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>> what we've wanted to understand is what does that mean for people everyday to try to make a difference in their community to do participate in the government's to make things better? the seven of us chose five different communities in north carolina that has experienced globalization differently.

there were two communities that we chose from durham county north carolina barry characterized as landscapes of consumption that the economy is dominated with the consumption rather medic -- environment itself with the tourism economy is vital also communities that are dominated by the acronym of fire refers to finance insurance real estate. that is all part of consumption and also to communities were characterized as a production in those our economy is dominated by manufacturing, agriculture manufacturing, agriculture, resource based economies and things like that. halifax county north turned -- number carolina and the the third economic

landscape but we look that was communities state capitals, communities that post a military base and the fortunes of those are determined by a much broader political decision made in the state capital or washington d.c. so by looking at these five different communities with three very different economic basis, we can say halides are impacted differently from the broad changes. >> talking with people about political participation saw whether you looking for as ugh democratic political purges a patient consist of? >> weir anthropologist and we are interested in talking

to the people about what they do rather than giving too much emphasis on something like voting to say poaching is up or down, thinking about what people are or are not doing as other scholars have done, we went out to talk with people who sit in their living rooms and participate with the civic organizations to follow along with non-profit organizations were watch groups. we sat and to follow people around and what are people doing? if they are not participating in bowling leagues water they doing? there are other creative ways to go about working their community and we found that in spite of some pretty dramatic obstacles of social inequality and intense

burdens that families are working more and more many families have multiple jobs, they are struggling with child care and in a political system becoming more and more confusing to navigate and despite of that we found enormous creativity >> how did you conduct your experiment? did you have a significant amount of time? >> we had in each of our five communities, we have photographers who were there full-time more than 12 months. of presser research and follow-up research, what we have fallen over the years since then but the primary research period was an intense 12 months working more than 40 hour workweeks whenever public meetings are

taking place or the controversy happens, we interviewed people with "in-depth" interviews. i remember there are numerous times when people you want to interview are busy so you follow along to say you don't have time but the mind if i take this road trip with you? they drive from place to place and you understand their lives and work and what is important to them. too meticulously document meetings and public debates and so we have and on the ground look at the ways that people participate in local governance. >> host: how did you learn about the way media facts democracy with those robust categories? some people are apathetic or angry does that have any effect and on participation? >> it does.

when we interviewed people about the number of lifetime participation interviews, we found certain themes that people feel guilty that adds to the additional feeling but more importantly, we fundamentally have taken a orrin -- we are taking on in striking out with the politics. where kate -- key decisions are made but by focusing on as many pundits or scholars do coming in the media in general, i think bill whole conversation and it is often

doesn't match up with people's lives. perhaps three using outdated terms or reflecting perhaps we are missing the boat because society is changing with our ways of understanding and has not kept pace. but i think what our book has done is to level of us to see new forms that nonprofit organizations become increasingly important to the federal level and people's participation in the nonprofit organization needs to be understood as part of american democracy and look at the way people are carving out new spaces rather than looking back at what people did to participate in politics 50 years ago, this is something in this old form it is

increasing or decreasing and we need to ask the question whether people doing today and how does that matter? for those opportunities and obstacles that exist and what work they are doing. >> host: have you seen that? after you do your research three on the path to get people more meaningful involved with political participation? >> it is next because many new opportunities have developed for direct civic engagement and it can be meaningful. although we don't necessarily right about this, i like to think about the way that so many other aspects of american democracy, citizens are responding to the actions of others. if you are voting you are responding to the candidates and if you write a letter to

a political leader do something that has happened, to take up the protest and you are responding. but when you form a nonprofit organization our community group it is a uniquely proactive space-bar you have a capacity to create the mission to create the old organization. that is a new space in american democracy that was not so relevant until the 20th century but is important now. the challenge is that is complicated when you take increasingly and complicated political system in the united states and recognize that it takes enormous business acumen, a political literacy and time to be fully and gauged then it starts to raise red flags. many scholars have reported

and then we have a shrinking middle-class and this is very well documented demographic. but what we have looked at is social and economic inequality it contributes to the broad political applied in there is a parallel story and we also have a growing divide. it is a real threat to the democracy. >> host: you work on a college campus.

have easy and more involvement of students in college? do they need to get more involved or get involved earlier? >> what i see is with students, they are finding new ways to get engaged and redefine what it means to be politically active. social media is a part of that. they are the tried and true parts of activism that we would like to see students involved but there's a lot of other forms of our emerging and we're just trying to understand. but i work off campus as well. a large chunk of my time is spent off-campus with people with the regional community and economic development i work for a lot of government agencies nonprofit groups and i see enormous

creativity and the enormous amount of change in the 10 years that since i did my primary research i have seen some pretty big changes in terms of accountability between the government's and we have new forms of oversight and record-keeping, documentation and accountability starting to be merged. at the end of the 1990's 1990's, but i felt like the wild west. there was a new system emerging when you knew what to do or how does accountability would take place people would define the public good and the public who were not to the public officials but volunteers and nonprofit

organizations and the public did not have any oversight the and the measures and indicators that are a bit onerous but it does provide more oversight. >> host: thank you for your time >> is author night at national press club several authors are here selling their books to support charity. one of those authors is jeremy. we have covered him for his book a new voice for israel. first of all,, what is this?

>> the pro pisani for the new organization that is three years old we have pressed for in teach men to help achieve middle east peace. >> host: how to use and as opposed to new aipac? >> we believe the two states solution is in the united states best interest want to see the president do more not less to help achieve peace. >> host: what is the new voice for israel? >> essentially provide a counterweight to the zero points that for too long to speak for the entire jewish community and have been issues that are more hawkish than the average jewish-american for those who are 40 and under from supporting israel does not mean supporting every decision of the israeli government and is not mean take the most hawkish possible view. >> what is the position that

you do support that could be different? >> zandi traditional establishment? the president gave a speech in me that he said the two state prowess i need to be made on the border between west bank in israel. we think that is right. the president took a great deal of heat from organized jewish groups and we thought they should have gotten support because that is the only way they will survive it is if it does achieve the two state solution in publishing for a new voice, jeremy ben-ami founder of chase street is the author.

[applause] they do per cryer appreciated i hope you're here because if you worry it will be a total disappointment he sings it in in takes require escrow you would leave immediately if i tried to do that. of lot of people have been supportive of me during the whole process of writing the book people who edited overt three pages on the couch amd we appreciate you show your support tonight. the idea the book was born out of frustration and it crystallized for me the first and only time of the one air force one i had

taken this job to "the washington post" for have been working for a while where it was my assignment to write more intimate story is what the president's life is like and it only took me maybe one week of doing the job to realize the president doesn't have personal intimate moments or certainly none that i will get access to prepare everything about his life is outsourced in a crazy way. 94 but lears and made six calligraphers right to anything he wants. 70 people make his schedule every day. it is a huge army that helps him operate day today and his schedule is subdivided into 50 minutes trunks and there is a secretary who sits outside the oval office that has reversed people so she could make sure things are running on schedule. he calls it the bubble and

it drives him crazy. the few weeks i have been doing this job it was driving me and my editors crazy as i was not writing as they were hoping and not getting those personal moments of the obama life. after doing this my turn came up to fly on air force one. everybody who covers the president your name is put into a huge database and every time the president goes on a trip, they go through the database and a more people get their turn. my name came up and i thought this is the moment i will see something to experience with this is like. we got dressed up and obama flies out of a private air force base in virginia. i rented a car to drive over

there because rachel and i at the time was the battered pontiac grand am that we had managed to keep running with bunge cords it did not feel appropriate. we rented a car. we waited with the eight other reporters as they waited for our turn to or. we waited an hour then they left us up. today lettuce up the back door and the rear of the airplane they said wait here. we waited for a half an hour and heard the president is arriving you have never seen reporters arrive that faster was a mad scramble to get

off memories saw him walk those were very eliminating from what he was doing and we where frantically taking notes. we got back on the plane come and we flew to new hampshire and scrambled off the plane as fast as they could cut its ships we fallen behind separately and there was not enough time or space for the press to go into the event with him and so we watched the speech on a closed-circuit tv in your taking notes of the events that way. honestly i was feeling frustrated with trying to write about the presidency in any meaningful way and listening to the speech i heard him talk about how it

collect the 10 letters he reads every night which is a sampling of the 20,000 letters that come into the white house every day. and what he felt was his own a direct connection in says sometimes that is what kept him sane when he felt he was so barricaded. i realized quickly that was personal and real and genuine what i wanted to try to write about. i wrote to a longer piece about the 10 letter sent that paper was generated to give me a year where i went to montana they totally removed the distinguished title from the professor. at the end of this

year, finally i did get time on the president's schedule and we talked about the letters. i will read every part of the book now from that half hour i had with him. the president said the hard is letters to reem -- reader those of made him feel remote or powerless. what results did each day inside the purple folder was the intimate view of hardship and personal struggle comment separate -- desperation. 70 writers needed urgent help and yet the act of governing is so slow that sometimes it takes years before legislation could improve people's lives. a few times during his presidency, all zero men had been so moved by a letter he had written a personal check

or made a phone call on the writer's 1/2 to believe it is the only way to ensure fast results. does something i should advertise but it has happened. other times or in letters to cabinet secretaries after dispatching the hand written note to say can you please take care of this? these letters can be heartbreaking. just heartbreaking. sun you say i really want to help this person but i may not have the tools right now. then you start to think about the fact for every one person that describe their story there may be another hundred thousand going through the same thing. there are times i feel pain i cannot do more faster. sometimes it makes them pined for the days as the community organizer ready-made $10,000 per year working on the south side of chicago he just graduated from college and purchased a used car for $2,000 spending

the-- driving around the projects to speak with residents about their lives and became with the same issues that flooded the male 25 years later. chronic unemployment in struggling schools. he was considered a master hands-on of grabby alert -- a new problems. skinny and boyish although still leave some of the older women in the housing project would invite him into the home in cook for him. he would keep a log of maintenance issues he raised for the city housing officials in established said 10 its right organization and the tutoring group to prepare for college. when he left for harvard law school, he has said his boss for his future in wanted to become a politician allowing to listen to people's problems to enjoy the simple satisfaction now he is the

most powerful politician of all but now it seemed more difficult and elusive. people can tell me a problem and i could be an advocate before he said. but just because it is the nature of the office you are removed in ways that are frustrating. sometimes join to pick up the phone to say tell me what is going on i will see if i can be your advocate, employment counselor. what i have to constantly reconcile is i have a very specific role to play after make a bunch of decisions you open the aggregate that you cannot always be certain that is one of the reasons he would respond by hand each night. he like the satisfaction of providing one thing that was immediate and concrete. >> what i would do when i

would pick a letter to write about and the part that i enjoy the most, i would spend zero with the people who had written to the president and received a response to see the problem unfold. that was the biggest privilege and for a me, the mail that comes in to him every night, it is remarkably diverse. it comes from all types of people who despise him, love him, mostly from people who are writing about what is going on in their lives. hist it is like a journal entry because people don't expect they will ever read them but then for me to go spend time with those people and me there with them as they try to reform a school or filing for bankruptcy was

a huge privilege to see how that works on the us small-scale. the bulk is stories of these people's lives in the narrative journalism. the other passage to want to read is slightly longer but it will give you a feel for what this book is like. this is a couple that wrote the letter to the president and they were going through a brutal stretch. with this really bleak town in michigan and. halfway from toledo and a trade to and the the woman had lost her job it and her

husband had lost his job and she was diagnosed with cancer and she wrote a note to to the president to tell him what things were like. he wrote back to an end and stations operational notes and what they decided to two as said they should file for bankruptcy to try to get a fresh start on the tremendous debt of their lives. i went there with them while they went through the process and the passage that i will read is the scene of their bankruptcy hearing. >> they won't at 6:00 they had never slept but she had broken her ankle the day before another stroke of bad luck when she tripped going down the stairs now all she could think about was the bike again into the cigarette. j. hata had a.

he walked out of their bedroom to discover three loads of unfold laundry in dishes sitting on the table and awake and wailing query each restored us a grant from the 94. two sparc -- to smoky 22 chefs instead they were smoking twice as often. still burning $13 a day waiting to go to wal-mart. the smoke is have cigarette down and afflicted into the air. i don't know if i can do this for you have to. i have five hours left of four. i have the late shift at the airport. one kids screaming another going on a field trip 1/2 to drop everything to drive all

the way to a in referred to prove that we are broke? i am sorry. there is no choice. he searched his closet for the outfit the last time he'd just up was his wedding now his favorite slacks were missing a button he found some rankled khakis and move them with an i.r.a.. they fit they could not find a bill to match. he tried to not the type three times but still it was dangling above his bellybutton. he threw the tide back into the closet in went into the living room. you look good she said. he said i feel like nvidia. she went outside to smoke another have cigarette and j. disappeared into the closet and this time he did not ask for feedback you was wearing jeans, skateboard shoes and the oversize t-shirt and then grab the

car keys. he kissed her goodbye before she could object. he drove across the street to the coffee and pulled onto the highway headed for in arbor. he kept the radio turned off and on the other times he traveled the highway. he lived in ann arbor mandated a college girl customers had paid him in cash so he traveled the stack of $20 bills and celebrated a friend's birthday where waiters people the napkin when he went to the bathroom now he drove past that restaurant parking in front of the courthouse. just beyond the metal detector directly above the photos with a printed signs

bankruptcy proceedings with an arrow pointing up the stairs. he follow the signs to the second-floor lounge where they grousing hearings had taken every other wednesday for year because there were overbooked look like a waiting room. big flowers and come afford televisions in issues of fortune magazine across the coffee table. 40 chairs arranged around the room in the bankruptcy officiant sat in a suit at his table. and surveyed the room around him and another man wearing mismatched tennis shoes a motorcyclist with the unkempt grisly beard and one woman's genes were warned to the owe later he learned they had vetted by still

look as destitute as possible to reinforce the impression of a bankruptcy. dress to depress in his baseball high he was the most dapper client. his lawyer arrived 20 minutes late and pulled him into a hallway for the consultation. thank you for coming. the lawyers hair was slicked back. sure. glad to help. it was a good day for the lawyer. u.s. representing four of the other people 1300 per case they had already started to send monthly payment checks incurring one new debt to erase the others. remind me again why you are filing? >> lots of reasons but mainly because my business went under. >> id made a lot of money.

>> my brother just bought an in ground school. >> we didn't get many voters like that. the lawyer shrugged and handed him a one-page form to fill out. under 2008 and come hero 14,000 under 2009 he wrote 23,000. we checked a few boxes signed the form and handed it back. okay. efficient it will call us up and ask a few questions. keep your answers short and polite there should not be anything too confusing if all goes well you'll be granted the bankruptcy. don't be nervous. i do this all the time. trust me. it is a piece of cake. he nodded and went back into the lounge the room fell silent one by one people filing for bankruptcy walk to the front of the room to

sat across in the officiant they raise the right hand in hand offered testimony the soundtrack of the recession there primary reason i am filing is a was the owner operator of a truck business that went bad now have no truck and no business. case number two. there is no commission any more. i sell copiers and printers side made only 11,000 last year. number three. my son is on welfare not doing good so now i am supporting all five grandkids. 30 minutes into the hearing the fishy it stood up and called for a jays clients they sat side by side. the officiate stood back and was muscular with a crewcut he had been processing bankruptcy cases for 21 years supervising instead

nonstop parade of misery lately he has started to wonder if the job is becoming unbearable. bankruptcy cases of the all-time high more than 1.5 7,000,005 of a nationally. he had process 1700 bankruptcies in 2009 the busiest year ever. the preparation for each case required 60 pages of paperwork and no amount of ground work may face-to-face easier. people seemed more desperate than ever. they shouted, decried come a slammed their fists on the table and lately he was called to call in the court-martial about once a month. he thought his job was similar to the emergency room physician but after while it was the same pain and suffering.

. you don't become jaded but you have to look at the problems objectively and a move or to the next case. now pay looked across to the next case case number 10 so what caused the bankruptcy? >> guy when into business at a bad time and at a bad location a lot of my dad's come from that. he studied his filing not long ago as he believed a result from avoidable mistakes now he was not so sure he saw a familiar combination of bad luck declining wages and unemployment the story the country from 2010 sometimes there before the grace of god he continued to do his job because the paycheck

kept him on this side of the table is everything you filed accurate? yes. >> but i have no further questions for govett completes your exam. he stood up and walked out. the lawyer followed him into the hall. no further questions means he will grant the bankruptcy. he nodded and shook his hand and walked out to his car. he called gen from the road. it is done. what celebrate. they met at a mexican restaurant where the at lunch entrees cost $4.95 and they could split it. she wrapped her arms around him. they smoked have cigarette then went inside. of margarita for her and a beer for him. he had to work that night at the airport and she had to go to the doctor the restaurant was empty and react to music played in the background. they sat on the same side of

the booze holding hands. j. took off his hat in raised his glass. to bankruptcy. to a fresh start. to 2010. >> the book reveals a lot of what was going on in the country for gen and j. one of the heavier stories they file for bankruptcy and the deficit is continued to mount a and at the end of the year in at the end of the book, at a heartbreaking moment they decide they will take their first trip to new york city because an autograph dealer had been writing them again and again eventually they drove to new york and sold a letter for $2,000 so they could pay off

the debt so that is who had a profound impact. other stories are certainly more hopeful and things in the envelope range from devastation to kids right teeing who are inspired and running for class president. but one of the things that i find astounding is that the president reads the 10 letters every day. for me, having no control control, it is pretty humbling in terms of what people are coming through in their lives and people tend to rights when things are difficult for them. i know most of the feedback i get is because people are upset and what he read reflects that. but i also think it is a fixture of what he does and

will continue to read 10 as long as he is an office. so far the mixture has not gotten easier. we will see how things change. i bush could love to talk questions. if you have more uplifting stories. [laughter] >> you say he gets 20,000 per day? how did they narrowed down to 10? >> it is a crazy process. the male used to be handled in cited the white house itself before the anthrax scare then they decided that was too big a risk so they took over an office building downtown ron the ninth floor 50 employees, 100 in turns, the volunteers or through the day losing of mail that comes in every day. they're very specific about measuring the metrics.

at e-mails are adam -- automatically categorized into one of 75 folders. they measure every day we got 20% of the male about occupy wall street, how much was negative how much was positive. they take the metrics to give said general feel of what is coming in. pretty much the people who selected these letters are the staffers in the office it is their first job in washington d.c. may be working on the campaign they read 300 per day and they pick five over the course the representative and the main issues and those that stand out and stick with them. those go to the director of the office staff looks at 100 potential letters in picks 10 that he feels represents. it requires an army.

>> how did you pick? we looking for the 10 never representative or just the amazing stories? >> luckily i could do both. it was a reporter's dream that you could pick one day just the fact that 20,000 had reduced at 10 they will probably be compelling stories. but then to pick to read hundreds of letters over the course of the year but to pick from the wealth of letters, it was hard to pick the ted days the 10 i wanted to follow. i wanted a mix. stories like gen and j but also stories that were fun and also looking for letters that impacted his