have taught him that it's okay to accept help from a stranger that he might've accepted some type of help other than what he was doing.

But his father, it was weak if you accepted help from somebody.

If you cried and asked for help from somebody that wasn't your mom, which he didn't have, then you were weak.

And that did it, it's passed on.

Like on that part, my dad did break the cycle, he let me know it was okay to talk to him.

He let me know it was okay to ask for help.

He let me know if these groups are gonna help you go to these groups.

It wasn't like F that, these people are weak.

It was like, do what you gotta do to get better.

(soft music) My heart is beating.

It's just intense.

- Oh you'll be good.

You'll do well.

- I was super worried about getting my message across.

- Oh, you'll do just great.

And you've got an important story to tell and they'll be- - 10 minutes - They'll be more interested in hearing it than they'll be in hearing the history of the Civil War.

- [Teacher] So class, here today, we're gonna have guest speaker, Drew.

- All right.

So I'm 34 years old recovering drug addict.

I'm a single father.

I have a one year old child and I'm his only parent.

I'm one day short of being a year clean off of marijuana, alcohol, meth, heroin, PCP, cocaine, ecstasy, you name it, it didn't matter.

I made some choices when I was your guys' age and I never turned back.

Was very difficult for me and my family.

I mean, I had trouble reaching out and asking for help because I felt like I was different, like my family was different.

It was weird that my parents didn't live together and it was weird that my parents fought at home and it was weird that there was drugs and alcohol in the house.

And I wasn't allowed to talk about anything outside of my house.

My son was born in the hospital, premature addicted to suboxone and methamphetamine because his mother choose to use as well.

And we couldn't break the cycle.

I just had a longing to get better and I wanted to be a parent and I wanted to make different choices, but I just couldn't.

So about a year ago I got out of jail and I hit the ground running.

I made a conscious decision to not make the same choices that I did when I was younger.

And I was blessed, my son recovered, he was in the hospital for two months.

He withdrew from the narcotics that he was addicted to.

He made a miraculous recovery and that was by like sharing what's wrong with me and trying to find the problem and asking for help.

I think it takes a village for someone to succeed, especially when they're coming out of the negative, the extreme negative.

If it wasn't for the support and then people reaching out to me as well, I don't think I would've just done it.

So now I'm starting to get the things that I want.

And I have like, I'm optimistic.

Like today's gonna be a good day when I wake up.

Or maybe it will stop raining.

Just anything like that.

Maybe Ashton will walk today finally.

Yeah.

- Well done.

- Thank you, I appreciate it.

- That was really good.

I thought Drew was so persuasive and spoke so authentically so obviously from the heart.

I just wished that when he was 14 that they had have been a Drew who had come and spoken to that 14 year old Drew and tried to change the course of his life.

Right now, I'm in my old math classroom, it just brings back all kinds of memories to be here and so many of my classmates really struggled and a lot of them aren't here now.

(soft music) It's been painful to witness their suffering and to recognize that things could have gone so differently.

(upbeat acoustic music) Every person in America needs hope.

A more compassionate society understands that some are not as lucky as others.

If you do fall, you have to believe that someone's gonna be there for you and give you a second chance.

That's American too.

For too long we focused on the power of the individual, but it's in community that our true strength lies.

(soft music) So it's time for a new version of the American Dream.

One that includes everybody.

We owe this to the next generation of kids riding that number six school bus.

(soft music) (upbeat music)