if you can keep the bureaucracy away things can happen. so he's changed a lot. >> host: are you a car guy now? >> guest: i like to think i am, i know i'm not technically but i know a lot more about them than i did and i do notice on the road what kind of vehicle that was. so yes, from that standpoint i am. >> host: what do you drive these days? >> guest: i drive a ctsv cadillac and i love it. >> host: thank you so much ed whitacre to read the book is "american turnaround: reinventing at&t and gm and the way we do business in the usa" and it's been a pleasure. thanks for your time. >> guest: it's been a pleasure, stephanie. thank you so much. ..

problems are selfed not book may if mayors ruled the world. climate change, illegal trafficking, immigration and terrorism. it's just under two hours. [applause] thank you so much, kathy. it's a particular pleasure, as you might imagine, to have the

hospitality of a distinguished center at the graduate center the center on philanthropy and civil society and have the friendship of a terrific scholar who has been a friend of many years. i owe kathy the special debt in the generous invitation to be a senior scholar at the center and bring my small organization with me. thank you very much, kathy. it's because of her i'm here today and here at the city university. i sworn after i left maryland having left rutgers i would not go back to the university again. i'm glad i have broken that promise to myself and here. it's a pleasure to be on the podium again. we met in the '70s what we were both regarded as a radical

scholar. some might not think that anymore. francis and i were asked by james mcgreger burns to be the co-chair of the american political science invention program. we came up with a program that even i think jim burns was a little alarmed by. he in fact put in to action. i have known francis since then. she has remained an honest and authentic voice of progressivism and radicalism with a deep interest with those they have shown -- the homeless and the poor. not how they can be helped but how they find ways to help themselves through the movement and work that they do. it's a pleasure to have her perspective this afternoon in responding to these comments.

i'm very pleasured to jackie davis, the chairman of the -- and rachel and members of the executive committee they are here today because that organization the interdependence movement which i'll talk about a little bit today is central to the thinking that has lead me to this work on the cities. i hope if your not familiar with it, you will have a look at interdependence movement.org online and gate sense of the work we are doing there. but let me make -- some remarks about the city and suggest it's change in recent years. my thinking about in politics in ways i hope it might also change yours. and in a sense, just what i want to do this afternoon, i want to change the subject. for 400 years, roughly when we talk politics retalk nations, we

talk sovereignty, the nation state, we talk about international relations, relations among nations. we talk about the league of nations. the united nations. the nations state have been the central preoccupation obsession of politics for 400 years. it's been the central and pivotal and core institution of western and ultimately global politics. there's no question of primary actor in politics for the last 400 years has been the nation state. it's special role for the last 400 years has been a protecter of democracy. it's impossible to think about social contract theory. to think about representative institutions and think about democracy without thinking about independent nation state inside of which democracy has nestled

and institutions has flour riched. the growth of the nation state and growth of democracy over the last had 400 years have gone hand and hand. democracies and those who care about disple owe a debt to the nation's fate. we know in the 21st century democracy is in crisis. i won't waste my time trying to persuade of you that since i think there are a few people who think differently not just here but in the western world, and even those part of the world that are yearning for democracy and seeking it when we see whether egypt, libya, syria, or iraq or somalia. we see how difficult to secure democracy today in the context of the struggle for an independent state. and the 18th century the decoration of independence spoke to the world by saying if you want lickety, freedom, justice.

you must first secure independence. that's been the mantra of democrat-seeking people and the discussion go o- on far long time. i want to suggest that the crisis of democracy today is in part because it's no longer true. that nations states can no longer vouchsafe, security and liberty of citizen. it's no longer well cared for in the nation state. that the nation state so powerful and valuable for 400 years has been outrun by the new circumstances of a global interdependent world which the nation state can no longer solve problems as it once did. the mantra of the nation state is independence.

the trouble in the 21st century it happened in world war ii and world war i. we live in a world of independent challenges, independent problems but in a world of interdependence challenges. i won't enumerate them here, if you look at sustainability, ecology, environment, weapons of mass destruction, or tropical storm, every one of those threats pace little need boundaries. every one of those threats is a cross-border challenge. every one of those threats represents a new interdependent, take one example, al qaeda. one of the reasons al qaeda still lives despite the fact that the leadership is lick

dated, the drones are taking out, it's leader along with a lot of people who aren't the leaders nonetheless the leadership being lick dated. one of the reasons al qaeda survives, it is what i call a belev lent ngo. it's a nongovernmental organization. it belongs to no state. attacking states, laying low state government, defeating the taliban, al qaeda, making war in it will not stop it because terrorism like steanlt like markets are independenter in their character. what we have created beginning of the 21st century is a deep symmetry between the challenges we face and the political response the political institutions we have to respond to that. every challenge is interdependent global cross frontier and the primary

political actors that respond are bounded, frontiered, independent nation states. and in that a symmetry, you can see the dysfunction of the modern world. we watch, for example, starting four or five years ago in copenhagen and going through mexico city and due by and recent meetings where 180 or 190 nations came together to renew the protocol already out of date in term of the ecological challenges but to embrace that now and failing to do so. and going home and saying that is because our sovereignty said china, the u.s., now canada, even leaders doesn't permit us to monitor. doesn't permit us to report to international body. doesn't permit an international

body to tell us what to do with emission. sovereignty has become the obstacle to cooperation and increasely made states look more and more dysfunctional. how is that the most powerful, well equipped military nation in the world has ever seen the united states of america can't bring a handful of terrorists to heal in benghazi or mali, or afghanistan. the asymmetry between a massive military based on big ships, planes, and bombs and the reality of every day -- cross borders that a symmetry means that the war machine, the war machine of the greatest state there ever was is largelier

relevant to the security threats we face. as we learn on 9/11 when in this city, a handful of hijackers living in the united states for years hijacked our planes and turned them to weapons. they didn't have to be given weapons by anyone. they seize them and use them and created devastation here. that, again, is a sign of this new asymmetry. and you find it in every one of these areas from disease, pandemic that effect us today, when i was growing up in manhattan in the '0s my mother used to say don't go to new jersey. i think there's flu. we worried about the new jersey flu. we worried about disease today come in pandemic no matter how good the health system, ours

isn't that good, no matter how good it is no health position in position to take on the global threat we face. global world challenge, indper dependence as the reality and independent nation states born two, three, four hundred years ago in world which sovereign territory and jurisdiction could be and was the gairn or it of liberty and security. we need in short new political entities, new institutions to deal with an interdependent world. there's candidates around traditional multinational cop corporations which are interdependent and global which pay little attention to the states. that is not a great candidate to

go the work. they can do a fair amount but they lack power of any kind. they are unrepresentative and undemocratic. they represent the interest of the people, but they don't consult the interest of the people. the international monetary institution that came out of -- they are mostly nation state based in the nation that own them and the banks that own the nation more or less the term in the policy. they are not useful. we are in need of new actors politically. that can act democratically, across-border, and have an impact on the interdependent problems we face. it's there i don't idea that there is in the oldest and original political institution possible potential for a new 21st century interdependent

world. namely the city. the town, the entities we first formed in every early culture people come together around trade, creativity, living together, the neighborhood which we gathered. the ancient palace, which is where we started could conceively today act as an alternative agent in a modern world. and the great irony, beauty of that is that it closes a great circle. western civilization, civilizations everywhere started in towns, township, trading posts, and cities. but by the end of the ancient world it was clear that those cities were too small in the scale. too limited in their political

representation to be capable of governing in the world that emerged in the mid evil empire and in the renaissance. in other words that's the scale of human society's grew. the township proved too small to deal with a large scale problems and so it required the invent of this of the renaissance in the early modern period to create the new idea of the nation of people. who then substituted themselves as a large entity capable of ruling and social contract theory of people and conceived themselves as being in a contract with one another to obey a larger power in some the nation state emerged as a solution to the limited scale and limited capacity of the city to deal with a new growing problem of europe and north america and asia.

the nation state was the solution to the problem of inadequate scale on the part of the city. but now, as i just described, it's the nation's state who has the scale too diminutive to deal with the global reach of the problems we face today. what i'm suggesting is that we circle back to cities but not one city, town, palace at the time. but what cities can do together in networks. to work and corporate across borders to do what individuals sovereign states cannot do. the old palace reconstituted in a networking of -- can become a global instrument of global cooperation. the subtitle of my book if mayors rule the world why it's a

good idea. the more important of the sub title is if mayors rule the world how they already do. because part of what i'm saying is notlet pluck the city from on security and get them to talk to one another and get them to work together. maybe if they can do that we can create a new utopia. on the reason contrary -- is that seis already are deeply erk inned. that inner-city associations if you look what is happening successfully global world are doing so. that cities are already well on the path to soft, informal global governance. not an executive authority with

a mandate telling people what to do through laws made but a group of cities and mayors and counselors and citizens working together across borders voluntarily developing best practices, exploring common urban vir chow to solve problems states have proven no longer able to take care of. and i will bore you with it here. it's boring. important as it is. i name for you the inner-city networks that already in operation doing important business around the globe. you would be shocked and suppress a long yaun. the names are boring and bureaucratic. the reality is great. one of the most important institutions nobody has ever heard of, for example, is the united cities and local

governments uclg. 3,000 cities and local authorities that meet globally every year and the networking cities around work and environment, transportation, immigration, secure city, and a number of other issues. i hadn't heard of it two years ago. i doubt too many people here other than the urban specialists have heard of it. it's a living organization. most people know what you mean the american congress of mayors, sister cities, maybe. they pale in the context of the actual inner-city organizations literally hundred of them. some regional, some national, some with global scope that exists. the forty cities or 58 cities now working on global environment and doing better jobs than the state have done. cities for mobility.

mayors running the world city. city protocol and organization in barcelona that shares best practices. claire the counsel of local authority. the climate alliance. partnership of democratic local government in southeast asia. the international counsel of local environmental initiative and so on and so on. they go on and on. they are there working. i know, if i sit there and study and do a full report, your junior high school kids would say isn't there something else i can do for the report? they are important because they are achieving results in the very area where nations states are in lockup. unable to make any readies tings progress. they are actually doing things in important things together. and they do it because when you

look at cities, the approach to governance, the approach to citizenship, the approach to policy problems turns out to look different from what happens when you look at nation states. what mayors are and do prepare to what presidents and prime minister are and do is striking in the distinctions. and i'll start with a simple fact that might startle you. there's not one mayor of any american city despite the greatnd of america's cities and the names american mayors has become president of the united states. mayors mostly don't become presidents because mayors are a different kind of politician than presidents. and part of what my book explores is what makes mayors different. why don't they become presidents? there's some places where they do in france they do. because they are chosen by the

political system. not by local candidates and being mayor is part of a political career. but in most places are they are elected they don't. the starting point is that mayors are among the most pragmatic problem solving politician the world has ever seen. that's because their job is specific. if you become -- you have go the to achieve world trade regulation. you have to top the taliban and deal with chaos in libya and mali. you have to ban guns across the country or not. saling up the board ears and fig -- those vast large scale problems lend themselves to ed yolings. no government, big government, self-government. when you're mayor, you have

sircht set -- sircht set of task. you better get the snow off the road when it snows. mayor lindsay, some of you may recall in 1960 when failed to plow. almost lost his job. because he didn't plow the streets. mayor teddy, pragmatic mayor of jury -- was known as a pragmatist and famous for having said he was in a meeting with rabbi and christians who were arguing about access to the holy site. he finally said to them, spare me your sermons and fix your suers. a wonderful phrase that contrast the religious that divide israel

and palestinian and the middle east. from the practical problems that have to be done. there's another rather unmown mayor same period, very much like him who was a mayor. he almost got himself killed insisting his job to make the city function as a city. not to engage in universal debate about the jews and the arab and palestinians and who owned the land and who was there first and should do. it it's typical of mayors that they focus on problem solves. if you look at what they actually say, you'll find again and again we did survey of mayors in many different countries and they ended up saying the same thing. or job 0 is is to get it things fixed and do thing and make it happen. a moi your in philadelphia said the mayor the president of the american conference of mayors said we could never get away

with some of the stuff that goes on in washington. you either fill pothole your don't. the pool is open or it isn't. someone responded to 9/11. when you're in the city being socialists, being a conservative. they have impact on how you view government. in the end you have to do the work of govern innocence. the other thing about being mayor if you're president of the united states, you're a figure head. if you're president of france or china and 99.9% will never to more than see your face. if you're a mayor in a big city like new york let alone a smaller city. if you're mayor there your neighbors know you. they see in the coffee shop.

you can't get away with much because you are a neighbor and a politician who is a neighbor is a different breed. whenit was a different man than when i was president of france. the new president of fran spent seven years as mayor of tule in the south of france. as part of the political career, he grew so fond and involved when he took the pledge of office last year when he became the president of france he went down to tule and took the oath of office in front of my neighbors. sop the mayor as neighbor means that in fact mayors are -- to use the phrase mayors are home

boys from the neighborhood. they are about the neighborhood. we read about mayors like our friend in newark who run to burning buildings and poor out people or mayor johnson who stopped on a mugging on the street of london. even if barack obama or bush wanted to, obviously the secret service would not let them get out of limo and interfere with a mugging. it's a different kind of job as a symbolic power. ed in the end you're not surprised when a mayor you see a mayor out on the side of an accident or pulling somebody out of burning buildings. ultimately the mayor sees themselves, first of all, as a ?aib. someone solving problems it's reflected in the statistic. we know that the trust in public north in american throughout the western world and much of the world has plummeted.

congress is 12 fortunate in some polls. the presidency not this president but the presidency in 309 and 0. considered wildly popular because he has 52% support right now. the supreme salter ire court numbers have goanl.name poop some would say that's a hello effect. you know the guy you know. whatever you want to call it. neighbors retalk about trust in democracy that has been largely lost elsewhere which means also our relationship to our own town and city counsel and mayors is the last repository of trust in the united states and western europe. and the collapse of trust the democratic institutions is a deep crisis because of democracy which loses the trust of the citizens is going to fail. and the fact that the trust is

greater means that at least in the city and town. there's greater optimism. a lot of people like bloomberg a lot of people don't. the thing about him. i saw last night on new york 1 somebody who doesn't like bloomberg can go up to him and scream in his ear and eventually the cops pushed him away. the guy who did it was a professional hecker. he asked the mayor how come you are being protected and we're not. try to do that with president obama or the president of china or the president of france. you can't do it. ..

and anything else. if you run for the legislature in new york state or in kentucky you will probably the one to be a congressman, then senator then run for the governorship. it's a kind of slippery slope upward. people fall upward as american politicians as we've seen so often that they become neighbors and very often tend to be mayors like mayor koch. she will be here at this

foundation next year but it's unlikely that he may have had aspirations that he will because the qualities that it takes to be mayor make it very hard to run for national office or ideologies and party identification and big-time rhetoric and a big of waste are what really make things happen. that also gives mayors the chance to solve real problems together. i just want to give you one or two examples of what mayors actually do and have done because it's extraordinary. let's take i think what is the most crushing issue on the world agenda and the one no one from china to the white house in washington today is paying much attention to, climate change. the fact is if we do not find a way to deal with of the sustainability, the sustainable environment, carbon energy, the world as we know it, rather

governed by cities were nation states will largely vanished because most of the crises that we face in demography and water supplies in the rising oceans and the shifting populations and immigration go directly back to the problem and we have watched nation states sit by while all of those tipping plants, whether it's 2 degrees in the raising of the atmosphere or 350 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere are bypassed and we go up and and the temperature has gone up and it's already well past 350 we are up to 420 or so and climbing and states have made an awful lot of malaise and have done almost nothing. but here's some interesting and optimistic fact. cities use 75 to 80% of the world's carbon energy and our

responsible for 75 to 80% of the world's carbon emissions. they had been in cities which means even if china and canada and the u.s. and france do nothing, cities can impact carbon emissions significantly by the work they do, and indeed that is already happening. they have already begun to do that. i will just give you a couple examples. l.a.. if i asked you where to the carbon emissions come from i would certainly say and imagine you would say the freeway. not true. to the port of los angeles, the largest port in the united states the port of los angeles was responsible for something like 42% of the carbon emissions of los angeles and for a lot of the small. the diesel ships hundreds everyday the container ships sit there and spew diesel fumes even

while they are tied up the shore, delivering 12,000 trucks a day coming in and out delivering the cargoes the old diesel engines with lots of automobiles and so on. the mayor philip russo five years initiative a program of reform of the part in which he provided electrical connections and the raiders coming in at the container ships coming in to look up the electrical the way yachts do. so instead of using oil they were on electricity. the trucks were compelled overtime by partnerships and the trucking companies can benefit by it to upgrade their engines to harbors the debate to it's been something like 35 to 40% reduction in the carbon and sessions to the commissions with a total percentage of the emissions in l.a..

the mayor did that. the u.s. did nothing. the u.n. did nothing. the mayor, the council and the citizens of los angeles did that and it's very different. in new york it's also not transportation. we don't compare it to places like phoenix and san diego used cars the way they do in the west. but here, the bulk of the carbon emissions come from buildings, poorly insulated, old, dark attracting the sun. so here the mayor has initiated a crucial round of trying to get better insulation in old buildings that are insulated new buildings, more efficient air conditioning, more efficient heating, change the oil from number six to four it may be the natural gas maybe eventually to alternative energy contant the rooms white and again by the

local municipal law and the local cable production and private public partnerships if you can begin to actually make an impact that's measurable in this course of the year that states simply can't do. then you find the city is coming together another global environmental organizations exchanging best practices and you find what new york and l.a. have done to be replicated in other places. you find something that started in the 1960's in latin america a program where you put the brakes on the street and make them available to everybody is now being used in the 3,000 metropolises around the world including the spring of new york where the bikes will be out there, get them, put them back when you are done, more and more people used bikes the new needed the dedicated a bike lanes which others are doing and rahm emanuel in chicago is doing it they've been doing it in latin

america and rio for a very long time they're doing it now in asia, they are doing it now in africa. they are not just shifting to the banks their shifting to public access and the public transportation systems based on the banks or insurance protection and avert other cities in the 1990's with a brilliant ideas you can build surface lines of buses that are dedicated lanes with concrete barriers on the side that operate like surface subways. they move quickly, they pick up people, they have expressed stops. degette people in about half the time to jobs that used to be hours away and they do this at 10% of the cost of building a subway. so to get dedicated it's a great idea of the injured in these international organizations and

cities to get there are working to to do it or even in the area of national security you think that's one area that we need to the states doing things for us here is a nice story from new york that is told in the book about the post-9/11 security efforts in new york and after line 11 the mayor giuliani dispatched the new york intelligence swap which is eight or nine detectives working on the global intelligence trying to figure out the terrorists were doing and were they going to come to the u.s., what was going to happen he dispatched them as any what in washington. to talk with the fbi, talk with interpol, talk to the cia, the national intelligence agency and the homeland security. by the time the bloomberg was the mayor and the police chief they came back we said this isn't very useful. we've been for a couple years in

washington we've learned almost nothing. a lot of bureaucracy and gossip and very little hard information the agencies often don't talk with each other competing with one another. washington, d.c. isn't the great place to be gathering intel. so ray kelly with bloomberg support had an idea. he said why don't we redeployed them to the global cities one by one, one to singapore and hong kong and frankfurt, send them to the places that we are likely to get valuable information, let them coordinate and cooperate with the units around the world. let's do city to city security intelligence gathering i can't say i'm not a security expert but that's the reason we haven't suffered another serious attack but i'm sure it had something to

do with it. and certainly, i've heard and i interviewed people they feel new york's intelligence is among the best in the united states, and i don't think it is a, incidents that that intelligence comes from city to city intelligence cooperation. so, there is no area that i can imagine where cooperation among the city's strictly cannot enhance the solution of problems among politicians and mayors who are compelled to solve their problems if they are going to stay in office. you just can't get away with the crowd that goes on in washington today. you know we don't know which is the best to use so we are not going to plow the snow this winter. we have and it theological quarrels about who should sharpen the blades so we aren't going to plow the snow. can't do it. fundamental difference. so what i want to suggest to

them is that cities and their makers and citizens, and by the way i said if they rule the world, i could have said if city management bureaucrats ruled the world probably not a great tidal. but when i say if mayors rule the world i mean if cities rule the world, if the citizens working together with their elected officials will the world, if people that take their citizenship seriously as neighbors and citizens are directly involved in the global governance, things could make a difference, and that brings me to the then proposal in which my argument issues and the proposal that in order to give a voice and a political act with the cities are already doing in the inner city organizations are already doing we need to convene something like a global assembly of cities and global parliament

of mayors and in order to do that are you joining me or are you just coming to take those we? okay, thank you. >> we need a global mayors parliament. not a top-down executive telling cities what to do, but a representative organization that allows the cities to consult, to opt in and out and to deutsch together with your already doing informally. let me just conclude if you don't mind i don't like to read but i'm going to read the last few pages here of the chapter about global parliament because i want to be concise and make very clear what this is about because some people said isn't that kind of grandiose, that's never going to happen is that a kind of utopian but what i want to suggest is that when i

propose say mayors parliament i am not asking for a mandate for the top down sovereignty by the legacy is exercising exactly the authorities over a world of pacification states. rather, this is a brief for cities to london but this to informal practices that they have already put in place to give institutional expression to emerging cooperative relationships, to focus on the bottom of the role that the city's already play in deliberate thing and deciding and voluntarily implementing policies and reforms that need to be interdependent challenges of the 21st century. the aim isn't to edit the burdensome job of covering the world to the already burdensome job of governing the city. it's already to understand that to govern the city's effectively they may have to play some role

in governing the world in which they're cities fight to survive. but in governing the city's cooperatively to give their prod what is of the global effect may years need not await the cooperation of the disk united nations or the international financial institutions private market multinational corporations are centuries old and dysfunctional nation's. they can act now in ways that are symbolic, and volunteer aid but that are also practical, efficient and potentially transformational and they can do so in ways that directly impact more than half of the world's population because 52% in the world live in cities and 78% in the developed world live in cities today. but indirectly serve the entire planet. a global parliament of mayors will give the mitropoulos a

megaphone and allow its voice to be heard. when the best practices by which cities to find themselves can be shared and implemented in common, we can take the inner city cooperation to the next level. what i propose to them and want to propose here is that much of the difficulty that we face today lies with a traditional sovereign state to large participation and to address global power. and i want to recommend that if we change the subject from state to city, we can come to terms with interdependence. the cities also harbor hope that can imply naturally to the collaboration and interdependence that has always been. that's why 90% of the cities are on water because it is about transportation, it's about

concourse and trade and become an occasion, it's a lot cultural cooperation. inner-city relations reflect a civic reality because network cities already comprise of a modest and informal but actual model of global governance and since they have a taste for cooperation and they've shown an ambition to write the achievements and best practices of their cities into a promissory note for the plan at, it is time now for the cities to start doing what the nation states have consistently in the recent decades been unable to do, cooperate. the city has the future is a demographic and economic fact. republican vice presidential candidate paul ryan you might remember a couple weeks ago even suggested president obama was free elective on the back of

urban voters, and he was right. the city is blue, not in the narrow sense of being space but in the broad sense of being cosmopolitan tolerant, open, multi-cultural, creative, willing to cooperate. that is a good thing, not a bad thing. it's a fact, not a political ideology and it describes the nature of the modern world. the global looks ever more like the city and ever less like the oral landscape. the world that we live in is connected and is interconnected and so are the cities which make them ideal the exemplars and representatives for today. in increasing in the urban habitat that is our destiny we can begin to the stand or psittacism and share our pessimism about the democracy and politics. we are liberated to build a cosmopolitan governments edifice on the parochial foundations of the ancient city and guided by

the blueprint implicit in its modern successors. europe or the year rosellen is likely to fall apart but the cities are coming together. the united states and china may be paralyzed by their abstract ideologies and consequently failed to address the mutual security issues but american and chinese cities can pursue pragmatism with a purposefulness the ceo jim clifton indulges in a certain hyperbole when he says forget washington, cities will win or lose america. but in fact the fiscal and a jurisdictional noose held by the powerful nations, cities are not free to ignore those nations by whose leave the exist and

operate. they will have to do what they do with and not against the state. i understand this is where the nation states this. they won't come they can't, but the world imagines here will allow the cities to lead rather than follow states. and even when necessary to raise the flag of resistance when sovereign stubbornness threatens not just the right to action, but the survival of the common plan that. embracing the interdependent logic of the city brings us full circle we can finally rediscover the process took an to the core. we can cover the participatory politics by securing in the world of the globalization a place for the democratic neighborhood writ large.

thank you very much. [applause] >> francis, will you join me, please. >> i will stand right here today i want to share your authority with the podium. >> i'm francis of the graduate center and it's my pleasure to welcome my longtime friend and colleague. this is his maiden taught at the graduate center and we are really glad to have him. [applause]

i think he mentioned that we first got to know each other some 40 years ago when we were asked to plan the annual conference of the american political science association which even now the certainly then is very austere and traditional and boring event and we tried to pick up little bit. we had a lot of good ideas, none of which i will mention until the cameras are shut off. it was just a lot of fun to work with ben and when i tell you those ideas that will improve. succumb ben has a point of view

about how to save the world, because the world as, the planet as we know it and the country as we know it is in big trouble. those troubles include the ecological crisis we year but all the time and go about their daily life as we did before if there will be tomorrow and tomorrow but there might not be. they include the spiraling inequality. they would include the erosion of the infrastructure of the space governments but also the infrastructure of living together. that means the infrastructure of transportation and utilities, the networks that we depend upon as well as the governing structures that we have

developed over centuries to help shore up people that are in trouble to read those are being dismantled as well so we have big, big problems not just in the united states but in some respects they are worth more in the united states but they also exist elsewhere, particularly in the northern hemisphere. we expect them in the southern hemisphere and that proposes a network of moles as a global solution and that tells us what the network in the different organizational forms is already there. it's already working on those problems. it's already helping to solve those problems even if you think they are getting worse they are holding back the floods, and he finally proposes that we

escalate the solution. we enlarge the solution by creating a global program of mayors. so, okay, we will do that. i will vote for it. now i want to discuss with you some of the problems, democratic problems that the parliament will confront. one set of problems has to do with we slide a little over this with a question of whether the local government, even urban local government is in fact real space than national government. is it more practical? well maybe it is more practical about different things. maybe local and national government concern themselves rather than the politicians that preside over the local and national government have

different priorities because the politics of getting reelected and staying free elective is different on the local and the national level. but, the question is whether because they are local that is what they say, the ideologue's always say closer to the people is more space. isn't that what richard nixon began saying all the time and it became republican mantra justify dismantling programs and a lot of great society programs, so wait a minute is the local government closer to the people i think we have very reputable tradition and in the study of the american politics over the local oligarchy is only overcome

during periods of national convulsion. it would be an example of that. or look at the 1930's and 1960's. were these periods that didn't have an impact on our society so much because of the impact on the local government because it wasn't because the mayors responded to the travails of the great depression or the travails of the new urban migrants in the cities in the 1960's. it was national government that responded in a big way and that provided the cities to also respond. and that was true about them in the 1930's and in the 19 sixties. so, wait a minute. local government is more space?

who are you thinking of klaxon some of the examples would make me feel warm and good. i kind of like john lindsay in retrospect even if he did make some mistakes. but when have we had a mayor that walked the streets of the ghetto in the riots since before or after? john lindsay did that. or what about laguardia? right there, a good mayor. but mayor bloomberg? i think that is another matter altogether. i think bloomberg is the major mainly for the financial sector, the mayor manly for the tourists that flood into manhattan. he is the mayor who gave the

high-rise condo buildings and a loud and facilitated the destruction of the working-class neighborhoods. i remember manhattan as a place of working-class residences and little shops. now all i see is this stuff that's going. well, mayor bloomberg is the mayor of the most affluent people in new york more than he is of the people of new york. so i disagree with what the confidence that the mayors for all these reasons -- i'm not sure that they are more space or kind of anchor of democracy.

and there are other questions -- i have other questions as well. for example, we have networks of mayors that do a lot of convening, not recently but a long time ago. i don't know how much they actually accomplish, but ben actually thinks that because of the convenience and the parliament of the mayor's he proposes to build because it is voluntary and consensual he seems to think it is our powerful. i don't know why that would be true. i think it is voluntary and

consentual of it has no mandate in powerful goods in the society it might be easier to brush aside. the mayors are after all against the space and that their practical if they pay attention to the millions of people that live in the cities that live in cities not only like new york which is a welcome place for international capital and investment but cities like detroit and camden and a benton harbor. the mayors of the cities are going to be against a very powerful antagonists who don't care about many of the city's, who don't care about the people living in those cities who want

to use the programs that once kept those people flowed as another source of profit. they are cannibals on the public sector. that's the kind of opposition that this convening of mayors is going to be against. it's going to be against the international finance and it's going to be against the multinational corporations and the interests in the cities and the plundering interests of other cities that want to come into places like the harbor and take whatever is valuable and throw the people of the harbor over shorter periods, i am not confident about the network, the parliament as equal to the task of confronting the antagonists

who have to be confronted for the democratic solutions in the city's. then finally, i want to remind you of the kind of insight that we have gained from watching the american federalism and this tells us be aware of giving authority to local political actors in a global war and national world because bill local political authorities, it can even be a governor, the local political authorities are so easy to with saw by investors that are free to go here or there we have a tremendous problem in american federalism and we have it for a least 120

years, and that problem is that we have a former structure of government that gives large responsibility to the states, that means governors and legislatures of the local government that means many years in the city council, gives large responsibilities to these sub national government units at the same time as capital is operating on the national and international level. that means investors can say to the mayor or the governor i'm going to do it. give me what i want or i will disinfest. give me what i want and i will invest. that's not democracy. that is living under the black male of the capitalist class that is free to exercise the threat of exit in the global and

indeed interdependent world. thank you. [applause] >> let me make a few quick responses. thank you for the spirited and deeply critical comments of the system and the democracy and the issues that we face. but why we are doing this we would like to invite all of you to think about questions you'd like to ask and there are microphones on either side of the hall. if you would like to come down to either one of the microphones so we can get to other people involved, take the microphone and we will have some time for questions, too but let me try to address a couple of these. the biggest question that i would agree the problem is, the question i always want to ask compared to what is their aid

money elite, is there an oligarchy system in the modern global capitalist world that exercise is illegitimate influence on the political relations everywhere at every level of government? yes. of course you'd have to be [inaudible] not to see that to be the question isn't are we there and find ways to fight it. it is a heavy burden on all of the government's. but it's not i believe a special burden on the city and part of my argument is in some ways despite the fact they are smaller and weaker, they are naturally in a better position to exist. i think right now the influence of the tinted corrupt money on the american system is nowhere more obvious than in washington, d.c. and the natural elections and that is where we see that

influence and while you also see that the state level and to the neighborhood level of the power is there. i don't believe it is more influential and in some ways less influential and there i think you have to factor not just to the space character and the government but some of the issues i was talking about cosmopolitan and the creativity, what cities to, but they are and how that makes them a little less vulnerable, though still very vulnerable to the kinds of oligarchy forces that you are talking about. so this is a universal question. it is a threat to cities [inaudible] and every level but the question is are the cities and a better position to deal with this than others? i think they are. the examples of the federal laws

and in the early 20th century i agree with you. the federal government was a friend of the progress of some. i'm not sure that is true today. the national government is blocking [inaudible] cities i didn't talk about that one of the proposals. [inaudible] which can go to hospitals and use emergency rooms and cities are trying to do things that nowadays the national states no longer deutsch and by the way the same is true in other in the world. the book does try to [inaudible]

>> thank you. is it on? the city tries to deal with issues that once upon a time the civil rights universal rights was the local government got in the way and escorted them to state and local universities in the south because the mayor's and places like little rock were a big part of the problem. but nowadays i think that has changed in fundamental ways and i no longer see the central government as a friend of progress and friend of justice and the opponent of big money i see the cities as better able to do that and indeed it seems to me it thinks the big government is the place it wants to operate and the reason the big money isn't on the side of the tea party ultimately is that they don't need to make the big government smaller, they can buy it and own it and put it to

their own uses and i think that is harder to do nowadays. a lot of may years about how we can argue you talk about some of the things with the changing of the city constitution and the third term i had some problems with the way in which he brought people into the school system who didn't really i think represent parents and kids but we have to balance these things out. the fact is if you look at his national efforts against but illegal guns and the ecology, if you look at the international cooperation and leadership, she's shown the inner-city organizations many of which has played a leading role, and he stunned many important things and one of the things today is because of the nature of the inner city cooperation you have to judge them not just what they do on their own cities but with the with others about the leadership. as we can argue about the

specific mayor whether it is in philadelphia or mayor villaraigosa some people said to me, you know, he is a portrait time, he hasn't done anything and then i found out he had done with the poor. he'd done very important things. what is interesting, too about the mayor bloomberg and others before him and so long as they are subject to a kind of criticism and they are engaged in a debate about the work on hold doesn't happen. nationally other than through the polarized advice of the ideological lens is the we bring today. with mayor bloomberg we talk about what did he achieve an education, what did he achieve in the intermodalism or what not and in that sense i think that of mayors said just the ss ability but ultimately i think that the real question is not are the mayors are vulnerable to influence and on the side or not it is as compared to what my

view is the mayors, city council, presidents and the citizens of the city's are a great place to start because the cities around the world remain more cosmopolitan, are open, more tolerant, more plural, more creative than the alternative senator tbb to entities of the state and national level and in that sense why not make a bet on them while we've been on the nation's state and i'm not sure the 21st century the bet is playing off. why not place a democratic bet on the city i think it is worth making that that. >> i said that when i had the opportunity i will vote for the

neyer -- mayor. then i went on to say some of the things that would not accomplish. some of the terrible obstacles the parliament but consent even its most decent and democratic members. so i think what we might also talk about is your solution as a government structure solution. let's reform the structure of the government, and it that way incrementally at least to change the power structure of the world so, let's talk about that. i think that i would go along with that. and then i am not going to work on it. i'm going to work on something else. i'm going to work on the social movement and energizing and

protest movements that exercise real disruptive leverage against the dominant institutions that have enough threat power to force the real substantive changes in policy. so, i would vote for the parliament. >> and i will vote for social movement with equal fervor if not either or we need more, we need them to work together. my wife by the way is involved in the movement. she won't tissues to vote for you, she will work with you but we are looking for the mutually reinforce strategies, social movement is a powerful way to do it in their riding that you've done over the last 30 or 40 years on what works and what the obstacles are to the social movement and francis has asked the same question how do the social movements work and that corrupt world, and then

acknowledged that also presents difficulties for the movement. these are some of the ways we deal with it to get so i think these are mutually reinforce strategies and i welcome and thank you for your vote and you have mine in return. if we continue to do both things, maybe that democracy will be better off. let's turn to the audience. >> my name is robin rogers and i am a professor at college and i want to first say that i agree with virtually everything that you've set about where we are. i think the nation state is a relic. i think the cities are the center of what is happening. however, i disagree entirely on the idea that the wealthy are not viewing politics as such. they are not putting it into the nation states because they are not stupid either but they are putting it into philanthropy and public private partnerships many of which are run with a major and get public money to create

programs and health education, prison reform, and so i think what we are seeing is the development of the network system with people like bloomberg, gates. i could rattle off 70 or 80 billionaires' out of the thousands that there are in the world that are. but the smart money is coming into philanthropy, not into influencing policy makers and so i wonder of the focus on the city that you are proposing man not be space. maybe focusing on the upper budget for which his philanthropic efforts to change policies in ways that the elite prefer is located. >> i will take a couple of questions so that we can make sure that everybody gets a chance let's go back and forth,

back-and-forth. >> go ahead, sir. >> i am a journalist. i would like -- by the way i'm attracted to the idea of the city's trading information to see the ideas like on the transportation coming out of places like brazil, etc.. but is the question then about a lack of ideas that we don't know what to do? or going back to the ultimate question i think behind the comment is a problem of the power to get it done versus the power of those who profit from things not getting done and i would like to ask you as a practical matter you said the big issue was global warming. i would say the big issue is probably any quality and the power the world is brought to its knees by banks run wild.

how would you use your conference of mayors to take on incorrect the disaster of the excessive power of multinational banks or when we get to the issue of global warming, for example, what would your mayors to about what is the xl pipeline or shy from's operations in ecuador and, for your information, it is not a philanthropic organization. >> thank you. >> i am a recent graduate of international relations now apply and graduate programs for the urban management it so clearly my thoughts are in line this year sweeping down to the urban and regional level. so my question is about what

responsibility or obligations of any larger cities have towards the smaller cities that may fall within the orbit of the regional influence. obviously the cities can gain a lot from each other working together on environmental and security issues, but the so-called second-tier cities do suffer in terms of constitutions for business, or even greater regional or national influence as for government offices and that sort of thing. >> yes, i come from france so i hope i can express myself properly. you mentioned that the mayor would become president and we have a very strong case. i remember him saying once to govern a city like paris international, cosmopolitan with

all of the problems of terrorism and everything, you can easily. and of a second mandate rather passive as a president what we retain in the french population is that he was a terrific mayor and a wonderful mayor, and i wonder when you read your book if you had the chance to talk to him and if your book will come out in french because i think it would be very interesting for us as well. a side argument. we have daniel inouye who is a very left government he has done a lot of things i don't know if you have heard of it, it is a

great success and now we are going to have the left bank with a circulation and so on. so in order to make paris still a beautiful tourist city but also something of pride for the french people. >> why don't we take those i will say a few remarks about them. one of the question circled back to the central power and financial power yet the power of monopoly and global capitalism putative in the world -- and again, one can only say anyone who thinks about power in the modern world and particularly about democratic level any institution whether it is civil society and philanthropy or the national government or global government has to think about this parallel system, this parallel destructor of money, power and fiscal power.

that is a fundamental problem. my own view is we have two choices we can choose the kind of cynicism and say it's over, democracy is ghana. it's basically hypocrisy. it's a way of preventing we still exercise the popular power when the reality is a few oligarchies and the banking and oil and the carbon industry and agriculture and so on actually run the world, and that's just the way it is and we talked about civil society or people's movements for social movements are cities are people who argue for progressive democratic party or progressive socialist party are just kidding themselves. in the 17th century catholics and protestants would be killing each other with a provision and health of kings we would bring an end to religious warfare and

bring something like the representative social contract nation states and if after the holocaust and the experiment in the german fashion some we were able to bring a new europe, the democracy deaths have some capacity to impact the power in the world. obviously the oligarchic power that is owned as a part of the fight. but if you believe in the democracies i think that the real argument and the important one is the one that we are having was isn't mutually exclusive but to be put more energy and effort into the civil society, and some people like my friend, kathleen, philanthropy isn't just another expression of tainted money trying use influence, but it is also the consequence of people trying to do good deeds in the non-governmental to make the world a better place and that is again, but for me the argument

about all of these power things is the question on how we do it, can the city's health and the difference? can the poor people's movements, can social movements make a difference? kamarck democratic party whether it is republican or democratic party to make a difference? can the united nations is not the general assembly, the secretary-general's office and places like unesco make a difference? within each one of them we can always say yes but here is the money and that the corrupt power and the skewed environment of the world which there is no equality to the you can say that or you can ask compared to what? which one makes the bigger difference and which one allows us to impact the power, illegitimate power, those to me are the questions that we need to be asking. the last questions that are the smaller cities and the second-tier cities are a very good question 500,000 trying to deal with cities from 10 million to 25 million in the world, the

center of the global economy, those cities, that is clearly not a fair competition. and detroit and new york are two very different questions. but interestingly, the mittal site cities have also used creativity it's beginning to look at the digital age and beginning to find they can get the companies taking over. mittal site cities have their own attractions many of the so-called attractive cities to live and one of the reasons they are powerful as because they love living in the cities become too and they go to the most creative act on to real, they go to the most attractive cities and a lot of the cities of between 500,000 a million. and that attracts very creative innovators that can help solve problems so they are definitely issues between big cities and small cities that we need to

deal with that there are also some strengths. finally the case that was made over here. yes, the french mayors are not elected, they are appointed as a part of a political system, and he was a successful mayor in paris and not just a successful president. i mentioned in my thought he was the mayor and france and quite a successful mayor for seven years we will see whether he's a successful pri minister or not. his main success comes from deploying the french army which isn't always a very good sign. but still, that remains to be seen. as i said for the most part with of the french exception and some other cases, most makers don't go on to become president and even when he did as you said it wasn't an effective as of the separation between the mayor was and others is not absolute but there are fundamental differences. the book will be published in french and german and another of

other languages i am happy to say. so yes i hope he will be looking forward to having a french addition and other editions. the book looks at the global cities all over the world, not just cities in the united states >> two quick points. the first is we should take the question compared to what, and we should apply in muscular interrogation to the different strategies that we espouse. it's too easy to say philanthropy sometimes does good. this helps people and creates these proceedings or whatever. so, when you live. if you do decide to think about welcome a social movement or structural reform that will allow it to the mayors in the scheme of things, well, ask

those vigorously and apply some historical test to both of them because i don't think the structural reform works without a change in power relations. so for the parliament of mayors it isn't going to mean anything without a surge of unrest, of serious demand, the kind of collective power of refusal from the bottom of our society and other societies. my other point, and i will try to be quick about this, too. i want to really scrutinize the word to be used innovation, creativity. cities are supposed to be innovative and creative and wonderful and cosmopolitan and all that stuff.

well, there are things about walking down the streets of greenwich village that i like but i haven't liked it for a long time i have to say. and i certainly don't like the fact that mayor bloomberg, i guess that he agreed to this painted these patches on the street and put wooden chairs on the patches and said that he's made the city beautiful. that's all for the tourists, that is sent for the new yorkers. so all of this innovation and creativity and cosmopolitan so forth i think has to be subject to space scrutiny. the democracy doesn't just have to do with that it has to do with the pressure of price. i don't want a city that taylor's to the upper class and

the tourists or the tourist businesses. so, be careful about that innovation stuff. >> he's not going to let me get away with that. .. >> in those places. are their swarms of tourists? there are, and i guess for a new york economy, thank god. but those spaces also have to do we cog, have to do with sustainable, have to do with the

livability of cities. and in europe, as we all know, they've had pedestrian zones and car-free areas and neighborhoods for a very long time. those are also, by the way, flanked by the same world stores that we have in new york that are mollifying them, and i don't like it when i go to vienna that half of the stores i see are the same global marketing concerns you see here. but, you're right, i want to agree completely with frances when she says we can't just say little cliche, we have to interdate. interrogate those terms. i do want to say, though, in defense of philanthropy that even -- i've written critically about the monopolistic philanthropies that do away with the small scale that allow competition and different aa poaches. but the fact is on the whole if you look at bill gates and want to say in terms of the world n terms of malaria, in terms of small children living longer and

women getting on, i'd rather have a world with those philanthropies than a world without one, although i could design a world that was ideal. but many terms of the real world of philanthropy, i'm glad to have them, and i think the other thing we have to be careful of is being, oh, well, that george soros and bill gates, they're so tied to big money. the fact is a lot of lives have been safed around -- saved around the world and in the developing world because of the work that those philanthropies have done despite the connections with anticipated money, despite their monopolies that make it harder for people to have white houses. let's have another round here. >> hi, i'm in professor rogers' class, and my question is more with regard to the city's ability to adjust and, um, deal with issues of ideology.

because you speak very highly of its ability in pragmatic areas. um, as far as i can tell, the relationship between iran and israel much resembles the relationship between tel aviv and tehran. so while there are strong relations between certain cities, other cities have not crossed those boundaries. >> my name's tom murphy. what struck me was the phrase you trust in cities because they're unburdened with the issues of borders borders and sovereignty. while i'm not going to address myself to jerusalem and borders, we'll stay with new york. i was reading this morning the biographies of all the freshmen leg to haves in albany --

legislators in the albany trying to see where was their previous employment. and more of them were political consultants, favored few of big honchos in albany and assemblymen moving up the ladder. they're insiders. less of them were mayors, county supervisors, school board members. and the rest -- i don't know who's going to tell who what to do up there. but, of course, they will tell new york city -- which is older than the state, a mature city, a mature economy and which is only a creature of the state we cannot even set our speed limits down here is by active legislation. now, most of the cities are not mature, these cities, megacities even just super megacities are not mature. they're overwhelmed. i was just reading about

caracas. you know, you cannot go to bed at night without hearing gunfire, and that has -- it's an oil state. there's plenty of revenue, but the city is just forgotten. and that is, and if anything, the city mayors, if you got together, they would probably tell you they're making it up as they go along. >> my name is barn by spring, i'm an employee for the new york city department of education. i'm a licensed teacher and a licensed principal. i work now to support principals and schools that are overwhelmed with the number of situations. one recent one being having to refigure out their budgets in light of some budget cuts that are coming. due to an inability of our decision makers to come up with a workable plan for teacher

evaluations. and my question comes from the realizing of a book called "dancing with dynamite" about the history of social movements in latin america and what happens to these social movements when they start getting a little tates of power and that -- a little taste of power can and that dance that goes on between the social movement and the empowered. and another guy i've been read, we don't talk much about him, edgar moran talks about complexity. and, of course, i'm just thinking about these kids in the south bronx that come to school living in conditions of poverty. and incredible pain. incredible pain. the older i get i don't see it decreasing. it's like a third world country. and as i look at both of you up there, though, the real question i have when i think about interdependence and collaboration and the danger of words is what's the structure

that might exist between social movements and a parliament of mayors? how might a parliament of mayors if today had to adhere -- if they had to adhere to critical attributes of membership, you don't just get to be a member of this parliament because you're the mayor of a big city. you have to demonstrate some sense of balance between the multicorporations and the people who are dying in your city payoff the deals you're making with -- because of the deals you're making with those corporations. and what kind of a structure to make sure these mayors on this parliament are hearing the voices of these people? in other words, rather than voting for the parliament and then i'm going to do my own thing, how about how do we vote for the parliament together, let go of whatever the concept we have of how it's going to manifest and let go of results and see what happens if we truly collaborate and try to find a balance between the voices of the oppressed and the voices of the oppressor who as paula would

remind us are both in quite a or horrific situation and both need to be liberated. >> thank you, barn a by. we only have five more minutes, but, professor mcclintock, go ahead. >> hi. i'm vavi -- ravi mcclintock. i'd like to ask a question about the historical perspective behind this. you started off with the nation-state is a 400-year enterprise to get to its current late condition of perhaps decline. i'm very taken by the idea that an interactive network of increasingly autonomous, politically autonomous cities is a structure that is much more better adapted to solving some of the fundamental problems facing people over a longer-term

future. but i think that ms. piven's points about the power of various parties to the life of the city right now have a great ability to impede that process. if we look at the history of the nation-state over 400 years, it was originally an aristocratic, monoaround -- monarchic enterprise existing to facilitate the interests of a very small class. and so i'm wondering either in the parliament of mayors or as a prelude to arriving at a parliament of mayors what the real sources of countervailing

power might be in a large historical development that would enable a more democratic or civic republican or common-spaced vision of the city to actually come into dominance against the privatizing forces within it. >> i think this is to our last round, and, i'm sorry, i'd like to talk to you longer, but let me just very quickly make a couple of comments in response to the most recent round of questions and comments. first i want to speak on the question of i think it came up about three speakers ago, four speakers ago, the question of movements and power over time. or, in other words, most of you

would be familiar with in this kind of issue as the issue of co-opation. don't moves arise only to precipitate responses which result in the integration of some leaders from the movement, maybe some softening of the dpreecheses of -- grievances of the rank and file and then the movement disintegrates, disappears, evaporates back into the general population, and the impetus for reform disappears with that and is over. all we have is the residue of the movement in the shape of the concessions that were made while it was alive and furious. what can i say about that? i mean, identify just made the -- i've just made the case for the questioner that, yes, that's the way it has been. just the way it is. so then we have to have another movement. movements are not rationed.

movements can emerge all the time. and it was actually jefferson who evoked the idea in american history of almost a continuous turmoil, challenge, popular challenge, popular unrest, popular refusal. so, yes, the movement is over time probably going to fizzle. of its leaders -- its leaders will show up as bureaucrats. but that's what we have to organize -- that's when we have to organize a new i movement. i also think that -- and maybe i'm not responding to the points that you intended to emphasize, barnaby, but the difficult question of how a parliamentary left or a parliamentary dissidence relate to a movement,

the dissidence on the street, now, that is a really big question or set of questions. and it is, comes up in real life all the time. it is the question that the greens have disappointed us in germany by becoming a very timid and cuf parliamentary bloc. but historical parties have, in fact, in their origins the impetus, the energy of a movement that gave rise to the party. and having said that and indicators that i don't put too much faith in the parliamentary bloc that is allied or associated with the movement, i also want to say that it is the parliamentary bloc or it is the parliamentary success of the movement that is the achievement of the movement. movements don't fashion solutions out of the air, they fashion solutions out of the

crises they've created in the system of government. and in our societies that is the legislature or the parliament that fashions those solutions. >> thank you, again, frances, for your vital contributions to this ongoing dialogue and one of the pleasures of being at city university is knowing that we'll be able to continue this conversation. i just want to say three quick things. there's not really time to answer appropriately to the depth of the questions that were asked, but very important question about iran and israel versus tehran and tel aviv. i think the implicit point there was that just the way money colonizes democracy at the federal level and the local level, ideology can also colonize democracy. and i think the point was tel aviv and tehran are not insulated from the ideological questions that put iran and israel at odds with one another.

that's true. but again, i'd say as compared to what if i'm asked who's more likely to come to terms, tel aviv and tehran or the government of israel and the government of iran, i'll put my money on the two cities first. i'd rather have them have a go at it than i would the states. that's part of the general argument i'm making. same thing u.s. and china or los angeles and shanghai. it turns out the mayor of los angeles actually reached out to shanghai to solve some transportation problems he had in a way the u.s. and china would not. so that's the answer to that. barnaby spring asks a really important question. i wanted to say also to you, frances, chapter 11 -- chapter 12 of my book is global parliaments, chapter is 1 is civil society and -- chapter 11 is civil society and social movements. [inaudible] along with other discussions including occupy wall street and other more recent movements that have had an impact.

those are a part of the synergy, i believe -- i know. i didn't want to. i thought you wouldn't let me put it in you found out i was doing it. it would taint your reputation. but -- so, i want to add one thing to barnaby, he was an actor and artist who became a teacher and then a principal and then an educational innovator because he believed, he actually answered his own question, that education can make a difference. education can be a part of how we confront the deterioration of democracy. along with social movements in civil society and changes in government structure, education e -- remains an absolutely central issue at the same timed as it is by money and -- tainted as it is by money and ideology. and barnaby is trying to show even in a bureaucracy like the new york school system you can make a difference, and he has. finally, last point to my friend robbie mcclintock about the history of this and

countervailing powers. ultimately, the only countervailing way to deal with ideology, to deal with the taint of money, with corruption, with inequality and global power systems that illegitimate is democracy itself. jefferson said a long time ago that the remedy for the abuses and ills of democracy is more democracy. and the question for us is what does that mean in the modern world. what does it mean to have more democracy and philanthropy, more democracy many schooling, more democracy in social movements, more democracy in government structures? but that's the faith of the democrats, small d, that when democracy's in trouble what we need is not less democracy and alternative democracy, but actually more democracy and then to interrogate, as frances tells us, what that actually means to each of these important domains. thank you, frances. thank you, kathy.

thank you all for being here. good night. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> tell us what you think about our programming this weekend. you can tweet us @booktv, comment on our facebook wall or send us an e-mail. booktv, nonfiction books every weekend on c-span2. >> here is a look at some books that are being published this week. matthew goodman recounts the story of two women journalists in the late 19th century who attempted to break the record for the fastest trip around the world "in eighty days." in "with charity for all: why charities are failing and a were the way to give," former ceo of npr ken stern investigates u.s. nonprofit organizations and argues that the industry needs to be reformed.

pulitzer prize-winning reporter michael moss reports from inside the labs and boardrooms of the processed foods industry in "salt sugar fat." in the battle of bretton woods, benn steil, senior fellow and director of economics at the council on foreign relations recounts the united nations' monetary conference that took place in bretton woods, new hampshire, and resulted in the creation of the international monetary fund and the international bank for reconstruction and development. now part of the world bank group. education journalist sara carr followed a student, a new teacher and a principal through the new orleans school system after hurricane katrina in "hope against hope: three schools, one city and the struggle to educate america's children." look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the

near future on booktv and on booktv.org. >> i want to move to the role of publishers in this new world. it used to be that publishers would take care of all distribution, they would take care of production, and they would provide the advance. and that series of services led them to take a very hefty cut, a 95% cut. now, now you don't need production because you can put it out on the web, you don't need an advance because it doesn't cost that much to write, or you can crowd fund the advance using something like kick starter, and you don't need the distribution, again, because you can put it on the web. so what is the changing role of publishers in this new world where production and distribution and financing are starting to be taken by different technologies? >> so there's a lot in there, and let me kind of unpack it. first, i actually disagree fundamentally with a couple of

things. there's, there are production, distribution costs, and, um, you know, tasks involved whether it's digital or physical. i think it's a very common sort of misunderstanding. there's very easy to think that digital is free. and it's not. i mean, there's a lot of backlash, actually, if you will, over some of the early books. and we've got an extensive pack list, thousands and thousands of titles that are not converted. there's a conversion process that takes place, and there's a lot of care and feeding that must go into that because in the early days when you're just sort of literally scanning books to get them into an e-format, you just were not replicating the book properly. so, first of all, there's still a production not just cost, but an entirely new competency around production of a digital book and presenting that properly. i'm actually looking at our head of children's publishing, um,

who's smiling because she knows she and i have these conversations all the time. when you talk about children's books and how to produce something, um, that is for color that, you know, conveys the gorgeous illustrations, um, that the artist intended --? >> but if that's true, surely that's only true for the first copy. >> correct. >> every one thereafter is free, because there's no, there's no marginal cost to make ten million copies. >> right. you lose paper, printing, binding. >> that's marginal cost -- >> the mar gypal cost of paper, printing and wounding. >> and shipping. >> and shipping. >> be and warehousing. [laughter] >> not necessarily. not necessarily -- >> [inaudible] >> yeah, it does. no, not necessarily. there is a, there is a deep infrastructure that is needed to support digital operations. the other thing i would mention about the state of publishing

today is if you talk about the future of reading, the future of publishing, you know, where are e-books going to go, that's kind of the big question. will it be a complete swapping out of the physical for the digital media as happens in music, for example, and, you know, in film, photography, that is. in books, um, i believe there's not going to be that swapping out. now, that's today. five, ten years from now, you know, we might be speaking on something different, but today publishers are in a world where they can't be jumping tracks from the physical to the digital, truly supporting two businesses. so you're continuing to support the print business while continuing to support the digital business. underlying that is sort of a third business that you're, that you are cultivating which is

getting to a place where we're not talking about the conversion of e-books. so merely taking what used to be in a physical form and now porting it over into a digital form, but the creation of digital products, the creation from really creating a digital product from conception, something that was initially conceived with the author, developed with the author to be a completely new digital product. so the role of publishers in that scenario because the one thing that you sort of had forgotten, i think, on your list of what publishers do, it's really the heart of what we do, it's editorial. it's really bringing that story, you know, shaping that story with the author and bringing it to market in the best possible way. that still exists and exists, i think, in a more, an even more exciting way when you talk about the creation of digital-only products. >> shaping the story may be the only role actually. because there's almost nothing

left after helping shape the story. >> that's just wrong! [laughter] i always wanted to get my john mclag land on. but, no, seriously, you're wrong. [laughter] i will say this, you know, as the other side. we're partners here. she's not my publisher, but she is a publisher. >> she might be. [laughter] >> i'm happy where i i am. but, you know, i had a very explicit arrangement with harper about, like, who's to doing what here. and, again, because i came from more of a digital foundation, i was skeptical of that. i can do that, i can do that. what have you -- i got spell check, what have you got? [laughter] >> and it turns out i was wrong about a few things, i was right about a few thing, and i learned a ton in the process. in terms of the editorial, having an editor was great. now, of course, i could have gone and independently hired a great writer/editor to hire me through the process. i was happy to have the support of barry harbaugh, that was really cool. the distribution of the physical to still support the digital,

that i ignored completely. i basically got free advertising across the nation on book shelves. i can't buy that. no single person can afford to distribute 10, 15, 20,000 book into the hundreds and hundreds of bookstores and libraries all around the world. and digital-only doesn't do that. you cut off the physical marketing in that sense. so that helps support the kingal. when they ran out of physical books, my e-book sales spiked, so there is a level of demand regardless of format, and people literally, you could see the charts, they switched over. but they would have probably gotten a physical one. and then the actual marketing of the thing, me and my campaign manager for the book, a guy named craig who i met through the onion, we built this rabid internet army digital plan, and harper did the more traditional big media plan. and got me on msnbc and all these things that, again, individuals, it's very hard. that's a network game. and that's a roll to decks game.

and there's a finite amount of people who can talk to a finite amount of people to make that sort of thing happen. and the flood of authors can't all pull that off on their own. so i, you know, found that i was wrong that publishers are useless. [laughter] and i was glad for it, you know? because we were splitting in this here money, and i want to make sure that we're both doing something. [laughter] and i learned a lot about, you know, the excitement, you know, the upside and the limits of what, you know, individual authors or authors who create a collective or create their own kind of digital presence. but there's a flood of readers, there's also a flood of writings and in words, tweets, blogs, also books. there's just more books than ever. and how do you discover, how do you discern, how do you convince somebody that you're worth their time? you know? attention is the currency. and whether you spend it watching a cat play a fiddle l on youtube -- [laughter] or reading about the future of blackness, like, that's an equal choice to some people. [laughter]

right? in the bit world we're just competing for pixels, we're competing for mental real estate. and there's so many extra writers competing for attention. a publisher, you know, who knows what they're doing can add a little extra weight on top of the individual kick starter, you know, moving artist or somebody who's just like i've got a blog platform, i'm going to print out my blog and call it a book. >> i think that's true, but you're an exception because you wrote a bestseller. the shelf life of a book, i'm sure that cheryl would confirm this, is a matter of weeks or days. and most books don't make it into bookstores. we're live anything a different world. >> true. >> now, i agree in this world publishers are crucial. i'm really worried about booksellers, however, because that middle person is beginning to disappear, and outfits like amazon are transforming the way books reach readers. and then there's a movement in

the other direction that i think very few people have noticed. there were about 350,000 new titles published in the u.s. last year. that's a 6% increase over the previous year in paper. the book industry is actually doing very well, although publishers are always wringing their hands and saying it's the end of the world. [laughter] but compare with that 350,000 700,000 books were self-published. twice as many books are produced by independent authors who put them online and have something to say. now, you might claim that there's a lot of garbage among that 700,000 books, but i think there's a lot of good stuff as well. so i really feel that if you look at the publishing industry, i don't know if you would agree, we are witnessing a transformation in its structure. so some of the middle, intermediaes