there is so much corruption they can buy their way out and the other side, the taliban defense their right to grow coffee. in facing the drought they have the economic motivation to support the taliban because that will defend their right to grow the one crop that is economically viable. . .

today we would hear from three distinguished authors all of whom have written the learned books about various chapters in labour labors past. in each book discusses different groups of workers who face hard times and are often under siege and he spoke discusses how these workers whether the international workers of the world or schoolteachers in new york city, construction workers in brooklyn bought back against manifest injustices they face. each author i have asked to speak for about nine minutes about his book and perhaps also about how his book might shed light on recent events in wisconsin and the trials and tribulations faced by american workers and labor unions today.

i suspect some of you will have questions about all this when we open the floor for questions about wisconsin and other labor issues. today we will hear first from clarence taylor, author of "reds at the blackboard," communism, civil rights and the new york city teachers union. clarence is a professor of african-american religion and civil rights at baruch college in new york city. his book examines other early teachers unions here in new york where the champion of social justice and civil rights and was persecuted and prosecuted because of his progressive stances to the communist party. then we will hear from william adler the author of "the man who never died," the lifetimes and legacy of joe hill american labor icon. i read bill adler's book for a story i did for "the new york times" and it is a marvelous historical research and the book shed some important new light on the case of this labor hero, joe hill, raising new questions about how he was railroaded to

to a conviction into his execution before a firing squad in 1915. and last we'll hear from brian purnell, one of the co-authors of "black power at work," community control affirmative action and the construction industry. ryan is professor of african-american studies at odin college in maine. brian tells amazing source of protest right here in brooklyn five decades ago in 1963 when black construction workers and black ministers and the congregants and groups like core engaged in sitdown protests to demand integration of construction projects and construction units that were 99% white. many of these protests were at downtown medical centers right here in brooklyn and someone named malcolm x participated in many of those protests. one last thing. i saw to have 100 pounds of

cheese shipped in from wisconsin but i'm sorry to say governor scott walker halted the shipment when he heard that cheese was destined for all you pointy-headed progressives, union friendly new york intellectuals. bill's book is on sale downstairs for any of you who would like to buy his book which i recommend. i'm sorry to say i haven't seen either of your books here. i schlepped a few copies of my book here if someone wants to do a personal transaction. i would be happy to sign books. bill will be happy to sign his book. clarence, you will speak first. >> thank you. >> i tell people i really timed my book to come out just now. i said, tell people i really timed my book to come out just now when there is this tremendous attack on teachers. to say that there is an attack on teachers everywhere is no

secret. obviously wisconsin is just one place and i want to talk about what is taking place in ohio and about what is taking place in indiana and what is going on in my home state of new jersey and in fact my wife is a new jersey schoolteacher. last year her union center and e-mail stating that the union was at war with the governor. the governor has -- and so there is this tremendous attack but reticular lay on teachers unions. and it is not just republicans who are involved in this attack. one can look at what took place in new jersey and the democratic party joined in with the governor in going after teachers in terms of limiting collective

bargaining and that is also chu and other places such as massachusetts and illinois. and i should also note the president of the united states was in support of firing every teacher in rhode island and his porsche push race for the top also carries i think a detrimental impact on teachers and teachers unions. one can ask the question why this attack? richard kahlenberg, the author of a biography on albert shankar noted in "the new york times" that it is a group of reformers and education who art carrying out this attack. and while i agree with richard kahlenberg that there are these people who call themselves reformers and in particular they want to attack teachers unions because they have been the most vocal and standing up to the

corporatization of education which is taking place today. i would note here that one needs to go back in time. it is not just in the 1990s that this attack began. one can look like i did that into the 1950s when the new york city teachers union was the subject of a book i just published. this union fox for a type of unionism that i have labeled sort of social unionism or social justice unionism. its members wanted to obviously help get them higher wages, better benefits and working conditions but get unions also worked along with parents and worked along with community activists in order to save

public education and that is the gist of social unionism. by the 1930s when the communist led rank-and-file corporations gain control of the unions it helped create a harlem committee and that committee works to build new buildings in that community. by the early 1940s stivers and had created a williamsburg council which also work to create better education to have newer schools and proper funding for children. now, it is the attack on this union by the 1950s that sort of helps eliminate that important voice and i'm going to end here by reading an excerpt

from my book, noting the atmosphere that was created in the 1950s. in the spring of 1957 josephine o'keefe, a young substitute social studies teacher, gave her eighth-grade class at baruch junior high school in manhattan and assignments together information on foreign countries. she instructed the students to write foreign embassies requesting information on history, geography, economy send other pertinent data. only the british and soviet embassies responded and sent packages including magazines and brochures. a 26 earl teacher plays the foreign magazines and a rack in room 404 of the school which was used by the social studies class. in the preamp post-cold war era

the incident would have seemed harmless. in the mid-1950s that set off a widespread investigation. detective mary j. mcdonald and the new york city police department bureau special services and information agency was teaching an evening graduate course in police science in room 404 at simon baruch junior high school when she spotted the soviet magazine. mcdonald immediately reported to her commanding officer, lieutenant william p. brown, that she had bound communist literature in the school. browne interviewed the school's principal. together they went to room 404 where they found the magazine and to quote communist propaganda pamphlets hidden behind other magazines, a display of pictures in magazines

clippings also caught their eye titled the aftermath of the civil war and chronicled events in the south mostly using pictures from "life" magazine. the pictures demonstrated incidents of racial intolerance. aside from one rather small section on the recent inter-racial difficulties in mississippi, the largest part of the display concerned the ku klux klan and other organized groups prosecuting blacks. the pictures included magazines of blacks being shot or lynched and a close-up of a man being burned. after interviewing o'keefe, they attempted to defuse the situation declaring he was convinced that she was guilty of only bad judgment. the assistant superintendent of schools claire c. baldwin said the teacher would not allow the

use of soviet material in her class. nevertheless brown reported the incident to the department of the bureau of special services. details of the affair would eventually reach the office of the assistant corporation counsel of new york city. he had been assigned to the board of education to oversee the anti-communist investigation. clearly fighting to save o'keefe's the rear contacted john dunn to point out that o'keefe was devoutly religious and quite patriotic applying that such a person could not be a communist. the o'keefe affair demonstrates the level of surveillance in the new york city public school system during the cold war and how fear would impinge on academic freedom. despite the defensive o'keefe he

never raised the issue of academic freedom in the interview with brown and baldwin. during the cold war period activities of teachers in new york city schools were being monitored by the police and collaboration between the board of education and the new york city police department. the fear of communism help to determine what children learn, decision for educators. police and those invoking the need for national security have a strong voice in deciding what was educationally appropriate for the students. teachers exercise independent judgment they risked their careers. even the subject of lynching and racism could be eliminated through the teacher's lesson plans because it was seen as supporting communist propaganda. academic freedom became subordinate to the concerns of the security states. i'm afraid to some degree we are

facing this situation today. thank you. [applause] >> thank you clarence. adam will talk about his book. >> to low. can you hear me? can you hear me in the back? good. first i want to thank the brooklyn book festival for actually putting this panel together because it isn't often that people who write about labor history and labor issues for that matter get to this sort of an audience so thank you nonfiction committee members. the audience is dwindling. steve greenhouse here i think is about the only labor reporter left in the country. i could be wrong about that. it is good to be here. i also want to thank them because i have been going around

the country talking about this book, "the man who never died" and i have been taking a lot of questions after my talks but very few people have been asking about contemporary labor parallels between joe hill's time at the turn of the 20th century and the turn of the 21st century, so it is nice and it is refreshing for me beat to be a list talk about that a little bit. i'm going to give you just a brief recap about joe hill. there's not much time to go into his own story, but hill was a songwriter and a member of the industrial workers of the world, the wadleigh spat between between the turn-of-the-century, the turn of the 20th century and the first world war when they iww was at its heyday. hill was, he had this artist compulsive to create and he had a propagandist need to incite and those two compulsions really collided i think in his music.

that is what he became known for, a songwriter of clinical topical satire. in 1914 in salt lake city hill was arrested for murder. the evidence was all circumstantial and all flimsy. there was very little of it. the evidence amounted to a gunshot wound that he received of the same night that a storekeeper in salt lake was shot to death. but the police had no direct evidence linking hill to the crime. they had no motive, they had no murder weapon, they really had next to nothing except that gunshot wound. but hill did not help himself because he refused to explain other than to the doctor who treated him that night of the murders how he received outland. he said at the time that he had been shot by a friend in a quarrel over a woman but he didn't name the friends. he didn't name the woman, and so

he never -- and for the rest of his life refused to say anything about it. he could have testified. in the end he died a barter. he was executed by firing squad and salt lake on november 19, 1915. and he has come down to us i think is probably, certainly the best-known labor martyr of all times and probably one of the best-known members of organized labor of all times. his songs endure but many of them more as i say topical, written in the heat of the moment in the crucible so they don't stand up in many ways today but i think an important part of his legacy nonetheless is that he was writing songs out there on the line and that is something we could use more of today, i think organized labor could. so i wanted to talk a little bit about wisconsin and the title of

the panel. i don't claim to be an expert on contemporary labor, but i was thinking about what joe hill might make a bid and for one thing, he did ascend to the celestial realm of kind of this pantheon of american folk heroes. he is up there with john henry and paul bunyan and the blue ox. but i think the problem is that people don't take him, they don't take their folk hero seriously. i know i really didn't. i didn't know much about joe hill other than the folk song. and so i think he would be disappointed that the context he lives his life in and he died in this radical militant time has somehow been sanitized and has been appropriated by many other organizations and causes. people say don't organize all

the time which was the abbreviation of the telegram he wrote on the last night of his life. but i don't think people really understand that context so he would be upset about that. he would also be upset though that unions today continue to be scapegoated as they were in his time. and the grants as well, and how those two groups can be blamed for america's economic ills is something i think you would find not puzzling but certainly disturbing. you have deregulation, mobilization. we are fighting two wars. you have got tax loopholes and tax breaks for the rich. you have got more income inequality and concentration of wealth is more pronounced now than it was an joe hill's time.

it is alarming i would think to him and it probably should the. so he would not be pleased with that. and in wisconsin, think you would be pleased with the fight back going on among public workers, but he might not agree with the tactics. i'm pretty certain that he and the early iww would not be pleased with the way that it is going. they have concentrated on electoral reform and legislative reform, judicial reform but it is reform and the iww if nothing else was a revolutionary union. they believed you couldn't tinker with the machinery of politics and capital, that it had to be overthrown so they didn't dissipate in the electoral process for better or worse. so he wouldn't be happy with that. i think you know he would feel like he had material to work with today and that would be good.

he would have plenty to write about in his songs but beyond that i think he would be pretty upset with the situation. so i think i'm going to leave it at that for now and we will take some questions later on and lead ryan speak. [applause] >> i want to interject one thing for a second. one fascinating point on bill's book on joe hill, joel joel lived in a time when there were many immigrants from china, poland serbia and sweden and russia and italy, and they didn't speak the same language. many of them were illiterate and many american-born workers were illiterate. of the song became the way to educate and mobilize people and you know joe hill in many ways is the best-known songwriter labor songwriter this day.

anyway brian purnell, take it away. >> i will echo bill's words of thanks to the organizers for having this panel and to you for coming. i'm a bit of an imposter on two fronts. the first is that my book is not yet in print so it is nice to sit up here with legitimate authors. i have a few essays and some anthologies and i think that is how i came to the attention of the organizers of this event and i am an imposter in some ways on another front in that i am not a labor historian directly. i'm a civil rights social movement historian. my book is about local activists in brooklyn but i do have some chapters on their attempts to integrate workforces in brooklyn.

so, i'm going to speak a little bit about that book and i think it touches on some issues that are related to the politics of what happened in wisconsin and kind of the contemporary questions for organized labor in the 21st century. you know when organized labor right now is that one of its lowest numerical points of the last 60 years, about 16 million union workers in america, about 11% of the population where after world war ii about a third of all american workers were unionized. as the question -- country becomes more racially and ethnically multicultural in the 21st century, questions about labor and organized labor's relationship with racial and ethnic minorities and the complicated history of labor unions support for both civil rights and some labor unions

restrictions against black workers. is important i think we talk about that complicated and complex history. my forthcoming book which is entitled the movement grows in brooklyn and the congress of racial equality and the civil rights movement in brooklyn new york is married to the uppers of an inter-racial group of activists who fought against racial discrimination in housing, employment, public schools and municipal services. during campaigns to open jobs for black and puerto rican workers, brooklyn court fight against employers and unions to break down walls of discrimination. civil rights activist in brooklyn also supported striking unions that had strong commitments to civil rights and sizable black and puerto rican memberships. or cleanse history of labor activism and civil rights activism is indeed a complex and multifaceted story in which

unions sometimes play contradictory roles as promoters and inhibitors of my norm -- minority workers social advantage. when we examine closely the civil rights movement in cities outside of the south, we see activism places like brooklyn demanded social and political equality. protesters in brooklyn and cities like brooklyn issue the country's earliest demands or affirmative action. activist pushed employers to use percentages and proportional representation when hiring black workers are accepting black apprentices. in employers and unions often resisted these demands, especially in the historically all white building trades unions, but some local industries adopted affirmative action and blacks slowly gained jobs. from that action policies were

always controversial but local histories of civil rights campaigns are open employment indicate that demands for proportional hiring and racial preference did not initially cause the splits among liberals who supported civil rights activism and unions. while flexible unions and businesses reluctantly embraced affirmative action, some -- such as the building trades union led the charge against what they called reverse discrimination. and that is really what became kind of the national conversation about affirmative action by the 1980s. so my book covers local campaigns to open up jobs in industries in brooklyn, the adventures baking company, the chef failed farms milk plant, schaefer brewery. these rural campaigns that are claimed led to gain jobs for black workers in the early

1960s. in those campaigns in particular each of the employers agreed to a proportional or representative hiring plan in which black workers would become members of, would become workers at the industry in a preferential hiring system compared to white workers. so ebinger's baking company which had changed throughout brooklyn and queens agreed to have 40 of its 240 retail workers be african-american by the years into the protest in schaefer brewing company and sheffield farms had similar proportional hiring plans. there was a strike at bethel hospital in brownsville in 1952 which black and puerto rican and women hospital workers and their white allies in the union went on strike and brooklyn core supported that but in 19631 of their most well-publicized

campaigns was to break into the practically all white -- it was something like 99.7% white -- building trade industry. there was a three-week campaign to open up jobs at the downstate medical center construction site in flatbush. the reason that they targeted downstate and the recent activists in cities around the country targeted things like hospital construction is that these were part of multi-million dollar state-funded construction campaigns. the downstate construction was part of a 300 million-dollar state-funded expansion of medical teaching complexes in albany in brooklyn. in essence, the state was underwriting discriminatory treatment of black workers and the brooklyn core and all of the powerful ministers which mr. clarence has written about in his book on black churches in brooklyn, demanded 25% of the

workforce be african-american. now that campaign ends on a bittersweet note. in some ways the workers, the civil rights activists don't win immediate hiring. they win some concessions from unions to open up apprenticeships but there is no agreement to bring black workers on the job. in the words of one core member, he said that the effort was a struggle in vain. so, i'm going to close though just with some observations about how the history of the northern civil rights movement and the history of civil rights activism and cities have by the south can show the way that labor union rights and civil rights sometimes complemented and sometimes contradicted one another. when they work together, civil rights and labor rights created strong avenues toward

middle-class african-american workers and you only have to look at the last 40 years of changes in unions like the uaw and the american postal workers union, etc. to see the ways that african-american laborers have been able to enter the middle class through organize unions. but for such efforts to continue and strengthen into the future is important it is important that we know the historic benefits that came from incorporating previously excluded groups into workplaces and into unions is equally important that we not overlook the way protection of white privilege to alienated some unions from growing populations of nonwhite workers. in march of 1968 martin luther king remarks ' mac,, all paper has dignity. u.s. history has shown us that only one making and movement embraces hiring practices for

previously excluded groups and civil rights struggles and when i civil rights movement advocates the protection of organized labor, kings words are made real for all working people. thank you. [applause] >> you just witnessed a miracle. all three speakers spoke without me having to say one minute left. now we will take questions. c-span is here. they asked that they question her please speak up and maybe someone will be able to bring you a microphone. so who has a question? this gentleman with a blue shirt tried to keep your questions short and refrain from giving a speech. thank you. >> i have a question primarily for clarence taylor and perhaps brian purnell has something to

say about it. i've been struck by the last few years by the difference between teachers unions and other professional unions, saying nurses unions. nurses unions have been relatively successful in saying that their fights are also on behalf of the profession and also on behalf of the patient anyway the teachers unions have been unsuccessful in doing that witnessed the success of the popular success of the reformers narrative. and so i am wondering how you explained that difference in the medical workers union and how you find that difference and i ask how much of that has to do with new york city teachers strike? >> that is an excellent question and i do covered in my book.

[laughter] but, communism and civil rights and the new york city's teachers union. but one of the major battles in new york city was over which direction teachers union that someone's going to take and this erupted in the 1930s. the type of unionism that i describe here emphasized by the new york city teachers union, social unionism, did have the sort of rotter definition fighting along with parents, fighting along with the civic leaders to democratize education. now, the union that unfortunately dominates, that one in the end an had a

different version of unionism and a different type of unionism was militant clearly on the behalf of teachers. militants in the sense of giving them better wages, better working conditions, but it didn't lay those roots. it didn't extend it to dealing with concerns of parents, the concerns of students, with the concerns of the larger community. on certain issues it did but it clearly was not part of its broader take. and unfortunately, that union ran into a lot of trouble with the black and latino communities by the 1950s and of course by 1968 we have this strike that takes place in new york city, and that strike has been

described, the 1968 teachers strike, not as a problem between management and work, but this is now a strike that deals with what was going on with community forces attempting to reform education. and it is that type of unionism unfortunately that finds itself in trouble today. so i love what is going on in wisconsin and the fact that people are coming out, pouring out, but unfortunately i think many people, many people see public-sector unions as self-serving. and you know, even though it offers an opportunity for them to sort of challenge that view. >> i will just say briefly because i want to hear from

other members but ocean bill in brownsville in the 1968 strike needs more attention, more panels, more conversation, more debate. it is this moment i think from my knowledge of that when we really can see splits between natural allies. when you have good teachers and you have teachers who are respected as professionals you can have quality schools where students have a chance to succeed. when you have students and parents who are involved in what is happening in the classroom then there can be support for teachers so that they can be treated with dignity as professionals. when that strike pits those allies against one another and public education in cities throughout the country became blacker and browner, it has been harder over the past four decades for schools or teachers to form those alliances outside of their union ranks.

so a closer look at that history and more of a conversation about how those two sectors can come together to improve teachers rights and rebuild to help strengthen communities that are beset with problems on a lot of different sides could be a way to get at some of these issues. >> iges wanted to add something very quickly to clarence's and brian. right now as you well know there's a fairly large incentive, well-funded offensive against the teachers union, the charter school movement in the reform movement. the teachers union like the inertia's unions are trying to say the nurses union are asking for better nurse patient ratios in teachers union are pushing for better teacher-student ratios but that is hard to take that message that teachers unions are equal. than when you have the government of wisconsin and ohio and other states basically trying to take away the rights of teachers unions to negotiate whatsoever and many people are

complaining teachers unions have great benefits, they don't want you here with the teacher unions have to say about trying to improve teacher-student ratios. yes? >> thank you. two quick comments. i think is important to note united federation of teachers also represents nurses and in the number of new york city hospitals and it is in their or their service and a bargain very effectively for them as they do for teachers. the other comment i will make is those of us in the educational field no longer refer to them as reformers. they are de-formers and that is an important concept to get out there, dialogue about who these people are. they are not teachers, they are not educators, they are likely nation of 1968 stirring the pot to destabilize the unions and the workers but my real question

here is to the panel in general is, what is it going to take to revitalize the labor movement in the united states to turn around those statistics that you so eloquently alluded to? we are down to less than 10% in the private sector unionized and 30% in the public sector under attack in the public sector because of them. what is it going to take to revitalize the labor movement? >> we are pointing to one another. [laughter] inexperience and youth. it is going to take, is going to take what the sanitation workers were doing in memphis and 68. it is going to take struggle. it is going to take i think a coming together of sectors of

our civic life that have been seeing themselves as polarized for so long. we need strong schools and if you want strong schools you need strong teachers and the need strong unions for that. that is just something that we have to believe in and we have to fight for. i think it have to come from the ranks of unionized and you have to go into communities where people have not organized and we have to see the concerns in those neighborhoods and the concerns of the people living there, when those are addressed as well as the concerns of labor rights in the schools, mass movements can move forward and strengthen labor and life, beyond that union bread and butter. >> i agree with brian. is going to take i think a grassroots effort. i think the unions are going to have to go out into the

communities and convince people that these attacks on them are attacks on their children, on public education because really it's about public savings and public education and of course i think it is going to be a tremendous effort among teachers and other unions to be able to convince people of this because they have the media and others. they have been winning. but nevertheless, i think one thing that the unions have to do is break away from the democratic party. [applause] democrats have proven themselves not to have the benefit of the unions at heart, and we see this

time and time again and until we sort of break that wedge and take the stronger independent -- it doesn't seem to me that is going to happen. >> ride and i agree with clarence. i think they need to spend that money or poured into electoral politics into organizing the unorganized for one thing. they need to build coalitions not just among unions but among community organizations and faith-based organizations. there needs to be more solidarity among the working class and the middle class then there is today. the other thing it is the thing bill haywood used to talk about going into the gutter and pulling up the great mass of workers and bringing them up to a decent living. that is the concept that seems to have disappeared today and i think people really do need to go get started working and

immigrant workers continue to. it has been done with some success as a matter of fact and i think that needs to continue to happen. >> i think brian made a very important point. the labor unions and the civil rights movement are doing what the labor movement really needed to do to grow so does not just a selfish movement trying to help well-paid white construction workers but it can be a social justice movement, a workers justice movement and of 1968 in memphis the union movement caught fire. it has stumbled in many ways since then. many kenyan leaders are not terribly inspiring. most union leaders are older white gentlemen. many unions are not doing nearly, nearly enough organizing the most powerful unions in the nation now are generally public sector unions. the two largest teachers union,

the private sector unions now except for the service employees and maybe the uaw and the steelworkers have gotten pretty weak and they are really not doing much organizing. some labor relations people say many of the private sector unions have dwindled so much in power in numbers it is going to be extremely hard for them to get the wherewithal to do the organizing they need to rebound. one point about i'm not saying i disagree with you clarence but if the union movement were to declare its independence of the democratic party unless they took 15% of the vote with it, they might elect rick perry or someone like that. it is easy to say union should walk out of the democratic hardy. it is not clear, big money controls a lot nowadays in politics. not just republicans but democrats and i think that is why a lot of democrats are not paying attention to union members and that is a big issue. i will shut up.

next question, the lady in the gray and blue shirt. >> thanks. i think this is a useful point to maybe try to take a step back and look at how we can situate reshaping the narrative around unions in the larger social kind of debates that are happening in the direction that we have been moving in since the 80's and continuing. this idea that freedom is the overriding value that we should embrace in america but that we have lost touch with other values of fairness and equality and opportunity and justice that used to also animate the american dream until we considered ourselves to be as a people. so we have discussed the idea that unions are seen as being selfish but on the subway yesterday i overheard ice -- the

building trade council must be protesting in front of a construction site because there is a rat and they are all wondering why. you know they have the right not to hire union labor so i don't know why these people are so upset. i'm like okay, the future. how can we reshape the messages generally for the larger population. this idea right now really and also are tough, we are seeing the return of the -- error braley so where in the progressive era and then maybe directly after world war ii did we receive successful messages particularly now we are dealing with the mass media where perhaps individual songwriters are not going to be heard? >> a quick answer. rick perry has boots one named liberty and one named freedom. obama named one of issues equity and the other fairness maybe that would help us.

[laughter] >> it is all in the messaging. >> i think it is in the messaging and i think that public service workers and their unions do need to do a better job of linking their issues to those of the people they serve and the consumers of those services and i think that is what has been missing. that narrative about public service workers are selfish that firefighters and cops and teachers somehow are the bogeyman. i don't know how that became the preeminent narrative but it seems to, one way to resolve that is to get people whose services they been in bed -- benefit from, child protective care, whatever it is to speak up and form alliances with them. there is a real need for solidarity and not just as a slogan but for people from all these walks to benefit from public workers and i think they need to stand up together and fight back.

>> go ahead. [laughter] >> i don't want to take up too much time. strong unions and labor rights are human rights. i don't know how we lost that message. you know i grew up in a union household. i had health care. i never worried about going to a doctor because my father was a transit worker he. we have good housing be because we grew up in complexes that were spearheaded by union workers in brooklyn. so much of what we have benefits from working people. so i think with organized labor and liberals, but could stop being afraid and being on the defensive, we have nothing to be afraid of.

we have nothing to feel defensive about. strong unions and the labor movement that embraces labor movements and their children, that pushes a place where citizens can have access to health care. these are things that are signs of a civilized society. so, i just wish -- i don't think we should be defensive any more. i think we should be proud to stand for these things and we should put that out there in public as much as possible with as many people as possible even if it is on the subway with high school students that we don't know. >> i'm going to advertise my book for a half a second. i have a chapter about what i think was very important and in many ways the most important drive over the past decade. it has unionized 5300 janitors in houston and they were basically hispanic many of them

undocumented. probably many of them didn't speaking wish. they generally work 20 hours a week and may be maybe made $100. maybe they made $100 a week and tried to support their families on that. the seiu like dr. king back in 1958 turn this into a social justice movement. how can we in the united states as a nation pay these people $100 a week? how are they supposed to survive? how are they supposed to provide health care bridge for their kids when they get sick? the seiu by using using light innovative smart organizing tactics was able to unionize these janitors and basically doubled their pay and got health coverage. when unions are smart and strategic and really play the trump of the social justice tuned they can still make serious drives. clarence, sorry.

>> many of us set up here earlier, it takes going into communities, working on the grassroots level -- grassroots level to do the this. i teach at baruch college, a school that emphasizes business, trying to model itself and it is probably one of the best public business institutions in the united states, but i have my students because they are majoring in marketing and accounting and so on and so forth, how many of you know anything about collective bargaining? none of the students know anything about collective bargaining. there is no labor history at the college. so i think one way of doing this is we have to find ways of talking about the history of labor. the struggles of labor.

whether colleges, high schools, elementary schools, and communities, we have to find ways of doing it and i think unions have to take the bull by the horn to do this. >> we have time for one more quick question and one more quick answer. we have a few minutes left. this gentleman. >> two things. i think it is a mistake with -- i was with transit union workers for 25 years. i think the impression that wisconsin is an electoral battle, we didn't get into how incredible it was and politicians and labor leaders are still trying to catch up to the rank-and-file who took over ohio and wisconsin state-building for a month and a half or whatever. that needs to be examined more

closely, whether that was -- speier question please? >> the other part of that about the democratic party, we need to teach our workers how to not go from demagogue to demagogue. the outspoken question of wisconsin is where the same people who put those republicans in office and the year before, get a year later we are making revolutionary steps and taking over the statehouse. wet lettuce to look for those republicans? the question being it is not only taking over the democratic party, not only -- but how -- sometimes you have to go with some democrats to defeat those republicans. it is not just the whole thing of the democratic hearty.

>> just quickly, i knew this would be controversial when i said democratic party and in response, the democratic party is going to use fear. essentially if you don't support as you are going to get someone like rick perry. you will wind up with reactionary and of course there is truth to that but you are constantly beholden to the party because it carrying out essentially the same program that republicans have been carrying out. tell me the difference between obama and the secretary of education arne duncan's program pushing a more charter schools, how that is clearly different from the governor new jersey pushing it. in fact the governor of new

jersey brag about it. he said obama and i essentially are on the same team but how do we address this problem if you don't challenge what the democratic party is doing? [applause] >> thank you. >> bill's book is on sale downstairs in brian's book will be on sale next year. you can get mine on amazon, i don't know. [laughter] [applause] this event was part of it 2011 brooklyn book festival. four for information visit rockland book festival.org. >> one, the most important lesson is that the most important thing to happen in the

united states in the last 10 years was nothing. the last 10 years never saw another successful terrorist attack in the united states. and i think the most important question to ask is why and whether it was worth it. to me the most important decision was one that president bush made as commander in chief and chief executive on the very night of 9/11 which was to treat the 9/11 attacks as an act of war. i think the way we thought about it in the justice department at that time was that if any country had attacked us and the same way on september 11 fsoc qaeda did no one would have had any doubt so the only difference was a qaeda was not a nation-state. and important legal and constitutional issue was could we be at war with a non-nation-state? i think president bush made that decision for the country that night. that was an important decision because once you make that call

them big united states can turn to the laws and rules of warfare to deal with al qaeda and the threat of terrorism. all of those i think ron displayed not just in our invasion of afghanistan, the use of troops and drums to wipe out much of al qaeda's existing leadership that the time of 9/11 but was also put fully on display in the successful operation to kill osama bin laden over the summer which i think of as president obama's greatest foreign-policy and national security achievement in the last two and a half years. he saw intelligence provided by people who had been detained under the laws of war, electronic surveillance reducing more intelligence all pulled together to locate where osama bin laden had been hiding and then the use of military force to go out and kill him. under the rules of the criminal justice system, which administrations of both political parties had used in

their approach to terrorism before 9/11, we would have instead indicted osama bin laden and sent out and try to arrest him after he had committed a crime. they switched to switch to the approach of war and bitter policy forward looking to try to stop people like osama bin laden and terrorist groups to attack the united states before they could attack. the second lesson i would draw from the last 10 years and also helps us to move forward is after 9/11 we treated intelligence and information differently. we tried to broaden the scope of intelligence available and to deepen its so to take one example before 9/11 because of civil liberties concerns which i think were quite valid at the time they were put into place, we prohibited our intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies from sharing and communicating information. if you read the 9/11 commission

report carefully, some of the commissioners believe that law was actually instrumental in preventing us from identifying the day to hijackers to be in the country before 9/11. things like the patriot act, enhanced interrogation of three top al qaeda leaders, enhanced electronic surveillance all allowed us to gather more information but pulling down that wall between law enforcement and intelligence allowed us to analyze that information more effectively and then that was tied to the ability to use force to wage war more quickly and surgically than ever before. so again i will use the osama bin laden operation is an example. that was it really and military operation in which i think all americans were proud but what people don't realize i believe is that the military now carries out operations like that every day. >> you can watch this and other programs on line at booktv.org