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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone, and happy Martin Luther King Day. In just a minute, my first very special guest for this day, New Jersey, Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, who as many of you know at age 75 and as a lung cancer survivor got COVID last week after having to shelter in place during the insurrection with Republican colleagues who refuse to wear masks. I know you all want to know how the Congresswoman is doing and her thoughts on moving the country forward.

Before Bonnie Watson Coleman comes on, I want to share with you something that she tweeted about this weekend that I think isn't getting nearly the attention it deserves because of the intensity of all the other news. "Donald Trump has become the first president since Grover Cleveland to carry out an execution during a transition to a new administration. In fact, by the Washington Post's count, the number of federal death sentences carried out under Trump's since 2020, just since last year is more than in the previous 56 years combined."

I'd like to read for you just a few lines from an op-ed that Martin Luther King III, Dr. King's son published in the Washington Post last week. The headline is, "Martin Luther King Jr. abhorred the death penalty. Executing Black men on his birthday would dishonor him." He writes, "In 1957, my father, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was asked whether God approves of the death penalty for certain crimes. He responded, "I do not think that God approves the death penalty for any crime. Capital punishment is against the better judgment of modern criminology and above all against the highest expression of love in the nature of God." Unquote, that quote from Dr. Martin Luther King.

Then his son continues, "After a 17-year hiatus of federal executions. The Trump administration carried out a shocking 11 executions in the past seven months and scheduled two more for the final days of Trump's time in office. Lest than anyone confuse these executions with the pursuit of justice, we should recall that those executed include a Black man convicted by an all white jury, two young Black men who were barely legal adults at the time of their crimes, and a Black man whose claim of intellectual disability went unexamined. To cap off its killing spree the Trump administration had planned two more executions but on Thursday a federal appeals court vacated a stay of execution for both cases, meaning only the Supreme Court can intervene to stop the executions from taking place. Friday would have been my father's 92nd birthday, nothing could dishonor his legacy more profoundly than if these executions go forward."

Those were excerpts from an op-ed by Martin Luther King the third published last Thursday. The two executions plan for the next day, Dr. King's actual birthday last Friday were delayed by one day. Both men were executed on Saturday. With me now, Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman from New Jersey's 12th district, which extends from roughly Plainfield down to Princeton and Trenton. She first got elected in 2014 as the first Black woman ever to serve in Congress from New Jersey. Before that, she was the first Black woman to be the state assembly majority leader. Congresswoman, it's an honor to have you on this day. Welcome back to WNYC. I can't hear the Congresswoman. I wonder if she can hear me. I will tell you all as we try to fix this technical difficulty that Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman herself wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post the other day. The headline of that was, "I'm 75. I had cancer. I got COVID 19 because my GOP colleagues dismiss facts." That one starts by saying, "Over the past day-- this was last Tuesday, a lot of people have asked me how I feel. They're usually referring to my COVID-19 diagnosis and my symptoms. I feel like I have a mild cold, but even more than that, I am angry. I am angry that after I spent months carefully isolating myself, a single chaotic day likely me got me sick. I am angry that several of our nation's leaders were unwilling to deal with a small annoyance of a mask for a few hours. I am angry that the attack on the Capitol and my subsequent illness have the same cause, my Republican colleagues' inability to accept facts."

She writes, "When I left for Washington last week, it was my first trip there in several months. I had a list of things to accomplish, including getting my picture taken for the card I use when voting on the house floor. For the past two years, I appeared on that card completely bald as a result of the chemotherapy I underwent to eliminate the cancer in my right lung. It was because of that preexisting condition that I relied so heavily on the proxy voting the House agree to last year when we first began to understand the danger of COVID-19. I was nervous about spending a week among so many people who regularly flout social distancing and mass guidelines, but I could not have imagined the horror of what happened on January 6th." That's the beginning of the op-ed last week by Bonnie Watson Coleman. I think we have the Congresswoman now, do we?

Bonnie Watson Coleman: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Hi there. Thank you so much for joining us and whatever the technical difficulty was, I apologize for it.

Bonnie Watson Coleman: I'm just glad it wasn't me. It's usually me.

Brian Lehrer: [laughs] Very humble. Well, I know all our listeners and I was filling the time by reading the beginning of your op-ed in the Washington Post last week so they have some background now on what happened. I'm sure our listeners are wondering, how are you?

Bonnie Watson Coleman: I'm doing quite well. Thank you. I only had mild symptoms and I think that I'm pretty much even through that. Got a little cough going, not as tired as I was.

Brian Lehrer: Let me jump in because now I'm being told that I can hear you but the listeners can't hear you on the air. Let me ask our engineer, Giuliana, is that your understanding? Okay. That is my understanding. Rather than ask you to waste your breath. Okay. I think we can hear you now. Why don't you try again and tell people how you're doing. I apologize again.

Bonnie Watson Coleman: All right. Thank you for asking me how I'm doing. I am doing quite well. I've been at least through this seven or eight days. I had mild symptoms, like a cold. I still had them slightly, but I'm not as fatigued as I was. So I think I'm on the mend.

Brian Lehrer: Good. The part of that Washington Post op-ed that I didn't get to seem to say that you were first evacuated on January 6th to the Capitol because of a different threat to your safety. Do I understand that correctly?

Bonnie Watson Coleman: Yes. I live near the Republican National Committee so my apartment was evacuated about 11:30 in the morning. I went over to the Cannon building, which is where my office is. As I approached the first floor there an officer stopped me and said, "No, we've got to get you out of here. We're evacuating this building it's too close to the possible bombs." He showed me the way down through the tunnel. They basically evacuated the Cannon building down into the tunnel between the Canon and other buildings.

There were just lots of people down there. Mostly masked, a few people didn't have their masks on and whenever they came in proximity to me, I reminded them to put their mask on and they did but there weren't very many members, there was more staff. Then we were told that there were too many people in that room according to the Coronavirus guidelines. Someone would probably come ask us to leave. So I said, well, then I might as well just go over to the Capitol and it's probably safe for me to be there.

I made my way over to the Capitol to the first floor. I didn't have a pin on because I evacuated my apartment so quickly, went to the Sergeant of arms office to get a pin, got it and my husband happened to be with me because he got evacuated from the apartment, got his spouse pin. I was going to go upstairs to the floor and I decided that I had some time before voting to go ahead down to the attending physician's office. I had a question for him. As I was approaching that hallway, I encountered an officer who said, "You don't want to go down there. They're down there." I wasn't quite sure what he meant. I said, "Well, I just need to get to the doctor's office." He kind of shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

Went a little farther down and another officer said, "Ma'am, you don't want to go down there." I could see there. He said that they're breaching the Capitol and I could see the commotion. I could see the police struggling with people with lots of colorful things on, mostly red. He stood in the way as I went down another hall, went down that hallway and I sheltered in one of those offices for a couple of hours until the Capitol police came and got us and said that they needed to move us to a more secure location. That's what I went into that large room with both staff and members, some of whom did not have masks on.

Brian Lehrer: Did your Republican colleagues refuse to wear a mask when asked? Did it come to an ask and a refusal? Did they know that you were a recent lung cancer and chemotherapy survivor who had been very cautious about protecting yourself from exposures?

Bonnie Watson Coleman: Yes. I don't know how much they knew about me personally. There are 400 and some of us, and there were a couple of senators I understand in the room. There were some who didn't have their masks on. A young staffer approached where I was talking to another staffer and she took her mask down. I said, "No, put it back on now." She did, but I could see down the other end of the room that there were members with pins on who didn't have masks on. There were people around them also who didn't have pins on and did not have their masks on. Then I had a conversation with Lisa Blunt Rochester, from Delaware who said that she was trying to distribute masks to them and they wouldn't accept them. That's what I know.

Brian Lehrer: That's what you know. You've declined previously to name any names of those Republicans who you just described, is that still your intention today and why protect them like that if so?

Bonnie Watson Coleman: Well, I'm not protecting them. I actually don't know all of their names. I don't want to miss call anyone. I've seen some footage of individuals in that room that Lisa had approached. They can be easily recognizable by someone who knows them.

Brian Lehrer: Have whoever those members were apologized to you or expressed any remorse knowing of your diagnosis with COVID.

Bonnie Watson Coleman: No, I have not heard from any of them.

Brian Lehrer: People have said you could sue them. I wonder if you think they should be charged criminally was something like reckless endangerment.

Bonnie Watson Coleman: I'm not a lawyer. I think that they need to pay the consequences of what they did by knowingly endangering other people. I think that their arrogance and stupidity cannot be excused, that they need to pay consequences in terms of being members of Congress. I didn't even think about suing anybody. I think what we should be doing is ensuring that there are tough enough rules and consequences that those rules are followed and that people are not walking around the Capitol or the Capitol complex without their masks on. If they are, there are consequences as severe as if you're a member suspension, as severe as expulsion, as severe as a paying fine. We can't go on asking you to do the right thing and to appeal to your sense of duty to other people because that clearly doesn't work with them.

Brian Lehrer: We have a few more minutes with New Jersey Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman. Here we are on Martin Luther King Day Congresswoman, how much do you think the insurrection was about race?

Bonnie Watson Coleman: Well, unfortunately in the United States of America, it's generally about race. Somewhere down the line race is playing a very prominent role because you can't have white supremacy unless you have someone to be supreme over. Typically in this country, it has been Black people. Race has always a function and a factor in these kinds of situations. Now, that doesn't mean that there's not other sort of -isms in place, whether it's antisemitism or homophobia or Islamophobia but it has to do with discrimination.

Brian Lehrer: Of course, the incoming Biden administration will have its hands full and says it will tackle four big problems out of the gate. The virus, economic devastation caused by the virus, climate change, and racial justice. Are there particular concrete actions that in your opinion should come first for racial justice from the new administration?

Bonnie Watson Coleman: Well, there are two things, actually. There's one thing that's-- Well, actually there's three things. One is the Justice in Policing Act named after Mr. Floyd. The second is the Voting Rights Act named John Lewis. Those definitely are two pieces of legislation that are in the hopper that could be addressed quickly. The third is I think that the administration needs to have a commission to delve deeply into this issue of race in America and racism in America. There's got to be a reconciliation, but you can't have a reconciliation without having truth and justice first.

I believe that this administration is dedicated to this country being a better country, more respectful of the differences that we bring, the vibrancy that we bring through those differences, and the fact that we had the right to be safe and secure as well as anyone else. A high-level commission that examines those things, examines the consequences of what's happening over the last four years and even before that. Donald Trump didn't create this. He just took the bandaid off and allowed them to go hog-wild in manifesting their disdain and disgust for anything that wasn't white and principally male. We have a lot of work to do and I think that this administration is dedicated to a better America and that we simply needed to use his resources and his muscles to do so.

Brian Lehrer: Can we close by coming full circle. Before we got your line connected with those technical difficulties, I read lines from Martin Luther King III's op-ed last week about Trump's last-minute execution spree and what his father would have thought about that. Let me read now from the dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor allowing the final executions to go forward last week. She wrote, "After 17 years without a single federal execution, the government has executed 12 people since July." Then she names their names so I'll do that. "They are Daniel Lee, Wesley Purkey, Dustin Honken, Lezmond Mitchell, Keith Nelson, William LeCroy Jr., Christopher Vialva, Orlando Hall, Brandon Bernard, Alfred Bourgeois, Lisa Montgomery, and, just last night, Corey Johnson." That was one-day last week. "Today, Dustin Higgs will become the 13th. To put that in historical context, the Federal Government will have executed more than three times as many people in the last six months than it had in the previous six decades." Justice Sotomayor from her dissent last week, and you tweeted about the issue over the weekend. What are some of your thoughts?

Bonnie Watson Coleman: I've been against the death penalty ever since I was an elected official back in the state of New Jersey. It is barbaric. It is irreconcilable. It is revokable, and it is something that we should not be doing in a civilized nation. It's also been something that has negatively impacted in a disparate way people of color and poor people because they've not had the benefit of the best legal representation. The thing that touches me is that this administration is hell-bent on being absolutely evil, evil, and corrupt.

The duplicitousness in releasing people who had been convicted of war crimes and killing innocent people and at the same time executing people who've been in the custody of the prison system, it doesn't make any sense, it is just another evil mean act and it's a way that they're going to leave another of a blemish from their administration. Their legacy is going to be a learning lesson for all scholars and for all students on how not to govern, how not to be an elected official, what it means to not be a decent human being. At the end of the day, they'll meet their maker also.

Brian Lehrer: Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, Democrat from New Jersey. Congresswoman, I'm glad your COVID appears to be mild. Your voice is clear and I mean that on several levels. Thank you very much for joining us.

Bonnie Watson Coleman: Thank you. You have a great day. Thank you for having me.

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