fundraising for schools, churches and synagogues, organizing in and out of our immediate areas, not to mention the stock conflicts in the challenge engaged and entertained readers if ever you chew up our doors. we serve in our communities. authors and publishers depend on independent bookstores to not only make works available, but act as a bridge. they know an audience well enough to know how and when a particular book will display social media and author events. even with the arrival of the books, printed book is far from dead. ..

he mentioned a total we didn't have so we offered an order for him. he declined and said he would download. for the immediate future i think the competing platforms, he books, audio books, hard paper cardiff going to coexist. readers will read books. our challenge to all of us on this panel shares to growth leadership to the potential and printed word. independent bookstore we hope to buy traditional physical box but for right now it is our

challenge to find readers whether they are reading on the key platform or a regular book. challenges are best met head-on and we as independent booksellers and politics and prose more particularly will continue to lead the bridge between the community and the book world challenging, engaging and entertaining customers with a rich variety of books for sale combining platforms to exchange ideas and the stage for authors to present their work and make it easier available resources while technological to and our goals. we can't just announce or insist upon their changing media world. we have to demonstrate it every day. so i think that the biggest challenge like i said is to find more readers and whether they are reading it on a e-reader or a traditional look, whatever

gets turned on to their readers. >> thanks so much. our final panelist is the president of the ross literary agency and says each of her projects must meet two important criteria. they must make her daughter's proud and offset their college educations. she sincerely believes the phrase book changed lives. she represents a variety of important commercial nonfiction and she and her team work with authors and have earned the reputation in the industry for providing a rigorous and those against it editorial guidance at all stages of the publishing process. through the agencies blog and regular happy hours, she also encourages the writers to view themselves as members of the literary community, helping one another toward success. she's also a medium or with christa, ross where she advises individuals, companies and nonprofit on the copyright, publishing, new media and licensing. gail, welcome to this mix before. anything you put on the internet you are about to hear back,

right? so you have to make sure that one child is already for a college, and the other is almost done. part of what i'm here to do today is talk about money and authors in this new environment. but before i do that, i want to say a couple things about the state of the book from my perspective. i've had the wonderful, wonderful privilege of working in this business for as with a media lawyer for about 30 years, and as an agent for 22 of those years in d.c. which i think is in a lot of ways the non-fiction capital of the country, and it's been -- and i've also seen a lot of the ebook revolution because i was working on an electronic journal contract for some of the learned societies that i've represented over the years as early as 1990. so why have seen a lot and i must say this last year is about

the most positive year i've seen. i was visiting someone in new york just last weekend i go to manhattan a lot. the mood in publishing a year ago was much different than it is today. there was -- we are starting to understand what's going on, and the president of one company said to me she feels like it is the wild west now but at least she has 30 years experience which feels like she's starting a totally new job but she brings 30 years experience so she feels better than she did in years ago. it's an interesting time, we are making up rules, working on contract language. it's been both the fuddling and challenging and exciting because a lot of the language about e-book rights versus enhanced book rights versus multimedia but rights is all in place, and confusing us all and making my authors terribly frustrated at times and different people at

different publishing houses are responding to our experience in that in different ways. but it happens to be a very nice business, and people are generally collaborative and generally are seeing that authors and publishers for the most part are on the same page and have the same interest and really fundamentally we all share the same interest which is getting more people to read. i've become quite -- i'm agnostic about what the device is. i just want the next generation to read more. i'm interested in the statistic. one statistic you didn't say is how many americans buy books at all, and that is a fairly low percentage, and that's -- i worry about that. so, i mean i love my hardcover books, but whatever anybody dies is fine with me. one of the reasons i love my hard-cover books is because my offers get paid for the

hard-cover royalty versus the electronic book royalty and that's a little bit of what i want to show today. as you may or may not know, the traditional royalty structure for a major book trade publisher is a list price for royalty, and it's based for the purposes of this on the price of the book, the actual price of the book. so if you are getting say 15% royalty and we are talking about a 26-dollar book that's $3.90 that is credited to the author's royalty account, that's for a hardcover book. if you are using the agency model as mentioned for an e-book, the publisher sets the price. it's usually $12.99 or 13.99. let's say 13 so i can keep my math symbols. then the publisher, with the

author gets is 25% of the net received by the publisher, okay? so in this case, the istore or google or whoever does with most of the publishers now paying 70% of the $13. so that's $9.10 to the publisher, 25% of that is $2.28. so it's the same book published at the same time through hard cover to the author, the royalty of three whenever i just said, 3.90 versus 2.28. when the hardcover is out. when the trade paperback is out, that's a little bit different. and in fact, the money to the author's account from the ebook sale is better. the trade paperback it has a 15-dollar print bouck 15 dollar retail. the net to the publisher is

$7.50, and the 7.5% list price royalty which is what is typical on the trade paperback gets to the author $1.13. so that is for the trade paperback. when you look at the trade paperback, you are looking at 810 dollar retail that's pretty much what the publisher, the $10 retail online for an e-book, that is what the publisher is going to price it is $10 so they get 70%. the same 70% which is the net to the publisher of $7 then the author is getting 25% of that net to the publisher said the author is getting $1.75. when the trade paperback is out, the e-book royalty is better for the author. but when the hardcover is out, each the royalty from the e-book is less advantageous. now the interesting thing that has happened and this is where many of us have our -- have been

very upset at times is when did we publish of the e-book compared to the hard-cover? in the beginning, there's a move that the e-book didn't come out at the same time as the hardcover. if there was a period in time for some people six months, for others six weeks, but there was a perk of time people could buy the hardcover and the e-book wasn't available, and it was a lot of discussion, a lot of i'm sure jeff will talk about this. but the horses are of the corral and that isn't going to change now so the ebook is published simultaneously with a hardcover. if you can get the e-book for $13 online you want to pay $26 or even the discount you will find in a bookstore. there is a difference. there is definitely a difference. so those are some of the numbers. it has had an effect on advances that are provided to the authors.

how much, i can't really tell because it's too early and the publishers are having a hard time putting in a factor for how many books they are selling i only do non-fiction and it's still pretty much only in some cases ten to 15% as in his case it's gone from three to six in one year. it's going up, but in the fictional world it's very different and there has been a huge impact there because in some cases the publishers see 50% of the fiction titles being sold electronically. so that has a huge effect on the royalties, especially when the hardcovers are out as one said. so, i used to go of our the country talking about the books and saying that i would never -- people my age would never read and e-book if they were on a bed, beach, a couch, but life

become an ipad junkie i have to say. i was just in europe, and i had an experience i've never had before. i read fiction for pleasure because i spent so much time working in a nonfiction area, and i always read one mosul at a time and i'm totally in greece and i love it. well, i was going to paris, and i was reading quote coat the paris wife," i was halfway through it on my way over and i downloaded a movable peace because i thought i should read that, too, and then on, a friend of mine was riding a book that's about to come out about seduction in france, and that was in a pds form. haven't been published yet and she sent it to me. and the person whose apartment we were staying in had done a book about restaurants in paris, so i downloaded that. and then i was going on a walk and i didn't want to carry my ipad, it was a little heavier

than i would like. i had the first one. and so i went into shakespeare and company and i bought a copy of the paperback so i would have something to walk around and just sit in a cafe and read for a little bit. but by the time i got that i realized i had read about eight books, but i was going back and forth, and it was a very interesting experience parent i'm not sure i wanted it more than once a year, but it was different and i loved it. and now i'm reading one awful at a time on my ipad. thank you. >> thank you so much from gail. we still have a few minutes left and would love to take any questions if any of you have them. please come a step up to the microphone. >> is it possible to get an independently published book through bookstores and if it is -- isn't, why and if it is, how? >> we represent a lot.

we try to do it for people who live in our neighborhood. we think it is part of our mission to be in the neighborhood bookstore. so we pay the authors on the bookshelf but we are very open to the idea but we do get requests because people see it on c-span or whatever and books published in other parts of the country independently on a self published platform don't find much of a market. but if it's by a local author we are happy to be the place where they can find people to come by their book. >> i would like to ask about the library acquisition and how it's trending for a lot of folks 26 or even 12.99 is not something they can do on a regular basis but the library is where they can find a lot of books. but i'm wondering about per

capita with the exposure, my suspicion based on the montgomery county library is there are fewer books being purchased by libraries but they are fewer available. >> i have seen the data about the libraries and the acquisition trends in that regard but to many others have any good thoughts on that? >> i think the libraries are mostly getting burned by the world. but there's a debate going on with publishers about the e-book and how to account for the kind of borrowing of the e-book. there is a general message mentioning in passing that they are free for the publishers but there is a huge amount of stuff that for instance the trade system by which you can track how many times a library book is went out and if it reaches a certain point there's a

discussion so many times it is almost the equivalent of the physical things in for so many years would be destroyed and he would have to buy a new one. how does that work? no one has figured it out. there's a lot of different systems and it's not kind to libraries but i think most people in the book grew up loving libraries and on the other hand we cannot give away the books for a lot of reasons including authors deserve to be compensated. >> i remember meeting with a publisher once and said are you going out with your authors tonight or the doors and he said no i'm just taking the library in doubt. and he said in a given year if he gets the buyer for all around the boston area they are going to buy more books than most of the independent bookstores he's dealing with, so he's very smart. he sold a lot of books that way.

>> i was wondering how you saw the books changing the market in the back catalog and certainly when the more frustrating things for the reader is books coming out of print because there is no market for them but the margin is lower for producing of the ebook and so on and that's something where you see out of print books becoming more and more rare going to the ebook rather than previously that's been kind of the exclusive you have to go to a used book store where it seems like it is more possible. >> it's actually pretty great. they are available in a way they are not and then the author can be compensated for those sales

verses the used bookstore where they are great but they're being resold, the author isn't getting any more money when that is resold, so i think again, the inventory of digital books is fantastic and it may allow a lot of books are not paperback at all. a lot of the books that we do as well if they sell a few copies in hardcover then it's not sensible for the bookshops to order a lot of copies because they have limited space. so i think it's pretty great. >> deleveraging is the print on demand capabilities. i have several authors whose books would be out of print and you could get the revision just immediately. but they left them and print with the publisher and go around the country doing speaking and the order the book, print on demand and it's a little bit more expensive than the book would be otherwise. it looks just like the book but it keeps them in business and my clients don't have to pay for a new cover, printing costs, peter

cost, anything like that, so they keep that rather than asking, they keep it with the publisher, and ordered print on demand copies. a very efficient. >> one more question. >> yeah, i assume google is going after things the copyright has expired on, and i was wondering do they have people physically in libraries copying things were -- because i found it pretty esoteric book of the family history on the google reader and i was surprised and just wondered or individuals uploading things, too or how does that work? >> this is a huge thing to foreign to get into but basically several years ago google that deals with the major libraries in the world was scanned in an enormous amount of content. that's the shortest way to explain it.

>> they did everything. it's google. it's an incredible amount of stuff. >> and then there were to buy authors and other people were the ones that were not out of print, but there was a settlement and now the settlement is in a band. so, there is more to come >> [inaudible] everything you could find in a library anywhere. >> google as everywhere. >> yeah. >> thank you for your questions and attendance. we want to thank the panelists. [applause] >> thank you all for coming today. the keynote speeches next door if you'd like to go there.

♪

♪ ♪ >> now from the tuscon festival of books an hour-long discussion of women in leadership with gloria feldt of planned parenthood and former white house doctor connie mariano. to >> it's truly an honor today too introduce to women whose books t and stories could inspire all of us to recognize and in place and di activate our power to make a yr.

difference in our communities sw and our country's. the lives show pursuing a justi passion will eanqual justice and for service can truly change the world world. dr. connie mariano is a woman of many firsts. she was the first military woman to be chosen as the white house physician, the first woman directer of the white house medical unit, and the first filipino-american to become an admiral in the navy. but she started her life as an underdog. always being underestimated because of her gender, her ethnic background and her appearance. in her new book, "the white house doctor: my patients were presidents," dr. mariano shares her inspiring scrowrnny of how a little girl from the philippines came to america and became the physician to the president of the united states. her example is truly one of a woman whose achievements were unlimited in the military, medicine and government service.

secondly, gloriafelt will speak, and gloria is a leading activist, a best selling author of four books, a commentator, a sought after after speaker on topics such as women, politics, power, health and can the media. her front line experience as to how to unlock intention and ambition in order to embrace the power to make a difference about what we believe in is, truly provides her with a unique perspective, and she shares that in her book, "no excuses: nine ways women can change the way we think about power." she's currently a professor at arizona state, and previously, and i know a lot of people in this room know her and we're very excited to have her return to ads, because she brought -- arizona, because she brought phenomenal growth to the planned parenthood affiliates in west texas and arizona. she was also the president and ceo of the planned parenthood federation of america from 1996 to 2005. and her honors include "vanity fair" magazine naming her one of

america's top 200 women legends, leaders and trailblazers, and texas monthly naming her to its texas 20, describing her as part den mother, part businesswoman and part mae west. [laughter] so, please, join me in welcoming dr. connie mariano and gloria feldt to the festival, and we will begin with dr. mar yang owe's presentation -- mariano's presentation. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, becky, and thank you all for being here today. this is a challenge because i like to be unlimited physically, and i'm sort of limited right now physically as my colleague will agree, but we're going to handle it the best we can. in about 12 minutes i want to share you the journey which i outline in my book and encourage you to look at. one of the joys of being first or is you, obviously, get all the attention of being the first in a particular field, but the

sadness is, number one, that you had to be the first in that particular field. but the other is the hope that people will follow you so you won't be the last. let me share with you a story. we're all here because we like stories, books are about stories, and we're going to talk about leadership. and in a lot of ways my life, my story, my journey is one about finding that i am a leader and becoming a leader. i live in arizona, i live in scottsdale. i moved here in 2001 after leaving the white house, but before then for nine years i was in washington, d.c., and this is where i lived and worked. actually, i felt like i lived there, i was there all the time. it's a nice piece of government property on 1600 pennsylvania avenue. [laughter] you all pay for it with your tax money. it's the 18 acres of the white house, and for nine years i was the house call doctor, the doctor on call there where i spent wonderful times and some sad times as well there. but before i wound up at the white house, my journey really

began in a very far away place in another country, and that was in the philippines. this picture was taken in 1957. i was 2 years old. i'm the little girl, second from the left. those are my cousins. the two girl cousins on each side of me live in toronto, canada, and my cousin on the right -- the only boy -- is a retired navy serviceman in pensacola, florida. my father had received orders to the united states, and it was in pearl harbor we were stationed. so i first set foot in america in pearl harbor. and so i arrive inside the navy housing at pearl harbor, the daughter of an enlisted serviceman who was a valet. that's what you wanted if you were a filipino, to be a valet or steward in the homes of the admiral, and i began my american journey. here i am on my fifth birthday with my other class mates there, the girls in the neighborhood and my little brother who's

rather confused where he fits in, but he found his way. [laughter] so that really began my ethnic journey. one of the things i struggled with was trying to fit in. your height, your size, your color, et, et, don't set the stereotype of what's typically american. you constantly struggle to find a place where you really fit in. i learned to resolve this by saying, you know, it's not so bad being the underdog. first of all, you know, you look different, people remember you, right? and you're also hungry for opportunities because you want to move out of your condition. you don't want to be poor again. you don't want people to underestimate you. you don't want to be undereducated. you realize there's only one way out, and it's got to be out and up. so that in my case set the drive and the desire to get out of my condition of which i was born into. and so you really had that, in my case, the drive to move on.

what really helped me was education. okay? and i tell women, i tell everybody over and over again, your education is something nobody can ever take away from you, okay? you worked hard for it, you earned your degree, you earned your studies, and for me it was through education that i got my bachelor's of arts degree, my medical degree, it got me into the military, so i owe so much in terms of that. the other fact, it informs me in terms of a leader, as a woman leader, was really the military, the u.s. navy. i joined the u.s. navy in 1977 when i matriculated at the medical school in bethesda. my parents continue afford to send me, the only way to do it was a full scholarship, you just pay them back 12 years of your life, and i stayed on for 24 because it was that exciting. i learned a lot from the military. it really allowed me o become the person i am.

and the things i really learned about was focusing on what the mission was about. what was our job, what was our mission, and that supersedes somebody's ego, supersedes whatever's going on. the other thing it taught me was respect for authority. and looking at my leaders and the people i served under, i was really fortunate to have wonderful role models and mentors who believed in me and guided me along and promoted me along the way. also taught me to be understanding and look out for my troops, the people who served with me and under me because you really, you're only as good as the people you work with and work as a team. i learned about camaraderie, but i also learned about not burning your bridges because sooner or later you're going to need help from one of those people you served with out in the field, so you're really going to reupon that. but in the end it was serving a higher purpose, and that's what

gave me the courage to do the things that i did, was i believed in something higher that i had to do in this life. what did i learn from my nine years at the white house? you know, people ask me what's it like taking care of the president of the united states? it is a very humbling experience. it is one of the first -- it's the only job this america as a doctor that the present secretary calls you and says, doctor, the president will see you now, okay? [laughter] it's all about what happens in the lives of the president and the first family. you're there to serve them. you always know when a president's having his annual physical at bebethesda. you look in the waiting room, and there are doctors waiting there, and i bring them one by one to see the president. so you see a different perspective into the life of your patient. i travel with them everywhere, with the first family. you're with your patient 24 hours a day in sixness and in -- sickness and in health. you can see what kind of stresses go on, what kind of

food he eats. you can see about some of the secrets he keeps that eventually get i -- divulged later down the line. [laughter] there are secrets that patients hide from us. it gave me a glimpse into the dynamics of any family, and really, and one of the secrets is this: if president refuses to listen to you, your advise, you appeal to higher authority, you go to the first lady, okay? [laughter] the presidents here are all standing behind their bosses. and one of the things about being a white house doctor is you can't have that job unless the first lady endorses you because it's really about making sure she's comfortable with you taking care of her family. she's protecting her family. and i look at that in my daily practice as well. when i talk to my patients, if first lady of the family isn't buying into this, it's not going to work. so you have to convince them this is in the best interests of their family. you take care of the organization again. it isn't all about me.

people think, oh, you're or powerful, you've got connections, but in a lot of ways you're helpless because so many people work with you that if one person does something wrong, you're responsible. somebody asked me, they go, i how do you know who's taking care of the president? if i said, very simple. something goes wrong with the president's health, the press is going to nail you. you're the person they're going to bring on capitol hill and grill you. so you know you're in charge because you're the person they're going to blame. you ultimately are responsible for that, so you have to take care of what you do and how you groom them and grow them as well. my white house lessons were multiple. i learned about shattering glass ceilings before i even knew i was capable of doing that, and i think gloria talks about shattering glass ceilings, and i read her book which is a wonderful read. had i read your book, i would have gone further in my life. [laughter] but it really shows the things it takes. i was always a very shy, quiet

person who sat this back of the classroom. i never imagined myself speaking on television, being on shows, never -- speaking in public. it takes courage that you pull within you and finding the conversation within your -- comfort within your own skin. because once you do that, you have no fear. you have no intimidation because you're speaking your own inner truth. one of the funny things i did learn was if you want to succeed, follow somebody who messed up. some of my greatest successes i followed guys who really messed up. one of the guys i followed, the very fact that i was sober was a huge success in that job. [laughter] i showed up sober, i was sober. the organization got better. and in that case i learned what not to do and always learn, obviously, you know what to do from good bosses, but from bosses who aren't great, learn what not to do and make sure you follow that so you don't make the same mistakes. and don't be afraid to create change. one of the things about people like me who always stand out in

the some way is if you're going to stand out, i always tell people, make sure you're outstanding. they're going to remember you. it's your time to shine, so now's your time to stir it up. if you passionately believe in something, make change happen. it takes at least one person to start a revolution, and part of that is believing so much in your own voice that you believe it needs to be done and others will follow you because you are so passionate about what you believe in. here are my simple lessons that i share. in a lot of ways they overlap with what gloria is going to share with you today. demonstrate stuff over fluff. i look at a lot of people's resumés, and it's like, come on, show me the really substantial stuff that they did. not the pretty stuff but, but the hard core stuff that you really did something that impacted lives. i tell people over and over again, be honest, be forthright. you know, don't be deceptive. especially when dealing with the press. never deceive then, never lie. as a woman who's always been in

jobs such as the medicine and the military and the government where you have more men than you and you, obviously, see a lot of politics going on, tonight let them overrun you. you know? patient, you're trying to educate them about being professional. you step up the standards. but you are also, you don't cower, and you don't back off when they try to push their way. the other thing i found is really having advocates, both male and female, to be supportive of me and find a voice. i was very fortunate to have hillary rodham clinton, what a great mentor there. when i needed help, i went to her. it got done. whatever needed to get done, got done. i tell women, don't play games, okay? if you're stressed, don't cry. don't engage in that, you know? you know, if you're going to play in the boys' world, don't do games that they accuse us of playing. so really you're elevating your standard to above sexual politics to make it work. and then again, seek people who

enrich your life, who make you grow and mentor you, but also friends and very close friends whose shoulders you can cry on. i've had a lot of women friends who were very supportive. one of the things that kept me sane was once a month i had high tea with a friend of mine who happened to be a psychiatrist. she didn't have to give me medications, but the fact i got to talk to a friend i respected and mull thing over and share meant so very much to what i did. what would i prescribe to young leaders? number one of all, be true to yourself. my form of leadership may be different than yours, your daughter's, your granddaughter daughter's or somebody else, they have to find their own voice and be comfortable in their own skin. stand up and stand out. about people who are uncomfortable with the way i look and what i stand for, you know what? i tell people as my kids say, get over it. you know, i'm not going to die on you. i'll outlive you.

what we have to do is keep the people who aren't as enlightened and as educated. so hope flow, you know, it -- hopefully, it's not a big deal to have a woman white house doctor anymore because we've had many of them which is my hope one day. leave those doors open and hand off the hammer to the other woman to hand it next. in other words, don't just be the first. promote others to be following in your path. that's part of the hope. but amidst all these thicks that we achieve -- things that i believe in achieving, you still have to maintain your humanity. one of the things i talk about is my secret for success is i grew up with the mantra you're never good enough, you're never good enough, you know? and that could be a dangerous thing at times, but in a lot of ways it keeps you grounded. your head doesn't get bigger than your heart or your brain. it keeps your feet on the ground and keeps you working hard because you really want to do good things in this life. and in the end, you know, i look

at what i do, and it doesn't mean anything unless the people whose lives i touch and the organizations i'm involved with are better because i pass this way. so with that, i want to end my brief presentation and turn it back to you, and my esteemed colleague will continue. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. and now i'm very happy to have a presentation from gloria feldt, and we're just going to get the presentation up, and we'll be ready to go. just a moment. >> almost never use any

audio/visual equipment. [laughter] if something can go wrong, it will. >> [inaudible] >> which is chaos, that's right. we will be carpe-ing the chaos, and we will mistake it all work. >> [inaudible] >> yeah, either way. east way. all right. either way. all right. you are brilliant. thank you. applause for the i.t. department. [applause] hi there. i am so happy to be here. this is the most amazing book festival i have ever seen. it is fabulous. fabulous, congratulations to all of you. [applause] i loved reading your book,

connie, and when i did and from having met you and talked with you and now having heard your story in a little more detail, i just have to say that there is one thing that seems to be a thread between your story and my story even though we have had very, very different lives and very different experiences. and that is that we both felt different. we both felt very different. and what i have learned from that is that sometimes what you think is your liability in life turns out to be the greatest asset that you have. what you need, the resource that you need to do almost anything is right there in your hands if you can see it and if you can have the courage to use it. now, those are big, brave words, but let me assure you, i did not start from a place of power. a 16-year-old new mom does not

start from a place of power. i was born in temple, texas, that is, where there was no temple. [laughter] my family was one of the very few jewish families there. my grandparents, all four of them, had immigrated from eastern europes. my father was a big, blustery guy, and my mother of all things in the 1940s and '50s, my goodness, she went to work every day. other mothers all stayed home and took care of their families. we were different, we were so different. it just, i just thought that was the worst thing in the world. and so i did what the culture told me to do. you got married, you had babies, you got the picket fence, you didn't have aspirations beyond that. if you went to college, it was to get your mrs, and above all you were not to be smarter than the boys.

and -- oh, i hear some murmurs of yes. people understand this, right? [laughter] so this is me with my first born, tammy. bless her heart work had to put up with me going through my own growing and learning process. because what happened was that after the third child was born, i was 0, and an amaze -- 20, and an amazing new technology came along. oh, yes. [laughter] the birth control pill. and it changed my life, it saved my life in a way, it let me know that there was an opportunity for me to actually think beyond that picket fence as much as i loved my children and as much as at that point i still bought into the traditional susie homemaker version of womanhood, i knew that i could think a little bit more, a little bit bigger. and i started to college when my

youngest child was four months old. it took me 12 years to finish for a variety of reasons. but during that time, it was a heady time of the civil rights movement. so i became involved in community activities to support those who were struggling for civil rights. and then i had another epiphany. it was this, hey, if there are civil rights, then, by golly, there must be civil rights for women too. and i took some inspiration from a woman who had figured that out a long time ago, sojourner truth. sojourner truth was born a slave, again, someone who started at a point of less than no power. but she became a leading abolitionist, a leading women's rights leader and a methodist minister. and you can see her attitude, i think it's attitude we all need to have. so that leads us to the

question, imagine what would the world be like if women held equal positions of power and leadership? we can perhaps talk about that in the q&a a little bit. are we there yet? no? well, let's look at the numbers. you know, it is easy, i think, particularly for young women to think that we are there because, after all we have seen a woman first almost everything. didn't i tell you that if something could go wrong, it will with technology? if young women have seen a woman first almost everything, and every door has pretty much been opened at least once. we've changed the laws in so many ways, and yet here are the numbers. the first row of numbers, 60, 50, 18. anybody imagine what those might be?

well, women are now 60% of college graduates. we are 50% of the workplace. we are 18% of the top management and leadership positions across all sectors. the next row, 51, 54, 17. we are 51% of the population. women are 54% of the voters. we are 17% of congress, and i couldn't resist, i took this picture of bruce babbitt swearing gabby giffords in her first term in congress. we know she'll be back soon. [applause] now, this next row of numbers just blew me away, 85, 15. do you know women buy 35% of the consumer goods of the sold? we make up 15% of the boards of directors of the companies who

decide what we're going to be sold. [laughter] i think there is something deeply wrong with this picture. i but it means women have an inordinate amount of power in their hands that we don't use. power unused is power useless. and this tell uses that -- tells us that we could shape every consumer product be we got together and decided to do it. now the 15 and 15 is the one that gives us some of the answer to why this is. women get about 15% of the bylines on the opinion pages of the major newspapers around the country. now, that was something that really troubled me, and a friend of mine, katie other than steven, who created the op-ed project discovered in her research that women submit 15% of the op-eds. so you know what? you can't get your op-ed published if you don't submit it. you cannot get a political

office if you do not run for it. you can't get into the c suite if you don't put yourself forward for it. and that's what i think the message need to be to women, and that's why i wrote "no excuses." not to blame women, but to inspire them to keep going because we are in an unfinished revolution. we are in an unfinished revolution, and it's really up to us to finish it because if we, if we stay at the current rate, it will take us 70 years to get to parity. now, ellie and i are, have been at this for, like, five decades or so, and we'd love to live another 70 years, right? but the odds of that are not great. so, therefore, i decided i had to do something fast. the thing is that everywhere we look people are telling us it is women's moment. i don't know, did you read "newsweek" this week? tina brown's first edition of "newsweek," this is women's

moment, clearly. have you read nicholas christophe and cheryl's book, "how's the sky"? they say the moral imperative of the 21st century is the empowerment of women. ernst & young have looked at company across every sector, and they say those that have greater numbers of women in their upper management and on their boards make more money. they have a better return on investment: so everyone is looking at us and saying, this is women's moment. but like katherine big elope standing there with her two os corps car -- oscar, she sort of looked like a deer in the headlights to me like what am i going to do with this? i found from my research that women resist the power that's in our hands, and i started to look at why. why is this, why does this happen? and what i discovered is it has a lot to do with the fact that

we have negative attitudes about the idea of power to begin with, that we have an old idea of power in our minds, an idea of power that was constructed back when it was brawn and not brains that made the difference for us and for society. power over is what we have in our minds and power over, you know, that's force for denying you something. a power over assumes there's a finite pie, and if i take a slice, there's less for you. power over makes you feel powerless. power over is oppression. but when i start talking to women about the fact that power is really amorphous, you can make it whatever you want to make it, just like a hammer can break or it can build, and be we change the definition in our minds to power to, then it becomes something very positive. it becomes problem solving, innovating, being able to do something good for the world, being able to treat your

patients, being able to get an education, being able to help your kids have a better life. it becomes an infinite resource. the more there is, the more there is. power to makes you feel powerful. power to, therefore, is leadership. and leadership is nothing more than getting something done. i really like to demystify the whole notion of leadership. it is nothing more than getting something done, but for that you need your power tools. and can that's what i want to talk to you about now. i hate those books that talk about, oh, what's wrong with women, you know? women can't, women don't, this is why women never accomplish, this is why women don't get to the upper echelons. well, so what? the thing is that those doors are open, and it's really up to us the walk ourselves through. so what i wanted to do as a practical activist all my life is to share what i learned from

my own life on the front lines of leadership and what i learned from talking with women all over the country, and i just call them power tools because i like to be kind of funny too. and that would help women actually stand in their power, embrace it and be able to walk comfortably with intention toward whatever they want to english in life. it's -- accomplish in life. it's appropriate that today since this is women's history month that today is know your history, and you can create the future of your choice. and what women have done typically, the women's movement in america has a history of women stepping forward and then stepping back of our own volition. this is very frustrating when you look at how it has gone. since abigail adams asked john to remember the ladies, and he didn't, and the ladies did not foment the revolution that they promised him they were going to do if he didn't remember them,

that has been the, that has been the sequence and the trajectory, and that's what we need to change. no excuses power tool number two is define your term first before someone else defines you. we all know whoever defines the terms wins the debate. and i think just in redefining power i've given you an example of defining your own terms. use what you've got. again, as connie and i both took what was a liability to us in our youth, we hated that feeling of being different, of not being good enough, of not measuring up. but that's what propelled us into leadership, what gave us the passion for the poor, for the sick, for those who needed help in whatever way. use what you've got. i learned to embrace controversy. i learned to love -- how many of you love controversy? [laughter] i knew there'd be a few here. [laughter] how many of you hate controversy? see, most people really back off

of controversy. but what i learned particularly from having had the opportunity to lead, oh, arguably the most controversial social movement in the world is that controversy is actually your friend. if something is controversial, it means you're important. it means you have the platform. people are paying attention the you. and, you know, i was thinking this morning arizona is the only state, i believe, that has ever passed the martin luther king holiday by a vote of the people. and i believe that only happened -- and it passed by a huge margin. i believe that only happened because it became a big controversial issue. so many people were thinking about it, they had to clarify their own values and, by golly, they came out to the polls. i'm saying this to you because i think arizona politic could use a little more of that kind of attention right now. [applause] some say the chaos. when things are chaotic, it

always feels like you just want to pull in and go hide. but the thing truth is when -- the truth is when things are in chaos, that's when you can make the change you want to make. a good example is when the financial meltdown began. what if lehman brothers had been lehman brothers and sisters? [laughter] yeah, suddenly we can see thing differently, and we can see there may be alternative solutions. wear the shirt. this became a metaphor for me when i was here with planned parenthood in arizona, and we had a very small clinic in casa grande. i was visiting with the staff there one day, and one of the young women said to me -- she had on her planned parenthood shirt that the staff all wore in the health centers -- and she said, you know, every day before i go home i have to make a conscious decision, am i going to wear this shirt when i go home? because if i have to stop to get milk at the grocery store, do i

want to have to engage in a conversation with the woman at the checkout count about what i do and why i do it? and i thought for a minute, and i said, you know,s that is exactly the time it's most important to wear the shirt. and wearing the shirt of our convictions is one of the most singularly important and effective leadership skills. when we think back to who are the people we consider to be the greatest leaders of all time -- male or female -- i guarantee you you're going to think of people who declared their intentions, who they wore the shirt. you knew where they stood. they might not have always won, but you knew where they stood, and ha's what their -- that's what their leadership imperative was. create a movement. it's, it's really the application of the principles i learned in social movement that i figured out can be applied to anies aspect of life. ny aspect of life. you may recognize a few knockes on the front line.

madeleine albright, i was right next to her, she was like a tank. [laughter] you can't imagine what it feels like to have 1.2 million women behind you pressing on you, and she was like -- nobody was going to displace her. [laughter] employ every medium. the media informs us, and women have a huge opportunity in social media. it can change the world. women are 60% of the social media users. so what are we talking about on social media? where's our tahrir square? it's time. and finally, because this is a book festival, tell your story. and that's how we share these stories, the information from generation to generation. and because women's history isn't really taught very much in school, it's even more important for women with to tell their stories. so i'm wearing my shirt. [laughter]

and i want to encourage you all to gather up your power tools and let us use them to help women reach parity because it is important for women, as my friend katie say, not just to have the power to choose, but to choose power. and be i want to -- and i want to close with one, one story. has anyone here written a book? okay, i see a couple of hands going up. then you know that there comes that moment where you have to give it up. you've been writing it, and you have to give it up to your editor, your publisher. you're done. you can't change anything else. so i was already a month late turning in "no excuses," and -- [laughter] i had to punch that send button the next morning before my editor got to her office. so at 2:00 in the morning i'm going through it one more time, and i found one of those, one of those errors that spell check cannot save you from. the word was supposed to be

parity. it had somehow gotten changed to a par .. well, i guarantee you all that we will have a very big party when women reach parity, and will you all be there with me? thank you. [laughter] [applause] thank you. >> thank you so much. that was wonderful, and i would like to encourage people to come up to the microphones to ask questions. so if you have a question, you need to go to the microphone. i have a lot of questions, too, but we want to hear from you first. so, please, go ahead. >> yes. my wife happens to have gone to an all women's high school and all women's college and taught at an all women's college. and i was wondering what your opinion of single-sex education for women is nowadays, especially for secondary school? >> that's a great question. i'm very conflicted about it.

do you have a thought? >> i do. actually, i spoke in honolulu last week at a private girls' school, and i was speaking to the educators, and they find especially in the elementary/junior high years it allows girls to not be distracted by boys. in fact, i was there to promote science and technology for girls, and it was cool to be smart and that at that age they're focused on competing with each other. but you also have very smart girls focusing on fields you're not going to say, oh, i want the boys to go can to the head of the class, so i think they're great. if i had a daughter, i would have sent her to an all girls' school. in fact, my stepdaughter did. she did very well. >> the conflict i have about that is what i think we should be aiming for really is a world where both boys and girls are running it, and so the trick then is to figure out how you bring the boys and the girls back together in a way that doesn't put the girls in a

secondary position because i think they do find that once girls get into college and if they're going to a co-ed college, then they begin to sort of step back a bit, and i don't know. i guess if i had to err or, i'd err on the side of saying let's talk about these issues from earliest days, but let's try to have the two genders together along the way. >> please, yes. go to the microphone, please. yes, thank you. >> i'm a graduate of an all girls' high school, so -- catholic high school, so i thought it was great. and i went to college and had no problems with it. but my real concern right now is with the u.s. congress vote about planned parenthood that they're going to just abolish planned parenthood. in 1990 as a low- 1980 as a low-income mother, that's where

i went not to go for an abortion, but to go for a pregnancy test. and because i was such a high risk at 34, almost 5 and with many health problems, they're the ones that pointed me to the doctor who would work the best with me and get me through that difficult pregnancy. and it's an attack on women for them to say not only that we can't fund abortion, but that we can't even have any public funding for planned parenthood. because for my whole life, i'm 65, and i'm a retired teacher. planned parenthood has been a very important part of our society. i don't know what'll happen in the senate, but i wondered if either one of you had any idea what will happen with that in the senate? >> well, i think in the current senate -- let me backtrack for a minute and say we fought these same battles in the 1980s, and we won them. i believe we will win them

again. but we're going to have to use those power tools, and we're going to have to not be afraid to use them. and my concern right now is that i don't see enough proactivity and enough putting forward our agenda by the women's movement in general. and i guess, you know, the thing is that it's not just planned parenthood. we need to remember that too. because with title x planned parenthood only receives about 10 president of that fund -- 10% of that funding. this is way beyond planned parenthood, and you're absolutely right, this is an attack on women, it needs to be fought this way, and this time if women step back like abigail and her friends, we are cooked. so i say it's time for women's tahrir square. >> my question is pretty much on the same line with the conservatives trying to do away

with abortion when women do not feel that they can handle a pregnancy or another child and the morning after pill, this is terribly serious, and with the people that we have in government and the judiciary i'm most fearful. >> when are you running for office? [laughter] i mean, seriously. the only antidote in a democracy to a policy you don't like is to change it, and if people there don't change it for you, then you have to, you have to either run somebody that you know will, or get in there and try to do it yourself. i wish there were an easier answer, but there really isn't one. and i don't know, connie, if you want to -- >> people you vote into office, and if you don't like what they're doing, vote 'em out. and you've just got to lobby like crazy. >> and people, i think the other

thing is that people -- this is something we need to teach children from the very earliest years also which is that politics is not just about election day. the day an election happens, the next election starts. and it's all about who you write, who you lobby at that time, how hard you lobby, how willing you are to use your power, to use the power that's in your hands. if women are 51% of the voters -- excuse me, women are 51% of the population and 54% of the voters and 60% of social media users, okay. tahrir square tomorrow, i'm telling you. that's what we have to do. >> yeah, what advice would you have for young women that are just starting and, you know, they have good idea, today want to create change at work, but their process bosses, they're

pessimistic, today tell you, well, that's the way it's been done, you can't do anything about it. what would you say? >> do not give up. i constantly heard that over and over and over again. be persistent, don't change your message. it's funny, when i got to the white house first time, there were all these questions like why do y'all do this? why isn't there somebody here at night with the president of the united states in case he falls down the steps or chokes on a lets l? [laughter] well, we've always had it this way. we had a new president come in and he said, all right, whatever you want to do. i said now that i'm the boss, i would like to do the following thing. i think be persistent, keep working it, and there may come a time you realize, i can't work in this environment, you know? and you move on or they have to move on. but don't give up. >> i'd add one thing to that which is the power tool about creating a movement. because women do tend to feel like they have to solve their own problems by themselves a

lot, that women feel isolated often especially at work, i think. and so i think that, you know, if you can apply those principles of be a sister, reach out to somebody else if you think she needs help and ask for help when you need it. you're going to find there are other people who have the same issues and problems that you do and have the courage to actually raise those issues. and then if you think there's a workplace policy that needs to be changed or if you have a great new idea for something you think will make money for your organization, get your ducks in a row, get your facts in a row. get your sisters together -- and brothers -- who feel the same way and go try to make it happen. it probably will. >> i would like to ask, what happened to the era? as someone who supported the women that were looking for equal rights, it just seemed to disappear. >> it's actually up again. it's actually just been reintroduced by representative

tammy baldwin from wisconsin. literally, this past week. >> i didn't know that. >> i know. it's not getting any media coverage, but it did. and i think -- if i'm not mistaken, i'm not completely versed on this, but i believe that it was introduced in a way that would allow the states that have not yet voted on it to vote on it. there only need to be three more states to ratify it. >> but what seems to me that the women's movement has seemed to kind of make it passe. >> in many respects, in many respects because of the battles we have won, many people feel that it is passe, so why not go ahead and pass it then? [laughter] >> i'm on your side. [applause] >> does anyone -- do you have a question? oh, please, go ahead. and then we'll go here. please. >> oh, dr. mariano, as a fellow

asian/pacific islander, i wanted to ask you, did you face any discrimination as a fill pee that and as a doctor? >> well, actually, the a surprise that they thought i was a doctor because they usually thought i was a nurse or a medic or somebody's secretary. it was very -- you know, it got to the point i would just sort of smile, and my reaction was i'm going to educate them with a sense of humor. i think one of the stories i might have shared with becky was when i was at the white house, i had a day off, and i stayed home with my kids. and my first husband's caucasian, so my children look mexican. so i was hope tidying up, and somebody came to the door. looks at me, looks at my kids and says, is the lady of the house home? as you e know, people hi you don't understand your language like you don't understand -- [laughter] is the laidty of the house home. and i thought he probably thinks

i'm the nanny, and i said missy no home. [laughter] of and later on he probably saw me on cnn and thought, oh, my god, that maid was the mother! [laughter] as long as i can do the things i want to do, whatever impression you have of me hopefully i can educate you otherwise. i'm a retired rear admiral, one star. of course, we're not supposed to have long hair. so i recently remarried, and when we go onto military bases my husband drives the car, he hands my id card to the marine guard, and he salutes and says, good evening, admiral. my husband goes, carry on. [laughter] you know, but it is. it's something that, you know, when i'm in honolulu, it's not a problem. i blend in. it is, but, you know, it's part of your chance to educate them, and then they realize, oh, my god, you are? and that's sort of because they're profiling us, right? they profile a lot of people. but hopefully, eventually

through education and time, you know, it won't be a difficult thing to pick up. >> doctor, i'm also from hawaii, so i know what you mean. i also have the same problem because i'm a, i'm like the judge judy in the small claims court here. my litigants walk in the, and they always think i'm the clerk. [laughter] i'm not the hearing officer. laugh thank you. >> thank you. >> i was also based in the era where women in my household were told you just go to college until you can get your mrs, so i had three children in the '60s, planned children, i'm very delighted that i had them. but i also believed very strongly in a woman's right to choose, so i was thrilled when roe v. wade passed and, in fact, marched on washington in 1992 and again in 2004, you know, a woman's right to the choose. but a problem that i see now when you said the women's movement isn't doing anything, what women's movement?

i think young women don't recognize what women went through before there was the right to choose and to get that passed. and so they just take it as something that they'll never lose, but they are in danger of losing it. so young women really need to get busy. >> well, i think that that's why it's so incumbent upon those of us who have been through those trials and tribulations to share our stories. it is really important for us to share those stories generation to generation so that young women do know. but i find that young women today are -- i really see an upsurge in interest, and they -- but, you know, every generation has to speak in its own tongues. and it's not going to be the same fight that we fought, and it's not going to be the same language even that we used. they're more likely to talk about -- and i actually support this whole, much larger, broader

concept of reproduct e rights. i have a chapter called secure 500 pounds in a boom of your -- womb of your own because i believe economic and reproductive justice are intertwined. if you have those two things, you have control over your life in a much bigger way. and young women today, i believe, see that big wither picture much more than we did when we were starting out. and i think we should encourage that, support it, and there are actually quite a few young women's groups who are doing some initiatives. i think they're ready to pick up the torch, and they'll take it on. i'm a little more optimistic about it. >> very happy to hear that, thank you. >> i have a question. i know the last power tool you talked about was tell your story, and in the book you talk about how that can forge connection in community. and i know it can also inspire people, as in dr. connie's book.

is there a moment where you met someone or you felt that connection in that community that was forged because you were telling stories? >> oh, absolutely. i've done 20 cities now, and invariably somebody will come up and say thank you for writing this book because they were having difficulty at work and it gave them the courage to speak up as this woman was doing, or, you know, i awz always i was an underdog and nobody believes in me, and now i know somebody who never even spoke the language when they came here. so you're rooting for the underdog and not underestimating yourself. >> yeah. similarly, actually just yesterday i received an e-mail from a woman who was at a breakfast, just a breakfast gathering in the home of one of her friends. and it wasn't even a formal book event, the just one of those things that just was happenstance. and she e-mailed to tell me that

as a consequence, she had decided to start a new company with the express intent of designing everything from a woman's perspective. products in general. and how that's going to unfurl, i don't know. she wanted to get together with me and talk about it, but, yeah, i like that idea. and, by the way, i'm looking for the female mark zucker burg or bill gates. [laughter] zuckerberg. i want to know, if any of you know that person, i want to see the first woman that creates some new technology that changes how we do everything. i think that's the next frontier we need to be looking for. >> absolutely. >> and i have one more question. i think we have time for one more question. if anyone else -- oh, great. please, go ahead. >> it's a question for both of you. dr. connie, you came from very humble beginnings. i wanted to know your, your

interest and desire to escalate yourself. did it come from a parent? and then you also had a conflicting message which was you're never going to be quite good enough. and so i kind of want to know where that came from. >> you know -- >> and then a question for gloria, i guess i'd like to know what tape was in your head that you had to work against. >> it's interesting, both my parents, my father was a navy steward and joined as a servant class, my mother was a dentist who went to dental school in the philippines in the 1950s and very wealthy family, so it was very -- and then when she, my mother married and became a housewife and was always depressed and hated it, hated it. so i grew up in a family where dad was the breadwinner. mother could have made more money had she gone to work but was sort of downtrodden.

and a lot of it was she decided this is my job, but unfortunately, wasn't happy. i was still growing up thinking i need to do something about it, and as you read the book, you didn't quite trust your parents, so you were hypervigilant. my father's way to inspire me was in fifth grade he bought me one of those old-fashioned tine writers and said learn how to type because you can be a clerk typist. so i learned how to type, i learned to type 175 words per minute, i did that part time in college, helped pay for my college education. but it helps when you're a writer, too. so where do i get this desire? is i think from my teachers. i had wonderful professors or teachers who were just, go get it, you're smart, you can do it. and then in the navy, i really had a wonderful boss, captain midas, male physician who was the chairman of medicine said i'm going to nominate you for the white house. got to the white house, and bill clinton trusted me to take care of him and his family, and, you

know, from there you just proceed. i mean, what do i plan to do? i have a concierge practice, so i'm a entrepreneur. i think i can expand it if i want to, but then i want to write more books and other things. and can then i was in honolulu recently and one of the judges said, well, why don't you run for office? i said, can i run for governor of hawaii? i know it's been done. my husband said, you probably have to live there. so i said, why can't i telecommute? [laughter] that's the benefit of knowing what ceilings have been shattered is like, it's unlimited. what do you want to do in the next chapter of your life? women are living longer, we're living in our 90s. we're going to outlive everybody. women become secretary of state this their 60s, so, you know, it's unlimited. our potential's there, but you have to decide i want to do it, and you have to have the tools to move forward. and a lot of times the only

thing holding us back is ourselves you know? and our chances tell you don't hold yourself back. >> would you consider running for golf -- governor -- [laughter] >> i'll get back to you in the about four years. >> absolutely, absolutely. well, i also got the message about typing, but since i could never successfully learn how to type. i forgetted i had to become a ceo -- >> hire people. [laughter] >> now, actually, i dedicated "no excuses" to my father who always said to me, you can do anything your pretty little head desires. [laughter] now, i didn't believe him when i was young because the culture was telling me something complete hi different. completely different. and the example of my mother which is actually not terribly unlike connie's mother, although she didn't have that level of education going in, but she was very, very smart.

she ran his office. she always knew everything that was going on. she probably could have run general motors. she always operated from a position of feeling like she had no real authority or agency in the world. so i had -- it took me many years and many mistakes, many mistakes to overcome that and, in fact, even as recently as a few years ago after i had left my 30-year career with planned parenthood and i realized i had been, i had allowed the movement to subsume me and who i was, i had completely -- i had, i had given myself so completely over to it. and once again i listened to my father's words, and i realized he was right, i really could do anything my pretty little head desired. [laughter] ..

[applause] i want to thank both connie mariano and really gloria feldt for coming here and sharing with us and i hope you continue the conversation out in the tent where you can buy those of their books and again, you will go to the signing area one, 10b and books will be available there for purchase. thank you again for coming to the decibel. as a friend of the festival, please go to our web site. thank you. [inaudible conversations]

spain now from the harlem book fair, a form on african-american economic history. it is a little less than an hour and a half. >> good afternoon everyone. it is indeed a pleasure and an honor to present these dynamic, it's going to stay young ladies but dynamic young ladies and i mean that in that sense. these are two terrific sisters. they are authors and hard workers that are activist so again i applaud you all forg out coming out and what might be 100 degrees weather to enjoy what we are about to enjoy right now. my name is troy johnson and i'm the founder of aa lbc.com the african-american literature book .lub most frequently visited web site by and about books written by and about people of african-american

-- african decent. the web site was started in 1998 and is one of the oldest websites of its kind on line. i would like to introduce you to carol jenkins, author of black titans and making of a black american millionaire. a writer and producer and an emmy award winning former w. nbc-tv television anchor and correspondent and founding president of the women's media center. she is executive producer of the pbs documentary what i want my words to do to you which won the freedom of expression award at the sundance film festival in 2003. carol jenkins enjoys an award winning tenure in several new york city news department including 23 years that w. nbc tv where she coanchored the 6:30 p.m. newscast. she was most identified with

reporting of national political stories including from the floor of the democratic and republican national convention that yielded president carter, reagan, bush and clinton. give a round of applause to carol jenkins. [applause] >> next up we have dr. julianne malveaux, author of surviving and thriving 365 black economic history. she is the fifteenth president of college for women leaders' unrecognized for progressive observation. she is an economist, author and commentator and described by dr. cornell west as the most iconoclastic public intellectual in the company. doctor malveaux's contributions to the public dialogue on race, culture, gender and economic

impact our shaping public opinion in the twenty-first century america. a round of applause for doctor malveaux. [applause] >> i bring you the conversation, black wealth past and presence, the politics of black wealth. >> thank you for your great work. i love what you produced. hi am a friend on facebook. >> thank you for the opportunity to be with you. i love you all. thank you so much. >> i would say if ever we needed an economist today is the day we need an economist. i felt in the last few weeks we needed to go back to school to take courses in economics to try to understand what is happening. do we need to raise the debt ceiling? what is going on in washington? since you have a keen eye and understanding of what they're

doing what is happening exactly at what is your prediction of the outcome? >> we have to raise the debt ceiling. we can't default internationally on our obligations. it is fascinating that the debt ceiling has been raised probably 70 times in the last 30 years. why does it sadly become an issue when the president is barack obama? the answer is because people have issues. they are angry. we are attempting to set perimeters around what is happening with the economy. here is what we know for sure. everyone in this audience. is there anyone here who has not experienced economic hardship or know someone who has? the unemployment rate is 9.2% overall. it is 16% for african-americans.

real unemployment rate for us is 28%. one in three americans has been looking for work for a year. if anyone stands up here and says i have not had economic hardship, someone has to key in their life. this is a brother or sister who says can you help me pay my rent that is not going to turn out right. help me if i am hurting. this is what is going on. we know because you have a phenomenal -- >> she is holding up my book too. >> a phenomenal ancestor who basically made it happen. even in the middle of hardship we make it happen but we make it happen because we decide we are going to make it happen.

so i think what we know is john boehner and president barack obama -- >> she said that deliberately. john boehner. >> whatever. i tried. my mama does this thing with holy water. i don't have any holy water. anyway whatever his name is, the man is attempting to circumvent the president. the bottom line is on 70 occasions this has been called housekeeping. now that president obama has to deal with that it is called something else. here is what we have to do. anyone in the sound of my voice, we have to stand up, stepped up,

man and woman up to the side we will not allow people to marginalize the president. some of you who know me well, do not allow us to marginalize this president. we understand that in the middle of a recession we cannot talk about cutting social programs. [talking over each other] >> my young people come to me, $5,500 is all we are offering. 35. thirty-eight. round here somewhere, probably hiding. reggie bailey -- i have friends

here in the house. stand up, reggie. i love you, a dorr you, philanthropist. these are people who lived up our young people. how could they do what they do when we can't do what we are supposed to do? how do you cut a poll grant? forgive me and allow me an indulgence. 75,000 americans got engineering degrees. 300,000 indians. six hundred thousand chinese people. they are doing what they are supposed to do. reggie bailey, were you mit? what are we supposed to do? what are we supposed to do? i am going to be quiet. >> let me follow up because it is the collective wisdom that it

is president obama has offered what the new york times has called an overly generous package of cuts in social programs. what do we say about that? of course the republicans walked away once again. >> holy water. holy water. you know what? let's take our time and talk about the energy we have. i can fix these people. they are not fixable but here is what i want black people to understand. you know it from your ancestors story. no matter who we are or how we are we have triumphed even in the middle of nonsense. let's continue the energy of triumph. the reason i wrote surviving and

thriving is because i wanted people to understand even when the game is not fair it is not going to be fair. please don't kill me. my best friend forever, a phenomenal woman who has raised up the young people at the southeastern learning center of washington d.c.. we got to say -- somebody put the camera on her. reggie, help us. here is the point. no matter what we're doing we can't do it -- the game is not fair. we win it when we play. this sister brought $6 million to the worst part of d.c. because she played the game. this brother helped her because he played the game. we have to play the game. we can't play we don't win.

that is the story. >> i am going to get to that. we have a distinguished audience. by the time dr. malveaux is finished everyone will be standing including my oldest boy. >> oldest boys, stand up. we don't want to leave you out. let's give the oldest boy alone. >> he made his contribution. one more question. as an economist i need a prediction. what is your prediction about how we get out of the mess? what options--president clinton has settled president obama would have to do is to write the check and declare that he has the right to do it on his if it turns out that congress can't get itself together in any

agreement. do you think that ultimately is what he might do? how do you think the country would react? >> i hope president obama will take the leadership he has earned. he is our elected president. he can raise the debt ceiling on his own. to dance around the mulberry bush with people who denigrated my favorite beverage -- [applause] -- it is not useful. he has to step up and i believe he will. even more importantly we have to have a different kind of education. what has happened here is you have people -- how can i put this nicely? hy won't. >> just getting -- >> people who are intellectually

deficient decided to make a decision and say the same thing over and over again and that makes it true. here is what is true. we have in the united states of america fourteen million people who don't have work. we have another fourteen million people who don't have work unofficially. we have people who are struggling. people in southeast washington d.c. with children who can't do what they need to do because they're hurting. what do we do about that? here's what we do. we talk about the images and the possibilities we have. president obama could do more. i think he feels constrained but i tell people all the time he would not get fed in your mama's house if you don't bring your plate to the table. black america has to ask this

president to do what we need him and to do. ask him. tell him. exhort him. i am so e enamored of this president. i am concerned about economic policy and we need to be able to communicate that. what can we do in a year? in a year we have to create jobs. that is what america is clamoring for. one third of the unemployed people in our nation have been unemployed for more than a year. how do you live your life unemployed for year? what do you do? these of the questions we must ask. my brothers and sisters here we must raise questions, ask questions, push, probe around the ways we think our economy should work.

>> i agree with that way forward. the book is fascinating and thank you for including my uncle arthur in this. >> he is a phenomenal human being and we know that. alabama businessman who lived for a century and what my daughter and i did in the book was try to assess america in the century he lived, 1892-1996. incredible amount of things that took place for black americans. we said we were going to talk about the history of america and black america and everybody talked about slavery -- that is how we got here. i don't hear many people talking about the g i bill and the devastation that brought and the discrepancy you are seeing in black american wealth and white

american wealth was the government engendered right after world war ii. housing, training, all of that which was given to veterans returning to this country, and black americans forced into what we now know as the skyscraper, apartment buildings. and the fact that they use government money to build those thousands of houses that only white veterans were able to buy. they have video of shiny a kitchen appliances. this was the beginning of the current discrepancy of wealth in our country. you have thoughts on -- >> there is introduction 22 page essay in which our talk about the wealth gap and many ways the

wealth gap was imposed by public policy. erik nilsson wrote when affirmative action was white. in his book he talked about the very ways that white americans, especially post world war ii were able to get benefits that african-americans were not able to get. in mississippi 300 black men -- they were able to get benefits. back at the ranch almost every white man who served was able to get a loan for a home, loan for college, loans for other things. if you look at wealth, look at someone investing in you no one has invested in black america. let me say something i don't want you to get too upset about but it upsets me every day. we invested in ourselves.

the most phenomenal lacked of economic courage was self emancipation. whenever i talk about this i actually get sick. i talk about patrick oliver around here, project manager on surviving and thriving. [applause] >> how is it that we by ourselves? how do you cut a deal? you have black folks who purchase themselves. the first fact of the boat -- thank you for the southeast center, phenomenal occasion. thank you for your support of that. i just love my people who have them. how do you purchase your self?

what goes on in your mind is aiken by myself in the land of the free and the home of the brave or the slave. how do you by yourself? here is what happened in cincinnati. john parker taking two measures. louis farrakhan -- this was bad and crazy. he walked onto other people's plantation. harriet tubman was credited with freeing 300. john parker freed more than 900 people. what about the plantations? what he said was we will free ourselves. the thing i want us to think about was the audacity which is not a word -- i just made it up.

the many ways our people have been phenomenal and the reason i raise it is for my young people, my younger sisters and brothers, if they could do that what could we do next? if they could do that, enslave people to free themselves by purchasing themselves, 25% of enslaved people were self emancipated in cincinnati. you bought yourself. i always think that this is a sixth thought, who ran away and who saved? if i could be a sociologist and go back in time, who bought themselves and who ran away i know i was a runaway slave. i wasn't paying nobody for nothing.

but the woman who was -- a seamstress. there were many women. men's stories are more told the history belongs to shiva holds the pen. she not only paid for herself but supporter white family. she supported 17 people with her needle. let's talk about this. we found that -- working my daughter and 9 on this book about young people. he started out as the grandchild of slaves living in a cabin and managed to create ten major businesses in birmingham, alabama and became one of the first of modern times. they were quite accomplished very wealthy people before my uncle but managed to create a bank radio station, construction, all kinds of things and was influential in

helping martin luther king desegregate the department stores. in 1963 when he came to birmingham i don't know if you remember the gaps in motels where he stayed that was an economic fight. it was to desegregate department stores because blacks could buy back about fraud on anything in these stores in birmingham and they couldn't use the restroom so it created an extremely difficult situation for blacks. that is what it was. so many of our flights were economic fight. he was able to do it with a couple things. he was phenomenally focused but also operating in segregated birmingham, alabama. after segregation was over there were problems. you talk about that and how you see the evolution of that. we have to think that is where the solution lies for people to create businesses like the ones

you included in surviving and thriving. >> your ancestor was a phenomenal human being and we understand the courage but also what the courage--not another choice. so many people refused to accept what was there. i would make a black economic history parallel with this. i wrote 15 publishers to say can we get this book published? we are not interested in black economic history so my company did it. that is what i am seeing a lot of times. oliver deserves a lot of credit. just walk and talk. we can raise money and do things so we did it. that is the challenge.

we have more choices in the twenty-first century that we had in the 20th and 19th. your antecedent -- there was no one lined up to do that. we have to be really clear about the many ways that we own ourselves and that we own our history and make decisions that our history is phenomenal, vital and special. when i look at so many people, especially some of the women. i look at maria stuart, the first woman who made her living as a speaker i resonate with her. what i look at t. j. walker and maggie clean the worker -- walker. she did not -- any malone.

let's be clear, madame c.j. walker was phenomenal but she took someone else's model and wrapped it up a bit. but maggie lena walker from virginia was a second grade education who started penny savings bank. debate that existed until 2009. let's lift her up. when it comes to black history month we have our black people i love them all, frederick douglass and martin luther king, put your head down. she just did. the point is this. we have black people who people don't know who are so important. par la harris in new york. a phenomenal woman. this brother who is a

philanthropist, a leader who is phenomenal. st. john, television and radio personality in the 1950s. we should resonate with her. she decided to be a broker. the first black woman to pass the new york stock exchange exam. come john now! give the sister some love. [applause] naomi sims. she was just a model. she was also a phenomenal -- mary ann dragons, black woman on wall street. i list these people because it is important. we don't want to just say we have static figures. we have dynamic human beings we might walk across at the starbucks. that for you, the work you have done around your antecedent is important.

it is very important for us to be clear that economic history is the history must love and lift it up. >> i want to close that because i have a disconnect. a believe in celebrating with my uncle who was quite the exception. whenever i read statistics about the net wealth of black women in this country being $5 or $100 that they are the bottom of the barrel, how do we get the bulk of black women, single women who have virtually nothing and mostly because they don't own homes because household ownership is still the basis of most of the wealth we know. how do we deal with that? $5?

$100? >> the data on that are daunting data, speak to the challenges we face. black women take care of everybody else before we take care of ourselves. his wife had $5 because she was related to pooky who said i will pay my phone bill and see you in a month. i don't believe in lending money. just give it to them. if you lend to them you will be mad at them. if you give it to them is okay. the other piece of that is please give them the rent money. otherwise they will move in with you. you really want that? all the kids come to your house? no. here is the deal. we take care of other people before we take care of us. when you look at the numbers we don't have the wealth and we have to deal with that.

we have to learn how to take care of ourselves and it is a challenging thing to do. the data was daunting last year. the average single black woman with children had $125. 1 25 -- that is no money. not a very good one if you are in new york city. we have to deal with that. but what we have to do with that is about surviving and thriving. let me tell you the story of elizabeth keck and --keckley. she wrote her own autobiography after she was done by some

virginia white folks. she described them as dissipated. you work with that. they were run out of virginia and taken to st. louis. she wrote i supported 17 people with my needle. she supported the people who owned her with her needle. she with the go to women in st. louis. >> the address it was hers. she purchased herself and went to washington and became the taylor for elizabeth todd lincoln who have 165 pairs of gloves. how do you have that many gloves and 365 days a year? you have a shopper problem. [talking over each other] >> the story about her is useful because i want my sisters to

think about multiple in come story she had. when abraham lincoln died elizabeth keckley was hostess to mary lincoln. they were sisters but mary lincoln didn't buy any more gloves because she had no more money. so she fired our sister, the former slave who then wrote an autobiography and told stories no one wanted her to tell. she was clear about the fact she needed to make a living. sisters need to be clear about these issues. multiple income stream. how do you make a living? how do you put yourself out there? what do you do? surviving and thriving is about that. i want to say a little bit about this book from the perspective that nobody wanted to publish

it. nobody wanted -- i had a lovely lunch with a young sister. send me a lobster salad and a glass of white wine and told me nobody wanted to hear about black people in congress. it was a lovely conversation. >> reminds me of a story talking with a television executive about the life story of lena horne and what was said was it is not interesting enough. there wasn't enough -- not enough -- [talking over each other] >> long story short, i give him credit. do your thing. so we published a book.

i called the book a note to my people. i want people of african descent to understand how important it is for us to revel in history. [talking over each other] >> it is crafted as the of 365 facts and mixed up the current with the historic so it is really great and things people don't know about. i recommend it. i want to go back -- i am the one presenting this note here. because i think it is important for us to use your book and my book as encouragement to get through it. apparently between 2004, and 2009, media network of black households fell by 83% when

there was a 24% drop in white households and it was 2018 or seven years for us to get back to the jobs we had in 2007 and what you talk about is an effort to recovers that doesn't include jobs. the centrality of work in our economy is being lost. i found that piece of yours -- >> go to juliannemalveaux.com. we could have a recovery but no jobs for people to go into. >> it is one of the most perplexing aspects of the current economic situation. there are economists who say we are in recovery and no longer in recession and i always say go to the hood. stand on the corner. martin luther king and malcolm

x, a lot of places you can stand. if economic recovery has come it has not come there. we have seen gdp growth in e .. a function of the investment the federal government has made in banks and in other places. we have not seen people going back to work. last month only 18,000 jobs were created. the unemployment rate went from 9.1% to 9.2%. for african-americans the unemployment rate is 15%. if you look a real rate it is 28%. these are trying times. what do we do about that? i believe we have abrogated our

responsibility as citizens. we should all be angry, focused about what has to happen. i also believe we can create wealth on our own. so many others did. we can talk about a entrepreneurship in a different way. the oasis where we educate and celebrate women and develop 20 first century leaders and global thinkers -- [talking over each other] >> we require students to take a class in entrepreneurship because you will be an entrepreneur at some point in your life. with your a science or art majors some time you will have to figure out how to make it on your own. that is critically important. i think we need to begin to talk about ways that we replicate,

produce, engender the wealth creation process. we also must talk more about how we engage politically and what we do. i am frustrated with our people around conversations with our president. this congress is a city hall. all these other places. what are you doing about that? how do you operate? how are you engaged? what do you do? we have a lot of work to do. >> i remember distinctly when i used to see you on cnn and your voice is an extremely important one as a pundit. what do you think about al sharpton getting 6:00 on ms nbc? >> it is exciting. we don't have african-americans in prime time. if he is able to bring some knowledge to the game, let's do

that. [applause] >> i am waiting for a sister. but i am excited this has happened. i really am. >> what do you think it is that has made black women's show in visible? i helped create the women's media center where we work to get women's voices and stories told. it is an uphill battle. 90% of everything is still passed by men and women still only hold 3% of the positions in media in this day and age. >> i have two perspective as. one is the bias and patriarchy but we also need to be more vocal about what we want. i don't know how many sisters are here in the house. how many visited someone who

said i want to see some black women on the air? we could own this. we have some ownership we could do as well. i am excited about the many ways we are beginning to unpack things. michele obama is a phenomenal leader and role model. she is great and wonderful. we have to stand up. these people who have denigrated my favorite beverage make all this noise and every time she goes out for a hamburger they will take that somewhere and make it into something which is nonsense. when the left talk about the

bush barrels -- girls there be no. we need to set the same standard. you can talk about president obama that he is a big boy, even talk about michele but leave the daughters out of it. they are little girls. come on. we don't do the work we could do to stand up and put a line in the sand for our people. can we put a line in the sand for our people? that is all i am asking for. you know and i know when we make the phone calls we do the work. one phone call people think of as 1,000 people but who calls? you say that was just messed up. i was so mad that was messed up. don't be mad.

get even. danny glover had a verizon commercial. they got mad at his politics and he lost it. why has rush limbaugh and never lost anything. i am exposing myself. have my back, please. come on. they talk about us as though we are in human. no one stands up for us. what is wrong with us? that is a story of surviving and thriving. we only win the game when we play the game. we have got to play the game. >> i have a moment of shock when the girls went to africa with their mother. it was the first time i realized there are black girl living in the white house. isn't that amazing?

i started reading alice's book the end of danger. talking about the fact the next generation of african-americans are not as bad as my generation was. do you believe that? granted he is interviewing the harvard mbas who have a different perspective on the world and have a slightly different in come but do you believe we have perhaps mostly because of barack obama entered an optimistic face? we are not angry or should we be angry? are we hopeful? the figures say african-americans are more hopeful despite the employment figures than anybody else in the country. i want to know who they're talking about. >> to the southeast learning center to have any kind of

survey of the homes in the hood. phyllis --ellis is a brilliant writer and really good and is raising interesting questions. let's look at the numbers. 3% of us don't have jobs. one in three. you don't have a job. you don't have a dog. you don't have a job. has anybody called you? jobless people to ask how you are feeling about this? [talking over each other] >> the harvard mbas i am related to some. let's be clear. we have challenges. i used to live this life that was very fascinating. i took a piece of data and i could write a book about it.

now for peace of data comes through my office and says i lost my job. how do i pay my tuition? that is my new life as a college president. i revel in it but i am very challenge by the fact that we in black america don't always see ourselves. some of us do phenomenally well. our applaud them, the recreation committee and lots of other organizations but i also know about the people who have more months than money. they cannot eat. these theoretical discussions are not discussions that make a difference in their lives. it strikes me when i look at the numbers, sometimes almost makes

me want to cry to think about the number of people who want to work but can't find work. think about the people being foreclosed on when billions of dollars of banks won't lend. i am not sure how to begin to have a conversation about the hidden danger. an end of a anger is the beginning i hope of -- i hope those people who understand they essentially pay their taxes for other people to get bonuses are mad enough to do something about it. [applause] >> we don't hear those voices. unless we are reminded of the unemployed we don't see them. we don't know that they are

there. what is the solution for that? we are talking about the debt ceiling and other issues. we are not talking about the people you are talking about. that has to happen. >> you and i are both media people. we spend time telling stories and we know the stories that want to be told and that don't want to be told and we need to be clear our story needs to be told. one reason i am excited about our sharpton getting a show on msn b.c. is i know al sharpton has a feeling for the people. i am hoping he will raise up the issues, talk to some of the people who have issues or problems and deserve to be heard. we all need to be clear about the way we deserve to be heard and we will create our own

strategies. again, probably not the place to be as vulnerable -- this hurts me. it hurts me to see people of african descent at the periphery of our economy understanding the many ways we have been central. understanding in so many ways to work that we have to do and understanding no one is going to do it for us. there are a series of demographics that are frightening. we are not the biggest minority any more and we are now the fastest-growing. the latino population -- we are not mad at them but they are where they are and who they are and how they are and we need to figure out how to work with them. we also need to figure out how to get our fair share of this economy that we have created a foundation for.

that is what part of the challenge is. i look at the next five years for the next 25 years of our nation. i understand last year we created 75,000 engineers in the united states of america. china is 600,000. they are investing in higher education. we are divesting from higher education. help me with that. help me with that. is that ok with those? president obama says he wants to be the lost leaders in terms of education but china is investing more money. this is the money that goes to our poor young people. we have challenges that we refuse to deal with. our people are dying and nobody

really cares. the answers you would find in the economic history of blacks in america, what would you point to? >> i love that question. when we look at our people we look at ursula burns at xerox and sarah washington who was lifted up at the new york world's fair in 1945. distinguished businesswoman. dorr the bronze and who has opportunities in radio. carolyn mingo jones, mary ann's dragons --spraggins we had a sister once, ilan appears on the securities and exchange commission. gloria stewart was the sister, first black woman to make a

living as a speaker. par la harris, phenomenal young woman who was a financial genius and has a fabulous voice. the first black woman who passed the new york stock exchange -- here is the point. we can do it. the book was written as a love note to my people because i love us. i think we are so phenomenal. just about being a person of african descent. i worry. if the lord made me something else it wouldn't have turned out right. i think we can do whatever we do. i look at my friends here, reggie and patrick and so many others who step out on a limb because they love us.

if you love us you will help us be who we need to be. >> there are people in the audience who would like to ask questions. we have a microphone set up on my left side, your right side of the auditorium. if you would like to step up please join us in this conversation. we want to hear as many of you as possible. and okay. go right ahead. >> first of all it is great to see you, carol. i remember you from channel 4 and you are best. >> thanks very much. >> great to see you. i have a question. i am very solution oriented. i am a retired physician and i'll always -- i make the diagnosis but here is the prescription. about what you have been talking

for the last half hour or so. is voting now irrelevant? i am asking this because a drop in the percentage of young people who voted in 2010. we're seeing voter disenfranchisement efforts across the country. i am asking both of you, what can we do to let young people know how important it is that they not let go of this life they have now that they are 18 years of age. how do we communicate that we have to go to economic tour must keep them going to the polls not just every four years but you mentioned city council, how do we do this? i think this is critical.

>> julianne has written about voter suppression which is something we have to keep uppermost in our minds. >> voting is not the most you can do. it is the least you can do. we need to be clear with all of our people that voter registration and voter information is the least you can do. we need to be clear that there are efforts towards voter suppression which mean in some parts of the south instead o vo suppression which mean in some parts of the south instead of precinct voting they're doing area going which means 30 miles to a voting place which then discriminate against you by money or how you get there, 20 or 40 miles.

in some states you have to show that you're a citizen. the mayor of atlanta's mother was turned away from a voting bowl because she did not have the proper identification. we have to be more active and activist around the voting issue. .. four years ago was called a housekeeping matter. ue.y, now suddenly it is a huge to ha

>> room to deal with theg proces integrity of the voting process, and so i would ask people to iink about ways they might alsd be involved in the voting process whether or not they are running for things like secretary of state of voting inn their area. your question i own areaad of the game with this. again i would lift up "surviving and thriving" for many reasons. many of the people who made an economic difference did it through the polls and so while the vote talks a lot about entrepreneurs, we also talk about people who the national domestic workers union in the 1930s, the women who did the

research for the sedans, the people who did the sedans, this was an energy we once had and that energy we still have her go thank you again for your question and you have also talked about the fact that women are still missing in leadership roles including the civil rights organizations and in politics so i would say not only should you vote but you should run. that is my incentive to that. >> i agree voting has a function. by political education precedes the vote. if you just take that franchise and handed over without demanding a return back, then it is just useless and bad seems like what is happening in our communities. belonging to a party that has been mistreating you for the longest, you know, i think it is

time for us to think outside the box and not look for the box to be adorned with a white ribbon and a white bow. >> are you talking about third-party candidates or are you talking about. >> i am talking about are people at some point having a political convention. keep everybody out. and let's work it out. but this is an working. it is not working. having black faces in high places is not enough. >> you feel that the democratic party has not held its part? >> and yet, you wouldn't find yourself wanting to vote for the republicans as you know them now? >> i'm independent. independent, but let's be real with it. >> here is the reality, my brother. here is the reality. you have a whole bunch of barbie

doll looking, okay somebody is supposed to help me here. [laughter] these women who are republicans who don't know chicken salad from chicken spears are not leaders. policy is an imperfect process. it is an extraordinarily imperfect process. i think we all know that those of us who have spent time in politics know that. third-party politics -- possibilities do it. do it. we have seen it before. i think that, what was his name, ross perot? he made a difference in 2000 or 92. he made a difference. i think that african-american people have the right to raise questions, issues, platforms but i also think that at the end of the day, if you tell me that my

choice is any democrats or sarah palin -- [laughter] i am going to go with any democrats. i mean, that would be me. that might not be you. that would be me. i'm not sure that i can see russia from alaska. [laughter] and yet, though, there are many are regressive's. there are many people of color who are in this quandary. what is a quandary? >> of quandary is -- the quandary is how to get action for your. >> the same thing that you are urging. >> we cannot, we cannot assume again -- let me be really clear. those who are in presidential politics who understand the limitations that any president

has. he was talking about more than just a president though. i think the whole party. >> so make it happen. make it happen. here in new york i think there is a working party's family which i think is really exciting and they are doing exciting work. i know some of the folks there and they are doing good work. i think in minnesota you have the farmer party. again, that is exciting. but i think it the end of the day, politics is the art of compromise. how do you get more of what you want them more of what you don't want? i know that i don't want a palin, a bachmann makes stuff out of whole cloth. let's go down the list. a romney, and mccain, you know, a flawed obama is better than the best of those people. [applause]

>> your question? >> hi, my name is carla peterson and i'm a professor at the university of maryland. i just wanted to start off by saying that this conversation reminds me of things that dubos said, are right? its emphasis on politics, education and work. so it seems like we are revisiting that conversation 110 years later. as a kind of sideline, i also wrote a book about family and i am talking later this afternoon so i'm really glad to hear about your book about entrepreneurship because my family also 19th century entrepreneurs. but along with entrepreneurship they were really invested in issues of education. so that is the question that i wanted to ask about. because, you know, as a college president and a college -- we worked really hard with their

students, black and white, but addressing a comment that was made this morning by michael lomax, what do we do to get her kids to college? i mean it seems to me that is such a big issue. getting our kids just through high school and into college. i work for a foundation in d.c. called pozzi and i think we are are -- to be our executive director and what they do is they work to get disadvantaged kids into college. so how do we address our failing public school system especially when it comes to black kids? >> whoa, that is big. >> first of all, thank you for your remark and of course tomorrow lawson is the new d.c. coordinator of the foundation in d.c.. i'm so proud of her and she is my baby girl.

she is really coretta's baby girl but i borrow her from time to time. we are excited about her. >> she was hired in a nanosecond. it was like m, calm. but we are excited about that and i'm excited about the image that the foundation has which is really about changing the metrics around college attendance. here is what we have to do you all. whoever is in in the -- within the sound of my voice, going to college is not warring. it is not nerdy. it is not white folk. eight is how you build yourself. so many young black people have been told that you don't need to want to have to go to college. well if you want to be a banker that is what you are going to do. if you want to be a scholar, that is what you are going to do. if you want to deal with our health disparities that is what you are going to do. we need to make this as exciting

as any other game in town. the foundation is important because it brings young people in a group to deal with what they do and so you have a group of people reinforcing each other. here is what is more important. we need to begin to have conversations about what we want black america to look like and when we have those conversations we have conversations about excellence and we have conversations about excellence. we began to talk about the ways we want our young people to be and what they can aspire to. and again that is one of the reasons why i wrote this book. the game is not fair but we can play the game. you now, they purchased themselves. let me say this again. if an enslaved person could purchase him or herself, then how com we can't do what we need

to do to be ourselves, to love ourselves and to lift up -- lift ourselves up. when we began to talk about college attendance and college participation it is about us claiming our rights to be there. maya angelou came to bennett college for women, our waste is and develop this into 21st century tinkerers. anything within the human consciousness is attainable for any of us. what does that mean? learning is attainable for all of us. thinking is attainable for all of us. achievement is attainable for all of us. this is the message we have to give to our young people. we cannot allow somebody to tell our young people that they can't. when they come home with that message we need to say who told you that and then we need to get a can of you know what and say,

no, you cannot bring that up into our space. because we know that we can compete. we know that we must compete. and we know that we will compete as long as we have that opportunity. my sister i hope that you will continue your work and i hope that all of us will continue to work of lifting up our people. yes there is a horrible achievement gap. it makes me cry frankly. this is what i think. people ask me, i don't sleep at night. i get up at three of or 4:00 in the morning worrying about the achievement gap but you know when i see all of you all in this room and you came here because she wanted to have a conversation about who we are and we are a people who have achieved. and we will continue to do so. >> i would just say on a more practical note we had to pick out bad teachers. [applause] we have to make a decision

between our children and the adults and i think that we have been way too you know considerate and so -- the question starts way before college. >> what do you say about the bad teachers? >> well i think, i am not -- i'm not. >> this is an issue. this is an issue. >> i am ashamed that we have to analyze who is being productive and who isn't. >> michelle rhee who was the former chancellor in washington d.c., basically blame teachers for low achievement but. >> i think the results that just came out showed that the schools, that they have eliminated some of the teachers who were not performing. >> they also manipulated results >> this idea is sidelined

competition. i am a member of a sorority inc. with black women's organizations that basically has a lot of teachers. [inaudible] >> i thought i like to but you made a mistake. who got the holy water? who got the holy water? [laughter] >> next question. >> hello, my question is, we talked about the young people and then we have -- you talk about the gap. my age group is, i guess we don't get a voice because a lot of us are educated and we are not employed as well. we are not being considered and i wanted to, as somebody who grew up in the city who moved to other states and who is a very persevering person, i would like

to know one of the things that specifically this book fair is about books. my industry that i am interesting -- interested in publishing and was outsourced to years ago, the company i used to work for reader's digest went bankrupt. i am a non-super knower, but who is going to employ me? i just traveled an hour and a half to stanford connecticut for a technology job and after doing a great job was turned away because i was told i live too far away and i would leave them. i am the most loyal person and because of that loyalty, i am not employable. i am highly overeducated and a lot of different areas, and when they look at someone like me they go, what do we do with you? what is the direction of someone like myself who is committed to the community, who digs in and goes wherever i go and tries to make it better but gets turned away? what does someone like myself do

do. >> technology. you are looking for the technology job? julian was talking about the engineer's. >> it is more about the creative side and the contest. >> when i get turned away from those creative conditions because of who we look like. so it is each one teach one. education jobs have been downsized. >> i was just at borders yesterday and at the everything must go sale and what i realized is a been though everything must go and everything was discounted the books were still more expensive than i could lie on line or download on my kindle. as i wrote in my blog, media.com, i take full responsibility because i was an early kindle adopter. so this is the new -- and certainly julianne's experience

in publishing. this is the future, you know in this book is selling phenomenally well. >> patcher gave me the figures of all of the books that are flying off the shelves that are part of julianne's company and i think the entrepreneur aspect of that you know, it is why we need to read the example of a.g. gaston in and the making of black america. because, because that is a story of creating, what julianne was saying earlier, we are a little bit beyond looking for jobs. we have to create our jobs. we have to create our companies. i just wrote a piece about catherine cut, who, when she was 15 -- she had a rather 15 or 16 years old, started my yearbook.com and they just sold it for $100 million. she is still a student at georgetown university and i think that is the creative piece that julianne is talking about

that we really have to engage in. we are beyond looking for employment. we have to really focus on creation. >> you know, sister what i would say to you. >> is a it building our own businesses? >> let me say a couple of things. one when we look at the unemployment records it is very clear we have to create some of our own opportunities. when you look at the fact that a third of all black people don't have employment and that most of the people that are unemployed now have been looking for more than a year. i would ask you to engage your spirit and the ways that you can create added value to the world. that is what entrepreneurship is. it is creating added value. so, and i see carla brown has not again her. stand up. you snuck in here.

[applause] we are glad that you are all here. sister, you need to figure out where is your passion, how to engage your passion and what do you do with it? i think carroll has raised some things and i think i have raised some things in the context of this conversation but i think importantly, if you preferred to prefer to work for others, you are still an intra-print or, which means that you need to figure out what value you bring to others. if you are an entrepreneur, go forth. if you are not, create your space. there are a whole bunch of web sites and stuff. i think that our nation unfortunately is evolving from an economic perspective. more of us will be entrepreneurs. that is what i really believe is going to happen and i believe that our young people and i applaud you for standing up and

speaking your truths, but i think a lot of our young people are going to have many challenges. at bennett college for women you will take a class called introduction to entrepreneurship. whether you are an art major, a science major, journalism major, a business major, i believe he will be in on trepanier read some point in your life. i believe that is unavoidable so therefore it is now a requirement for our students to do that. if you have not taken such a class, find a community college and take one and do your thing. [applause] >> thankthank you. >> good afternoon. my name is casey and i want to dovetail off of what the earlier gentleman said about the political parties, democratic and republican, and how they are basically failing us as a people and failing people in general. i think that the people in the

communities, the people across the nation actually need to wake up to the fact that we are being gamed. so many people have said and it has been written in so many news articles that the democrats and the republicans are two wings of the same bird and we are being played like the monkey in the middle. right now we are having this discussion about the deficit ceiling and should it be raised and so on and so forth. and the details are being kept away from us. what are they talking about cutting? who is going to be heard in this process? obama is giving a generous negotiating invitation to the republicans. what does that entail? we are never told and by the time we found out it is too late and then there will be protests in the street all over the place. of course, the city apparatus is always building up their police forces. >> do you really think there will be protests in the streets? >> i'm sure because they are talking about cutting medicaid

and social security. they are talking about cutting medicaid and social security. >> but the question is? >> the argument is, the argument is that the people need to be more politically awakened, politically aware. we need to be more actively involved in what goes on in our governing. >> i for one would be very happy to see protests in the streets. but whenever a lasting process in the streets? the fact of the matter is that people have an opiate. we continue to hear about things that are going to happen. we all bring our cancer people have not responded. here is the deal and when we talk about voter suppression, you are first of all suppressing all people. old people are the ones being hit by social security, medicaid and medicare cuts. so you cut their voter

opportunities and obviously the people who are being cut have nothing to say that they can't vote. i am with you, i would love to hear or see people rise up. but the fact is that, we all shut up and we are here quiet, opa did, silent and i am wanting students for example to gallop out cuts in pell grants. how dare we cut pell grants. how dare we take the poor students in our nation and say to them that they are going to be cut more than that. we give aig and other people low interest loans but our students still pay six and 7% on loans? but do you know what? it is okay. we don't say anything so my brother, you take that energy. i love your energy. take it to the streets. >> that we have been taking it to the streets and there have

been protests. we live in a nation that seems to be manipulated by a mass media. >> i knew it was going to come back to the media. [laughter] thank you so much. unfortunately we are running out of time but once you lay blame on the mass media than we then we are all sacked. thank you. >> people are activated and people are protesting and that is why myself i have joined the freedom party. the freedom party has been involved in massive protest to change the way education is being destroyed. >> thank you so much. thank you very much. i appreciate your efforts. we are told that we are at the end of our time. i want to thank julianne malveaux, dr. malveaux for a wonderful "surviving and thriving" and "black titan."

thank you so much. i am carol jenkins.d@hhhh

all of this color and a lot of its flavor. currently they discovered over 200 chemical flavors just in who bought char from the beryl. this weekend we highlight frankfurt kentucky. throughout the weekend look for the history and literary life of

kentucky state capital. on book tv on c-span2 vice, violence corruption and the renewal. now a discussion on the state of the book from the book festival, this is a little less than an hour. >> i've been in the book business for two decades and have met a lot of wonderful and smart people and an pleased to say five of those colleagues are

here on the stage to discuss the frustrating industry that we love. next week in new york city people from all corners of the book industry will gather at bouck expo america to discuss every aspect of the industry. i suspect many of the topics you hear about today will be the same subjects discussed in new york next week so please, sit back as we offer you and the viewers and exciting chance to see behind the curtain of the powers to determine what you'll read in the future. the moderator's journalist michael norris, senior analyst at the book research firm information and the a butcher of the book publishing report. without further ado i will turn things over to michael. enjoy the panel. [applause] >> thank you very much, gene. my name is michael norris and i may senior analyst from simba information. with me today is martha from the legendary politics and prose independent bookstore, jeff lyons the president and ceo of rowman and littlefield and head

of the national book award, geoff shandler of little book company and gail ross of the ross yoon agency. i want to start with a few words. i think studying the publishing industry for about seven years now, and it's actually a pretty long time if you think about everything that's happened in just the past 3e and have come up over the past seven years or so i have watched a lot of changes going on in terms of not just what is being said about the future of books but also was actually talking about it because over the years a lot of newspapers have scaled back their coverage of books and i can't think of a single paper of the top of my head that scaled back their coverage of the technical industry of the tech industry. so a lot of what we are seeing in just the day-to-day press either comes from the viewer and the lines of the columnist or is

it actually comes, the marketing department of a multibillion-dollar organization that really has a big financial stake in the future of books. so it's actually very important to remember that if someone has a future that is completely and 100% tied up in the books they will tell you the future of the book and state of the book is all about the ebook. now, to try to separate the rhetoric from the reality of simba information from research, we've put together a nationally representative u.s. consumer survey coming and we wanted to go to the entire population basically to ask who is buying these things any way? do you by e-book, what do you recall how many books to you by and so forth, and over the three-year period we've been collecting the data we have recently began collecting it quarterly for the 2011 report

and we found that about 90% of the u.s. adult population hasn't bought a single solitary digital book. not a single ebook and we also found because we ask critical questions in the surveys that they still outnumber the buyers about five period one. and the other thing we found out, actually this is interesting is that with everything that's been said about some of the new developments that are out there such as the ipad, we found about 40% of all ipad owners in the u.s. haven't read a single solitary e-book on the ipad. so it's once we actually have a lot of independent and objective information about the book industry, you think you can talk about the state of the book and rather than doing that i want to talk about the state of one book, and this is a book that i've brought about six weeks ago. i was in the london book fair walking across this massive

exhibition hall and i saw something that struck me day in my tracks. a very large black wall which is the side of the publishers booth and on the wall where either of the photographs have the 2-foot by 3-foot photographs of old looking bicycles and if you spend time with the outside of books you really into bicycles. i saw the signs and i thought to myself this is an incredible book. it was encyclopedia. i knew nothing about the book. i didn't know where it was published or what it was. i had to have it and i made up my mind at the moment i was not going to leave london without this book and i know you're all wondering but yes i was able to get the book. i came in the next day i was able to get it and this book was about this large, this thick, it's very heavy and it had -- i get to. around with me the rest of the day because i never made it back to my hotel, but i was really

grateful to do that because the book is literally so gorgeous i'm thinking about building a coffee table just to go with now, let me discuss the future of the book. we really can't build it on anything that steve jobs holds over his head because at the end of the day, you are not framing and creating content for telling a story to a device that is going to take declared obsolete in the 11 months. the future of the book regardless of the format or how it's distributed has to do with selling one book at a time to one person at a time and making the book have so much value that somebody like myself did at the london book fair wouldn't care about any price barriers or any content barriers in order to get it. we are always going to have print books forever. you can write that down and i

will sign my name we will have print books forever what we will also have the books forever, and the future of the book will involve all of us talking about where one stands in relation to the other and how we can get innovative and intelligent people to talk about ways to make the industry better. so with that i would like to introduce our first panelists. jed lyons of rahman and little publishing group. rahman and little publishes about 1200 books annually under the imprint of rowman and littlefield commentary dale prez, governor institutes, tayler trade and others. he also serves as the ceo of the national book network and a distributor of 200 independent publishers which rowman and littlefield launched 96. he graduated from college in 1974 and is a member of the

chief executive organization the council on foreign relations and the chapter of the washington national cathedral. welcome. >> thank you. >> well, i've often heard the book business referred to as the accidental profession and when i first got into the business 36 years ago i asked why there's no way to prepare to be a publisher. you couldn't go and get a degree in publishing. you can now get a master's degree in publishing. but the accidental profession has been for a long time. so if you will indulge me for a moment i will share with you my accidental experience. so, my guess is most of us in the book business i was an english major but it started in high school with a fabulous teacher at a suburban high

school outside of chicago, barrington high school. in the 1960's i was lucky enough to have a fantastic english teacher named charlie wright, and in this gigantic public high school outside of chicago, charlie would show up every day wearing a fleece jacket, a paisley ascots long beard, long hair, and he was our hero. everything we wanted to be. so he got as interested in reading and writing. most of us had never had any interest in it at all. but we were very lucky to have a guy like him. so after high school literally the day after i graduated i hitchhiked around the country to visit all of my favorite authors i started off at conquer massachusetts and i spent a week

for managing the park rangers because i didn't realize. i spent a week with trying to commune and then i hitchhiked down to new london connecticut where eugene o'neill and even one of the bartenders. from there i went down to see thomas wolfe then after mexico because i was a big fan of the time and actually met d.h. lawrence' with no fleet in life married a leader woman, she was still living in the house. so by now you can imagine i have a full head of steam after a summer of visiting the famous authors homes, and finally when i got to san francisco checking

out all of the poet's y met in the bookstore in san francisco. so now i'm off to college and of course i'm going to be an english major and i was lucky enough to have some great teachers, too who would teach melville and we would go to the home of the professor which was on the rocks overlooking the atlantic and he would talk about ahab and the whale and was all very real to me. so after college, more hitchhiking, and now i am trying to become a great american novelist, and i am not making much headway. i am having a great time. but i am finding it very difficult to sit down and actually write something in the short stories.

so, eventually i just had to come to the realization i wasn't going to be the great american writer. maybe i was going to explore something else in the publishing scene like the next best thing. so, 36 years ago we started our little company here in maryland. that was after i counted on new york city to find a job in publishing a that was in 1975 there were for a few jobs available. anyway, i never regretted the choice. publishing is a wonderful business and also today when i meet people for the first time the kind of look at me like i have a terminal illness