I'm Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center and welcome

to We The People A Weekly Show of Constitutional Debate.

The National Constitution Center is a nonpartisan nonprofit chartered by Congress to increase awareness

and understanding of the Constitution among the American people.

Last week, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison,

an Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost,

join me for a vigorous bipartisan conversation

about the role of state attorneys general in addressing

police reform protests and other constitutional challenges facing states

today. Hope you enjoy their many insights and please check out our other America's town hall programs, which

we run every week on our Companion Podcast, live at the National Constitution Center.

General Ellison, you are at the center of the most closely watched case involving the police in America today, the rising out of the tragedy. the But you've had an extraordinary background as a representative for Minnesota in the U.S. House of Representatives and as a civil rights attorney separate

Specializing in civil rights and defense law.

Tell us about how your background

as a civil rights attorney and a representative

has influenced your approach to the Floyd case.

You know, my background, I've got to go at least back to a man

named Frank Martinez who is my grandfather he was organizing black voters in the

1950s in rural Louisiana and he would do fish fries

or community meetings show up at church and try to convince people who have never had a chance to

participate in democracy that they really did have every right to participate in

democracy. They signed up a lot of people to vote and some of those people were ordered off their farm some of them were threatened some of them were beaten and he was threatened and uh and and beaten himself and even had we that my mom will tell stories about how they

...