it's too exhausting and weary to keep up the facade. the argument. but what it's about is about whether you get back up again. whether you are willing to own up to your mistakes and whether you are willing to correct your mistakes and whether you are willing to forge ahead in spite of the opposition. so that's why i chose to address many of the things i did in my book and talk about it where i came from and some of the hardships that i personally endured so that people can be inspired to get involved. ..

>> are very excited to be talking politics today, and i can't think of two better people that i'd rather talk politics with on a sunday afternoon than congressman major owens and bob hardt. i hope you all had a chance to read this book. if you haven't, you should buy it. you should read it. and you should get the congressmen to sign it. if you're a political junkie, it's a really great book. and if you're not a political junkie, you will become one after you read it. so it's very exciting. so to my left -- and i wonder if this is purposeful or not is

congressman major owens. he's -- of course, he's a democrat. he's a former congressman but we always call him congressman. he represented the 11th congressional district in the house of representatives. the communities were, i guess, brownsville, east new york, parts of flatbush, parts of oak slope and i'm sure i'm missing one or two -- part of bedford. a good central brooklyn part of crown heights. a good central district. he was elected in 1983 and served until 2007. he decided not to run for re-election in 2006. also the author of the book which we'll be talking about and is a professor at medgar evers college in brooklyn. >> bob is slowly becoming a true

legend in the political media circuit world of new york city government. he's executive producer and political director for new york one, which we all watch. his imprint is very strong on inside city hall and on all things. so, bob, we thank you for being here today. so what i'm going to do is really just kind of serve as a little bit of a moderator, a little bit of an emcee. and if things get heated, i'll try and control everyone but i don't think they will. so, bob, i'm going to turn it over to you and maybe you can do a little intro, and then congressman, we'll hear your thoughts and then we'll really make this a dialog and get some questions in and everything. is that good? bob? >> thank you so much i thought i knew a fair amount about you,

congressman, when i read your book i learned a lot more. and one thing which i thought was very appropriate today when you moved to new york city, you're a tennessee native but when you moved here to new york city after you graduated from moore house started working at the brooklyn public library and you were an aspiring novelist and playwright and i did not know that and i thought today was an extremely appropriate at the brooklyn book fair to have you here. i hope i'm not giving this way and you're still working on a novel. i looking forward to perhaps being here next year when we can discuss your novel rather than "the peacock elite." the "the peacock elite" is your study of the congressional black caucus which, of course, you were a member of 24 years when you were serving in washington. and you never come out and say what the "the peacock elite" is. it's at times a positive thing. and i think at times a negative

thing and i think good opening question is, who are oig in terms of the congressional black caucus and why is it sometimes good and why is it sometimes bad? >> well, thank you very much for your introduction. thank you two for reading the book. [laughter] >> i want to say the previous panel here had a room full of people and they were talking about -- [inaudible] >> and politics. it's very interesting. i should have joined them with my points and it's a big audience because that's the way it goes. you take some of the pop culture and you get a bigger audience.

politicians have done this and make it official from a to z, from congress down to city council members, all have learned that the code of pop culture prevails in america. and a money of a bullet in terms of bob culture. it doesn't matter what it's known for. and they know you for that particular cause but they want somebody who's highly visible so much of that pop culture style and credo has infected politics until you have a vast majority

of politicians who are into just being peacocks, just strutting out -- just emphasizing their style, getting their names on and not doing the homework, the workhorse part of the business, i think there should be some balance. i criticize myself saying it was a bit of an imbalance so it should be about balance and i talk in my book about the balance approach. but they're gone overboard in terms of just enough of the peacock. so i'm glad there's tremendous amounts of literature -- of legislation that never gets written and it's good legislation. and the mobilization and the manipulation and things that have to be done by members of congress behind the scenes to make it happen if it's not there. you know, we talk about and are upset about the great deal of power that people who have money

have, power and influence, you know, combined the billionaires, about 400 billionaires with the multimillionaires so it's about 1,000, 1500 people who have -- a greatest percentage of wealth in america and we're upset about that. and we say that they use that wealth to also exert influence over our democracy. but michael moore the other day said it quite simply. we outnumber them in a democracy, we're still so many more of them. 150 million voters. they only have one vote. all the rich and powerful only have one vote. we outnumber them in terms of voting and only if we let them push us into a situation where they can dominate the thinking and brainwash the population because they have the money to do it with the media -- thomas jefferson talks about the blood of the each generation that has to be shed in order to guarantee democracy, we don't have to go that far.

not blade, but sweat is necessary. it's necessary for us to be much more active in our own political arena to make it work. we don't need to have spring. but americans have grown too slow and lazy and you have the tea party people who are showing us -- one good thing they are showing what a small group can do when they become very active. why don't we have a counterveiling force? a black caucus should be that kind of counterveiling force and my emphasis on the book but what i learned in the black caucus is something i'd like to see carried over. we need more groups like that. madison said, democracy should be dependent on counterveiling groups, forces against each other in a peaceful set of

jostling, peaceful jostling. if that doesn't happen we don't have accountability groups then one group that is in motion will run over us. so what i say about the black caucus is they -- they have accomplished a great deal. my book is a criticism of what we have not accomplished and could have accomplished. my book is also praising them, which you don't get enough of, politicians, elected officials don't get praised enough for what they do good. and my book also is a recommendation about how they might operate in the future to do a better job. in this modern complex world of ours we need to streamline the operation. we did some great things and i'll go into it later but we can't accomplish the same kinds of things without a different kind of setup, a different set of streamline operations and it could be applied to the new york state caucus, you know, each state under dramatic

organizations -- each state -- i mean, each -- they have regions and each state is the big state like california or texas, new york, they have -- they have their own caucus. new york is a caucus under the bigger democratic caucus. it is a recognized regional caucus. it's one of the worst regional caucus we have in terms of the operation in terms of solidarity and moving together to produce results. there's a whole lot of peacocking in the new york delegation as a whole. black caucus members, particularly on the spot because in our society, in black society we don't have the kinds of institutions which would help whip people into line that we do have in the larger society and that makes it more and threatening situation with respect to blacks than anybody else, yes. >> you pointed out the power of the caucus the caucus was found in 1971 just 13 minutes and now i believe it's up to 41 voting members. you trace the history while you

were there very well and you just touched on something that you wrote about in the book that i wanted to read back to you and the audience and i wanted you to reflect on that and explain what you meant 'cause it was very critical and i was surprised how critical you were. you wrote, one of the causes of the abominable state of black america is predatory leadership. and then you go on to write, at the pinnacle of power in washington, the congressional black caucus has blundered too often and despite its scoring of significant highly visible triumphs, it is routinely failed to systematically accumulate greater powers consistent with its potential. so i wanted to ask you what -- what -- has the cbc not done that you think should do moving forward? >> well, we had a lot of triumphs. we haven't talked about that but you want to talk first about the blunders. major blunders have taken place in terms of the caucus and not keeping its eye on matters which affect the black population that

they serve first of all and most of all. one was ronald reagan slashed the republican budget by one-half, 50%, 50% of public housing was cut under ronald reagan. there was not much of a fight from the congressional black caucus. >> why was that? >> we had divisions of interest. you know, one of the good things we did we broke up the major functions that affected our people into categories. one was housing. a brain trust for housing, brain trust for education. brain trust for welfare. >> your education. >> my brain trust was education. and whereas any congressman, like a good librarian who is supposed to know a little bit about everything and i think i did, you can't know deeply what's going on in all of those things and that's why we relied on each other. and the man who happened to be in charge of the welfare happened to be howard ford, sr., who the ways and means committee

which is a strange place to have the welfare program but there's a reason for that, they want to control and so they put it under a place where they got the least amount of sympathy in my opinion. he was -- avenues subcommittee committee chairman of the committee responsible for welfare so he was out welfare brain trust person. he announced at the beginning of the gingrich drive to demonize the welfare people and cut down the welfare people because clinton felt it was necessary to get re-elected, he announced that we are not going to move one inch. the caucus is going to stand firm unless there's a job training program and they have jobs that pay $8 an hour, you know, it was a great thing that howard ford jumped out and announced and then he disappeared and he didn't go any caucus meetings. he'd stuck his head and we'd move on. we never acting report from him and we looked up and things are going down the drain and clinton

is ready to gave in, and he caved in without having to fight the caucus. >> so the caucus never did anything -- >> the caucus never did anything. he would some favors with the white house, when he was in trouble with life having gotten a banking loan, a savings and loan banks situation and he was put on trial and the clinton administration helped out. we all helped out but to pay off that debt, he betrayed us and betrayed the welfare population. he made a big deal out of the situation where farmers continue to get huge subsidies. you want to see where the welfare is, they are just beginning to let people know. oil companies get huge welfare subsidies. all those subsidies were not being discussed. the welfare people were about to break and bankrupt the nation and us not having a leadership on the follow up on that is not

one of the great things. the last thing that hurt a great deal was katrina. it embarrassed the bush administration. and they turned to the black caucus, you take the responsibility of us and they appropriate billions of dollars and gave us an opportunity to come up with a program. that was my last year there. i was a lame duck. but we didn't come up with a program, you know. as a lame duck i guess i was sort of ignored as being a nerd going out. i put on the table a program which would have kept creating jobs in louisiana, kept the population there and been able to save what we've lost, you know. louisiana's loss is the black power base. the black population is never coming back and they're never going to have that power again.

and it's loss and we had in our grasp the power to come up with a program and they didn't. in the end the task force came up with a statement that president bush had come up with a plan to end poverty in 10 years and use louisiana -- new orleans and katrina as an example, a model, and so forth. bush, they handed it to the fox. they handed the hen house to the fox. >> let me just -- >> that kind of blunder, you know, was unacceptable. >> you talked a little bit about republicans. did your during your time with the congressional black caucus -- i think the audience would be curious, were there black african-american republicans as part of the caucus? and if so, what was the relationship with the democrats? >> i believe there were six republicans elected, black republicans elected to congress. while over the course of the history of the caucus. i don't know if all of them were

there when you were there. >> over the course of the caucus, only one decided when i was there. from connecticut. >> studs? >> i think it was studs, gary. i forget his last name. he didn't last i think for one term. he got defeated. but he's the only 100 and several others -- >> congressman watts decided not to join. >> he was there at the same time. he decided not to and i understand they have one now -- can't hear me well? [laughter] >> and i know senator brook from massachusetts -- >> the senator from brooks from massachusetts was a republican. he used to drop by once month or so. >> now you've also had -- there's been a couple white congressmen who actually wanted to join the caucus. >> more than a couple of white

congressmen wanted to join the white caucus as the population shifted and the district shifted there was an outcry of people who said well, this should not be a segregated caucus. we don't have anything that says a white cannot join. just the situation is such that they're not encouraged to join. at one point we had friends of the caucus to accommodate the people who wanted to identify with the friends of the caucus and then the progressive caucus came on strong and there were no demand to do that anymore because you had a blacks and whites joined the caucus in the progressive caucus. >> you talked about when newt gingrich took over how you have a great description of him. you said he had a style a little bit of everything from stalin, mao and goebbels when he came in. and you talked about how he tried to almost dessertfy -- i don't know what the exact term is but do away with the caucus.

what exactly happened when gingrich took over with the cbc? >> well, gingrich saw the cbc as being a threat, too strong. he also he didn't want any other like that. you had the blue dog coalition was coming on. >> and we should explain the blue dog coalition is a group of conservative democrats who created their own counter-group to sort of counter the cbc? >> not just counter their cbc. their primary concern was to keep the farm subsidies going on and they did because they made alliances with the military industrial complex and they're a small group. there are only 32 districts that serve farmers, a very small group but they get a huge sum of money. they got $100 million appropriation for one year at the same time that welfare was only getting 16 billion. and welfare serves many more million people than farmers.

the amount of quota, the amount of money paid out to farmers was $360,000. welfare family of four you got $6,000 a year and the most generous states in new york. but they demonized welfare in order to make certain that their part was there. it's the most ridiculous subsidy going. maybe the oil subsidies is another motive but at that time it was the most highly publicized subsidy going and they were able to maintain it and they had alliances with powerful forces like the military industrial complex. newt gingrich wanted to get rid of the complex. he got rid of the whole pattern. there was a democratic caucus that was funded, you know, with the public funds. democratic study group. all kinds of groups were phased out on newt gingrich but i think

particularly they should get rid of the black caucus and that kind of opposition. he was also smart enough to try to appeal to us and he came once and sort of -- in the back hand kind of way said, you know, you guys are never going to take back the house so why don't you think about coming over to our side. >> right. >> he said that once and i think he was embarrassed by having -- he never said it again. we turned it down at the time. one of the problems i have is the way the atmosphere is and the black caucus it is possible that the caucus could swing and in 10 years it could be on the right instead of on the left. it's that bad. the power of the democracy, the people who make contributions are so great and there's so many young people who are disappointed who came into the caucus, congratulations of yale, harvard, wharton school very educated young men who don't have the martin luther king seal. who are not dedicated and they will sell out and they have sold

out. the harold ford model, jr., model. the people i call predator peacocks. they will go for anything. they've been discovered by the powerful rich, harold ford is now out of congress. he lost his bid for the senate in tennessee but he was brought here in new york city. he's in new york city now working for one of the banks. i think it's citibank for $2.5 million a year. that's his salary. so the stakes are up and other members know they can go in that direction and a number of other members who are defeated are retired working as lobbyistists now. it's a whole different ball game and a whole dangerous ball game because they have safe seats. they can get elected by blacks without newspapers and radio stations and television stations that are going to criticize them and monitor them. they can get away with a lot of things and you will have them switching over slowly to the

majority to the right. it is possible in the next 10 years. i worry about that a great deal. >> you talk about oufshl how the cbc has been unified as if it was one of the largest states in the union in terms of delegation size. were there any issues -- nafta comes to mind for me but i'm sure there's other, maybe the first gulf war. were there any issues that really split at least internally there was a big debate among the cbc hey, how should we go besides nafta or the gulf war? >> well, basically the cbc members were against nafta all but four voted against the gulf war, you know, four members of the caucus voted with bush. those have been pretty much unified. and the overall defense budget and the whole orientation. there are a couple of members

who are really advocates for the military industrial complex. they represent districts which have a majority of black people and a majority of those people are poor. but at the same time, their votes don't reflect that. but every time there's an issue related to the military industrial complex, then they're voting for it. there is a contradiction there. you cannot come out with a strong black caucus budget unless you show where you're going to get the money to finance the nonmilitary programs so over the years the criticism of the military industrial complex by the black caucus has lessened, you know, when delloms was in charge of our military brain trust, we were very critical of the military industrial complex even when he was on the committee. even when he headed the committee, he voted -- i mean, he presented what the committee brought to him and they were all these things that we couldn't go

along with. delloms got on the floor and voted against his own committee. when he left things were beginning to fall apart and there are a couple of members that come from districts that happen to have military bases. all the majority population is still black. they don't serve that black population. their interests are with that military industrial complex in their district which makes sure they get elected, makes sure they get donations and they'll be there for a long time unless we have some critical forces outside which puts them on the spot and exposes what's going on. bobby scott in virginia, a very nice guy, very well educated, yale law school graduate, a moore house graduate they both represent areas of high military concentrations and they do the bidding of the military industrial complex first before they do anything else. >> one of your major issues when you were in congress was that education. i want to ask you about education here in new york.

you've seen the pendulum swing both ways from centralization to decentralization back to now where we're heavily a centralized system with one chancellor where it's basically one by city hall. does one model work better for you than the other? should the school system here be centralized? should things be run top down from city hall? or is that model not work? in other words, does the bloomberg model working now? >> i've been involved in education in new york city for most of my adult life, my political life certainly. when i was a commissioner at cda, one of the procedure concerns of cda was education. when i went to the state legislature i was on the state education committee. and when i went to congress i became a member of the education and labor committee so i've been concerned about education in a very active way for all of my political life. i've seen the pendulum swing all over the place and there's no easy answer to your question

except the thing that does not work with control. i think inherent in that top level control is not just plenty of room as a person but i think any control which is corporate oriented where orders come from the top and it's contempt for the people at the bottom the. the corporate model doesn't care for democracy no matter what they say. there's contempt for parents. there's contempt for elected officials. bloomberg not only did not involve parents in decision-making and they also left -- froze out the elected officials in communities. and what do we got? we got some great ideas. and some great breakthroughs in terms of training and emulating what goes on in industry in general but overall, the system is collapsed in terms of being able to improve the education of children. and one of the reasons they've locked out families and parents

and community. it won't work. a better system is a board of education with a mayor who makes education the top priority but does not try to micromanage it. you cannot micromanage it. you end up making the kind of blunders that have been made. >> so i think i want to open it up to some questions. we have about 20 minutes left. and maybe i'll just start by asking both of you, since we're talking politics and, congressman, your opinion, we had a very interesting congressional race last tuesday. i think people were either shocked or dismayed and some were not surprised at all with the results. maybe both of you can share your thoughts and then we'll start with questions from the audience. congressman? >> well, i'm baffled by the results on the one hand. as i think more about it, there's some things that need to

be examined quite closely. i don't think ed koch does not have that much power although he does have power and influence when you combine with him giuliani, double power and influence. those two men have done a great deal to divide and conquer. koch started and divided the minority communities from the white progressive community. he made that division, started it and giuliani just blatantly poured more salt into the wound and built a tremendous division in the city which in sharp -- where people like sharpton have not helped because they're playing the game of spoiler made it impossible for white progressives to trust plaques and blacks didn't trust white progressives who weren't willing to take strong positions in matters that related most to them. this was supported and then our

media, of course, has chosen to champion the colorful blacks and the blacks at least responsible. shops you could get headlines in the media including the "new york times." and when ruth messenger ran and you didn't hear anything about the black officials supporting -- you only heard the chaplain was running against her. when ms. hostman ran, the only district attorney in the history of new york state who challenged a police brutality case and had policemen circling her office picketing. she championed the cause and yet sharpton ran against her in that three and four race and he was the spoiler and nobody knew all the black leaders were supporting liz because the media in this city only dealt with the colorful blacks, the blacks who are strong leaders always ignored as has been the

traditional pattern in the city. so what was the question again? >> about the election results. >> so that divide and conquer thing out there interests me a great deal. when you have roman catholics uniting with ed koch. and giuliani -- i would like to see what the minority vote is. there's a strong hispanic vote -- population out there. they threw in these same-sex marriage issue and nobody is talking about that. what i would like to see what's the possible impact of the same-sex marriage issue there where you have orthodox jews against same-sex marriage and you have catholics against same-sex marriage, what kind of unity are they on that issue beyond the situation where koch was of paramount concern is making obama pay for his position on israel. yong it was quite that simple.

i think it was more complex. >> bob? >> i live in the district and it's a really interesting question if you look at how the votes went. it's kind of i'd say almost a reagan democrat district. it's majority white, catholic, like the congressman said, orthodox jew as well but if you look at the results on the queen side 1, not handily won about 55-45. if you go to the brooklyn side of the special election which was manhattan beach, parts of sheep's head bay, a little bit of coney island, brighton beach, overwhelming went for bob turner. i believe 70-30 so it's interesting we think brooklyn it's the second largest democratic county outside of cook county in illinois, this small pocket of brooklyn basically sent bob turner to congress. i think it's very interesting. i think some of the issues that the congressman brought up, gay marriage and israel with the

orthodox committee were definitely there. and you talk about people with turnout, and it was a very strong turnout in some of those neighborhoods so that's -- i don't think there's this big global oh, everybody is unhappy with obama. when you look at how turner and weiner did two years ago, or a year ago, weiner barely won that section of brooklyn so i think the more interesting story to do and the thing to do is let's go to that place -- those areas in brooklyn, talk to people and find out what's going 'cause it's definitely different than what the rest -- how the rest of the district is voting. >> it is interesting because if you take neighboring districts in brooklyn that in, i guess, in '10 voted against the democrat incumbent to congressman and voted for a almost, i guess, a staunch republican opponent, you almost see a trend in southern brooklyn and i think the congressman is right. the roman catholics and some orthodox jewish voters that are

kind of coming together to support conservative republicans. but, okay, so questions from the audience. we have someone that's going to be walking around with a microphone so please -- mr. owens? >> i guess this isn't really fair for me to ask the question. since i'm chris owens and i'm the congressman's son but i do want to hear the congressman's response to how the congressional black caucus is doing today in the context of an obama presidency? it seems that the current chair representative cleaver has triad to take a more forceful stand on some issues in his peacocking role. what are you sensing from the workhorse side? >> well, i came here saying i was going to try to avoid using names. i have great respect for mr. cleaver. his rise is long overdue and i think that it's good that he's there. but he's only been there since january as a chairman.

the previous chairman barbara lee has much to be commended for, her great vote -- she's the only one who voted against satisfying, going into afghanistan shortly after 9/11 so she's famous for that. she's the person who was headed to the task force on katrina which decided to end by saying let george bush come up with a plan to save the poor using katrina as a model of how it can be done. i'm still furious about that. that kind of neglect of homework is partially, i think, what has happened with obama. for one. for two, rahm emanuel was in charge of the white house and i don't think that was good at all for the black caucus. rahm emanuel was certainly very unfriendly towards black. i hate to call him a racist but

in my book, you can see some pretty strong things he said. >> he said he looked at the caucus with contempt i think is what you were -- >> he had contempt for the caucus. so if he had to arrange meetings with obama, i'm sure he was -- he was one of the people who blocked it. for two, i think some of the leadership in the caucus, not necessarily the elected leadership of the caucus, jim clyburn was a primary leader. he's the strongest. he was a majority whip under the first two years when -- he was a whip for the whole democratic party. and he's a great politician. he's a great, you know, guy and there's a lot of things -- he should be commented for. but he was pretty much -- he liked to go solo and i don't think -- i think he enjoyed having power directly with the president himself and not encouraging the whole caucus to

participate. now, i know this is being recorded and i'll get into trouble. but i stand by my words. >> good. yes, sir. you want to bring a mic here? [inaudible] >> found yourself in trouble, congressman. i've heard you speak about the things that you feel that obama has done positively. you speak generally none of positive terms of the president. i haven't heard you address the concerns that i would have about foreign policy, about the -- his role in libya, about his continuation of some of the attitudes towards security -- the security civil liberties divide. and i'd like to hear you speak about your critique of his presidency especially perhaps in those areas? >> well, as you've heard me

also, i think he's been a magnificent president. he's done a great job. and i think very few presidents even hated abraham lincoln have had to undergo the kind of rigorous attacks, that he's undergone, even harry truman didn't have to put up with quite that kind of constant bombardment and often the media not helping at all with their little subtle ways of undercutting him also. so i think he's done a magnificent job overall. but like all official leaders, all politicians, there are things -- there are weaknesses like all tragic heroes they have flaws. and there's some clear flaws that have to be pinpointed. one of those flaws has been corrected. he fell in the trap of compromise, compromising. i think i attribute that to when

i heard that rahm emanuel was going to be his chief of staff, i'm not surprised that that pattern prevailed. this friendship with the republican party and this buddy-buddy situation we can work these things out has its limitations. i think he's learned the hard way that pretty early they made it clear that it doesn't matter what he does, they weren't going to cooperate. so we're in the fourth quarter now and he's finally come out fighting the way he should come out fighting to let it be known exactly where he stands. and he will go in that area and he's fill some of the gaps and some of the gaps are in my opinion a domestic. he did a lousy job on education. and trusting people like bloomberg and having al sharpton becoming the spokesperson for black people and education in new york, those kinds of blunders are ridiculous. but some of the other race to the top and others things they moved too slowly.

and they ignored some of the wisdom that's accumulated over the years among people who are educators, professional educators. they've taken the bloomberg approach, business people can do a better job and they've treated educators with too much contempt so that's the area. on the housing front, a great deal of fear there. fear of the bankers in my opinion. do you know that new york on state in the depression -- there was an assemblyman who passed the law that you can freeze the foreclosures and it passed. it was challenged in new york state courts. it went all the way to the supreme court. the supreme court upheld it as being the federal government -- the government has the power to freeze foreclosures because it's so involved with the mortgage and so forth. that kind of power still laying there. the present administration has really used very little power to deal with this whole mortgage foreclosure situation. on foreign policy, you know, you

and i may differ on libya, i think too many times we set by and let genocide take place and then afterward we've regretted it. afterward we regretted it. but to take vigorous action then you're called a warmonger, you know? so i don't agree we should not have been forceful in libya against a fanatic who had said -- he announced i'm going to slaughter the people he announced it, you know, and proceeded. i saw the slaughter take place in haiti, for a couple of years. people lying dead in the street when we were reluctant to do anything about it. finally we went in and that's one of the great triumphs of the black caucus. they got clinton who was very reluctant and two-thirds of the people in the country were not in favor of doing anything to help haiti but we went in with troops finally and i always said to clinton, it's not an invasion. you're going to escort the newly

elected president elected by overwhelmingly majority in a supervised election by the u.n. and they threw him out and he has been killing people, 5,000 people killed in a couple of years. the people are not going to support the army. the army knows that. and when your troops arrive they are going to throw their uniforms in the bush and run. they did. not a single -- 22,000 soldiers went into haiti. that's colin powell's doctrine of overwhelming force and we didn't need any. there was not a single casualty. in the haitian army, there was 600 noncommissioned officers. in the u.s. army, 609 noncommissioned army. when i arrived in haiti to reinstate aristide, this is one of the great moments have the black caucus. we need that. we even got arrested. we sat in front of the white

house and got arrested, several members of the caucus including myself. but you don't know about it 'cause the media ignores that kind of thing. but anyway, i do think that libya and the way we behaved in libya of, whatever the problems are, it's better than having another rwanda on our conscious and that's where it was going. some of the worst in rwanda in my opinion. >> okay, sir? just wait for the mic and we have about five minutes left of the program so we'll take this question and one more. >> there are a couple questions. i didn't hear everything you said. i guess you were saying sharpton has impacted things negatively. it seems to know one of the things that i was hearing about. the other is to get people --

elections to go in that direction next year. what about pac so all this tea party doesn't have all the company. and i'm involved in the n.o.w. the national organization of women and other activists group. what can we do to get some of the more positive attention that will get the democrats stronger and re-elected like the way the congress was up to last year? >> what can we do? >> how we're going about it. >> i'm a disciple of martin luther king and i think a nonviolent direction action would be very useful, and it should be united and try in new york to set a precedent and bring the progressive community together, progressive white community together with the minority communities that was

split apart by koch and giuliani on things like unemployment on things like the deterioration of the school system, et cetera. some direct actions which could be accomplished with unity and they could not ignore -- the press could not ignore. if you had a wall street job search and every day when you send the unemployment and down to wall street just to hang around and ask for jobs, you would not be ignored by the press, i assure you. you'll find enough people to get some attention, you know. if you had a situation where you just threaten to have some traffic stoppages, we stopped traffic all over the city for the community action program. it was a small group. and unless you deal with some changes specifically -- be specific, you got to be specific in the school system we want to

go back to a board of education where the majority of people who want to label it education which operates schools and we want parents to be included. lay it out and go out there and say we're going to block traffic and don't tell them where you're going to block traffic. there's no police force that can cover all the points, you know. all kinds of ways you can play with nonviolence and the process of working for people to work on a nonviolent gorilla action handbook of things that can be done, nonviolently. the opposite is that things are going to keep getting so bad until it gets out of hand. we can't deal if people get valid and you have rights and people are hungry and unemployment -- nothing's happening. it just isn't going to go like that forever. britain, london -- london, even london found that you can push people only so far and then it

gets out of hand. you don't know what happened. there's no leadership. we don't want that to happen. we have to get up off of it as i said before, stop being leah. stop being smug and use our democratic constitution privileges in a nonviolent way to create a situation where our elected officials have to move and act in a more positive way. >> last question and we'll wrap it up in about 2 minute. >> this will be multitiered. i didn't hear what the police brutality case was with elizabeth holesman that she was working -- >> i'm sorry. i can't hear you. >> i didn't hear what police brutality case you were referring to with regard to elizabeth holesman where the police were surrounding her place. the other two questions would be obama or president obama did not

allow a delegation or is not allowing a delegation to go to the international conference on racism, bush sent barbara lee even though he's a conservative. and then also they're allegedly going to veto out of hand the palestinian state with obama and i would like you to address in relation with president obama and also where the cbc stands on these things. >> well, the police brutality case -- i don't remember specifically it was at the time. but elizabeth conducted an investigation and upset the police here in new york. and he did put a picket line around her office as a result. i cited that because clearly police brutality was a major issue in the black community. one of those many issues that holesman stood for, not just that but that was one highly dramatized issue.

yet, when she ran for senate, you know, votes were undercut by greatly based on sharpton entered the race and knew he couldn't win and he's always a spoiler in every race he's been in and that spoiler thing -- when you have blacks attracted because he's the guy played up by the media, they knew more about him than they knew about us elected officials who were endorsing holesman. us, the elected officials endorsing him and they didn't know because our newspapers and media didn't bother to tell them that but every step sharpton made was colorful and, you know, he was a good peacock and got a lot of publicity and he suede our population to go and vote for him, even though, you know, it was a hopeless wasteful vote. on the other issues that you raised they are more

complicated, in terms of the palestine y palestinian vote situation. i think it's sort of the u.n. will decide, you know? no matter what we do, the united nations vote is going to sort of bind the world. and, you know, i think at this point there's -- it's not an issue that should be put on obama's table and in his lap. it's out of his hands and they're going to decide on an international basis -- and this country will be isolated if it just ignores it. and i just don't understand how else we could deal with it. [inaudible] >> international conference on racism, why didn't -- >> well, i have no idea. i'm sorry, kent. i can't answer that. i don't know. >> okay. so i think we will wrap it up now, congressman owens, thank

you for a great presentation. a great book. you'll be able to meet the congressman downstairs to sign books; is that correct? >> let me -- let me. >> so you'll come downstairs if you're interested in a book. bob hardt from new york 1 -- >> i have no book to sign. >> he has no book but i'll tell you one thing, you should take a few minutes and talk to bob about politics 'cause it's always very fascinating. >> let me make one closing statement. >> yeah, please and we still have a few more events before the end of the day so enjoy the rest of the book festival. >> i said at the beginning the room was full inprevious panel and you had rap music commentators and artists who are discussing politics is serious issues and so forth but there was more interest and i should have brought some of my rap poems. let me just close out with a portion of one of them that i think is very relevant because i wrote it in the early 1990s,

1991 or '92 and it's so relevant still now until -- it's always on my mind. one of the first rap forms i wrote and put it in a congressional record it was a poem about the meeting that took place at the white house to decide how to cut the budget. it was the old question on the table right now cutting the budget. it was on the table then and the danger was that they would cut all the budgets that helped the people who had the greatest needs then and then same dangers now and my rap poem was at the great white dc mansion there's a meeting of the mob and the question on the table is which beggars will they rob? it's beggars will they rob. all the make a deal and the poor has no appeal and there's a meeting of the mob that's the way my poem starts and we close with that. [applause] >> thank you, everyone.

>> this event was part of the 2011 brooklyn book festival. for more information, visit brooklynfestival.org. >> dr. starbuck, you have written a few books on archeology. why is it important for people to learn history through archeology? >> it's often said that history is written by the victors. and we read about such things as major battles, generals, military campaigns. history talks about those who won. it talks about the famous. it talks about the great events. archeology, on the other hand, talks about ordinary people. we dig up the remains of soldiers on average days at their forts at their military p epcae epen-wae epencampments -- than campments. history has traditionally been

biased towards the famous people, the important people. to an archeologist everyone is important. when i dig up military camps, i'm digging up the activities -- the things that people were doing 360 days out of the year. not what they did on that one or two days they were fighting during the year. so archeologists love to say, it is everybody's story that we try to tell. >> and you've done -- you spoke about how you've done multiple kinds of archeology. how did you decide to transition to the military archeology of forts and battlefields? >> i was originally trained in central mexico. it's fun. it's exciting to dig in other countries but gradually i started digging historical sites in america, things like early factories. i dug up eli whitney's gun factory many years ago. i've dug glass factories, i've dug mills but somewhere along

the way the national park service asked if i would start working at the saratoga battlefield. i never worked on military sites before. i did know, though, that when you dig up early america, people in general are drawn to certain types of things. and other things maybe they don't find quite as exciting. it was 1985 that i first started digging a battlefield and i was amazed to find that everybody is fascinated by early military history. and it's not just memorizing facts and memorizing battle strategies, people want to actually go where the action was. they want to stand where the soldiers stood. they want to stand where the battle was going on. and they want to see and touch the things of the past. a musket ball, a gun flint, a bayonet, part of a musket, people want to physically connect with evidence with

traces for past wars for past battles. the moment i started digging forts and battlefields, many more people started signing up to dig with me. magazines started requesting articles. television started wanted to do programs on military digs, books, everybody wanted books on digging up forts. i never realized that level of interest exists here in america for all the old military campaigns, all the old forts. and i suddenly realized i'd never planned to dig a fort in my life but all of a sudden people cared. people wanted to visit. people wanted to connect with past soldiers. and for 25 years now, i have dug up the remains of america's forts, battlefields and encampments trying to find out what soldiers' lives were really like. >> and there's a lot of interest you mention in america with people with forts and battlefields and in the forward

to your book it states that sometimes it compromised the material record. what does that mean? >> i'm afraid that battle fields are such famous popular sites that the moment a battle was over, anytime in our past, local people would descend to pick up souvenirs. and in no time at all those musket balls, those bullets, those bayonets would be picked up and carried off. also, if people lived nearby, if the remains of a fort were starting to crumble, were starting to rot, the garrison had left, local citizens, local towns people would always go there, grab anything they could walk off with, whether it's bricks, old fireplaces, timbers and take them off and use them for their own houses. so military sites are compromised all the time by people wanting souvenirs and

wanting to recycle for their own uses and by the time an archeologists was there there's only a fragment what was there on a military sites. >> what were some of the things that people wouldn't expect that you would find at a fort or a battlefield and what types of things can tell the most stories? >> i think what people expect us to find would be things like the musket balls and gun flints, gun parts. that's interesting. i've seen lots of students get very excited at finding a musket ball but i think the more unexpected things are usually the personal items, things that a soldier actually had on their body, buttons, buckles, cuff links, anything of a personal nature, you suddenly see that button and realize a real person was wearing that and you're connecting with s