because they knew that they had to be strong in order to be of service to others. i'll talk toward the end about how we use that lesson in the work that we do today with wounded and disabled veterans your home. but i saw that in bosnia, and in the heart and the fish to write about how i saw this and other places as well. desolate in rwanda where was working with people in 1995 who had survived the genocide. i was working with children, many of whom had been separated from their parents. i saw it in bolivia when i was working with children on the street. as many of you know, there are hundreds of children who live in places like bolivia to wake up every day and spend their days begging, selling gum and cigarettes, some of them like this groan spend their days shining shoes. i saw this in cambodia or was working with people who had lost

limbs to land mines. i was working with kids, some of them young kids who have lost limbs to land mines whose families lived on less than $1 a day. kids who were survivors of polio when they were fitted with prosthetics literally had to learn how to walk again. what i saw in all of these situations was how important it was, how essential it was for people who were living through tragedies and facing difficulties to have a sense of purpose and now lives in the sense that there were being called to be of service to something larger than themselves the question for me was how i was calling to live that in my own life. i had been doing this work as a student and spending a lot of time reading and writing in studying in doing simple work in places like refugee camps, feeding dying patients, helping kids set up soccer teams and soccer games, but still the

question was for me what was i going to do with my wife. i remember, i was 26 years old. i was at oxford. i was looking out at the future and really had three options in front of me. one option was to stay at auction in university or to go and pursue an academic career. i knew that oxford or any university would deal to give me a lot of freedom. another option that i had was to go to a consulting firm, and i knew that they offered me in my first year, they said that we will pay you more money than both of your parents' combined have ever made in any one or two year timeframe. then i had this third option from the united states navy. now, the navy said to me, they said, if you join the navy we will pay you $13,302.60 per month.

they said and they said, and we promise you that in your first few months in the navy we promise you that in your first few months in the navy you will have zero minutes per day of privacy. and they said, the deal is the minute you sign up on the dotted line you're going to os a years of service, at least four years' active duty in four years in the reserves. they said in return for that will we will do is give you one end of the one chance at a basic underwater demolition seal training. if you make it through that turning you will be under way to being a kid navy s.e.a.l.s. if you fail that turning, over 80 percent of the kansas to, you are still going toe was the years, and we will tell you where and how to serve. now, it is not a very interesting recruiting pitch. but i remember actually i went to an event. this really fancy universities have mentioned.

as i walk ten, i remember looking out and seeing the names of rhodes scholars who have left oxford in world war two to five overseas. they have left to fight overseas and had died overseas. i remember, as i was looking up at them, i remember thinking that if they hadn't made that choice that i wouldn't be standing here looking at them. i thought about what the university could give me, they would give me a tremendous amount of freedom. at the consulting firm could give me a lot of money, and i realize that the navy was going to give me very little, but will make more. it would make me more because there are going to challenge me. never going to make any more because there were going to test me. never going to make any more because there were going to demand something of me, and so what i thought about that, that

decision, i just decided that i was calling to choose the path that offered the greatest possibility of actually making me more, helping me to serve in a better way. and for those of you have read the book, a couple of u.s.-style was going to talk about the o.c. as chapter, which is one of the, you know, places to read what officer candidate school, and one of the things they taught me very quickly was how important it was going to be to have a sense of humor to survive in the military. eventually, i won't talk too much about a c.s. i graduated and went to the navy training. as many as you know, a reputation for being the hardest military training in the world. in our class we started with over 220 people in our original class, and by the time we graduated redound 21. serve with over 220, and by the

time we graduated and 21. in the course of that training there are always testing unit pushing you. as you in your first week to do a 50-meter underwater swim. later they ask you to swim down 50 feet, and not comment come back out. they put you in small teams and as you land the small rubber boats and jagged rocks the middle of the night. there is one evolution call drown proofing. a tap your feet together and they cut your hands behind your back. with your feet tied together in your hands tied behind your back yet to jump in the pool. with defeat tied together in the hands tied behind your back they as good as some 50 meters. as you're going through the training it builds -- the crescendo, considered to be the pinnacle, the hardest week of the hardest military training in the world. very aptly named hell week. and as you're going through the average class leaves a total of

to the five hours over the course of the entire week. as you're going to do they have you doing physical training with long is the way a couple hundred pounds on the beach. they have you doing races in and out of the ocean with a team. the water, as many as you might know, off the coast of san diego regardless of season is often in the low to mid 50's's. they give you plenty of time to appreciate the water. they have you running the of to the course. one of the things that they love to do are these firemen carry rules where you pick somebody else up, throw the money back, and then you run with them in soft sand. you pick somebody up and run with them through the mounds of the woods. and there's actually an evolution of one. as you're going to the training. happens is it's the 10-mile run. over the course of that 10 miles everybody who is wearing a 40-pound rucksack and carrying a rifle. the trick is to over the course

of that run, every step along the way one person is injured and has to be carried. so everyone has a 40-pound rucksack, carrying a rifle, and every step along the way one person is injured and has to be carried. now, when you look at this and think about doing something like that, are there any thoughts about what it takes to do that successfully? man, do you have any thoughts? absolutely. it takes a tremendous amount of focus to make it through something like that. sir, do you have any cost? sure. [inaudible] >> absolutely. a certain amount of focus and a tremendous amount of humility. that is absolutely true. also tell you that if you ever have to do this or you ever have to do anything like this or

anyone you know address to do anything like this, i learned very quickly that one of the keys to success was that you want to at the very beginning, position yourself so that you were standing next to the latest guy. [laughter] that made a tremendous amount of difference over the course of a 10-mile run if you were standing next to the light is died. one of the things that we're doing here, of course, is you're going to this training. people are signing of, high-school track stars in division one college football players as a champion wrestlers and golden gloves boxer, tremendous athletes, but what happens is as you go through that training every single person is pushed beyond the envelope of their talents to the core of their character. every single person has pushed beyond the of the above the town and one of the things that was interesting to me to see was

that there were navy seals who came from all different kinds of backgrounds, different physiques, a different athletic backgrounds, geographic backgrounds, all different kinds of backgrounds. one of the things that they all have in common was a willingness at the moment of their own personal challenge to think about the person to the left and think about the person to the right and to say to themselves, i need to be strong for the people who are depending and me. and what i started to see as i went through the training was i had this idea of navy seals as being physically strong and courageous and it tactically proficient. what i started to see was that as you're going through this training to make it true that training what it also took was a real hard of someone who even when they were in tremendous pain was willing to think about the person to the left and the

person to the right. and as you go through the training there is tremendous amounts of chaos and confusion and challenges that come from all sorts of different directions. eventually what you begin to see is what it means to have a real efik of a warrior. this is simply had to learn as i went through the training. i'm going to read here a short passage or talk about what i actually learned as i went through the seal team training . frequently misunderstood as america's deadliest commando force. it is true that they're capable of great violence, but that is not what makes them truly special. given two weeks of training and a bunch of rifles, any reasonably fit group of 16 athletes the size of a platoon can be trained to do harm.

what makes the special is that we can be thoughtful, disciplined, and proportional in our use of force. years later did iraq receive a group of rangers blow through a door behind which they believe there was a terrorist, taking aim, says that he was unarmed, and then fight into the ground and cuffed his hands behind his back. they did this while other rangers at the very same time in the very same room positioned themselves over a sleeping iraqi integral to protect her and then simply picture up and carried her to an iraqi woman in another part of the house. as my boxing coach used to say, any fool can be violent. warriors are warriors up because of their strange, but because of their ability to apply strength to good purpose. thai was very fortunate i went through that turning to be surrounded by a tremendous group of warriors.

up to you a story about a couple of them. the guys you're looking at here in this photograph in the middle is james' son into the left is mackle some. there were with me in bud's class to 37. it went through every day with me and it went through all of the advanced qualification to any. we spent virtually every day of trade together for 14 months. on june 28 that was pinned down in a firefight. when he was pinned down the call went out, real call was received , and james white and boarded a helicopter to fly in to rescue him. has that helicopter was flying in it was shot down , and that day of matt and james gave their lives the reason i'm telling you that story is because if you had

asked james as the moment he was getting on that helicopter, if you have ashton, were you doing right now, he would not have told you, and getting on this helicopter in order to win the global war on terrorism. he would not have told you and getting on this helicopter because we need to pacify this part of afghanistan. if you had asked him at that moment what he was doing when he got on that helicopter, he would have told you, my friend needs me. that's why he got on that helicopter. i mention it also because i think that sometimes when we think for ourselves about the kind of difference that we can make in the world, we think about all the challenges and the problems around us, one of the things i learned that i took from this was that bad baseball we can really do most effectively is to actually be of service to the person standing

right next to us. put ourselves in a position where we can actually make a difference in the life of one of the person. and so when i came back, when i came back from iraq -- sorry, when i came back from iraq, as dole said, one of the things we did was we went up to visit the family of travis' manning. travis, who had been with us that day in this suicide truck bomb and gave his life serving there with us. and we went up and we visited with the family, and we came back. i went to bethesda right around here to the naval hospital to visit with other recently returned wounded marines. i remember many of you might have had the experience of visiting with some who were recently returned, but you walk into one of those hospital rooms

you talk about the men and women often in their early to mid 20's and as the ball little bit about the unit, their hometown and the plummet. the city's one of them, tell me what would you like to do when you recover. every single one of them says to you, i want to return to my unit . they all say to you, i want to return the unit. the reality was for the men and women who are was visiting that they, they were not going to be able to return to their unit. one of them have lost both his legs, another had lost the use of his right arm and part of his right lung, another lost a good part of this hearing. and one of the schools that we went to was called survival evasion resistance and escape school. in that school they teach you how to survive if you're ever

taken prisoner of war. one of the things that they teach you is a principle called the stock still paradox. some of you might not recognize the name. is named after james stock tell who was a prisoner of war in vietnam and are in the congressional medal of honor for his for american pows. it says this. in a situation of great pain in danger in difficulty in chaos, as a leader one of the things that is essential for you to do is to maintain a 100% focus on the harsh reality of your situation. he says when you're in the middle of a difficult challenge it does you no good to sugar coat the facts. he says it does you no good to fantasize about what might be. you have to maintain 100% focus on the harsh reality of your situation. but the paradox is that the same time, at the same time as you're

maintaining that focus you have to find a way to maintain hope. now, the harsh reality of the situation was for the men and women who was visiting that take there were not going to go back to the unit. that was the harsh reality. the question for all those is how do we maintain held. i ask each one of them, well, tell me, if you can return to your unit, tom would also like to do. every single one of them told me that they wanted to find a way to continue to serve. it is not necessarily use the word public-service. one said i had a really rough childhood growing up and i would like to find a way to go home and maybe a football coach or mentor. of the one told me he wanted to see if he can go home and get involved in law enforcement and another told me a teacher. as i was leaving the hospital

that day i realized that all of these men and women have a long string of visitors coming in to say thank you to them. thank you for your service, thank you for your sacrifice. it was clear they appreciated that. it meant a lot to them. it was also clear that in addition to thank you there was something else they had to year, and what they also had to hear was they had to here, we still need you. they had to know that when they came home we saw them not as problems but assets. they had to know that when they came home we still believe in them enough that we were willing to challenge them to find a way to be of service. now, as we all sit here today there are thousands of wounded and disabled veterans who will put this one in and will go to bed tonight having spent all day watching tv, playing video games

, self medicating, and the problems with alcohol. we are facing today in the united states what appears to be the highest per capita suicide rate in american military history. and as a what appears to be because a lot of the statistics around suicide are not actually counted. for example, veterans who are coming back age 18 to 25 are dying at a rate five and a half times their peers in motorcycle accidents. a lot of times we are capturing that, but we have a generation coming home, men and women, like joel who were injured in their servers, who are coming home at two are starting to ask themselves whether or not we still found you and your home. i believe that the answer for them has to be yes. as the @booktv as i left the hospital i decided to do something about it. i doubted my combat pay for rock, both of them put in money from their disability checks

commander use that to start the mission continues to be the idea behind the mission continues is that we are going to help every single returning veteran who comes home find a way to continue their mission of public service. will we do is provide fellowships to veterans so that they can begin to serve again in the community. i want to read to you a little bit about one of our very first fellows. one of our very first fellows was a helicopter pilot. his name was chris martin. he was a black hawk pilot who was serving in afghanistan. his blackhawk helicopter crashed during operations over afghanistan. he broke his leg, his foot, and his right arm, shattered the bonds in the right side of his face and severely damage to both knees, his hips, and both shoulders. he was barely conscious when the man ran up to the rack.

is the aircraft on fire? no. am i the worst one to back if i'm the worst injured everyone . when he came back he got in touch with me than my friends. he became our first follow. through his he started working with his fellow wounded warriors in a way and started breeding them out and have them start doing service projects in the community. and chris morgan graduated from that program and actually became the director of our program and help this bill to a place where today we have worked with over 180 wounded and disabled veterans who have become our fellows. chris martin when he finished a program and finished being a director was accepted to wharton business school, went there, and the nba.

after that he had another number of different things, very lucrative offers about different directions ticket taken his life what chris did instead was when he graduated decided that he was going to rededicate himself to serving his fellow veterans. he was going to make a decision that would enable him to continue to make himself more for service to others. very proud to tell you that he is right over here. he is today a leader in this generation of veterans working with the wonderful organization that partners with the mission continues and is an extraordinary leader and will always be a great friend. it's good to see you here. [applause] [applause] and it's not just chris martin. i encourage you tonight to meet some of the other mission continues fellows here tonight. these are men and when he came back, some of them have lost

their eyesight, some lost their hearing, some lands, severely burned, some came back with traumatic brain injury or posttraumatic stress disorder, and through the mission continues they have become martial arts instructors and humanity in the red cross and mothers against drunk driving. together those fellows have actually turned to their fellow americans and asked them to join in service and together with those fellows at the mission continues we have actually had over 13,000 americans and to service work with and alongside our veterans and communities across the country. and what i have learned from those men and women, what i learned during this humanitarian work overseas, doing navy s.e.a.l.s training, the wounded and disabled veterans who we work with, that what they do every day is very difficult, but not complicated.

but they do every day is the wake of command with their heart they set a direction for themselves and they said the purpose and they said a passion in service to others. and then what they do is they walk up half every single day with courage and perseverance and the fist of discipline so that they get to a place where they ultimately transform their own lives and have a tremendous effect on the lives of others. what i learned during all this work is that every single one of us has a tremendous capacity for courage. ..

it is an honor for me to be here with you tonight. thank you very much. [applause] >> 15 minute q&a if anyone has a question. >> thanks for coming. i just read your book. it was very interesting, all the different barriers where you operated and the peace corps, as

a worker and humanitarian before your military service. the thing i was struck by was each one of them, especially bosnia. i served there. bosnia and montenegro, an event began opening up the worst atrocities seen since the second world war took place as you mentioned the. virtually every area you worked in, rwanda, bolivia, bosnia, all of the events that occur, the tragedies are foreseen especially as a special operator like yourself following that career up, it seems to me all the history and everything you have done and everything we end up doing in the western civilized countries and we try to stop these, we are reactors'

acting after the fact. as a result we are all going to be more or less reacting to the aggressive tension of people who propagate these situations to begin with. as a special operator what have you learned? have you evolve a theory or belief that pre-emption would be a better thing to do since that is what seals and united states army special forces believe we should do and every situation especially a bosnia, did you see indication in iraq and afghanistan where special warfare operators like yourself try to prevent it in the first place would be the better strategy. >> there's a tremendous amount we could learn from these stories. a tremendous amount we can learn from studying what happened in bosnia and rwanda and cambodia but when we think about actually

acting preemptively we need to think broadly about all of the tools at our disposal. the fact is often times we actually have a lot of the answers right around us. we just haven't figured out a way to use those tools effectively. one of the things i write about in the book is a lot of times as americans we tend to invest in buildings and institutions instead of actually making connections to people. just as i look at this audience right here i can see answers in this audience. steve culbertson runs youth service america, program engaging hundred of thousands of young people in the service around the globe and build those relationships and understanding that we need to build on. scott biel who runs -- reverse peace corps where people come from all over the world to serve in the united states and learn and i think when you think about preemptively how do we learn and prevent there is a broad range

of tools. the military peace may be part of that but if we think creatively we have so many wonderful social entrepreneurs, people doing incredible things around world that if we start to support them and leverage them that will get us farther. thank you. >> you have clearly reached levels of excellence in everything you set out to do. what do you credit that to? it is just in your dna or your upbringing? >> first of all, thank you very much. one of the things i should point out and i hope is made clear when you read the book is what you may be seeing is the end of a very long journey. along the way there is a tremendous amount of pain and difficulty and failure that is tied up in that. we just have to acknowledge all

of that. and to the extent i have been able to be successful in some of these areas i think what i would credit it to many times is having the right kinds of friends on the journey. we live in a culture unfortunately where we don't think about the importance of friendship to our personal success and the role we play in the world. i challenge you to go to barnes and noble or your favorite independent bookseller and pull down, go to the leadership section or business section or personal improvement section and let me know if you confined one chapter on friendship. wasn't always that way. when aristotle wrote about what it means to live an ethical life and to make a difference in the community and the city, that is a book divided into ten chapters. each chapter addresses the difference object. only one subject gets two chapters and that is friendship.

what aristotle argues is it is the people who are your friends more than any philosophy you can study or any quotation that will have transformed effect on the person who you are. in every single one of these endeavors, i talked about my teachers and boxing coaches and as i look around i see so many -- so blessed to see so many friends that are here. if i attribute anything to any measure of success we have been able to have it is because i have a wonderful team and wonderful friends. >> i want to thank you for the presentation. it was very inspiring. i am interested to hear more about your experience in a country like iraq and how being part of the american military and serving in a country which seems to be hostile to the u. s,

how did you feel you have a personal mission towards this country and towards the iraqis? >> great questions. when i was partering with a jolt joel was running in mid teen. military training team. actually working side by side with the iraqi army. one of the things that i write about in the book that was really obvious to anybody who went to iraq, had this debate about how many troops we needed. iraq is the size of california. there are twenty-eight million people there. there is no way no matter how many troops use and you can physically impose peace. the only way to do that is to create allies and create alliancess. we talk about something in concept we call the complete warrior. we believe to be the complete warrior part of it is what we all know means there is no worse enemy. it also to be the complete

warrior there must be no better friend. for us when we are working in iraq, joel could tell you better than i, he knew the kinds of falafel the guys he was serving with what they like. he was building close relationships with them. this was at a time from fall of 2006, spring of 2007 things looked difficult but actually the hard work people like joel did and people like travis did on the ground working with trying to build those partnerships. through those relationships built and created a level of peace. scott? >> you talked early on about the role teachers played in your life and picture of teachers with bricks on their head. tell us more about that. the teacher and student. when a teacher breaks bricks on

your head they're just a jerk. they are passionate. how do you read that needle? >> that is a great question. unfortunately lot of times you don't know which one you are dealing with. you don't know. to i really need this or not? one of the things that -- the only way that i can reflect on this a little bit is it is great to talk with not the current students of the teacher but to talk with their past students. so i guarantee you if you went right now to coronado, california and after all the bus trainees when they thought of their instructors they would not have kind things to say. i also guarantees that if you went and asked them the same question 12 months later and they had since base and able to reflect on that experience and being pushed and challenge made them work as they would have a different opinion.

there were many times when i was a student whether it was my boxing instructor, earl blair, i really questioned what they were doing. but part of the teacher/student relationship is out of the student you don't have a full understanding of what you need to know. but i think one of the race -- one of the ways we can try to figure that out for ourselves is not to ask the current student but to ask people who were two or five years ago and to see was it someone who actually challenge you in a way that made you better? >> more questions? >> thank you. i just have a question. you worked on both sides as well as with military. coming from both sides, what advice could you give to both sides on how they work together? there is a huge gap between how humanitarian work with a

community and our military will work with the community. what kind of advice would you give to both on how they can effectively work? and prosper in that community? >> fantastic question. the advice is really simple. the advice is just to begin to communicate. often times the case that you have groups that are actually in many ways both personally and in terms of their mission closely aligned in what they are trying to do and you often had zero communication between them. there is little personal understanding. you might often have people in a humanitarian organization who not only are not communicating with military force but don't even know anyone who serves or has served in the u.s. military. the same way you might have people in the united states military who haven't -- they have done an incredible amount of intelligence work but haven't walked down the street to talk

with people who were doing development projects and might have years of experience understanding how to operate in a community. what i would say is the first thing you have to do is actually have to reach out and find ways to communicate and when we did that in places like kenya for example is just had a tremendous -- people sat down and they might not agree on everything but there was actually a very large area of shared understanding and a lot of potential for cooperation. i think actually opening up those lines of dialogue is critical. >> i am the daughter of a drill sergeant from the vietnam era and i know how influential and forming it can be to serve in the military and i have a lot of

respect for that. my question is a little bit of a piggyback on what she was asking. when i was reading your book, obviously in both realms you were working in whereabout service, but so my question, like especially talking about -- just mentioned that. why is it -- i sometimes the see the value and why do we have military men doing things like in kenya trying to find information from civilian that live there. it is the person in uniform wearing a gun with him that is actually going to get that good information and build those relationships. so my question is since you have been in both of those roles do you still believe in the equal value of both of them or would you like to see more of a switch

from the weights of let's say budget that goes in the direction of one as opposed to the other. >> great question. one of the things i hope the merges from "the heart and the fist" is this idea of practical wisdom. this idea that actually when you build experience like this one of the things you see is both what is worth doing and how to get it done. in a place whether it is kenya or bolivia or iraq or afghanistan there are certain roles and functions the u.s. military can and must do. there are a lot of other things the u.s. military is not the best, certainly not the best organization to be engaging in a work like that and one of the things we have to do in our foreign policy is to be able to look and take a much wider view. i mentioned a couple of folks who are here and think about how we can make investments in long-term relationships that

actually build that kind of trust over time and i think there is a lot of work for us to do. i think certainly there is a role for humanitarian work in our foreign policy that a lot of times we often don't think about because it is not pressing. it is not right in front of us. to make that investment you have to be thinking 10 or 20 years down the road and i think we do have to do that absolutely. thank you. >> i am going to segway the last two things together talking about cooperation and friendship. thanks to the reference to our team mates in that disaster. you treated them extremely well. honoring those men in that book was powerful. we heard military and humanitarian coronation but department of state and department of defense are severely schismed.

have you looked at -- have you been approached to to the kind of integration because when we have those entities working well overseas and doing this investment you talked about and harnessing the capacity of the humanitarian organizations, those guys avoid us downrange because they don't want to be stigmatized by the uniform or the military. i really think a person in your position having hybridized across the spectrum can bring a lot of credibility to a lot of commanders and policymakers. >> thank you very much. i appreciate that. i have not been approached yet about that. i certainly would be willing to offer my service and also point out i think there are a lot of people in this generation especially in this generation of veterans who have come back and taken a different look at what is happening in places like iraq and afghanistan and southeast

asia who i think are certainly open to thinking about that wider approach about how you would create peace overseas. thank you for the comments about james. i keep my friend john white here, i keep a calling in my pocket with james -- one of travis man in that says never forget in memory of our fallen brothers. what we try and do with them is the greatest thing we can do for someone like james, to actually live there values. if we live the values of james or travis man in, we know we are doing them a great honor and we know we will make ourselves better as well. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you.

>> for more about eric grietens and his work is eric grietens.com. >> here is a short author interview from c-span's campaign 2012 bus that travels the country. >> you work with several professors to talk about democracy. tell you how you do your research and why. >> we're trying to understand the relationship between globalization and democracy. the end of the 20th century in the united states was a period of dramatic change. dramatic political, economic and environmental changes that really changed people's lives in a lot of ways. what we wanted to understand is what does that mean for local

democracy. what does that mean for every day capacity to make a difference in our community and participate in the governings of their communities? and so the seven of us shows five different communities in north carolina that experienced globalization differently. there were two communities we chose watauga caribbean during county, north carolina characterized as landscapes of consumption. those of the communities that the economy is dominated by the consumption of something whether it is medical service for the educational service or the environment itself where tourism economy is vital. it can also the community is dominated by fire. there is an acronym, fire, which refers to finance insurance real-estate. those are consumption.

we also adjust two communities characterized as landscapes of production and those are economy is dominated by manufacturing, agriculture, resource based economy and things like that. that helps in eastern north carolina and chatham county, north carolina. the third economic landscape we looked at was the landscape of the state. these are communities may be state capitals or communities that hosts military base and the fortunes of those communities are determined by a much broader political decisions made either in state capital washington dc or something like that. by looking at these five communities with these three different kinds -- kinds of economic bases we got to see how people did things differently by

the broad global economic changes in the 20th century. >> you talk to people about political participation. what were you looking for. what is democratic political participation consist of. >> we are sociocultural anthropologist's and we are interested in talking to people about what they do. rather than giving too much emphasis to something like floating and saying voting is up or down, rather than thinking what people are or are not doing as many other pundits and scholars have done we went out to talk to people and sit in their living rooms and participate in civic organizations to follow along with non-profit organizations or community groups or neighborhood watch groups. we send in these different environments reading the newspaper and following people

around to figure out what are people doing? if they're not participating in bowling leagues anymore what are they doing? if they're not voting are there other creative ways people are working to make their communities better? and we found in spite of some pretty dramatic obstacles of social inequality, intense burdens on time that families are working more and more with multiple jobs, struggling with things like child-care and the political system is becoming more confusing to navigate. in spite of all that we found the enormous creativity and people doing really interesting things. >> how do you conduct your research? you spend a significant amount of time? how do you decide what to do? >> we had in each of our five

communities, full time for more than 12 months and with research prior to 12 months of follow-up research for the next six months and falling over the years since then but the primary research area was intense 12 months working more than 40 hour work weeks, whenever public meetings were taking place or a particular controversy happens, we interviewed people in depth interviews. i remember numerous times when a lot of people you want to interview are busy. you follow them along and say you don't have time for an interview but do you mind if i take this road trip with you and they are driving place to place and you talk to them on the way to understand their lives and report to them. we meticulously documented public meetings and followed public debate about different things. we have got a really on the

ground look at the ways people participate in local governments. >> what did you learn about the ways media affect how people think about democracy? you wrote about how they entered the category that some people are apathetic or angry. does that have an effect on people's participation? >> it does have an effect on people's participation. when we interviewed people we did a number of lifetime participation -- and we found a certain things people feel guilty about not participating more than they do. sometimes afraid of participating and that adds to the additional feeling of obstacles of participation but more importantly we fundamentally have taken our eye off the ball and we are striking out when it comes to

understanding american politics and where key decisions are made and how people are participating. by focusing on as many pundits do or scholars do or in the media in general, the whole conversation is off. doesn't match up with people's lives. perhaps we are using outdated term as. perhaps we are reflecting on -- perhaps we are missing the boat because societies change and their way of understanding, but what our book has done has allowed us to see new forms that nonprofit organizations have become increasingly important to government and global, regional and federal level and people's

participation in nonprofit organizations what needs to be understood as part of american democracy, we need to look at the ways people are carving out new spaces for themselves. rather than looking back at what people did to participate in politics 50 years ago and say this is participation in this old form is increasing or decreasing, we need to ask the question what are people doing today and how does that matter and what are the opportunities and obstacles that exist that they are doing? >> have you seen that? since you have done your research are we on the path to getting people more meaningfully involved in political participation? >> yes but it is mixed. it is mixed because many new opportunities have developed for direct civic engagement and it is really at times very

meaningful kind of engagement. i like to think about also we don't write about this in the book i like to think about the way that so many other aspects of american democracy voters are often -- citizens are often responding to the actions of others. if you are voting you are responding to the candidates you are presented with. if you are writing a letter to a political leader you are responding to something they have done or has happened. or if you take up protest you are responding to something that has you excited. but when you form a nonprofit organization or community group it is a uniquely proactive space where you have the capacity to create missions seen or an organization that didn't exist before. that is a new space and american democracy that wasn't so relevant in the 20th century but is important now.

the challenge -- when you recognize it takes enormous business acumen, takes enormous political literacy, takes enormous amount of time to be fully engaged in this then it starts to range -- and considering also that many scholars, many people have reported that there is a growing divide between the rich and the poor in the united states. it is a shrinking middle class. this is fairly well documented shift in american and wreck. environment. but what we have looked at is the way that that social, economic inequality that exists in the united states impacts --

contributes to a political find. and there's a parallel story told alongside this growing trend between rich and poor and the divide between civic engagement. that is a real threat to democracy that we continue. >> you work on a college campus so as a professor do you see more involvement by