in our country and that they were committed to moving forward in a positive way for all of its citizens. and when i began to realize and to see things that were contradictory to that, i decided that perhaps we had forgotten many of the lessons that we had learned during the '60s. in many cases, we hadn't taught those lessons. but in other cases, we had forgotten. so i decided that i would go back and recapture the memories of a 14-year-old from the bombing of the church. ..

>> reporter: this is the book. it came out with 2 weeks ago. my first book was about my relationship with my adopted brother david. and growing up in a rural town in indiana and being sent off to a reform school in the dominican republic. so there were some parallels between the two books as far as race and kind of belonging to the cloistered society with religion. and also being sent away. when i got to be part writing about jonestown and how secluded and isolated and cut off from the world the jonestown

residents were, i could really empathize with those people. oddly enough there were some punishment used in jonestown that were similar to punishment used to buy reform school. when people -- they had their heads shaved or they were put on something called raming support where they were had to run from place to place. that was interesting to see those parallels. and the book has its origin, i was writing a novel, a satirical novel about a charismatic preacher who takes over a small indiana town in indiana. and i thought about condones. so i googleed him and learned the fbi released the documents they found in jonestown that no one had used this new crafted book. what happened for those who

don't know, a congressman from santa tale, california which is south of here decided to go to jonestown to investigate claims that people were being held against their will. and as he was leaving, group of people from jonestown decided to join him. they want that out. and so jim jones knew that the gig was up when those people left and came back. going to tell people about conditions in jonestown. what he did was sit some security guards on the party as they are waiting at this jungle airstrip and killed congressman ryan and members of the people that were leaving. so the fbi then goes in. it is a federal investigation. congressman leo ryan is the first congressman killed in a line of duty in u.s. history. the fbi goes in to jonestown after they clear the body and

start collecting documents as evidence to figure out what happened. was there a conspiracy to kill the congressman? they literally go through letters that were never sent home, diaries, meeting notes, they collect 60,000 pieces of paper. that would be like, i don't know. 15300 page novels -- 150-300 page novels. when i started working -- heavily redacted, couldn't read anything and then as i was about to turn the book in they released a redacted version of the document so i took another six months to read through and i could finally see what who was doing what, who was ordering cyanide and who was planning to kill everyone. that was interesting.

so i am going to read to you -- first i could explain the structure of the book. 918 people died in guyana that day. my way in since everybody knows how jonestown ends is take five different people who represent different demographics that were attracted to tim jones. so you have for example a middle-aged white woman, college-educated in punxsutawney. really wanted to do something to help the cause of minorities and african-americans and was drawn to tim jones church which at the time was seen as this progressive force. as a movement in san francisco. so you have her at one end of the spectrum and the other end stanley clayton, this african-american young man from oakland who was brought up in a

broken home, angry, sa everything in racial terms and for him jim jones's message about equality and establishing this utopia where there would be no racism or sexism more is needed them, that fell sweetly on his ears so he was drawn to jim jones's church. it wasn't just -- it was a 70s mix of people who wanted to improve social justice. another person i followed through with tommy vogue who was sent to jonestown as a teenager like i was sent to my reform school as a teenager to straighten me out. he was sent to jonestown to straightened -- get straightened out. he was skipping class and stopped going to church. he was sent in to isolate him from negative piers. and i really bonded with tommy.

one thing people don't realize is a third of the people who died in jonestown were minors. that is another perspective. what is it like to be in a church just because your parents are members and end up in jonestown and have no say in the matter? i also profile his father. stanley clayton, the young man from oakland, edith roller who worked at stackhouse as a secretary. there are these two sisters from alabama, hyacinth french and edwards who joined the church in indianapolis. and they joined in the 60s in indianapolis when jim jones'

first started people's temple and he really was at the cutting edge of the civil-rights movement. he was in degrading his church. she was integrating lunch counters and going around to hospitals, administrating hospitals but hyacinth and her sister were drawn to his message of the quality. they saw him on television on sunday. they turned on the television and saw his choir and this young preacher inviting people of all colors to come to his church. for them it was a revelation. so they end up in jonestown. through the book i introduce these different people. hopefully you become emotionally attached to them and understand a little bit more why it was that people ended up in jonestown. i think one of the hopes i have for this book is it changes perceptions about what happened. that the people who went --

bless you. it is so easy for people to denounce jones victims as baby killers and even susan jacoby who is a respected cultural historian recently called them in her book the psychotic kool-aid drinkers of jonestown. i hope this book challenges those notions and sets the record straight about how trapped people were in jonestown and how isolated and there was no way out and that is what i found in these documents. i found these heartbreaking letters. dozens of letters from people to jim jones say i want to go home. i had no idea it was like this. my children are scared. let me go home. he wouldn't let anybody leave. the essential argument in my book and what i discovered in my research is he was planning to kill his followers for years

before he brought them to jonestown. he talked about loading them into buses and driving the buses off of the golden gate bridge. he talked about loading them onto an airplane and crashing into the ocean. the rank-and-file members had no idea the conversations were going on. it was his inner circle who tended to be the young leaders will wait, suppressed, nihilistic people who reflected his own character. that is the most heartbreaking thing about what happened at jonestown, that the rank-and-file who went down there, the poor, the inner city, the progressive went to jonestown thinking they were going to partaking in this great social experiment, that they were going to stay for a month. they were going to send their kids to a semester abroad and come home. and once they got down there jim

jones took away their passports and the money and said no one is going home. no one can leave. and that is the most chilling thing i found in my research. and a year before the massacre he is starting to talk about the fact that some day they are going to commit revolutionary suicide. someday they are going to die to protest capitalism. when he first brings this up people like wait a second. we didn't come here to die. we came here to give our children a better life and they would argue with him night after night. he would hold these meetings in the central beloved jonestown that-pavilion of jonestown and say we want to live. you have to read the book, but eventually he was able to break them down by depriving them of food, of sleep, by telling them they were surrounded by

mercenaries in the jungle who were about to come in and attack and he had his conspirators, his son's go into the jungle and shoot back at the camp to make it seem there really were people in the jungle about to attack them. so the amount of planning and orchestration that went into that final night are astounding to me. the methodical nature of his breaking down there will power, their fight, their psychological resistance to him. so i am going to read to you really briefly about the first time he brings up the idea of a revolutionary suicide. by the way i should say q. we

newton, co-founder of the black panthers, wrote an autobiography called revolutionary suicide. what he meant by the term was the oppressed people should not be passive if they are attacked by the police or the oppressive. they should go down fighting instead of going down passively. jim jones skewed it to mean that we are going to commit mass suicide to promote capitalism. he took huey newton's words and twisted them into something different. so this happened on december 9, 1977. year before the actual deaths. on december 9th, jim jones's mother died of emphysema in jonestown. a few hours after her death and emotional jones summoned his followers to the pavilion.

he described his mother's last motives as she gasped for air with her tongue hanging out and saliva flowing down her face. he invited people who knew her well to take a last look at her. although she looked terrific he said that in death she looked very well, very well indeed. leno was the one person jones allowed to call him luck and get away with it. in jonestown when she overheard him bragging about shooting wild turkey from 200 yards distant he laughed and called over her daughter in law. that man didn't shoot any turkey peterson will she said. anyone knows he can't shoot anything with a pistol from 200 yards. when she died her moderating influence vanished. another court tethering jones to reason snapped. a few weeks later in the middle of a rambling street he abruptly

asked his followers how many of you plan your deaths? it was a stunned silence. the you ever plan your desk? he continued patiently. a number of you do not lift your hand and say you plan your deaths. you are going to die. don't you think you should plan for so important an event? he called on a 75-year-old texan named callie. don't you ever plan your desk? on a tape recording of the conversation -- no, he said finally. why don't you? don't ask. i don't know. i just haven't thought about it. don't you think it is time to think about it? it is a terrible thing to have it be an accident like i saw my mother to be wasted and weighed

in a box. kind of a waste, don't you think? the old woman was in tears. she thought jones was talking about life insurance. my husband couldn't pay it and i had no money to pay it and i let it go and haven't thought no more about it. i am not talking about insurance, jones said. i am talking about planning your death for the victory of the people. for socialism, communism, black liberation. haven't you thought about taking a bomb and running into a ku klux klan meeting and destroying all the ku klux klan people? the microphone buzzed loudly enduring jones. he ordered the people at the back to stop playing with their babies and pay attention. and 8-year-old biracial girl raised her hand. shea too was confused. what does planning your death

mean, she asked sweetly. on tape her voice is shockingly innocent and clear. in response jones launched into a diatribe is the essence was captured in the sentence a healthy person has to think through his death or me in a sellout. . this was his deepest fear. that his followers would sell out or be trey him as they left his church. he would rather they die for him. when somebody so principled is ready to die at the snap of a finger, he told his followers, that is what i want to build a new. that same type of character. he began talking about beria's methods of buying. drowning is one of the easiest ways in the world to die. just a numbing sleepy sensation.

the crowd was solemn. their lack of enthusiasm infuriated him. some of you people get so nervous every time i talk about death, he shouted. he stuck out his tongue and pretended to gag just as he had seen his mother do as she died. the crowd laughed so easily. and elderly woman refused to smile at his antics and he turned on her. you are going to die someday, honeycreepers believe bellow. you are going to die. this is taken from audiotaped in johnstown. the fbi office collected a thousand audiotapes that i was able to use for the first time. i can't imagine being in that crowd that night when all of a sudden this man who you respected, this preacher, this

progressive figure in san francisco politics is suddenly saying you need to plan your death and bellowing at an old woman, calling her a bitch. i can't imagine what that would have been like. sitting there with your child and hearing this conversation. so again, that is what i hope people take away from my book. of better understanding of what happened in jonestown and how proud these people were. he told another tape has him saying to people who want to leave, we are not going to pay your way home. if you want to go home you can swim home. over and over he is telling you know what is going home. we're all going to be here and die together. and at the thing is i have been

to johnstown. i went there in 2008 and it is so isolated even today. in the 70s people had to take a two they boat trek up the jungle river to get there. and there was no phone, and there was a ham radio but he censored all of the mail going out and that is another heartbreaking thing fbi agents recovered were all of these letters that were never given to residents saying so and so, you need to come home. mom is dying and she wants to see you before she goes. they were never given these letters. and their letters to their relatives and loved ones in the family were never delivered either. so i hope again that by reading this gives you a better understanding and the phrase drinking the kool-aid is so offensive. most people have heard that

phrase but most young people, after 1980 have no idea where it comes from. that it originates from this horrific event in jonestown. maybe after reading this book that phrase will be bandied about as glibly as it is now. i would like to open it up for questions. i think i have talked enough. yes? [applause] >> important work. in about 30 years ago, i went to coo and did a piece for atlantic on raj nish. i am more cynical than you are. i feel for the children who

suffered this but in terms of the adults, as i said, i have seen people succumb to the twin ideologies which have been so harmful to many people. the ideologies of religion, coupled with ideology of politics in and of themselves, difficult and can be quite destructive when put together as jones did and you have a brew that is extremely destructive. the question i have for you, the good thing is leafing quickly through your book i see a lot of people who were involved in helping to create this image of jones being an honorable and good revolutionary person including mosconi, harvey milk, sorry, they really helped him and deserve our scorn for that. willie brown was involved in it

and that gutter's scum like angela davis and huey newton and kp f a's news department which never ceased to praise jones because they saw him as a fellow ideologue who professed what they did. the question i have is have you gone to any of these prominent people and asked them how they could justify creating the myth of james jones that led so many people--including people like angela davis, who should hang her head in shame. >> jones hoodwink the lot of people. as you say mosconi -- politicians came to people's temple because jones had at his command 3,000 foot soldiers who were willing to go out in this neighborhood and people demonstrations and even across voting districts to get people

elected. i found a tape where mosconi is basically saying you helped get me elected and therefore i am going to make you head of the housing authority which he did. and you are right that where these allegations of physical abuse and financial misuse happen, that he helped elect mayor mosconi, district attorney, councilmember harvey milk's, turned a blind eye to. your right. of course milk and mosconi were killed ten days after the massacre happened. but you know, you had jane fonda and willie brown and angela davis. on the outside people's temple looks good. i talk about in the prologue that growing up as i did with a black brother and feeling like a mixture and longing for a place

to be long. if i had come to a temple service on a sunday morning and see in this time would have definitely been interested, my brother david and i. i would have been interested because of his message of social justice. i would have been interested because there was a real love between temple members. having grown up in the church. a church is more than its leader. it is the relationship you have with the other congregants. your kids becoming friends with them, for example young man like stanley creighton from oakland whose mother didn't give a damn about him and he was going around stealing from grocery stores to get something to eat while his younger brother was crying with hunger. the temple offered him a place to sleep. the temple got him out of jail on early release. the temple encouraged him to get his g.d.. the temple ran all kinds of

services. drug rehab, had child care for working moms, medical care for the elderly impoverished people. it looked really good on the inside. i don't think -- i think it is hard to explain these people. in retrospect, you know, yes. you can say jim jones was an evil man, so marshall broke the story about what was happening and all of this came out. he really held a tight rein on communications and what was going on with the church. angela wouldn't speak to me. she is a very busy woman. >> i am wondering about -- i am wondering about your research,

how you were able to gain access to the final. was that difficult? what the process was like? >> what happened was there was a freedom of information act lawsuit filed by relatives of people who died in jonestown and there is a professor of theology at san diego state university who had a sister killed in jonestown. they were in the leadership. for her and her husband this is a personal effort and they kept filing lawsuit after lawsuit to get these files released. and then the fbi finally did release the files without an index. so a letter filed -- a release them on three cds and scan this

material. page 208 would stand on cd 3, page 15. it was just nuts. so they put this information together and they and myself are the only people to have these documents in their entirety. a lot of them are very tedious documentation like purchase orders and really dry stuff. every once in awhile you come into something like this document which is the camp doctor who is in charge of trying to figure out how to kill everyone. exo on wednesdays the camp doctor stopped delivering babies and suturing wounds and went into his lab to figure out how to kill everyone and this is one of the subplots. stranger than fiction. he tried to develop botulism and

staphylococcus i toxin and failed. he grew cultures in baby food jars he collected from the nursery. this memo to jones he writes cyanide is one of the most rapidly acting poisons. i had some misgivings about effectiveness but further research i have gained more confidence in it at least theoretically. i would like to give two graeme storm large pig to see how effective our batch is. so in these documents you can see who is responsible for what. to -- larry shaq who few people have heard of, in talking about killing off everybody in jonestown and it was really interesting. there is another woman who was a probation officer in california smuggling guns to jonestown and in shipping crates, she is now

living in upstate new york kind of disappeared into the woodwork as a lot of temple leadership did after the massacre. she is actually about to get a surprise of local reporters on her tail. it was really fascinating to release and an redacted version to see who was doing what and who was to blame for what. it took me a year to peace these documents together and figure out, put them in chronological order. how would structure the narrative? everyone knows how jonestown ends but they don't know how my people end. hopefully my people will engage you in that and want you to read through an entire book and figure out what happened to them. >> my question i guess it is not just switching john's, where do you start with good intent and

get carried away and you are so kind of mired in your ideology that it becomes eventually evil. i was just wondering if that was -- if jim jones went to a similar psychological transition where he genuinely was outraged by what was happening and wanted to fix that and as he saw that people were turned by him, it got to his head and power got to his head. it is so hard and fascinating to see someone who wants to do good in the world and eventually kills his followers and that is still so perplexing. i was just wondering what you

found out. >> an interesting question whether jones really believed in social justice and equality or if in the 50s when he was starting his ministry he kind of some lacrosse -- stumbled across a vulnerable group that wanted to hear his message. in the 60s african-americans who were not happy with the advancement of the civil-rights movement that here was a preacher who wanted to go farther and he was really out there and not militant like the black panthers were but speaking publicly and vehemently about the fact that race and racism in america, and that is an interesting question. it is hard to say. he also was the first -- his was the first family to adopt an african-american baby in indiana. so he integrated his own family. he later adopted kids from korea.

some of his family was a reflection of his ideology, his ideology. whether he was -- really believed in social justice to that point or whether he just kind of built his church around the hope of these people is hard to tell. i do think he looked to the preacher, the minister, the head of the church and the authority figure he wanted to be the first time he went to a church coming from this loveless household wanted that type of -- the preacher getting this respect and attention and affection from the congregation and that is what he wanted for himself. i think eventually that power and the control got the better of him. and even in indianapolis when

somebody left his church, sending this man fevered notes saying it is god's will you stay in your church. if you leave something bad will happen to you. there is evidence that he had this need to complete the control his followers and later that became more exacerbated. yes? >> can you follow up? a friend of a friend of mine new jim jones back in that county days and enamored of him and his movement and contributed to it financially and what not and that at some point she became disillusioned with it and my friend asked her why and her response was she had become

convinced that jones was mentally ill and i just wondered if you had a comment on that. >> quite clearly he was emotionally disturbed if not mentally ill. i don't think he was ever diagnosed. we have a psychiatrist in the crowd? after you read the book you cannot tell me. and again, the way he controlled people, the extent to which he did it, he was growing this movement purportedly where it is either you were for equality or you were against it. everything was kind of black-and-white with him. people would turn over their

real-estate holdings and all of their well to the church and move it to a temple, yen and one woman, hyacinth thrasher, had done that when she realized something is wrong with jim jones but her sister is in the church and really believes and gets angry every time hyacinth try to talk to her and has given all her worldly belongings to the church. she can't escape it. she doesn't know what to do. and so she figures if jones doesn't like it she will come back and live with a nephew. she got down there and jim jones is saying nobody is leaving. it is hard to say. there was an element especially among the leadership of people who knew jones well and knew that he was having sexual liaison with both men and women

as a control factor. that stayed in the church. i think as he got further to the rank-and-file the people -- he had a satellite church in los angeles and the lot of people from that church would see jim jones on sunday and have nothing to do with him the rest of the week. they decided to go to jonestown to try it out for months or something, take a leave of absence and spent the track having no idea what his plans were. yes? questions? >> thank you. you mentioned a letter somebody might send home saying my mother just died and i would like to go home. and of the fourth amendment on to oppose leaving the camp. you also mentioned you thought even a year before this happened

that when his mother died in 77 he was seriously contemplating you mention a letter about a doctor taking poison and so on so that he was already planning to kill them but on the day that it happened a plane landed on a landing strip, rep leo ryan got out, several journalists from the examiner and chronicle one of whom was killed and the other survived. but the thing is it happened in a narrative sort of way. did they developed in its own way. one of us sort. he may or may not have had the intention is to kill everybody and had a.to do it and pumped them with ecological motivations. but on the question of revolutionary suicide is not just then they committed suicide but several murders on that day. there was a truck that went to the atlantic strip and killed representative leo ryan and a member of the journalist from the chronicler and the examiner. forget which one it was.

with a combination of suicide and murder. people survive like larry laden, mark twain survived. so it is of little more complicated. the question is what made that day -- what made the narrative of that day unfolded exactly the way it did and of course it seems to me having read something about this any way that the navy veteran whose wife was apparently going to go back to civilization with representative leo ryan and apparently the husband did not want his wife and someone else's kids to go back. this particular episode in the day's events was completely shielded from the public for months after it happened. i read all the newspapers and they had page after page and

apparently the fbi gave to the newspapers to publish have all kinds of stuff on jones going back to his birth but the thing is the actual schley incident was representative ryan was hidden and the speech jones made after this thing about leo ryan we have to commit suicide because they will hold against the san they will wipe us out with military force. the impending invasion on the camp because slaw i tried to make the gesture at leo ryan's throat with a switchblade. seems to me there is a double suicide plus homicide. was that also planned or did that just happen and where events got out of jones's control? but had a bunch of guys who went to the air strip. it seems like the old saying was not may be orchestrated but somehow involved in the settlement and revealed itself as the day went on and the events kept tugging away and

going on and what happened, i don't know, people could stop it or something? i am not sure. never figured out myself. you say he wanted to kill everybody and he was intent on doing this even years ahead of time. i wonder if that might not have been true. in other words whether the events of the day precipitated everything. if sly had not tried to make the gesture to assassinate leo ryan if jones would have continued his share rate for a decade or two or three decade or was he really convinced he was going to white fallout in a short space of time? his mother died one year before. >> what happened was leo ryan left jonestown with not only the media but also a group of defectors. okay? so these defectors were going to come back and blow the lid off

of jonestown. it was so tightly controlled, jones had them rehearsing. if you go to my web site you can listen to some of the audio. had them rehearsing answers to reporters' questions. for example towards the end of johnstown all the presidents were kind of gravy with sometimes some leafy vegetables and some cassava leaves or something but not enough protein. the people who survived lost 40 pounds. was crazy how much weight. they were very weak. he had them rehearsing in jonestown what do we eat here? oh, we eat well. that is not good enough. what do we eat? we have pork and chicken and steak. he was rehearsing them. he wanted that fantasy that jonestown was this great utopia

that to continue. when those defectors left with leo ryan he knew they were going to come back and talk to the media and talk about how horrible conditions were. that the preacher is rehearsing them in suicide drills and planning to kill everyone. and won't let anybody leave. he knew the game was up. what precipitated that? he was able to say after his security guards shot leo ryan's department party, our people are implicated in this crime and we have always said one for all and all for one and now the guyana army is going to close in and torture us so better to take this potion and slip across to the other side. he believed in reincarnation.

>> one more question. >> did you speak to any of the department of justice or other investigators? >> i spoke with an fbi agent who was on the scene of jonestown after the massacre. he was the lead photographer who was down there. as far as department of justice, most of their documentation including all of their internal investigation was released in these files and that is what i worked on. >> do the signing and all that. [applause] >> thanks for bearing with my cold. >> for more information visit

the author's website, julia scheeres.com. >> here's a short of her interview from c-span's campaign 2012 bus as it travels the country. >> karen beckwith, "political women and american democracy". how did you decide which essays to include in this work? >> my co editors and i organized a grant on the foundation of projects of american democracy at university of notre dame that we would convene by our estimation of the best scholars on women in politics in the u.s. not only in the u.s. but scholars who were working on u.s. women and politics. so we brought together a range of people whose research we knew well and convened for a two day conference at notre dame after

which at that conference we discussed all the manuscript that constitute chapters of these books of this book, and had some commentary about it and discussions and put it together as an edited collection which cambridge university press published in 2008. >> describe the role of women described in this book. >> there are several of the seas in the book. let me tell you what we are not doing. we are not looking at public policy. we are not looking at women in the executive because there were so few women in the executive and not yet a major female candidate for denominational president of a major political party in the united states. women at the executive level and the research wasn't there yet to support a good discussion and finally we didn't address women in the judiciary. >> what do we address? >> we look at behavior of women as voters. behavior of women as candidates for office both state and national, women within political

parties and once elected to national office. we also have factors that look at the gendered nature of u.s. political institutions as well as u.s. politics for women in politics in the context of comparative politics. what does the situation of women and politics look like in the u.s. compared to the rest of the world? the picture is not so pleasant. we have one of the least advantageous systems for women which is the plurality system with modification at the state level of the electoral college. we have only two major political parties which are in formal in their internal construction, have no clear formal instructions for becoming a candidate, author very little clear structural means by which women can work the party to increase women's candidacy. there are a lot of disadvantages women have in the united states

in terms of achieving elected office. >> it relation to the political party, as a woman voter, what are the findings related to? encouraging participation directly related to women? >> interesting things about women in politics that make women politically relevant demographic category. there are more women than men in u.s. citizenry and voting collect the rent. secondly women have slightly higher registration rates than men and women turn out slightly higher percentages than men. larger numbers absolute number of women combined with women heightened turnout makes for a big electoral impact. women also are disproportionately democratic. this is true across all age groups and also true or cross all racial groups. racial and ethnic groups women have a slight preference for the democratic party compared to

men. women are more likely than men to vote for the democratic presidential candidate. that has been the case in 1992. that gap has been between two percentage points to five the percentage points the pentagon the polls you look at. there's a democratic advantage in the electorate for the democratic party. in general because of women. the absolute numbers that turn out in preference of the democratic party. the issues that seem to mobilize women and attract their vote have to do with social welfare issues and foreign policy issues and to a certain extent so-called morality issues but on these people indifferent direction. on issues like same-sex marriage women are much less opposed to that than are men for example. not by a huge margin but there is a difference. women are more concerned with foreign policy security issues and that can have an impact on

women's vote and women are more concerned about social welfare issues. these include things like health care, unemployment, state of the economy and education. >> with a woman candidate for president coming in to the campaign to you see those preferences changing in 2012 were based on your research do you think they will likely remain the same? >> i see no female candidate coming to the candidacy in 2012. there are only two on the list that i know of. sarah palin who has not yet declared and michele bachman who is doing very poorly right now in early returns or early polls in the republican party debates and polling numbers. i don't see either of them being the ultimate candidate for the republican party. on the democratic side all things being equal the current president barack obama will be the party's candidate so that will foreclose any opportunity for a woman in that party to come forward.

i see no women as presidential candidates in 2012. let me do say however that some polling data, most recent polling data from 2008 coming in very early in 2008 presidential primary, 87% of americans are willing to say they would vote for a qualified woman regardless of sex, as willing to vote for a woman as a man. americans are more likely, more willing to vote for someone who is african-american or someone who is jewish for president than they are for a woman. and i think that number is slightly lower than the previous results because in 2008 there was a clear potential female candidate and that was hillary clinton on the democratic side who failed to win the nomination. >> what are some recommendations for women in that position or running for office?

does that matter come up in your book? is that something you touch on? >> we don't turn to the presidential specifically but we look at women's candidacy for low-level office. these are not recommendations for women. let me make clear we only need about 4,000 women nationwide to contest and win elections to have equitable representation in the senate and house and the state houses. there are not that many elected offices at the legislative level at least that require we need 1 million qualified women. i think we could find 4,000 qualified women to run. that is not the issue. the problem is with political parties and the non availability of access to candidacies through the incumbency effect if we have as do 83% of congress as we do 83% of congress consisting of men and most -- will be difficult for new

openings for new candidates whether or not they are women. so part of it is political parties. willingness to persuade members of congress, seated members of congress to step down, willing to support women challenging incumbents within their own parties, willingness to recruit women for office. right now the so-called big money people on the republican side are trying to recruit governor chris christie to enter the presidential nomination race, republican side which he so far has refused to do. but there are women who might be recruited. there are good female governors on the rstethe rlican side who t be recruited. at this point my argument is it is not a problem of women but the problem of parties lose specifically the rstethe rlican party. women are represented by at 2-1 to 3-1 marengn everywhere over republicans. >> thank you. ns> you are welcome.

ns> the c-span campaign 2012 buz visits communities across the country. to follow the bus's travel visit www. c-span.org/bus. ns> next from birmingham, alabaa and interview with warren st. john, author of "outcast united: an american todow, a refugee team, and pne woman's quest to make a difference". o.ooktv visited birmingham as part of the city's tort explore literary culture of eight cities across the southeast. >> a soccer team of refugee boys from 15 or more countries around the world experienced conflict and they live outside of atlanta, georenga. man'ostly from african countrie but not entirely. countries like liberia, burundi,

sudan but also in my book a young boy from kosovo, bosnia, iraq and afghanistan. they come through formal refugee settlement program through the united nations. they have resettlement agencies that handle relocation and help them get a foothold in this country and those are organizations like the international rescue committee and other non-government organiy antions. >> how does the resettlement program work exactly? ns> basically the aged stipend for a budget for refugee families and the gale ernment admits that and hand them over to the care of these aged

and theoretically aged a home for them, place to live and help with jo cf1 o the placement plead for and possibly language skills, a lot of debate how the agencies do that but they are pretty low on resources. not a lot of resources available to those that are settling refugees in this country. ns> tell me about how this todo -- >> it is a fascinating little todow. a little town over a square mile. of perfect circle the talent line and basically a little suburban town, outpost of atlanta loseotting midttle-clas families. it goes through town like itskid at the turn of the 19 to 20 centuries. refugees from clarkson, clarurin

had cheap housing and a lot of apartment complexes that were runskown and had available arkartments or public transportation grid, they don't have cars or the money to buy cars. after a long time it was a big throw into the econo, would not theoretically give these folks upheorne chloymenwar the process of resettlement for refugees is incredibly difficult, traumatic, fleeing lives of violence. placed in a little town that most of them nengner heard of. they don't know the language or the culture. thrid are given 90skays of government assistance and it is veryskifficu ref. especiallyskifficu ref for young people because they go to public schooia, and sense theexare ocifferent. outsiders in mainstream culture,

they tried to adapt orskress like american kids, learn english and listen to american man'usic and go home and their parents say what are you doing? we don't dress like that or tanh like that. need to respect where we came from. they ricochet between two world's. that is what is interesting about cars and. in the apartment complexes you have people from all these countries, neighbors can't even speak to each other. theyskontown know each other's languages but the children, whether they spe's q to each otr in a common lanlike age they ha the game they play in common and that is southeer. southeer games pop up in parkin lots, open lot around the complexes and e chty fields around town. it becomes a source of public natuare for people all over the world to interact with one anotherskespite the fact that they seemintriy have little els

in common. all sorts of things po cf1 o the g . , thrid purchase property just outside of town to try to build a pthe c hishool and a home for thdibr program. there's a lot of information l bue that on the web site. they serve the girl's team, full time school for refugee use. it is a program that has expanded and continues to impact young people. ns> how did you hear about them? >> i heard about them through casual conversation from someone who worked in resettlement in atlanta eng eang a tanot th. i ask the gentleman and he said the 7 refugees through the internatioemel rehisue committe and as a s