they discussed politics and how to involve young people in public policy. >> posted radio news talk in cleveland, ohio, next, staff director of the subcommittee on africa global health, congressman donald payne in washington d.c.. jeffrey johnson, commentator for the tom joyner show, the college division from maryland. the executive director from applied publishers of caroline magazine from new york, new york. and the director of campaign for african action from washington d.c.. next, rain atlantic and from

washington d.c. for outreach director from washington c.. and performing this evening will be tony, grammy nominated gospel artist from n diego, calif.. join me in voting our guests this evening. let's start the prentation. ♪

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♪ [applause] >> how is everybody doing? if you are happy to be alive, make some noise. [cheers and applause] >> i am a radio show host out of cleveland, ohio.

here we go. as the name of the one who created the trees, who created the breeze, the bones in my knees, sent blessings to me and i pramy words leave marks on your heart because as a people we have so much light, we stay in the dark, we don't like action unless the director yells action we become actors instead of activists. just to put up the black for is. the things we preach never put into practice as our pride as backflips, never stay grounded, our courage is pounded into ignorance and arrogance. we must ask ourselves this question, why where we send to this place called earth? we have a purpose, that is to inspire our brothers and sisters who feel they are worthless. the only way to create multi-cultural understanding and world peace, we have to begin in

the place the cause the most problems, in a society -- you may have to swallow or end up immaterial. the country that raised martin luther king and malcolm x, and they got holidays. people lovthem now more that they are dead. how can you have world peace? the slogan is the people. the country is being consoled, righteous, the law up holding the underlying factors our country is controlling, the majority of government and the economy, it became a monopoly, one controls many. i am not saying wheat -- not say we should leave our brothers and sisters alone before want to make a change, we are going all the way across the seat when we have people in our neighborhoods who are dying from disease. people in our neighborhood don't

know how to read. it seems if our people we don't want to be bothered because grown people in brooklyn are starving, young girls who have never met their father, a young person who contemplates suicide, the best thing about canada was carter, their heah care. the greatest untry in the world on welfare. i feel bad for my brothers and sisters who felt that tsunami. we had our own tsunami. our tsunami came in the form of crack. it hit blacks so hartebeests took steps back. point to any place on the map, i lower class citizen becase i am a man that is black. our tsunami came in the form of self aid. it you don't love your people you can love another race. [applause] this country must be insane. like a man leading a domestic

violence campaign when he comes at home at night and beat his wife and brings his family pain. don't need more house slaves. malcolm do what, the best way to world peac is to be an example, not how the world should act. if you want to be multi-cultural, you have to love to be black because everne loves their people except for us. no one has been brutally enslave mentally and spiritually and physical like us. we hope everyone else out, what are going to help us? in the name of the one created me, beautiful, he could have easily deleted me but instead he has forgiven me for my sins repeatedly. this is the truth. i see in you and you see in me i must succeed, the desperate need of me, wake up. let's talk about some issues because the picture is much bigger than those iraqi

missiles. let's speak to the leaders of the society, it can't lie to me, they insist on buying me and i am dying, they're trying me. i don't care. as long as there is no denying me. slaves change secretly, now we put the noose on openly, the change they used to be joking me, i am just -- they only treat the transforming of books so in hail and exhale knowledge, it is around me, [applause] you are catching it secondhand. let me give you a second, i am not related to mr. watson but i am out of time slightly. i try to do the rig thing like spike lee but it is unlikely. if it gets to the right hand, might get a record or movie deal, you can expect me to be killed but i won't start

reciting--the revolution we must start one, spirituallypark one, wake up. mort ascendancy in churches, the rest of our people in had hearses, no leadersn our community, we have more chicken than churches. the life of the roller-coasr ride, left with the creator, for him i will die. where is the legacy of malcolm, i am from brooklyn, live in cleveland, reside in the city where the dirty falcons me, living out t dream of the morehouse alumnus on the balcony, wake up, our society is choked, it was likewise a vote to get the recall, it sounds crazy when i keep shooting the character between total recl, this is the matrix, i stick to the basics, i came to give this a face lt. i couldn't teach all i knew

because only in the zulu war could you do that. the world is a bad boy and they try to lock up my shine. i me to bring the truth today. the world that i was mexican, i am talking to you, losers not logical, i am not losing, nothing like tom, my mission is more impossible because the world has been messed up waiting for the accused osama, waiting for britney spears to kiss madonna. ivey site life instances, don't give me life sentences. i am 5 pound the way, the truth is here, thanks so much. [cheers and applause]

>> okay. that was a tough act to follow. that was reading, emotional, that w powerful. obviously you agree. my name is noelle lusane, staff director for the u.s. house of represtatives suommittee on africa and global health. i work for the foreign affairs committee in the house of representatives. in my position i advise congress and donald payne of new jersey where i am from, who ishe

chairman of the subcommittee on africa global health. we write legislation, we prepare hearings that you see on c-span, we do a wide range of things including meeti with heads of state in the u.s. and abroad. i travel a lot to the continent, that is the bulk of my work dealing with africa and global health. they asked us to talk a little bit about who we are and what we do. i mention the things that i do because any of you, i truly mean this, any of you could be in the position that i am in. any of you could be working on capitol hill if you wish to do so. any of you can decide that there is an issue you feel strongly about, that there is a place you want to travel to, that there is a w for you to contribute to is world and i would like to say the two questions that i would like you to answer to

yourselves this evening, one, who am i? when i ask you who are you, i want to tell you a little bit about how i discovered who i am and i agree with everying ba basheer said so eloquently. i believe it is through learning about others, through traveling to other countries that we can learn about ourselves on a deeper level. because it is only through being exposed to other cultures, other ways of life, other levels of poverty and wealth, that we truly understand that some of the assumptions we hold to be true are not, or don't hold up in other contexts. learning about others, we learn about ourselves. the other question i want you to ask is what is my contribution to this world?

like many of you, most of view, grew up in this consumer culture that is the united states of america. the tendency is not to think about how other people live, the tendency is to think about oneself, i am an individual. but our lives impact the lives of people around the world. the clothes we wear, who made them? the shoes on our feet. our lives are interconnected more than ever before and if we do not become involved we will lose time. i want to leave you with those two questions, who am i and what can i contribute? for me when i started traveling at a young age to venezuela at the age of 9, in indiana at the age of 16, there were black

people in latin america which i didn't know, and i saw poverty that in no existed, but i also met people with amazing courage, people who were doing amazing things with their lives, and i saw thisxhilaration. the world was right within my grasp and it is right within your grasp as well. i encourage you to travel, to expose yourself to other cultures, other languages, challenge the assumptions that you hold, challenge the values that you hold, the norms that you want to be true. you will only be enriched by doing so, you will discover who you truly are. we are going to get more into discussions later on so i will leave it at that but i also want to say congratulations to the naacp for 100 years of service.

i think stefanie l. browand all of you for being here, for your intest, your active participation, i hope some of you will think about traveling to another countr learning the new language or becoming involved in international affairs in some way. thank you. [applause] >> good eving. you don't mind if i stand up? alright. it is an incredible honor to the president and ceo and board of directors, stefanie l. brown, national health director, to all of those in this place, it is an incredible honor for me to be here this evening. ten years ago today was my first

national convention as a member of the staff of the naacp. to be here ten years later, having been able to go all over the world, i just got off a plane from iraq four hours ago. the only reason i came back was for the naacp convention. i say that to say that nothing i have done on bet or tom joyner or none of the traveling i have done, the business i'm able to own, would have been possible had it not been for the naacp youth and college division. to cleveland in region 3. [cheers and applause] i grew up in cleveland and was in toledo, ohio, as a young person who wanted to work with young people. no other organization would allow me to work with young

people. they thought i was too radical, militant, and surprisingly the naacp did. it was that opportunity in toledo that allowed me to have opportuny on a national level, and so i can't say enough that we as young people, let alone adults in this organization oftentimes undervalue the brand and resources of the naacp. we as an organization often times they for stuff. at the end of the day this organization is not just the oldest, boldest and all that other stuff. it is fundamentally the largest and most progressive institution for black people to address issues of social justice and civil rights in the world. whether we e it effectively or not is a question, but the institution and its value to not be debated is what do you do with it? as young people, i see so many

young people in the country, they talk to me and come to me and say adults are not doing this or that, that is what happens. so what? at the end of the day, most of the adults standing in your ere doing nothing anyway. [applause] every day you can you come -- come to youth night and see adults who care about you because they show up, where are those that are not here? they are running over with adults that support young people because they talk about young people all the time but when young people show up to do work, they are not here. [applause] what tonight is abouts about

understanding your value and acting within a broader universe of activism. wed noelle lusane talked about was the same thing, we as a nation of young people have to decide what our individual is. there are many of us who may not want to go across the water because we are working at home, but there are a lot of us that understand that there is a diaspora that needs to be addressed, in needs our vision and insight and intellect and nius to part with our brothers and sisters overseas who are also looking to connect with those who have a vision of making a better world. and you have got to decide individually. will but let me tell you this. in 2009, you cannot be a leader and not know what is happening in the rest of the world. in 2009, you cannot be a

legitimate leader and think the 5 block radius where you live is the circumference of the universe. it does not work. so you don't have to be helping to dig wells and africa were dealing with the double door going to iraq or dealing wit issues in the middle east or going to europe or leaving and going to canada or mexico, but you had better know what is going on there. you had betterpen the paper and read what is happening in the rest of the world. because how can you effectively empower those where you are if you don't know anything? and don't know anything more importantly about the world that all of us live in. i would encourage you to be able, when identifying the issues you care about the most, the issue you are most passionate about, to identify how is that affecting me? other members of the human family and other parts of the world, one of the most amazing experiences i have been able to

have is being in europe or africa or asia talking to activists that are dealing with the very same issues we are dealing with in baltimore, new york, cleveland, oakland and l a and atlanta that they are dealing with in paris, rome, berlin, johansburg, bause when we come together as activists sharing ideas, methodology practices, that all of us become better, and no longer can we just be talking about who gives the most awesome speeches, who gives the most pragmatic solution to the amendment of problems plaguing us? if you think that is happeng in america you have lost your mind. unfortunately, there are communities that are demanding that their leaders do more than just talk. there are communities that are

demanding, it is great that you can give a speech, but i want you to solve my problem. i want to feel good after the program and go back to my community with nothing to take a. i challenge you this week to make sure that above all else you challenge us on the stage or leadership, you challenge board members to give me solutions and not rhetoric. give me models and not simply words and challenge yourself to develop your own vision, your own strategies and your own solutions. [applause] >> good evening, it is a huge honor to be here tonight. i came to the u.s. when i was

5-year-old and as an immigrant we don't hava lot of institutions that are 100 years old that we can gather year after year. so i am here as an ally and as a partner and as a member to -- [applause] -- thank you. to learn from a long history and legacy of the naacp, also to make my own contribution to it in its next hundred years. the issue i want to talk about tonight is one that you don't have to go veryar at all from your own home in order to participate in and make a difference in, that is the issue of immigrant rights and immigration policy reform. we are at a moment now where there is an enormous debate going on in the country about who belongs here and who doesn't and what people should have to do in order to belong here and what we should do as a country with the people that we deem not to belong here. those people are living right in your communities.

i would venture to say that no matter where you are from, whether is a city or a suburb or part of the american countryside, there are immigrants living right new who are dying to use the potential contributions they make to the country, who are unable to make those ctributions because our immigration policy doesn't allow it. there is a ton at stake for those communities. a guatemalan woman who gave birth in a mississippi hospital and then had child protective services take her kids away because she could not communicate with the hospital in english. speaking english, requirement for motherhood, otherwise your kids the going to be taken away. there are people like ahmad who died in immigration detention because he had heart disease that was not treated while he was in that detention center.

a lot at stake for the dozens of 18-year-olds who come to talk to me while i travel around the country going from city to city talking about the work, these 18-year-olds come to me and say every last one of them, i was brought to the country when i was very small and i never got legal immigration status, now i am 18, i can't work, i can't go to school, i want to be an architect, i want to be a doctor, i want to be a nurse, i want to make a contribution but i can't. is there anything i can do? right now i have to tell that person know, there's nothing you can do, you just have to wait until a new immigration policy passes. when they ask me when that is going to be, i can't tell them because we don't know. those are the kinds of lives all of you can make an enormous differen in by getting involved in the immigration debate. right now, the way our system works, if we make legal immigration very difficult, just like every other country in the

world, making it very hard to come legally, and we punish all of the people who come without authorization, we punish them by jailing them, chasing them down, trapping them at the border and deporting them, in the ten years the tween 1996, and 2006, we deported the parents of 100,000 u.s. citizens, the one hundred thousand u.s. citizen children living in your communities whose parents have been deported. this is a roomful of people who knows what it is like to be be controlled, to have this education and not that education, to have them decide to empoverish and imprisoned us and tell us it is our fault that that happens. i know that all of you

understand what that is like, and i also know that we have a great opportunity now not just to change the system of immigration, to make the free migration of people as possible as the free migration of corporations is, so that fundamental unfairness in which business can do what it wants to find good conditions for itself but when human beings try to exercise that same right there stopped by bureaucracy and regulation and men with guns at the border. [applause] there are a couple important things you can do starting right now. the most important one right now is you can't take the words illegal alien out of your vocabulary and you can begin to challenge this wherever you hear it. it is a political construction, a racist construction that applies only to certain immigrants and not to others, and used to keep those

immigrants under control. i promise you that if you do that, and the second thing, to get involved with your local immigrant rights organization, immigrant rights coalition, i promise you that there are people in american communities who are ready not just to invite you to join their struggle, but to become part of the very long, very important andvertime, victorious racial justice struggle that this organization has worked so hard to build and to win. we know that that struggle is not over, that struggle is a global struggle, and i know that if we do it together we can actually take apart the racial hierarchy that rules our lives and include immigrants in that justice movement. thank you so much. ..

i'm a citizen of zimbabwe and i work in washington, d.c. for africa action where our mission is to support human rights, democracy, economic security, peace and sustainable communities in the african continent. we've been around since 1953 a throughout that long history, we've learned hownterconnected communities all around the world are. we've learned how it is important for wherever we are in the world to not be indifferent to the suffering of any

community around the world. we've seen in practice how relevant and true the words of martin luther king a that to threats to justice anyway is a threat to justice everywhere. [applause] >> so for a very long century, activists of the naacp have worked very hard to break down racial barriers and to expand economic, social and political opportunities t all people in a way that did not only advance the cause of people of color around the world but actual advanced the cause of all of humanity around the world and this is with a we celebrate today and because of the enormous dedication and sacrifice that have been done by

people web tuboys and charlie houston and people whoave come through the naacp and many other organizations, we are able at that to count on impossible victories including the election of president obama to become the first african-american president. [applause] >> it needs no mention that there's no way tha that glass ceiling would have been broken without the enormous work and sacrifice and dedication that these men committed and dedicated their lives to. and if you look at people who have played a key part in history, as young people, the present generation we sometimes feel them as super humans and the message i want to bring into this place today is that those

men and women were just men and women like all of us here today. that we do have the same power and the same capacity that they have to change and affect the cause of history. we do have the same power a the same capacity as they had do good in this world. a great thinker that i follow very closely said every generation will come out of relative obscurity and must discover its mission. and to fulfill it or betray it. and that's a question that the young people have to answer. if we come out of that proverbial darkness and if we find out what's the most important mission of this generation a if you ask the people from the '60s they'll tell you their most important mission in the '60s was the civil rights struggle. in the '80s the most important struggle was the liberation from the apartheid regime and there's people who dedicated their lives

after that. their whole lives evolved around such a central task. what is the central task that our lives are evolving around at that? are we on course t fulfilling that mission or are we on course to betraying that history. what we have lent in the long struggles in africa and around the world is the struggle for social justice is a relay and every responsible generation passes the baton to the next generation. and i think today we acknowledge that those who today before us left that baton in the present generation today. where are we going with that baton stick? are we on course to do good and affect the course of history as those who came before us did? at africa action where i work, we try and deal with what we see as the most important question facing the african continent today and one of the key issues

is the hiv-aids pandemic. every year more than 2.1 million people are dying as a result of hiv-aids. and more than three-quarters of these people are found in sub-sahara in africa. and every year you have over 2 million people dying of malayer where a and if they had mosquito neither and malaria tablets they would be able to survive. what are we doing to address challenges. every year on the african continent thousands and thousands of children are dying as a result of hunger and in our analysis, we've learned that it's not because there's little food around the world but it's simply someone is eating their sure. what can we do to have a more fair distribution of resources around the world so that we do not have such senseless loss of life. one of the key issues is the question of genocide in dar fewer.

300,000 people dying, innocent men and women and children tying of the madness of genocide for darfur. and we realize the pain that they feel is connected to our own existence. we've committed ourselves since 2003 to campaign to bring that genocide to an end. today, there's all these debates about figures, should it be called genocide or this or that? we are saying a single life lost senselessly -- the issue of economic security around the world. one of the lessons that we've learned is that the world has become such an interconnected village. as a result of greed on wall street, south africa will lose 500,000 jobs, men and women who have to go and face their families and face the reality of their children dropping out of school and losing their homes

because of the greed that's happening on wall street. so we are that interconnected and we have a responsibility, i believe, to think globally and act locally. and i think this is the message that the speakers who spoke before me talked about. and sometimes i think it feels so overwhelming that what exactly do you hold onto? what exactly do you attend to? and for me, i draw guidance from the first african woman who received the nobel peace prize. [applause] >> and she says it's the little things that people do that make all the difference. and she says the little thing is planting trees. it's part of the movement where she's empowered women all across the african continent to plant millions and millions of trees to rehabilitate forests that have been lost and to deal with the question of the

environmental degradation. if we are to leave with something today, what is that little thing? what is your little thing? there are issues in your community. pick one simple issue in that community and commit your life to addressing such an issue. you will be surprised by the impact that it will have on the world. and let's have that global internationalist outlook in how we deal with our issues. one of the founding fathers to the naacp, a personal hero of mine. w.e. dubois died in ghana where he was working todvance the cause of african people but h was from here. so we have to draw inspiration from such history and see how inrconnected we are but let's work in our own communities that we will advance the cause of all humanity. thank you very much. [applause]

>> i'm honored that we have been joined by our j presidency of mr. benjamin toddealous and i would like to bring greetings to the youth delegation. [applause] >> >> good evening. well, it's inspiring to sit here and watch the young people of the naacp respond to the ideas exchanged on this stage. the last comments that were made about the importance of all of us knowing the purpose of our lives. making a decision that's not a hard decision to make. you may feel conflicted. there may be many compelling issues to you but you just have

to pick one. and in this period of your life that one issue is the issue. it's the big thing that you're working on until it's done. 15 years ago, i had been -- 16 years ago i had been kicked out of columbia university for organizing student protests and i linked up with some -- with the then-president of the mississippi youth council of the naacp, derek johnson, the state yoh council. and we decided that our big thing was that we were going to stop the governor from mississippi from turning mississippi valley state university into a prison. and we did it. pplause] >> a few years later, i was at the national coalition to abolish the death penalty with steve hawkins, who's now the executive vice president of the naacp. and steve who had started out in

the austin youth councilad dedicated his life to abolishing the death penalty. he and i decided that we were going to abolish the death penalty for juveniles in this country. and the campaign took us seven years but we succeeded. [applause]4pt >> and we succeeded because -- simply because a small group of activists got together and said, we know what the opinion polls say. we know that this is nearly impossible but it's absolutely outrageous. and we have faith in our fellow humans in this country, our fellow americans that if they only understood they would stop it. and then we figured out that we needed was thre states and it became a whole lot easier and we changed the law in those three states and the supreme court did the rest. but i put that out there to you because the reality is that oftentimes the challenge seems overwhelming.

and the reality is that it's usually not nearly so. commit yourself -- if you focus at that instanand you practice discipline until you win you will win faster than you realize. if you take nothing from the obama campaign but that, understand that when you are committed to making change in this world, you're capable as all of you are in convincing others to join you. change often happens faster than even you think is possible. so i commend you. i'm honored and humbled to be your president. i'm looking forward to doing to do when we were young. we're now middle aged, jeff. [laughter] >> with all of you, and that is raising cane as they say in some

parts of this country. raising cane and making the outrage real but doing it in a way that's focused and has results and changes the country for the better so that when you are parents, when you have kids headed off to college, you can say the world is better because i joined the youth in college division of the naacp and we made it better. thank you and god bless. [applause] >> at this time, we will continue withur panel and as you listen to the last panelist, please begin to prepare any questions so that we may continue the discussion. >> good evening. the first thing i have to do is echo the rest of the panelists in saying what a -- truly it is an honor to be here today to talk to so many people who are among the most active people in the united states.

my name is ranna lanagan. i am outreach coordinator at one. one is a grassroots campaign, an advocacy organization backed by more than 2 million people globally who are committed to the fight against extreme poverty and preventible disease, particularly, in africa. we do this through advocacy, raising awareness and taking action and we work very closely with policy experts, african leaders and other antipoverty campaigners to make this happen. to mobilize public opinion in support of these tested and proven solutions that really make a difference. but, you know, what the really great thing is, is that you don't have to be a development expert to make a difference. you know, one members all across the country and around the world are speaking out about extreme global poverty. they're telling their friends. they're telling their neighbors

that people still die3w)uáz mosquito bites in some par of the world. that children die from preventible diseases like diarrhea, things that we nsider to be a nuisance here but in them developing nations can actually be and, you know, what, all you need to do is effect this change is you have to have the passion, the drive and the commitmentnz÷ stand up for what is right and ise your voice to effect change.a

vote. you wouldn't have the right to vote if someone had said, oh, you know what? that's impossible. that's never going to change. so whatever issue you decide to care about the most, whatever really drives your spirit, whatever you want to change in your community in your world, don't let people tell you that it's impossible because it's not. [applause] >> we are presented today with a great opportunity to effect change. and as this audience knows well, change often involves sacrifice of some kind. but if that kind of sacrifice

means me giving up one afternoon to talk to my neighbors about extreme poverty, then sign me up because this is something that we can do in our generation. and your generation, over the next 20, 40, 80 years -- you're really the ones who are shaping the world. so go out there and make a difference, whatever your passion is. [applause] >> at this time i would like to invite my fellow members of the youth and college division up to the mics that we have. we have one in this aisle as well as one in this aisle to ask our panelists any questions. can you please state your name, the unit that you come from and

your question for the pammist >> i'm jasmine conity and i come from pennsylvania county in virginia which is division 7, i believe. [applause] >> and i want to ask you about the immigration. i listened to what you said and i want to back you but when i thought about what you said, you were saying a mexican woman crossing the border into american states having a baby, you know, using american taxpayers dollars to help her birth her baby and, you know, keep it in the hospital, what she did was crinal and that would make her, you know, an alien immigrant. i mean, are you asking us to support breaking the law 'cause what she did was criminal 'cause weo have laws. so i want to know what were you trying to say on that. >> i'm actually going to stand up for this 'cause now i can actually see you all and probably you can see me better, too. i really want to thank you for asking that question because it's very, very important.

and i know that it is difficult to wrap our heads around the idea that we have a set of laws and that people have broken those laws and that there should be some kind of redemptive process that makes it okay for them to be here. i know that's a difficult thing to -- to absorb and to get behind. so the things i would ask you to consider, to think about are these. the first is who is the law serving? where did the law come from? and is that a law that, in fact, is easy for -- or not easy but is that a law that is really about the public safety and about the -- having the best things happen for the united states? sorry, iaw you waving. did you want to clarify mething? and then you say you don't like them being met with guns at the border. there are a lot of things that can be infiltrated into the

uned states like cartels. when it comes to national security you have to have somebody at the border to, yo know, protect the people in america. [applause] >> i understand. i understand. i can just wrap up then that would be great. so this is a very complicated issue and i know that intuitively it seems like creating an immigration policy that is designed to keep people out and then enforcing that policy makes the most sense. in fact, we're spending a lot of money securing the border. not against terrorists but against people who are trying to work mostly. and there are -- there's a history to the creation of that law that makes it so that it is applied in a racist way. it isn't irish undocumented immigrants that we chase down and raid and, you know, pull out of their homes in the middle of the night and separate from their children.

[applause] >> so i would ask us just t -- not to ignore our intuition but to look at all the conditions around these decisions that we're making to see really how they're playing out. and the best way is going to be by actually getting to know immigrants in or near your community and talking to them about how they came to get he, what drove them here, and what they'd like to see happen in their lives and how that might help all of us be together. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. >> before we get into our next question, i would like to ask that in order to make sure as many youth can ask a question as possible, that we limit to one question. and now we'll go to the next microphone. my man kevin from new york. >> hi. as you said i'm kevin smith and i'm from new rochelle, new york. with all the domestic issues that we have and face here in the united states, why is it

important to be concerned and involved with other issues -- other international issues? >> well, i'd like to tackle that because i think the question that was just posed is a key example of why we should -- let them stand up. i'm getting -- okay. i'm getting the signal to stand up. okay. is that better? the reason why -- or one of the reasons why it's so important to understand what's happeni in other countries because it helps us understand to what's happening to our own communities and often we find what happens to people of color particularly around the world either has happened to people of color here in the u.s. or is happening. you know, we're concerned about national security, which, you know -- i'm not arguing with you, but what about security in our own neighborhoods. [applause] >> is illegal immigration

something that affects our daily lives? honestly? no. but let's think about this. and the other thing is this -- the other thing is this, if we don't understand u.s. policies around the world, we might not understand whyhere are people flooding our borders. [applause] >> there's a movie out right now, a documentary "food, inc." that touches on this immigration issue. why are certain multinational companies bringing in people by the bus load from mexico to wor in factories in low-paying -- i mean, jobs -- wages that aren't really livable wages, aren't living wages. they are bringing them in and these same people are cycled out of the u.s. when there are raids. they ever brought in by multinational companies to do

the work really most of us can't do because you can't live on it. but yet we're concerned about illegal immigration. that's one example. another example, you know, bashir mentioned that we've had our own tsunamis here in our own communities. well, what about -- what about katrina? [applause] >> okay? none of us in our daily lives thinks about what it's like to be a refuge. how many of you think about what 's like to be a refuge, nobody right? it has no bearing on our lives, we think, until the levees break and all of a sudden our people are called what? [inaudible] >> this is why it's important to understand what's going on around the world because if we pay attention, we will find that these same things are happening -- are happening in our communities or are affecting

our communities. so that's my answer to your question. >> we're going to calling this microphone 1 and microphone 2 just to make it simpler. >> i'm from mississippi. i came with my naacp youth council in region 5. [applause] >> and my question is, what are the most practical first steps to getting involved in international affairs? >> i'll go ahead and take that. at one we oftentimes deal with people doing that. they are taking their very first steps. >> stand up. >> and i would say that the very first thing that you need to do is start reading. read everything you can get your happens on. [applause] >> keep up-toate with current events. read your newspaper, watch the

news, do whatever you have time for but make sure that you kn what's going on in the world. that's step one. step two, don't be afraid to get uncomfortable. it can be uncomfortable talking about stuff that people don't know a lot about. so get comfortable talking about it. you know, become an expert on the issues. and also, don't be afraid to get involved in politics to some extent, too. you know, if there's something that you're really passionate about changing, don't be afraid to pick up the phone, call your member of congress, tell him or her what it is that you're fighting for, what you really want, what bill you're supporting. read up on bills. go to thomas.gov. that's an exciting website. there's all kinds of bills out there that you can read about. and when you're supporting one, you can follow who signed up as a cosponsor and see where it's at in the process. and that's something that noelle knows a lot about. the process of legislative

affairs. just get to know as much as you can. talk to people about the issues that you care about. and don't be afraid to get your feet wet. [applause] >> the gentleman at microphone 2. >> my name is darrell hamilton. i'm a delegate and representative of the north carolina fayetteville naacp branch. [applause] >> and my question is, what are the three most important issues in reference to the international agenda? >> i'll start. i think the challenge first is not getting into the trap of what are the most important. i think we did ourselves a disservice when we start trying to rank issues. because if you ask me as a person in liberia what the most important issue is, it's going to be very different than a person in croatia or a person in

iraq. i think we have to begin by saying that there are critical issues that need to be addressed. because if i ask the obama administration what's the most important are they may say south korea or iraq. i was appointed when i heard the president speaking about the africa this week and i was disappointed that he was willing to inspire but n talk about critical investment in africa. did not talk about encouraging u.s. corporations to do more than lip service in providing aid and not really developing in sub-sahara inafrica. i was more disappointed when i heard him miss an opportunity to talk about what the trance atlantic slave trade actually meant. now, i don't expect our president to be an activist and call for reparations and start gettingangsta to wear red, black and green but i'm