i have a great story, so at the time of the draft -- i'm going to talk about the draft riots. the draft riots were the week of july 13, 1863, and it's possible that once again the black elite thought class trumped race and they would be safe, and they were not. they were attacked, homes destroyed as if they were -- just because they were black. the big story is that of the colored orphan asylum and it was run by white women and seen then as an illegitimate act on the part of white benevolent women twanders underserved black children, and that was destroyed. the home of william powell was destroyed. the home of albert lyons was

destroyed. there's amazing accounts of three-part assault on their home on water street, and on the third assault it was successful and burned to the ground. i -- in her -- in williamson's papers, i came across a note, and it's down there. i won't bother reading it, where a car gent write ssh sergeant writes, and says i'm going to try to help you. i don't know what today will bring. meet me at said drugstore at 3 p.m., and i will conduct you to safety. the lyons and phillip white lived just a few doors from one another, and the pharmacy was right around the corner at frankfurt and gold, and i

speculate that's the pharmacy, so it's just amazing to think that the sergeant thought that was a safe enough place to take the family, so i started reading through williamson's papers and i found the story of the preservation of phillip white's pharmacy. he bought the pharmacy in 1847 at the corn corner of frankfurt and gold and stayed there until his death and established deep roots in the neighborhood. the neighborhood when he went in in 1847 was mixed. as time went on, it became more and more irish, poor irish. according to the accounts i read, he was a good neighbor, so he sold -- he made up their medications for them, sold them the medications. when they didn't have money, he gave the medications away for free. he gave away money, gave away

clothes so when the draft riots happened, they didn't want to see the store demolished or phillip white harmed, so the "new york times" reprints this dialogue, who knows how accurate it is, when the businessmen of the neighborhood who also really liked, the area was called the swamp, and it's businessmen of the swamp saw what was happening, he said you need to run away, and he said, no, i don't. as many rioters come down upon me, as many neighbors i have to protect me. the drugstore was not disturbed. >> [inaudible] >> that was a real goose bump moment, yeah. >> yeah, hi, i'm shannon. >> hi. >> okay, i was wondering, what made you write about your history, your family tree

because i've been trying to research mine for my own, and i find it very difficult to find things that go past the 1800s, go way past the 1800s, so i was wondering if you have advice and to tell me how you found yours exactly. >> you have to have the passion. without the passion -- this took me 11 years, so you have to be prepared to put aside a lot of time. you have to have the passion, the drive, the determination, the willingness to look and look and find nothing and then all the sudden find something. i suppose -- one of the reasons why i took the path that i did because there's so many ways in which i could have written a history of black new yorkers in the 19th century, but it was for that reason to encourage people to go and look for their family histories. people say, oh, you're lucky. you had a family to write about. you found material.

you know, i can't do that. i say, well, have you tried? they say no. one of the things i wanted to do was encourage people to go try. maybe i was indeed lucky because i found, you know, enough material about them, but boy, do i wish that my, you know, a forefather had been james mcewen smith or george downing. i would have found more material on them, but you take what you have, you know, that scrap, and you try and embroider on the scrap without going into fiction or making up lies, but really to look around and maybe gave the scrap context, so that's the way -- that's the way you have to do it. don't give up. don't give up. >> thanks. >> hi. >> hi. >> i'm julie swenson.

we have discovered an underground railroad site in our neighborhood, so instead of feeling satisfied, that's made my cochair and i even more obsessed with research. [laughter] so i recognized the phrase looking for a needle in a hay stack. am i coming to a question? [laughter] what sources have you turned to? have you started research? >> i was lucky -- well, my cochair did a lot of the research of the quaker abolitionists who lived in the building which was destroyed during the draft riots, but then i kept researching for more letters of the gibbon's family and i was sent by a hot tip from

a historian who said go look at columbia university. i went there and found a record of fugitives, 1855, by sydney howard gai, and that sent me off on to a real search because i found the most extraordinary thing, sarah moore, married to her husband jacob in the gibbon's previous home. now i'm trying to find sarah moore. i found here listed in new haven, connecticut, but it's been -- that's taken me two years to find that. >> thanks. >> i'm going to go back to the schaumberg, but i shouldn't say on the record, but there's one staff member who terrified me. he was so mean and so i'm going to get my courage and go back. >> yeah, i had experience with that too. >> oh, good.

>> but, i'll talk to you later. [laughter] >> okay. [laughter] >> i'll talk to you later and give you the names of somebody -- >> thank you so much. >> of somebody who is really, really wonderful and will help you. i just saw her a couple nights ago, and she's lovely. >> oh, great, and i just bought your book. [laughter] >> thank you. let me tell you, there was the individual lent societies, the african-american vigilant societies, so you can look around for that. david ruggles is a name to research and william hodges has a book out on david. >> i have that. >> oh, okay. >> i do have a question. have you heard of louis napolian >> not other than -- >> he helped rescue a woman and he was working with sydney howard gay who was then editor

and secretary and the do-everything of the anti-slavery society. >> right, right. >> so now i know enough to know, and now i know nothing, so thank you. >> so charles ray, charles ray's daughter put out a memoir of his life after he died, 1886, and that's there, so you can look at that because he was also a member of the vigilant society. i don't do very much with the society because my family -- i couldn't find any relationship between that and my family, and i just couldn't start talking about everything. my editors were already going nuts at the length of the book, but i would say david, charles ray, and charles ray's memoir, what about pursuing beecher? henry ward beecher? >> i just started to scratch the surface with that. >> okay. >> louis worked with him too,

and i spent two afternoons in the brooklyn historical society, and i realize that as very helpful as they were, i was searching in the wrong collections. >> yes. that happened to me too. also at the brooklyn historical society. a woman named -- oh, i have to stop. >> okay. >> we'll talk and give you names later. >> all right. >> thank you, carla. [applause] >> author carla peterson describing the lives of a group of african-american with upper class status in new york city before the civil war. visit yalepress .yale.edu and search black gotham.

>> back to education because you pointed out that was near the top or at the top, and now weir 31, down around 20. . we spend, per pupil more than any other country. it's not a matter of resources. what's wrong with our education system? >> guest: this is exactly the point. it's not quantity of money, but the quality of education delivered, and i have to say spending time reading up about the american education system and listening to experts who focus on the education system, it really reminds me a lot of the aid industry in africa. one, people are being rewarded for poor performance. you know, it's quite clear if american education funds are going down and you have these last in, first out policies, getting rid of teachers regardless of performance, but

because they are last, to me, that seems to be a dislocation there. the other thing is that we are as a society essentially being held hostage by up vested -- invested interests and trade unions. it's problematic we sacrifice our children's education and performance and their ability to compete internationally and the ability for america to compete in the interest of teacher's unions. there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but i think there's something particularly sort of wrong with the idea that we as a society can see that education going down, but we are not penalizing people for lack of deliver riots. >> host: is the problem structural though? we talked about how the u.s. has higher corporate tax rates than europe, but also in europe there's more school choice. sweden has huge school choice, the netherland and germany has school choice. we have a few tiny little

programs in a few cities and states. is that the solution? do we need a competitive model putting parents in charge over teachers? >> guest: i think you need parents more involved. the question is what can we do to make government weaker and parents more involved to make sure the slide doesn't happen? i'm not too sure whether it boils down to the idea of more or less choice because if you look at the education performance across europe, they, too, are seeing a backslide certainly on the oecd standards with the rest of the world. if it was about choice, you wouldn't have expected them to be with the united states sliding down. i mean, i think one of the things i talk about in my work that, you know, possibly could be something worthying about is the idea of conditional transfers. when put, it's popular in mexico, brazil, and rolled out in new york as a pilot program is paying people to do the right thing.

your child goes to school 98% of the time, you get $100. you get immunized for disease, you get $100. now, there's discussion now in europe about whether or not people should start getting paid so their children go to study mathematics, science, things that the united states and european countries need to continue to remain competitive. obviously, i mean, this is not what we expect of the society. do we really need to pay people to do the right thing? these are, you know, given where the societies are, everything to me seems to be on the table, and it's fascinating the idea of conditional transfers as one plausible solution to the problem we are seeing now. >> host: could some of the problem whether it's education or any of the other areas simply be the fact that once countries become rich they get lazy? >> guest: well, i hope not. i actually don't subscribe to that at all. singapore was the fastest growing economy on the planet

with 15% growth in gdp. i mean, that is really mind boggling for a country that is really close to western standard. in fact, about western standards of living on a per capita income basis, we shouldn't expect to see those levels of economic growth if we believe what you just said. i don't think it's that at all. the reason i wrote the book is because i really believe that perhaps a lot of americans don't understand what the problems are in the economy, and you see a lot on television and the press about big deficits and massive debts, but i don't think as a practical initiative people understand this is a fight for the soul of america, and not only for mcewen america, but for the world. there's going to be 9 billion people on the planet in 2050. we need to get it right. we need america to help solve some of the big problems around resources and lack of water and land and issues around energy that, the united states is great at solving these types of

problems, but you can't rely on the u.s. if you don't have education. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> labor journalists steve early studies the organizing strategies and structures of labor unions in the united states and reports on the internal conflicts from 2008 to 2010 that according to the author hurt union reputations and angered supporters. this is about an hour and 20 minutes. >> i want to thank everybody for coming out here tonight and thank the busboy's team. it is a great team which tonight includes christine taylor from booktv at c-span. i want to thank her for doing the video work. it's going to make the proceedings more formal than when we were at the 14th location and did an open number

with the microphone floating around with a question period mainly. going to talk for 15 minutes so they have a tape of something, and then we do the questions union convention style. you have to line up at the mic, and you won't get a chance to speak unless you see the green light go on, and i have my finger on that control, but i hope that when we get to the question period, it will be lively. i know it will be. this new labor series that busboys and poets has initiated i believe with an event involving barbara ironwright. it's no coincidence that don allen, the busboy's manager, is so committed to puts on programs that's going to enable us to showcase labor related books,

cultural events, photography events. he's the son of a striker who 30 years ago this summer was fired along with 12,000 of his coworkers, and growing up in that family and that experience can be formative to say the least. i want to thank pam and don again for the opportunity to be here tonight. i did some quick calculations of who is in the room, and particularly with all of my old -- excuse me -- friends from cwa and other unions represented, we have about 1500-2,000 years worth of experience here in labor lawyering, labor organizes, labor education, labor oriented work, labor building, and just plain old labor trouble making. i know with this wealth of experience, we're going to have a great discussion.

among our very special guests who i want to introduce first is one of the coray gas nurses at washington hospital center who went out on strike last friday, if you could stand up and -- [applause] [cheers and applause] ken if he's not here, formally of the unw and the afl, and now the national nurses united or can talk more during the question period about the issues involved in that strike. readers of the hard copy of the "washington post" will notice, i'm sure, that the washington hospital center is spending tens of thousands of dollars telling the folks of this community how much they care about patient care and the quality of the care that they provide, money that

would be better spent agreeing to the union's reasonable proposals for nurse patient staffing ratios and other improvements they need in the contract is all end to better serve the people who use that hospital. we had another strike last week of similar significance, 1200 nurses at kyeser in los angeles last wednesday, a group with bob and others in the room worked with. they are members of the new national union of health care workers. there's some contribution envelopes for the nhw over there, and an update on nuha activity in recent months. this is an important new addition to the labor movement in california and the subject of a bunch of this knew books call -- new books civil wars. i want to thank other cosponsors, labor notes, helping me out on the book tour.

i want to thank my host here in washington, d.c., sister linda foally, where is she? she's quick to put me up when others would have me sleep in the park. she's a member of the executive board and newspaper guild. i want to recognize and thank for their cosponsorship and turnout here tonight, anne hoffman, vice president to the uaw, my current union affiliation. [applause] i want to also thank, of course, my publisher, hay market, and recognize a great author here in front, dave ziron, which many of you who are sports fans, is the most knowledgeable left commentator on sports.

he has a new series of books out and also a hay market author. this little civil wars book tour was started last week with events in hartford and my hometown of boston and amhurst, massachusetts and cleveland last weekend. last night, we had an event in the city of macon and the written show the wire and other place called red emma's, a radical bookstore dt. i have a souvenir to prove i was there. maybe busboys needs to invest in a hoody like this. [applause] how many people here -- i know inside the beltway book audiences are a little more buttoned up and respectable. how many of you have been to red emma's? oh, i misread my audience. i take it all back.

it's good to see -- no longer a mccarthy era, and people are willing to frequent an anarchist bookstore. ap press, another terrific publisher. the whole network of bookstores around the country, places we need to patronize as people do here. if we don't, what's left? just barnes & noble and not much of a place to buy books at. we had a great group of worker student activists at this red emma's event last night, and one of them was an earnest young man from the social sociology club, and knowing i was in mixed company and not everybody was up to speed on our array of acronyms we throw around, i was spelling everything out, i didn't want to leave noninsiders

young or old completely baffled by the alphabet soup groups we're all a part of, and i mentioned the international brotherhood of teamsters several times. i talked about sandy pope and this young man was puzzled. i could see it in his face. he raised his hand and said what's a teamster? wow, you know, they are truckers and they work for ups and handle packages and work in warehouses. then i realized that's not what he was asking. [laughter] i thought to myself he is ever right to be mystified; right? he was 20, but it just shows, you know how last century it is that, you know, we have an

occupation from the previous century prom innocently future -- prominently futured in the names of our unions. how interesting it is to young people and how probably quite offputting to them that in 2011, that union is still projected as a brotherhood rather than a brotherhood and a sisterhood when it, in fact, represents 400,000 women workers, one of whom who is sandy pope hopefully the next international president, and as we know, you know, a number of unions with brotherhood in the name have grappled with this question of possibly coming up with a more gender neutral or gender equal name. one of them even acknowledges the existence of the recent invention of electricity; right? the ipbw. anyway, this was a dope slap.

it almost made me a convert to a more modern 21st century thinking kind of guy. our friend, andy tern, at georgetown, a visiting professor, the sole labor representative as you may recall, a valuable new member to the board of directors. i don't know if you noticed that brother andy is president of sciu, gave an interview at "newsweek" this week and he said, and i quote, "they -- that's us, unions -- seem like a legacy institution and not an institution of the future. see how retirement distances you from us, the us is now them, and andy is out there. anyway, this kind of tracks the

thinking of many people in corporate america and in firms like general electric which brother chris townsend deals with and who continually try to confine us to the past rhetorically at least with their constant repetition and references to legacy contracts and legacy benefits, the latter of which we are now told are no longer affordable anywhere in the country in either of the public or private sector where things are heading and told, those cheese heads got into the act out there in cairo by the lake in wisconsin. bob was just out there, brother mike elk who is probably twittering, a great young labor journalist who just returned from madison.

hopefully we'll get reports from bob and mike and anybody else. anybody else out there? david? chris? okay. there's a bunch of out-of-state cheerleaders. it's now called the cheddar revolution. let me say the cheddar revolution is a bit of a boom on book peddling on this particular tour. the folks at hay market even though they are saddled with a name from two centuries ago, it's a 134 labor reference, you know, came up with the subtitle called birth of a new worker's movement or death roles of the old. it's savvy marketing because it enabled me to, you know, answer questions at book events and interviews that dwell glimmingly on the subject of organizational death and dying or if events broke our way as they have in the last month, focus more

happily on the prospects of the rebirth of the labor move. i want to say a few words about what's been so exciting, particularly to those who had firsthand involvement about the upsurge in madison, talk about how the subject matter overlaps with the book which was finished up before this great development occurred, and then open it up for questions because we have a lot of folks here who i know want to contribute to the discussion. clearly, one of the most exciting things about the events in madison and it relates to how do we reach people like that young fellow from state who not sure what a teamster is, but who we need if we're going to be something other than a culture as a labor movement; right? if we're going to tap into

idealism of young people, and clearly, any account of this struggle has paid tribute to the leading role of high school students, college students, and the teaching assistants who are the vanguard of the struggle and members of the union that brother bob founded nearly 40 years ago in madison as an outgrowth of 60's activism. the fact that they did not take a business as usual approach to lobbying, and we all know what that is. how many of you have been on a union lobby day to some state capitol? all right. that tends to be highly ritualistic and being polite and having talking points prepared by the union staff and showing up on time for appointments with our betters in the political class and tipping our hat and hoping for the best. well, these folks had a lobby day and brought their sleeping

bags and didn't leave at five and occupied the capitol like it was an administration building, and they stayed for days and weeks, and that gathered that newsed, as we've seen, older workers in nsci arks -- nsciu and the kind of unity we need to rebuild the labor movement. . .

expressing very strong support or the teachers, the state workers, the county municipal workers who are all going to be affected by this attempt to strip public sector wisconsin workers of their bargaining rights. at the bottom tier of the public sector in wisconsin and other states and this is something that i do write about quite a bit in the book, you know, we have the largest force of newly organized union members who are also at risk in these struggles in wisconsin, in ohio and indiana and states like new jersey, where brother brook comes out of the public sector new jersey here tonight and the cwa vice president had a huge rally in trended confronted with

a charming fellow chris christie. i don't know if you saw his mug on the cover of "the sunday times" magazine a week or two ago. the guy has a voracious appetite clearly for a number of things. contracted sessions are a number number -- one of them. but in new jersey and all these other states, afscme, the ft, the uaw all following the lead of seiu, have organized in total five, 600,000 home-based workers, home health care, home daycare providers in the last 10 years, the biggest source of new union membership and have gained a very precarious foothold in the public sector for these workers who work in nontraditional work bases, predominantly female, nonwhite, often immigrant workers, many as in the case of our joint bargaining unit, childcare providers in new jersey would ask me. still trapped in the post-clinton world of work here. they are women on temporary assistance for needy families. so lots of this day, if you can

call it in some media outlets about the overpaid benefit laden, privileged, protected, pampered public sector employee is the fact that there is a huge underclass on the recently organized at the second tier recently unionized public-sector employment, who are losing their rights and their recently acquired contract detection. the case in ohio with the stroke of a pen destroyed through afscme as me when sie you a big group home health care aid at risk in wisconsin and so on in other states. so, within the public sector at all levels of the occupational structure, workers are coming together, allying with students, with the community, with what remains of private sector union activism to fend off these

attacks. one of the things that i think is most inspiring is seeing the bottom-up solidarity, seeing the rank-and-file initiative, seeing the cross union networking, seeing the people voicing their opposition to these attacks on collective bargaining and through mass actions that we haven't seen since public employees first got organized in the 60s and 70s and industrial workers had their great upsurge in the 1930s. the question of course is going to be how do we institutionalize that? how did the activist networks that have hopefully been created by these mobilizations in the midwest and elsewhere survived? when and if some of their unions do is bargaining rights and that is i think a challenging topic of conversation tonight. let me just say that i think we would have been in a stronger position to fend off these

attacks if we had not had a string of costly disasters and divisive intra-and inter-union complex described in civil wars. that story is a sad one and it begins with a conflict between seiu and afscme over home care workers in a number of states in 2005. it moves on to the raging battles between the california nurses who are now the anchor for national nurses united and seiu, and health care facilities and a number of states, in california and nevada and ohio. the development of a reform movement challenging the leadership of seiu which i personally felt was a very long overdue and healthy development in 2008 lead their good friend saul roselli, the president of united health care workers less, the third-largest seiu affiliate, 150,000 member local,

very dynamic, the kind of organization that any union certainly cwa would have loved to have had as part of its union when you h.w. with the help of a number of people in this room began to network, began to build a broader teamsters for a democratic union style reform caucus within the seiu, challenge the leadership, the san juan convention and puerto rico in 2008. they essentially set the stage for a leadership cracked down, the imposition quite literally of marshall law two years ago in california and the other seiu leaders remote 100 elected leaders of you h.w. basically occupied the local, removed hundreds of stewards in the second largest trusteeship in u.s. labor history. at the same time, even though they were both part of the

dynamic new labor federation known as change to win, seiu turns its guns on an i.d. or particular the hotel workers side of that fellow founding union of change to win unleashing another whole front of civil warfare while all this was going on on the name and. you had the fbi a few attack on the puerto rican teachers three years ago, 40,000 teachers and a militant independent union the s&p are went out on an island wide strike under the draconian public-sector laws that affected puerto rico. the union was decertified, stripped of its bargaining rights and it took a strike vote the then governor of puerto rico refuse refused to bargain any further. the strike had a lot of support in puerto rico and was over the critical issue of hybridization of the schools. the seiu which represents school superintendents and principals

and other school employees was well-positioned to provide solidarity. the fmg are instead of doing that, dennis rivera and other leaders tried to cut a deal with the denon -- been indicted governor to replace the fmp are, the whole seiu convention in 2008 in puerto rico was designed to build that campaign. the fmp are was excluded from the ballot when there was a boat on this question in the fall of 2000 puerto rican teachers resounded we voted that way and rejected it and thousands of them still pay dues monetarily to the fmpr which continues to struggle on not get having restored its bargaining rights. so this whole series of inter-and intra-union complex which i estimate resulted in the expenditure of about $140 million if you add up the cost of all those involved came

at a very inopportune moment. it came at a moment that we were told in the fall of 2008 was going to be pregnant with political opportunity. the first user via mezrich when we are going to achieve our highest priorities, real health care reform and strengthening of the national labor relations act to pass the employee free choice act. and civil wars i argue with considerable evidence of both of those critical campaigns were very much undermined by this internal dysfunction and the civil wars described in the group, some of which have been settled, happily in the case of the continuing successful collaboration now between cna and an nu and seiu within health care corporation of america. the last few months in kansas, in florida, and texas, the two unions working to correct their rather than fighting each other and organize close to 10,000 r.

and's and other hospital workers. getting california the struggle goes on before and h.w. and seiu continues to be very costly and in puerto rico, the 12 leaders of the fs pr including rocky it it -- raphael -- were all just fired from their jobs. their teaching licenses revoked in direct retaliation for the having the strike leaders in 2008 and continuing to wage a very militant struggle against school privatization in puerto rico ever since. hopefully we will be seeing a big fam par -- fmp our delegation in new york and there will be a continuing opportunity for trade unions to provide the kind of solidarity that group needs and deserves. so let me close by saying i think the lessons of the debacle of the implosion of the

progressive, what was described, what many of us thought was that aggressive wing of flavor in 2008, 2009, 2010 is almost like a tutorial and what not to do if you want to win against hostile employers at best, a democratic administration that is only casually interested in advancing the cause of labor and certainly if we in the private sector had not been so distracted, if we had health care and food service and hotels in the public school system in puerto rico where these battles unfolded, during that period and we had dealt the kind of grassroots movement that we have seen develop in the midwest in the public sector in response to these recent attacks we would have been much closer in 2008 and 20092 real health care reform. avco would not have been sidelined and marginalized and pushed aside so easily.

perhaps we wouldn't have had the wiped out of supposedly and of labor by the republicans last fall. as part of a working-class backlash against the failure of the obama administration to achieve so much that we hoped it would when so many people in this room and throughout the labor movement campaigned to elect present upon minutes fall of 2000 it. so why do we stop there and throw it open. i want to thank everyone for coming and i again apologize for the formality of having to approach the mic that i know many people in this room are used to doing that and have done so effectively over the years and much more daunting circumstances. [laughter] [applause] would you like to lead off by telling a soul bit more about what happened on friday? [applause]

>> good evening everyone. i am one of the nurses at washington hospital center who was -- went on strike on friday we had been locked after five days. we will be allowed to go back to work tomorrow thanks to the attorneys at the hospital. that was her gift to us to allow us to come back to work tomorrow. on friday we all went on strike. the nurses went on strike about 7:00 a.m. in the morning, and we proceeded to picket at around the hospital. they called in the police. it is very hostile. the police at the hospital were very hostile and pushing us to making sure we could get close to the hospital to take it but we had a lot of support from the community. we had a rally about noontime and we had support from a lot of different unions in the city. it was very encouraging to us to see the people truly support us as nurses and support our goal and our drive to really make sure the biggest hospital in the city provides safe patient care. although the hospital is trying

to put out to the community that it is just about money, and is not about money. to us, it is a part of our contract but at the end of the day we truly need more nurses at the hospital to ensure we are we are providing great care. and although we are going back to work tomorrow and we do not have the contract settled and we continue to fight and we will continue to rally as much support as we can to ensure that washington hospital is going to finish with his contract and actually implement the things that we need in order to have safe in -- safe patient care at the hospital. [applause] >> is arthur fox still here or did he have to leave? arthur. [inaudible] he is the ceo and president of

medgar inc.. the corporation has 1.6 fluid assets and has made 143 million in the last year. it continues to deprive us of a fair and just contract but also continues to deprive all of you who sit here and possibly receiving services without hospital and the proper care you are in right -- deserved. we ask you to support your -- collier officials in support of the nurses. zvi i wanted to be sure to recognize brother arthur. a lot of these book parties have been taking on the form of the cast party because civil wars has a large cast of characters in one of them is brother arthur and i wanted to recognize him particularly before he left her door that i work together at a teamster reform group in the late 70s called the professional drivers council and he was one of the founders.

arthur is one of the foremost democracy lawyers in the country representing reformers and the number of different unions for decades and did some great work on behalf of the embattled members of united health care workers west around some key issues involving the abuse of international union powers and other violations of the land of griffin act so arthur. [applause] alright, we have somebody approaching the mic. david, yeah. brother david. >> my name is david. i am here from seattle actually, flew in for postal workers conference, postal workers union and today i got all dressed up and found my fellow postal workers. we visited a house of ill repute after which we went to the senate. [laughter] so my question, sort of a

comment. i guess the big deal about this the change in the labor movement around the emergence of john swinney and that election back years ago and andy stern becoming a big leader and a seiu becoming a big leader with no realization that labor had to organize. a simple basic idea, right? organize, organize organize became the watchword watchword and sau was admired from afar. they did organize lots of workers but then somehow somewhere things went wrong and i guess how did it go wrong? what was wrong with the model is that maybe, and i've noticed some unions tend to be heavily staff based in the set for these people who you know might be bright college kids who are really progressive and eager and they are well-intentioned, but they don't have the base. and maybe they have never done the job. maybe they don't really trust the workers to organize themselves. many organize and they move on.

so i remember debate over that kind of model of organization and is that what were wrong? if you are a stab person you have no political power so you can't say hey this is wrong or if you do you are fired. you get a job somewhere else. i'm just kind of wondering what people's saucer as to where did sie you go wrong? what was the promise, was it a false promise to start with, was the tape that model? just throwing it out there for your thoughts. >> david is on the policy committee of labor long-time rank-and-file activists and post a union as he said in seattle, great and unexpected visitor here inside the beltway. i've beltway. i've never seen you look so spiffy. did you bring your sleeping bag for this lobbying venture? very good questions and ones that are addressed from my own perspective in the book. other people who have been involved in bargain to organize campaigns and leverage campaigns designed to neutralize employs

an organizing industry said that to grapple with some of these questions. what are the appropriate trade-offs between density and democracy to regrow contract standards? what are the quid pro-quos that we should agree to an intern for getting an a player like at&t wireless or hca or kaiser or hotel chains to give us a free and fair election agreement or a card check or some form of neutrality. what are they looking for in return? what kind of contract or the workers going to have? are they going to have an opportunity after getting the contract foothold to overtime improve the contract conditions so they will be locked into a prefab deal that strips them of any voice in the workplace but does generate dues revenue for the union that is partnered with the employer and maybe organizing right. a lot of contradictions and that

strategy which i argue in the book kind of doubled up and propelled a lot of these intra-and inter-unit complex that i just mentioned. brother david. >> hamm steve. first of all thanks so much for writing this book. it is a much-needed discussion. i was in medicine for five days. a life-changing experience if there ever was one. if for no other reason to see a contingent of 30 tendrils with a big banner that said what scotty on the potty was something i will never forget. [laughter] but i have a couple of questions in the first is the people of madison and the people of wisconsin have been her rock over the last several weeks. how do you access and braved the actions of the union leadership at this point in the second question i have this, i was talking with brother chris townsend about if you look at the republican governors association web site or she is the democratic web site the rta web site is support scott

walker, defense skywalker. this is all about scott walker hero in go to the dta web site in and there is no mention of wisconsin on the homepage. and it is a shocking contrast. my question is, is part of the problem that the labor movement puts hundreds of million dollars in a political hardy that sees them as at best as an annoyance and at worst as something to be held in actual contents? >> people are going to begin to think these questions are orchestrated. [laughter] this is a service that you heard of solidarity among workers. solidarity among others. it i it is good of days event. let's hear from brother mike else. i am sorry, alex. i want to hear another report from madison and just stay on medicine for a minute. if you want to respond to this question of what is the union

leadership up to, you are just out there and perhaps he could report on it to the meetings as meeting as you have been reporting for a number of other outlets. >> first off i want to say steve this is an incredibly creative book. anybody who is a labor journalist all of a sudden they start getting bashes from left-wing eagan busters. >> i've heard that accusation in the last four years. speeding credible thing is there was a article that stephen greenhouse wrote the other day where he said we are going to use this incredible tide of momentum from wisconsin to organize a dozen different top labor parties. the sudden it would help us organize walmart. he wrote this incredible argument of one thing you do well in your book is you take labor at all the different levels up from academic oriented scholars to labor journalist to international presidents to rank-and-file to local level and he really say that the labor

movement is not gerry into making a statement or some new ad coming out which is what typically people like stephen greenhouse do but it is really getting 12 people to come to a meeting and all these parts coming together. think it is so many purported like stephen greenhouse are so lazy and so awful in their reporting about their real dynamics of organizing? this is especially important coming out of medicine because the story has been that this was something organized by the afl and by the ft and afscme and why they play the role their membership that way out ahead of the leadership and weary been we are than seeing something anti-concession movement that has not come out. some questions that of my time to that. >> i am sorry alex for letting these guys jump the queue. i'm not a green house fan. a lot of his reporting stinks in my view because he is too -- talking to people atop at top and topic and to talking as an academic who have not been involved in organizing for 35

years if they ever were. never handled a grievance, never negotiated a contract never done actual trading ware for their experts. part of what he is operating with is the constraints of mainstream journalism. part of it is his own tendency to frame things very badly, his own kind of elitist time. he does have problems with the senators. yes to please them. he was terrible on talk of the nation the other day. i don't know if you heard him. he in a discussion of pensions, this terrible time problem of the over pension public worker announced that many public workers, and he was referring to wisconsin, retire with more than $100,000 a year, many, many. ran to the dictionary and looked up the word many. i e-mailed him and asked him for some statistical corroboration of this claim.

silence on the greenhouse and and then i sent him an article from tom rich. respected academic labor studies guide hewitt done a little research which apparently greenhouse didn't do that showed that the median pension for wisconsin public workers is about $24,000 a year and only 2% to retire with more than $100,000 a year, primarily management jobs not even in bargaining units, police chiefs and if you overtime hogs. maybe may be a little pension spiking. again i forwarded this relevant information to brother greenhouse. we are dissing flo newspaper guild member here. again, no response. i've complained about him to the public editor, his coverage of the kaiser campaign last fall was terrible. his coverage of past telecom complex has been really shoddy. bills sarah and one of his

predecessors put a more positive spin on five the congressman can do in the labor beach. he would go out and cover strikes and talk to the workers. intercepted labor movement is a little bigger than andy, john andrews. or john swinney or whoever else greenhouse picks up the phone and talks to. occasionally he comes through out of the blue. he did an interesting article about the jimmy john's campaign, an interesting portrait of what the industrial workers of a world were doing a fast food workers. for a comeback to the other questions that david raised -- alex. you won't dionne booktv if you don't approach the mic. >> you never told us what a teamster was by the way. [laughter] >> it is a guy that giata cracks the whip. a team of horses. >> we could use it. today is international women's

day and that provokes my question. the vibrancy in organizing seems to me, and part of the wars you have talking about have taken place in the health care industry which many people regard health care as a drain on the economy. i regard health care -- the economy. is the growing and sustained industry. you may disagree with its funding and with everything about it but nevertheless it is. and my guess is that a lot of -- there are two reasons why this is happening. one is because it is a growth industry unlike some of the other ones but the other is the prominence and the activism of women within that role. i looked in your book. i didn't have a chance to read all that while i was eating my sandwich but i did look at the

index and it doesn't mention specifically women by work, nor race. to what extent do those things play a role in the civil war that you describe? >> certainly the workforce was involved and home-based childcare and home health care aid organized predominantly female, direct care providers. nursing home workers again, often female, hospital workers in california, some of the leaders of the anu h.w., the breakaway union created in response to this terrible trusteeship that was imposed two years ago are women. i think there are profiles encouraged throughout the book. roseann demauro figures prominently inhe