we have to fix that. . .

>> i think that the talent is it comes down to leadership. as you look at these guys, it took decades to emerge as leaders, and eventually they became public figures. we just reversed the model now and public figures first who later become leaders. that said, in any of the societies, if there's true leaders with the credibility to take their country forward, technology can find them, so in that sense, there's a level playing field, but you can't overnight. >> you talked about building up new leaders, but it's different in the virtual world than it is. physical world. >> i think we came to the

conclusion that it's easy to say technology drives all the changes, but the essence of human leadership is very hard, very important, very person dependent, and very much dependent upon the charisma and ability to get people excited and motivated, and those are skills it will take a long time for computers to get to. >> jen? >> assuming you're right opposed to plato about -- >> assumptions, okay. [laughter] >> and anonymity sure to say. what's that say about cyber crime, then? you've been a victim of it at your company and so forth. do we have to completely separate networks that have to be secure like controlling nuclear power plants and that sort of thing? >> we better, i hope those are separate from the internet. >> well, that's right, but i mean, it's a much bigger thing to separate all the things that

we would like to be completely safe from potential attack; right? is that feasible? >> well, again, let me just tell you a little about this. the systems that you would be most concerned about around life safety things, systems that are command and control systems, and they are typically not connected to the internet, and it's alleged that israelis and the americans attacked one with the iranian reprocessing maneuver by getting a virus into the machines. we'll see if it's true, but it took a tremendous amount of work to do that. they are not to be connected to the internet. in the united states, i can say the critical military networks, command and control networks are highly separated and highly secure, and it's highly illegal to, you know, move the computer from one to the other, and they have done all the right things there, and so i don't worry as much about those as i worry about the increasing reliance about business systems that are

mission critical that are on the public internet that are subject to denial service attacks. we talk about this in the book at some length, and to net it out, the simplest thing for you all to do is remember two things. make sure it's not a common password in all your accounts, and make sure it's hard to guess. the fellow who was running the ap twitter account just learned that lesson; right? right, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars of losses from someone. the second is don't download malware, software you don't know, and run chrome browser from google, and chrome is the only browser that's not been broken. the combination of all those gives you a high degree of safety and security if you run a company, the government, a business, make sure you're running the most recent versions of software. almost all of the attacks are ones where the attacker finds a

down computer in a close et that people forgot that's not been updated with the latest patches and so forth, and they get in from there and does the rest of the attack. >> yes, right there, yeah. yeah, we'll go back to you next. i think there was somebody -- yeah, i'll try to get around to you, yeah. >> in your world, information is agnostic. the internet operates on passion and ways, and yet when the waves overwhelm science itself and information that's not based on fact and scientifics like we see with climate change or biotechnology, it goes against technology that could help the world. in a world of information, it's agnostic, how do you deal with those things? >> i mean, i guess there's a couple ways that we look at this, and, you know, again, the theme of the book is the next 5 billion people, and so i look at the alternative. that's a world where every generation after the next is being essentially socialized and trained based on memization, and

what they memorize is inaccurate, distorted, delusional, whatever adjective you want to use. ultimately, i believe in the power the critical thinking, we write about that in the book, and so imagine $5 billion people connecting to the internet, think of how many are young and school aged, the vast majority of them. young people with mobile devices in the hands, whether the teacher shows up at school or not, whether they have to memorize at school or not, ultimately, the mobile device is the best vehicle against a world that is, you know, incredibly influenced by rogue memization. you know, it's not ideal. it's not the perfect answer, but the power of critical thinking is important. >> i agree with all that. people can be frightened incorrectly and manipulated, for example, by business interests. say you are busy selling something that hurts people, the cigarette example from the 1960s. imagine using the profits of the corporation to try to spread

false hoodses, and you can make a good go at it, but it would be true today that an alternative group would amass a big group saying, hey, guys, this is crazy, and, first, you see them as choices, and second, the ranking algorithms would eventually sort out which ones. i think we have a pretty good answer that the more information, even with sponsored -- we call it "biz information," and business misinformation, people try to manipulate you, the net sorts it out, ranking algorithms get better, and when you see something that doesn't make sense, check it. so, for example, there's a site called snokes.com, and i get a message that -- it doesn't look right, and i check and see if it's correct or not, and the internet's full of this. this could be a period of society where we had trusted sources of information to possibly trusted sources of

information, and one of the conversations we have to have as a society is to check; right? when you watch television, and you're maybe being manipulated, rather than just believe it, why don't you check it? when you're on a website that looks a little bit promotional, maybe you should check it; right? google is available. [laughter] >> yes, i wonder if you can say more about the use of technology and tackling organized crime? i know you've been looking into drug trafficking, and can you talk about a concrete or more promising applications that you have seen in the degree of corporation with the u.s. and mexican government. we'll have obama going to mexico, and this is, again, one of the topics i'm convinced we have really not used technology as to the degree as we could. >> well, let me start with an observation. we -- eric and i took a trip to juarez, like, losing track when we went where, but sometime in the last year. >> last year.

>> and we were startle to find all police officers wore face masks. imagine living in a city already very dangerous where it's so dangerous the police who are there to supposedly protect you don't want anyone to know their identity. what's more extraordinary about this while the police are busy hiding themselves, the population is busy using their real identities to essentially crowd source where the violence is using violence microblogging platforms and social media platforms so there's a virtual courage emerging as a result of so many people coming online in in places like juarez. what's interesting in the book is a challenge it's not unique to mexico, but it's best ill illustrated by mexico. talking about free expression, it's talked about in the context of the iran, north koreas, the cubas of the world where the state is actually doing the censorship. in mexico, you know, by all accounts, the mexican government is a democracy, yet a

censoredded society because people self-center out of fear not from the government, but nonstate actors, various cartels, and violent criminal networks. how do you solve the problem of removing fear through technology? we look at this in the book in exploring various ways to encourage anonymous reporting, confidential reporter networks, and i would be sort of lying if i said there's a silver bullet answer, but this is a great example of what we said before. engineers love these problems. >> think of it as a problem of anonymous reporting and anonymous responders. can you construct the network so all players police the situation when the police, themselves, are corrupt? there's a technical way to do it. it's very hard to do. we saw something in mexico, a reasonably secret location in mexico city, where it was underground, the whole bit, building a data mining system so that when they apprehend

somebody in a traffic stop, they figure out who they are. our immediate reactions were those of americans, which is think about the possible civil liberty violations. a country under such terrible, terrible attack from, in this case, criminal gangs, might stoop to building an infrastructure which a subsequent government might then misuse against the law-abiding citizens. this is the tradeoff; right? it's not obvious where it will go, but the situation in mexico's very severe. >> so this question also has a mexican connection, and i, by the way, agree with you there's no delete button on the internet. however, companies including our owns have terms, conditions, and community standards. i don't know if you saw the story from the bbc yesterday about a viral -- two viral videos depicting decapitations. apparently, in mexico, which went viral in my daughter's high school apart from other praises as well. the beginning of the day,

facebook was standing by it saying even though it was showing graphic violence, it was in the public interest. yet, by the end of the day, having online petitions and a number of us weighing in decided to take them down. how do you guys decide what is in the public interest or not? >> youtube has a five-page document, which you can read on the youtube defining precisely what this is. i have not seen that video, but i would be extremely surprised if that passed our tests, that we would allow it. >> i read in a magazine, maybe "at atlantic,," whatever, facebook, youtube, google, each having a committee. how's that work? >> yeah, every company has a set of rules about this, so, for example, for the web, google is a search index and can't take them down, and if we did, it would be censoring in the form of filters in which we don't do. we host content, we have terms of service, and this is true in

bloggr. i assume there's policies without the same criteria or rules, but it's with the company. >> bitcoin? whether i should buy it? >> [inaudible] >> so, obviously, bitcoin is a virtual currency in the news a lot lately, unregulated, and the value rises and falls based on demand and stockpiles large numbers of them. what's interesting about it, though, is that the virtual wallet, and even if -- basically, people who are able to get bitcopies on their phone download a digital wallet to store it, and a lot is a number of incidents have been hacked, and the cay -- canadian government tried to create a virtual currency and couldn't protect the virtual wallets. there's more movement into the

currencies and goods as well, but there's some serious security challenges that come with it. >> [inaudible] >> well, we're in the process of doing that, except it will never be all. many use cash for convenience or what have you, but all of the technology firms have various forms of digital wallets, much more efficient. the phones have something called the nfc chip, allowing you to go -- a pad near it, swipe by it, and it charges, and velocity matters for merchants. it is going to happen. >> but why don't we have something very simple from google like an easy pass where, if i'm going around the web, and i want to buy today's "new york times" or buy, you know, something, i know a virtual wallet can be hacked, but there's 25 bucks, i can, you know -- >> we have google wallet.

>> yeah, -- >> the technology -- well, -- >> especially with payments. >> sounds like a simple proposal and product having now worked on this for a long time. they are complicated systems, subject to many, many regulations, and also fraud issues, paypal, of course, is the company that faced this the most and worked through them. others have as well. you just defined a particular kind of wallet, a wallet which you are willing to lose the money in; right? most people would not agree with you on it; right? they don't want a wallet that's okay to lose money in. again, you have to sort of figure it out. you do not have single sign-on across all the sites. facebook, google, and others are trying to promote that, and sioux we'll get there, but we'll do it in different ways. >> it would certainly help journalism industry if people could make quick, easy -- >> yeah, the technology run micropayments, fraction of a cents, have been around for a very, very long time.

it's not a technological problem, but a system provisioning scale problem. >> yes, ma'am, and then in the way back. sorry, trying to be fair here. >> thank you. i think we all appreciate what you did in connecting the human trafficking data basis because of making it more efficient for access and searching for information. there's so many examples where it's locked up in data silos. i'm interested in uniting our best data bases, too many of them, and you can't search across them if you are looking for something. what is -- is google doing more in the area? i mean, what -- >> we have groups that reach out to the closed communities. it's important to know that it's their data, not ours, and it's their decision to make it available. the largest trove of useful data that's not available to google is that in federal, state, and local governments, right, who have enormous data bases built in archaic ark tech dhur --

architectures, and that should be public, of interest to the public, ect., and it's not going to cause a huge confidentiality problem to make it public. the government runs much more efficiently when that information is known and see what the government is up to. that's sort of a good thing. the reasons that you said and so forth, we're working on it, but the core message is that if you're in -- if your job is to publish information, and you don't publish it on to the web in such a way that search engines and google can find it, you're not really doing your job; right? indeed, we respect robots text that says don't call me, and if you talk to the firm saying, oh, okay, there's a public site, you're proud of yourself, do you have a text to prevent google and google's competitors to get information, you may find they actually have one. >> huh, electronic medical records more easily? >> that's a whole hour conversation. >> okay. >> i'll summarize by saying that

there -- the -- in -- under the bush administration, the government did a very good job of promoting interoperatability standards for medical records where a set of standards to allow capped records to be exchanged with each other, state of the art. no computer scientists designs how medical recording is now evolving in the industry. makes no sense whatsoever. that's why it's difficult. it will be all merged eventually, but it will be slow. >> way back. >> there's a pretty brilliant report coming out today from david robertson and harlu yu on censorship in china called "collateral freedom." >> when is it posted? >> putting up a link right now that i'll pass on. >> who is it from? >> harlan yu and david robertson surveying censorship evasion technology users in china, a one

of a kind thing, and they found they are not using the tours, but they use, like you said, bpns, and they are upending the whack-a-mole model where china knows where the moles are, but they don't whack them because disrupting those technologies disrupts the business users making lottings of money nearby. is that something you'd seen in china or other countries where, you know, the whack-a-moll stops before it hits the mole because that screws up the economy or other parts of the society? >> there's encrypted contributions. it's most notable use was the use in wikileaks, although, there's place where tor is used. bpn technology is the kind you described where you essentially have an interimmediate approximatey to go through. all of the antedotal evidence we have is people continue to reach google services through whack-a-mole, and they are able to get there.

g-mail is blocked on order half the time for reasons we can't ever quite tell. our search efforts are blocked periodically for reasons we can't quite tell. say, my guess would be the reporter is roughly accurate, but we have to look at it. >> susan, last question. >> you comment on your observations about -- can you comment on observations about women in technology? >> >> be it leadership, be it use of technology, and developing countries, be it safety? >> well, i start by saying that we are enormously proud of the next generation of women leadership in technology. we're seeing extraordinarily talented, very, very smart, very driven people driving business really to new heights, and it's exciting, and it's exciting as its occurring in an industry that's historically been so male. >> the point that i would ask,

again, we talk about five billion people coming online, the majority of the 5 billion are women, we traveled around the women, and they do better in school, more entrepreneurial, and where women have been held back and men play video games and work for the government, you know, timely what's starting to happen is -- well, it's true in some of the middle eastern countries, they work for the public sector, and the combination of women who are already moving forward fast in the societies with some of the new freedoms they have been given and technology is extraordinary for the world. >> on a very serious note, the empowerment of the technologies allows the very local nature of horrific crimes against women to be recorded and policed. there are so many examples. we visited one which i don't think we'll ever forget.

we visited it in pakistan, a group of women who had acid thrown on their faces, which is, i can't describe how horrific this crime is, and they used the interpret to recover their identity. building businesses, i achieving objecteddives in a society where the shame was such they could not go out of their home. they were trying to use the internet to put pressure on the accused who inevitably were known, but not prosecuted for one of the worst crimes in humanity, so i felt that this, if any reason we should do what we do, it's for that republican. >> we'll end by saying education around the world will be transformed, and the people who have least benefited in parts of the world from education have been girls and women, and i hope that will be a major transformation of the 21st century. the book is about the major transformations of the 21st century, the new digital age,

best seller list, first week out, and our friends at politics and prose can keep it there if you buy the book. go buy the book. thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] >> i'm with the washington editor of national review, but as a political journalist, i'm looking ahead to the race,

candidates who are probably going to run, and one of the people i see is chris christie. there's a new book called "chris christie,: inside story of rise to power," it's a fun read so far, and it takes you back into christie's political new jersey. before he was u.s. attorney, he was a morris county freeholder, involved in a lot of county politic, and so it takes us behind the story, behind the politician on the magazine covers with president obama in new jersey, and it really asks, who is chris and those who know politics. i recommend it because christie, i think, is a likely contender, and you have to know where he came from and what his politics mean ahead of the election. second book on the list is by a colleague, kevin d. williamson, wrote a book called "the end is near, and it's going to be awesome: how going broke leaves america richer, happier, and more secure." it's fun because the fiscal

cliff was a story covered at national review, but later this year, you're going to have the debt limit be the story that consumes congress, and ted williamsson looks at the debt from a political per perspectiv, talks about the consequences was debt, how it's really taking up a lot of congress' time, how it could potentially ruin the country, make the country go broke, and he does it with some wit, with some fun, and "the end is near" is a great book by williamsson. third is "this town," and as a journalist here in washington, there's always gossip, talk about what happens behind the scenes, how stories are written, who leaks to who, the power struggles, not just politics, but the media. mark who has the ear of the beltway crowd has a book in july "this town" all about that, about the inside scene in washington in dupont circle, the georgetown salon, and that book gives us a story and the color of what washington and the

political media establishment's all about. for money fun, a book is called "mickey and willie: parallel lives of the golden age," andives down in arizona watching the cleveland indians, cubs play baseball, and i ran into mas getting up there in age, but it's great, looking at two men who came of age at the same time, became stars at the same time, and formed a lifelong friendship, something i never knew, and that's a great book, a big book for baseball fans this summerment that's the list. looking forward to reading them all. >> let us know what you are reading this summer, tweet us @booktv, post it on facebook, or e-mail us at booktv booktv@cspan.org.

>> it doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't often happen in washington alone. it really happens door-to-door, day-to-day, in towns and communities across the country with neighbors and friends talking to one another with outreach going on, with people who are trusted, so all of you can be outreach helpers. you can talk to your neighbors, your church group, and go and put a link on your facebook page reminding people that on october

1st there's new opportunities. we need that person-to-person coverage. this is an historic opportunity that we've never had in the united states. as the mayor said, presidents for 70 years have been trying to deal with this, and while it seems like it's a political debate, the debate is really over. the law was signed in march of 2010 by the president of the united states, and a year ago, the supreme court upheld the constitutionality of the affordable care act, and president barack obama was re-elected pretty overwhelmingly. this is the law. we're about implementing the law. it's great to be with all of you, and i look forward to working with all of you on a healthier, more prosperous, pennsylvania, philadelphia, and united states of america, so thanks very much.

[applause] >> when she came to the white house, she was interested in how the place worked, came down and found it was rather delap dated, dirty, tried to spruce it up, and she asked servants if they could tell her, do you remember how old this is? she started the idea of trying to catalog and create a sense of what the chinas were. she had a plan for putting display cases in the state dining room, but that never came to fruition, but she's credited with being the initiator of a concept of a permanent china collection at the white house. >> encore presentation of our

original series "first ladies" continues tomorrow night at nine eastern on c-span. now, a discussion on the role women played in the civil rights movement as washington, d.c. prepares to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the march on washington. among the speakers was king, the daughter of martin luther king, jr.. this event is a little more than an hour. [inaudible conversations] >> we're about to go live in one minute, one minute. are we live? we're live now! we need to -- can we -- can we -- i know we're enjoying our lunch, but we need everyone -- we're live. we are going to segment two -- hello, shhh!

thank you so much. can we give the first segment of women who gave us that lookback, the women leaders, organizers, and attended the 1953 march on washington. segment two, we're about to start, which will be a conversation with present women leaders of the movement. i'm not going to go into that. the moderator can go into that. that's the title. the moderator will not do that. i'm not going to do that, and, but, we have a representative of the obama administration with us, and he's no stranger to the black women's round table, and many of you, in your other organizations, i know, and that

is, we have doctor brenda mitchell, director of the faith based and neighborhood partnership with the department of education, and he's here to bring brief remarks from the obama administration. [applause] >> it is really, really an honor to be here with you today. i arrived just as reverend dr. barbara william skinner was doing the parade, and i heard most everything including the music today, and i'm especially appreciative that we're able to recognize the legacy of dr. dorothy irene, who any of you who know anything about me know she was the person that most inspired me in the work of community service outside my mama, and who helped me to know that anything we set our mind to

together can be done. it's about relationship building, and in this world, this movement work, if you're not in relationship with people, you can want be successful, and i'm happy, thrilled to bring you greetings on behalf of the president of the united states of america who values the relationship that he has with all of us, and thank you for the continuing support, the work, the things that we can say and do on the ground that he can't say and do from 1600. our voice has to amplify the voices we want to hear from him. our words have to lift up the issues that we believe are important. our walks have to demonstrate that we believe this can be a better world, a stronger world, a world where everybody feels that they are equal, and they have access to education and jobs and freedom, and i heard the president say that as we talk about freedom and justice, if we're free to sit in the

front of the bus, if we're free to go to any school, if we're free to do all of these things that we've. fighting for with our ancestors, and yet our children cannot read and cannot write, we are not yet free. so as a representative of the u.s. department of education, i just beg you today, i urge you to help us make everyone recognize education as a civil rights issue of our time. recognize that our children should not be dictated where they live on to the quality of education that they receive. recognize that if we start to educate our children in free public education at an earlier age, at three and four years old so that they don't have an achievement gap, that our whole world will be better for it and we'll be more better for it in the global society. there's a lot of bad news out there about what's happening with our children, but as a person who also carries credit

of being a rev repped, ordained clergy, i say, my job is to bring good news from this place, and so there is some good news. there is some good news. we hear that our dropout rate is just horrible. we want you to know that that dropout rate is decreasing with more and more african-american people graduating from high school. there are more and more young people who are finishing and going on to higher levels of education. the numbers are not ideal, but there is improvement, and there's many of my sisters have said today, it's out of our relationship of encouraging one another, lifting each other up, and being a voice for the fact that education is the key to success in the nation to inspire young people who may not have seen higher education as something they aspire to, so while we say that the president has the greatest bully pulpit, and i really don't like the word

"bully pulpit," but he has the greatest public platform from which to encourage us to do those things that make us greater as a nation. he has to have all of us as ambassadors, amplify the voice that education is a right. we are not free unless everyone is free. our children have to be inspired to go to greatness, and as we connect with one another around this world, the movement, in fact, does continue. i'm tharngful to hear younger women to say they don't want us to pass the torch. they have their own torch, own march, and own voice. lift your voice on behalf of all of our children and encourage america in the direction that it needs to go. i'll just leave you with this saying that the doctor used to like to hear me say that goes like this, my right hand is held by someone who knows more than i, and i'm learning. my left hand is being held by someone who knows less than i,

and i'm teaching. both of my hands need thus to be held for me to be all that i can be. hold somebody's hand as we continue the march for freedom and justice and jobs and education for all of america's children. thank you so very much. [applause] >> thank you, thank you to the post organizations, it's about coalition and collaboration and partnerships and sisterhood. with the round table, action network, apri, now our cohost now with the foundation, lead sponsor, verizon, partnership level sponsors, comcast, nbc universal, aft, congressional red caucus foundation, and i promise i would lift our

supporters, and quickly, afil-cio, apwu, api vote, coalition of labor union women, compville, em regard city, family values at work, international black women's public policy institute, labor project for working family, lawyers committee for civil rights under law, league of women voters, the king center, marriott, the national coalition on immigrant women's rights -- oh, sorry about that, national council of negro women, national latino institute of reproductive health, planned parenthood, practice project, rainbow push coalition, women in the naacp, ywca-usa. coalition, coalition, and we talked about connecting as sisters and brothers so we move the country forward for equal opportunity for all. i will now turn this over to our

awesome sister, leader who is not just a journalist for a host of organizations, and they've done phenomenal things on the public policy sector, and we're not doing resumés and bios so i wanted to let her know that we appreciate her, and we had a sister who was going to do it, but had something come up she could not do anything about, and i acknowledge williams who was on the way, but, what? airplanes and air flights, and delays, but she'll be here over the course of days because it's seven days, not one day, starting yesterday through august 8th, and there's another guest, and we'll let owe know if

the person makes it. sister gibb karen, give her a round of sisterly applause, and he knows we need it, and i thank you from the bottom of the heart you responded at the last minute. thank you. [applause] >> i'm thrilled to be here, and i'll start by introducing the pam, and i'll pose a general question about where we are in the present and ask for thiewts on that, and respondents will pose questions or statements to panelists to keep the conversation going. this is read in order on the paper, not how you are seated.

i apologize that for that. president of now -- sorry -- dara richardson, md, president ywca-usa. president feminist majority foundation, and denisa fairchild, president, emerald city. associate director of government relations and public affairs, national latino substitute for reproductive health, christine ken, president, asian pacific islander vote, davis, director of building green clark, and dr. avis jones, author, speaker, radio host, and social entrepreneur. [applause] all right. [applause] >> so, in this channel, we want to talk about the present, and i just want to sort of set the stage for the present in terms of the things that i think we're dealing with that i don't they we would have expectedded to be

dealing with at this point, and so i want to get your thoughts with regards to public policy, activation, and grassroots how do address the issues because, you know, you look out, and we have women executives. we have more women in congress, both in the house and senate than ever, and we have women governors, had a viable woman candidate for the presidency, and we will again. we have, you know, incredible women leaders all across our country doing all kinds of wonderful things. the women's vote is a vote that makes a difference for barack obama, both in 2008 and 2012, and, by the way, it was black women. we pushed him over the top, i'd say. [applause] we're such a critical part of the economy, a critical part of the political process, and, yet, if you look at what's been happening, and you listen to the level of conversations, you'd think we slid back a hundred years.

the type of conversations had about women and our basic fundmental rights and basic sort of humanity and whether or not you trust us. i like to say how can you trust me to run a company if you don't trust me to make medical decisions for myself; right? [applause] that's the level of conversation, and we have, you know, we have some male, white tv personalities on other networks that i won't name suggesting that it's actually women and working women are the reason for the down fall of our society. how can that be when, again, we are greater percentage of the population and so critical and fundmental to the economy and to the civic life of the country, how did we get here? how do we make sure that as women we vote to our numbers, but also that we leverage our power here in the present so that in the future when we look back in 50 years, we're having a

very different conversation than the one we are today where so many of the basic fundmental rights much women are undersiege in ways not seen in literally a hundred years. i'll start with you. >> >> okay. we all know we're in a -- >> well, i think i'll stand up. >> [inaudible] >> i'll try to make it short because i want all colleagues to speak, and we don't have much time. anyway, we know we're in the middle of a big backlash to both women's rights and civil rights, and that we're in this together, and one of the ways we can see how much we're in it together is what they're trying to do to take away our vote. yes, the women's vote and the african-american vote made a difference, and young people both made a difference, and

that's why you're seeing this southern strategy up folding where they are trying to take away the voting rights of women, african-americans, and students by these id laws that particularly affect our population. as we watch that happen, there's app attack on public education, the teachers. obviously, women are the biggest components, on economic rights, pension plans, as we see human services being taken away, and attacks on food stamps where some 20% of our chirp of this nation do not have enough to eat. all this is outrageous, and you put on to it the attacks on family planning, reproductive health, abortion access, and it is a big picture. we're not going to sit there and

take that, and that's why there's an absolute backlash from us, and there's moral mondays in north carolina. you see wednesday di davis and filibuster in texas. you're having a big rally, and everybody should know this in ohio for a reproductive rights on october 2. we're going to fight back. we are not going to give up the ground we have right now, but most importantly, we must go forward. we cannot, you know, i keep saying this in my head, justice delayed is justice denied. we cannot lose a generation to the tea partyers. [applause] >> well, that's certainly a difficult act to follow. i'm truly delighted to be here

on behalf of the wyca-usa, united states of america, and dorothy was a leader in our movement for over 30 years, director of the center for racial justice. for more than 150 years, they have been dedicated to eliminating racism and empowering women, one of the first institutions to defie social. s op race. when you think about the present, when i was sitting at my chair, i was getting depressed because i was thinking, you know, clearly the death of trayvon martin and acquittal of the killer, voting rights act assault, the health care disparity, the achievement gap, the education gap, lack of pay equity, lack of reproductsive rights, 50 years since the march on washington, and we're still fighting for the same things.

despite official legal equality, african-americans and women, particularly, continue to face a wide array of systemic barriers that are impediment to our equalitity and equal opportunities. as i was getting to depressed, i looked up, looked at the photo on the wall here, and it has a quote on the bottom, and it says, "my best accomplishment is that i started on a journey, and i'm still on it." that's from dorothy heights. that gave me such incredible hope because i began to think, well, we're still fighting 150 years later, but what would have happened had we not. fighting for these rights? i think that's critically important thinking about the next step. it's daunting. it's depressing. it's sad. there are economic arguments that make it very clear that women make a difference.

i was just reading an article that was written by one of our former leaders, mildred, and she talked about how she was summoned to the white house along with 70 other women from the white house to talk about civil rights acts before the march on washington. one of the things she said said was one one of the assistance who was the assistant secretary of labor, esther patterson, actually suggested to president kennedy that if he really wanted to get things done, he needed to call op the women. he said, we need to get this done, and that's why they were brought to the white house. i say to all of you and to everyone in the room, we are going to have to be the ones to get it done. we cannot get compressed. we can want stop. we cannot stop the fight. imagine where we would be had we stopped fighting many years ago. thank you.

[applause] >> good afternoon, everybody. sorry. power. we're really powerful women here in the room. i'm terry o'neill, president of the international organization for women. [cheers and applause] i actually got active, politically, not until the 1990s. i happened to be teaching in louisiana at the time, and david duke, anybody remember him? nearly became governor of the state, and my daughter was six months old, and i decided to get active in the community to stop the kkk/nazis from taking over the state i was living in. i became active then with the national organization for women because the commit to the

sexism, racism, home phobia, racism, all the isms, connect the dots. they are intertwined, cannot be pulled apart. i've. talking to -- we have been talking to colleagues in the weeks and days leading up to this very lunchon, and one of the things we talked about is the four themes of the 50th anniversary march on washington, and that would be freedom and jobs and peace and social justice. when you look at those issues and ask yourself, gosh, what is the impact on women of those things, and then you ask you're, huh, what is the impact on various communities of women, what is the impact on african-american women; what is the impact on immigrant women, latinas; what about younger women; what about older women? if we ask the question issue a legal scholar, dore think

roberts, i don't know if you know her, but she had that phrase, ask the woman question. any issue you're talking about, ask the woman question, and if you do and really seek answers to that question, you get an amazing insight into what is really going on in the present today as we celebrate the legacy of the civil rights movement and women's movement and lesbian, gay, transgender movements. look at the impact is on women. we don't have a lot of time, but if you want to talk about jobs, for example, right, women make up the majority share of public sector employment, and what's happening in states and counties around the country, and now with the sequestering that's happening right here in the federal government, women are laid off in disportion portionally large numbered, and guess what? women don't have as much as a

cushion to fall back on because women work a lifetime on unequal pay, 77 cents to the dollar on average, but it's 69 cents to the dollar for african-american women, and 59 cents to the dollar for latinas. how do you save for a rainy day on 59 cents to the dollar? at that kind of money, it's raining already. two-thirds of minimum wage workers in this country are women so when we call for a living wage, we need to understand we are calling for a living wage for our sisters who have not had a fair raise, really, in decades. [applause] when we call for affordable, quality education, we need to remember this too, that disproportionally, it's women who need the four-year college education because over a lifetime, you look at, on

average, a man who gets a high school education compared to a lifetime earnings of a woman with a four-year college education, they are about even; right? who is it that is paying more for college education just to get that decent job? that would be women. who are the women who are targeted for abusive student loan programs? that would be disproportionally women. when you ask the women question, you notice all these things. one more thing about family economies. women are more than -- more than half of women are the sole support of their family in this country today or an essential part of the family's economy. if she's laid off, they are not paying the mortgage within a month or two. we have to work harderment one more thing about the war on women, it is absolutely real, but we have won the war of ideas about women, and we have to remember that.

this is waged by a very thin slice of ultra wealthy, ultra resourced, ultra nut bar, right wing, ideologs that the vast majority of people, men and women in the country, do not agree with. we believe that a rape victim should have access to emergency contraception, but these guys don't. [applause] not to mention one in three women have app abortion by the age of 45. it is a common and necessary aspect of our reproductive health care. not one of these extremists legislators is trying to stop abortion, ladies, but shut down clinics that shut down the entire range of health care services. we will win it. we won the war of ideas. now we have to win the election, and we need for that, we need a voting rights constitutional amendment so the john roberts and his pals in the supreme

court can't take them away from us. thank you. [applause] >> are these women fired up? are you fired up? well, we are all fired up. that's what it is going to take to make a difference. i'm with emerald city collaborative and live at economic justice, environmental justice, and democracy. that is what emerald city does. let me just say that i've been stuck on the bus since 1968. the bus i got on was a bus that went to memphis, tennessee to nashville, went there as a freshman, to finish martin luther king's mission. he died for us in memphis, in '

67 dying for the workers who were struggling struggling witho collective bar beginning, who struggled for the right for workplace safety. if you remember the sign they raised up, "i am a man," all right, he went to memphis to stand with those men, and i am here to say that we went to memphis to commemorate his death, also continued to start that struggle for economic justice, and like i said, i've been stuck there ever since. the fact of the matter is that we are not -- we have so much unfinished business. we are even going back ward because we are still fighting for the right for workers to have a voice, collective bargaining is lost all across the united states. we, as a labor movement, have lost our ability to have livable

wages and women as heads of households, we need to have livable wages. we need security. we need health benefits. we need retirement benefits to protect and support our families. we are making less today than we made in 1960 when you consider the price of the cost of living, we earn less. losing collective bargaining, losing income, and we have no ability to protect our home. we are losing our homes. we have issues of foreclosure. you know, and where we live, our communities, particularly someone like myself was born in -- well, not born, but at least, raised my family, and worked in south los angeles, we have economic justice issues in communities of color that we have to fix. there's no reason in the world that i should go buy baby food in my community and pay ten cents more a jar. i looked at it, went to school

on the west side, why i am paying more for food? why do we pay more for car insurance or just about anything depending on what zip code we live in? our homes are toxic, led, asbestos, this is the environmental justice concern. we live in toxic homes. we live in toxic communities, all right? we have asthma, unprecedented levels of asthma with our chirp and our families because of the problems of air pollution. when do we get to clean up our homes? when do we get to have economic justice? there is an answer. there's a couple answers, and the last thing we're losing, we're losing our right to use our economic power. we used to have the right of boycotts. we used to use boycotts to make a difference. political rights and policies

are all well and good, but what america listens to is where money is spent and where it is not spent, and if there's anything we should learn from the civil rights movement, with the busboy cots and economic boycotts is we have power. if we have a dime in our pocket, we have power as to where we spend that dime. it's time for us to rebuild, reclaim our communities. ..

[applause] >> so for this next section what i'm going to do is we have a limited amount of time is i'm going to start with you on the end and we will go this way. let's use the table mike so we don't have the problem of getting up and down. before i turn it over to you one of the things that i think is so important to things i heard they were so important as idea of our rights of white cotton process to make our voices heard and moral monday and how important it is then. that's important because that rightness politicians. that frightens them into thinking oh my goodness i might be held accountable for my actions. if we don't vote we have to at least make sure -- we have to vote that we also have to make sure our voices are heard through boycotting and getting our voices heard like with windy davis and we will start with you

>> yes want to thank in each and everyone of our presenters. you have done an excellent job of laying the landscape in terms of where we are now. the challenge is that we still face in terms of the current movement that needs to continue. a couple of things that really stood out to me particularly the point that was made around the fact that here we are 50 years later. though we do have sort of -- on our side we have much of the public if you look at the polling data. it is interesting that our argument very tyrannical minority seems to be very effective at pushing through laws that are ripping through our ability to represent ourselves. if you look at what's happening with the voting rights act at the supreme court and look what happened in texas and look what's happening in north carolina. i just got a political alert. we didn't have that 50 years ago. the attorney general holder is

now suing the state of texas for their voter i.d. law so let's give him -- a round of applause. [applause] absolutely love him. he is the namesake of his department. i will say though that given the power of this very small but local minority what can we do now in terms of being more proactive to move forward with an agenda in a proactive way thinner than reactive way that ultimately seems to be one step a hind the trend in terms of responding to battles after we have already lost them. what can we do not to be a bit more proactive than a bit more assertive and making sure that our rights are protected and making sure voting rights are protected and our rights are respected. what can we do moving forward to

be more proactive? [inaudible] >> i think we have to be in the states. i think that we have had a habit of relying on national legislation because it makes sense. we think congressional legislation would apply to every where but we have to get out to the states. this thing on october 22nd in ohio is big because we want to get national attention to what's going on in ohio and texas. the people who showed up in texas were all from there. the people who showed up in virginia to protest the transvaginal alter some bill last year that was all the people in virginia that got national attention. that is what we have to do and that is where it's actually organizing. >> these things are generated

out of five women governors. they're only five women governors in the united states so we have to begin to elect women governors. they're a thousand, little over 1000 women mayors across the country so i think this is the largest number of women in congress this 113th congress but is that the state and local levels where the action is. >> thank you so much and thank you all for your remarks and for allowing me to be here today. i work with it national institute for reproductive health organizing and mobilizing latinos across the country for reproductive justice health equity and immigrant rights and to borrow a phrase -- thank you. these women don't live single issue lives. these are women who experience high rates of uninsured and to

lgbt violence attacks on him at and family families deportation and we know that we have to create multi-issue movements to address their multi-issue lives and i think the question i want to pose and i know we are limited on time is i think often we know by instinct how to stand in solidarity but we don't always know how to act in solidarity. so i would love to hear about an example of a time when you are able to act in solidarity across movements and issues. [inaudible] i personally think that people do not realize how often the national organizations are here fighting together and in the states.

not just here. we have tables in the states of our stations and our representatives and we are there fighting. there is no question but i think when they do the best is when we are on the upside. when they are responding to our legislation and i think we need model legislation. remember this stuff is all coming out of one organization. it is sent local. if alec the american legislative exchange counsel that is speeding these pieces of legislation to the states. we need to not only the same but to do it at her because basically we don't have to hide. they are doing their things like tricky maneuvers. these events are happening in extra legislative special sessions. we can do it the right way with the people with us and i think we should be using reference more. and by the way when we are passing their bad referendums we

are also passing ours. we are working together labor civil rights women's rights a whole host of organizations the m. bar mental groups. we act the best when we are working together. [applause] >> thank you so much. i am with asian and pacific islander american vote and we are trying to increase voter participation in the community. to the nerds of our community are first-generation immigrants and even with issues where we are battling voter rights issues as we have noted and even immigration being stalled and especially as women we are focused on how immigration laws are changing in regards to family reunification. that is really an important issue for families. at the same time on the local level with our partners what they find is that even though they want to be supportive of these issues we are talking

about their capacity is very low and how do we go about expanding our base especially when it's not even just the asian-american community but overall. many times they don't even know who their neighbors are. participation and engagement in your own neighborhood. >> first of all one of the things we are fighting for we have to pass immigration reform. we have got to do that. quite frankly it's something that is a moral issue to be honest and most women many of the people impacted our women and families so we are focusing on getting that legislation passed and that is what we are is what we are we are doing at the ywca.

>> i am a major fan of social media and reaching out that way but i also think there is no substitute for face-to-face. you do both. you have the face-to-face and established the relationships and i think you are right it has to be intentional. immigration reform has to happen but it needs to be amended. what is on the table is not as good for immigrant women as it needs to be. it's very work focused and a lot of women from -- countries are being discriminated against and they can't compete to get those more desirable jobs. also we need social net works. think of a family emergency you had in your life and think about your extended family that reached out to help them. immigration law makes it harder for immigrant families to extend

those family networks that are there for you. those two pieces really have to be changed. >> is this mic on? sitting through this entire experience a few things came to my mind. the first is certainly the spirit of dr. hide and i remember from 1989 all the way up, the last part she did was -- very closely and i remember the night the president obama was elect did and a canadian journalist doc asked -- asks dr. dorothy height this is so great given your experience and she quoted a philip randolph saying that at nature's banquet

table there are no reserved seats. you get what you can take. you keep what you can hold onto and you don't get anything without a struggle and organizing. so with that melanie typically when she steps to a podium says what we need to do is organize, organize, organize. and what many of you don't know is the extent to which she has has -- global gender issues. we have been all over the planet and she has supported gender justice and within the frame of global climate change. so i have my question posed for my good but he to say what is it that american women need to

bring to this environmental movement to really set that course and agenda straight? >> i do believe that women and particularly indigenous women are leaders in the environmental movement gave we have in fact they national affinity to nature. in fact don't have two cars and we don't have vacuum cleaners so we are still using brooms are washing machines. first we just need to asem that we have the power to lead on the question. not as many particularly people of color in this environmental movement and we don't feel it's a part of us. as a matter of fact i used to fight it myself but it is very clear that katrina when you look at extreme weather conditions and what happened to the community of color there and when you look at hurricane sandy

and the public housing units. we were the last one to get back on the grid. food water and shelter. we are at a point in time when emergency management used to be how do you live three or days without food and are is now up to 30 and 45 days. we have to own this is an issue in terms of quality of water that we don't have anymore and the landfills that we don't don't have anymore the fuel that we are fighting in the middle east for that we could be using renewable sources for. we first have to be aware of how this is impacting us now. the extreme weather conditions with floods every 100 years and now every two years that it's happening now. it's only going to get worse. it's going to impact women first and foremost and so we need to be in the conversation. [applause]

>> melanie is going to introduce a special guest. >> thank you karen. thank you panel. this is a sister who doesn't need formal introduction but we are going to give formal introduction. she's the asian area leader. she's a spiritual leader. she is serious -- and she is elder bernice king who is coming up to be with us who had a vision of what we could do differently about the 50th march on washington and we have been working with her and her vision for a couple of months. she had that vision long long

ago and i would ask her if she could and hope the cameras will stay with us a little longer to have her -- to hear from our sister leader and give her sister love the she tells us about her vision. i think her for coming up. [applause] the ceo of that -- center. [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much for that warm welcome. i want to thank sister melanie campbell for the extraordinary work that she has done leading up to this important if the anniversary celebration call to

action and commemoration. it's been a long journey and we are here now and we praise god for that. i want to thank her especially for her vision of inserting this at the front and of the weeklong celebration. many people do not get recognized and except the fact that the movement in which my father led would not have happened as you have heard many stories today, though without women. the idea of the montgomery bus protest began with women and it was women that made it possible to mobilize and organize and bring the community together.

in many respects it all against as life begins in a woman's womb and so we incubate, we nurture and the birth out dinges. we can never ever forget that and we must always ensure that the story is told and the record is accurate because anytime any time we hear about the movement for the most part in the last few years back its predominantly about the male leadership and we certainly applaud all of the wonderful leadership of all of the men who were at the head of this struggle but going forward we must continue to tell our stories and make sure that the story is very well on its because i just want to say for the record, i don't necessarily

believe in a statement behind every man is a good woman. i affirm the statement that beside every good man is an even greater woman. and i say even greater woman because we oftentimes have to make the greater sacrifice especially those who are wives and mothers because not only do we have to support our children but we have to support and encourage and motivate the men because there are points in which they become discouraged and want to give up but that instinct within all of us which is that nurturing instinct helps to nurture them back to the place where they understand that we cannot give up. rest if you must but we must never quit.

it is that energy. it is that tenacity of women that is so essential to the struggle. that is true no matter what race , no matter what ethnicity and am matter what nation you come from. it is always women who have that undergirding power and that greater sense of support and oftentimes even more than the men and the struggle. it doesn't make it less because i believe we are all equal in god's eyesight. functionally i think we have been so critical to every struggle so thank you for ensuring that on the front end as oftentimes it's the peripheral in the backroom somewhere on the fringes where the story of women is told. we are beginning this in a proper way i believe as we move

forward toward the august 28 actual day of the march on washington where my father gave his extraordinary i have a dream speech. when we started on this journey one of the things that i mentioned in our meeting is during the 1963, all of the snow that was a very southern movement at the time and really it was started in birmingham where it began to beat catapulted to a national state. as a result the energy and effort was to nationalize a movement that have become so southern to expose the -- that existed in the south and bring it to the church so we could be a better nation, got a greater nation and higher moral ground. that is what happened in 1963.

believe it or not as we sit here today that dream that my father articulated in many respects became a nightmare shortly after as we know about the bombing that took place in the church where the girls were killed. and so throughout that 63's through 68 time period it was a bumpy road. there are many times that my father said the dream looked like it had become a nightmare. there is a little scripture that i love to use periodically that says the seed falls into the ground and dies. if it dies it produces much fruit. even though me and my brothers and my late sister lost a father and my mother lost her lifelong

partner and husband the world gained so much more. even though s. children we didn't fully understand that, and couldn't understand it at that particular age as i have continued to mature in my life i have come to realize that in spite of my loss i am humbled and appreciative and grateful to god that this world ain't something as a result of the life and the legacy of martin luther king jr. and his death is not in vain. after 68 that speech began to beat catapulted all over the place and we can actually say today in 2013 it is not one one of but the most famous speeches in the entire world. [applause] it has galvanized the world he

cuts it speaks to so many of the longings of people all over the world. no matter the context he was speaking in racially people identify with him whereever they are whatever situation or circumstance that they exist in, whatever struggle they are fighting for. in many respects i heard as i continue to listen to it i heard three kinds of things come out of it and wanted to push them forward as we commemorate and call to action the nation and the world. that is freedom from the 63 march two today and when we look at what's happening in egypt in their heart goes out to her brothers and sisters in that country. our heart continues to go out to our young brothers that veteran chicago in so many places out to mourn all over this nation that are losing their lives. our heart goes out to

individuals who are still trapped in the pitch -- oppressive situations and circumstances. it's a cry of the human race. there is only one race. we talk about all these different races but will we accept the fact that there is one race and if the human race and we are in this race together we are going to continue to struggle. that same freedom, he spoke to the freedom to peacefully coexist and to participate in government. so we go forward calling not just this nation to action but calling the world to action because the reality is we are still -- there are still things that threaten us as the human race that threaten the integrity of our humanity. and this 50th anniversary is not an accident. i believe it is divine divinely

ordered that it happened at the right time. there is a convergence of so many different things happening in 2013 similarly somewhat in respect to 1963. i said all over the place we have fallen so much into a deep sleep and there's a point in your own physical life that if you go too deep into sleep you probably will not return to life area and and so we had to be chosen and awakened by some of these things because this generation and not just age but i speak of age as well as this generation of time has unfortunately got very comfortable and negligent to the struggle. by mother said it has. she sits struggle is a never-ending process. freedom is never really won. you earn it and you win it in every generation. although we may want to think

there is such a thing as an arrival there is not on arrival. we will forever be like the kid in the movie. are we there yet? every generation will be saying that. until the full soman of time where we get to that place of ultimate perfection. this generation has been dangerously close to not making that contribution to the worldwide freedom struggle. so we thank god for this moment and that we are all here. we thank god that we live in this time and have an opportunity to forge ahead and also have an opportunity to redo some things. some things have to be redone. i know i'll heart breaks when we think about what happened with the voting rights act but in recent years i have tried to turn my energy towards a more positive direction as opposed to

always calling things as set back or in trouble or whatever. if you assume too much it will overtake you and it will sap you of the energy and the figure you need to continue to fight. i said well it's extraordinarily disappointing but maybe it's not a set back. maybe it's a set up. it's an opportunity for people to reconnect and for people to really rise up so that people can begin to be who we were destined to be in this nation. i don't care what happens if still we the people and that's the message that came from dr. king and 68 and his last words were we have got some difficult days ahead. but it really doesn't matter with me now because i have been to the mountaintop. i would like to live a long life. longevity has its place but i just want to do god's will. he has allowed me to go to the

mountaintop and i've looked over and seen the promised land. i may not get there with you but i want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. then we fast-forward. regardless of race and regardless of party we fast-forward to 2008 in president barack obama who is senator obama the time said yes we can. this message is it's about we the people. it's not about party and it's it's not about a particular individual. it's about a collective because the collective has always been the force that has brought about the change in our world. we can never forget that because too many times we have given our strength and power and direction and vision over to systems and parties and it's time for the people to collectively have a voice just like they did in the 60s. that was a people's movement.

yes my father was the leader but that was a people's movement. [applause] we go forward and that strength can we go forward and have power because there are those that are looking at us and they are looking for us to continue to stand strong with the integrity of our gender as we move forward to continue to make a way for future generations. so thank you again melanie and all of these extraordinary women and leaders who have shared today. as we continue into the rest of this week we are just excited. there was no president at the lincoln memorial and in fact the president was preparing with troops in case there was trouble. the city shut down but this time in 2013 the city is not shut down.

they shut down because there was a fear. this time we will have not only the president but the presidents to be a part of this commemoration. this is important to note. yes we still have some difficult days ahead but we must acknowledge the fact that we have come a long way, the baby. god bless you. [applause] a pause of. >> thank you sister bernice. it is day two. seven days so thank you so very

much. i believe that we have to wrap up segment two and for those of you who can we really hope you can spend 20 more minutes with us because we have the women who have gone call for the last few weeks trying to prepare for just a short segment. so we can start delving the policy agenda. it's really about the work and at this 50th march on washington we will build on what we want to see and what will this look like 50 years from now? it's about future generations. his sister cheryl here is from the naacp.

i saw somebody else down here that i did not know was in the room. she is doing great work over there. what we are going to do is say thank you to karen finney, thank you to our powerful segment of president and then we are going to prepare. folks need to take a quick stretch, cannot brake, stretch. this concludes segment two and thank you so very much to those who have turned -- tuned in. this will be off the record segment, segment three. [applause]

president obama was in buffalo new york speaking to a crowd of the state university of new york. he talked about college costs while at colin the new initiatives from a can college more affordable for students. part of that plan included a new ranking system for colleges based on schools cost and overall performance. here is a little of the president talking about that proposal. [applause] >> let me just talk about each of these briefly.

our first priority is aimed at providing better value for students making sure that families and taxpayers are getting what we paid for. today i am directing already duncan are secretary of education to lead an effort to develop a new rating system for america's colleges before the 2015 college here. right now private rankings like the "u.s. news and world report" put out each year their rankings and in courage is a lot of colleges to focus on ways to how do we game the numbers and it rewards them in some cases for raising costs. i think we should rank colleges based on opportunity. are they helping students from all kinds of that ground succeed? [applause] and on outcomes on the value to students and parents so that means metrics like how much debt does the average student leave

with? how easy is it to pay off? how many students graduate on time? how well do those graduates do in the workforce? because the answers will help parents and students figure out how much value a college offers. there are schools out there who are terrific all use. but there are also schools out there that have higher default rates then graduation rates. and taxpayers shouldn't be subsidizing students to go to schools where the kids aren't graduating. that doesn't do anybody any good [applause] and their ratings will measure how successful colleges are in enrolling in graduating students with pell grants and will be my principle that ratings have to be carefully designed to increase the opportunity for higher education for students who face economic or other disadvantages.

[applause] this is going to take a little time but we think this can empower students and families to make the choices. and it will give any college the chance to show that is making serious and consistent improvement. a college may not be word needs to be right now on value but they will have time to try to get that are. we want all the stakeholders in education students students parents businesses college administrators and professors to work with secretary duncan on this process and over the next see months he is going to host a series of public forms around the country to tonight sure we get these measures right and then over the next few years we will work with congress to use these rates to change how we allocate federal aid for college. we are going to deliver the promise i made last year. [applause]

we are going to deliver on a promise we made last year which is college either keeps their tuition down and provide high-quality education are the ones that will see their taxpayer funding go. it's time to stop subsidizing schools that are not producing good results and reward schools that deliver for american students. [applause] >> you can see president obama's full remarks in buffalo new york and her video library at c-span.org. meanwhile the president's bus tour continues tomorrow with stops in new york and pennsylvania. we will have those events live on c-span beginning at 12:45 eastern with his stop at binghamton university in new york.

early on we said okay we have this land and we have to put some things on it or maybe not. it was an open-ended but can we do with that? and everyone wanted to say about it. very quickly our leaders promised a public profit to receive public input to generate a master plan. at the same time that was going on however like i said before you head larry silverstsilverst ein for developer who owned the least to the office space. you had the port authority and they really believed in the importance of the commercial space.

they wanted to make sure that lower manhattan remained in international financial hub and they believed in order for it to remain they had to rebuild all of this commercial space. next author paul reid talks about his book "the last lion" a work he co-authored with the late historian william manchester. it's the final volume of a three-part series on former british prime minister winston churchill. from the 2013 "chicago tribune" printers row lit fest comp that this is 50 minutes. >> thank you very much and thank you all for turning out on a sunday morning for this event. i'm cited to be here with paul reid e-rate we had met before and we have taught before. we are both churchill buff so

it's a pleasure to see him and paul thank you for coming up to chicago. we are going to talk for maybe 40 minutes and leave plenty of time for questions. paul is going to be around signing books so feel free to talk to him after. paul is really a wonderful guy and on top of that he is a journalist who got his start in journalism after career in manufacturing which he said in his bio, which i didn't know and is a reporter at the palm beach in florida where he came across a group of marines that new build manchester the famous author of the terse -- first two volumes and a feature writer paul got to know this group and got to know bill manchester and the rest is history literally because paul went on to take over the book project and write this third volume which has been out for months and is doing very well. i have had a chance to read it. it's an amazing book if you

haven't so paul welcome and tell us how this project started and how it came about. >> thank you, greg. the project began 60 odd years ago when i was a little boy. i always get confused over that question, so where did it begin because it's kind of nebulous but i would say what began with those six marines who served on okinawa with bill manchester. they were going to have a reunion in west palm beach florida for surviving members of their session as they called it. bill couldn't calm, -- manchester. the marines had the youth reunion anyway and i covered it. one of the marines reverend douglas sent it up to bill manchester who liked it and sent an nice little note which was quite something for a rookie for

a 46-year-old feature writer to give. a couple of years later the same range went to middletown connecticut wareham mr. manchester live. two strokes in 1998 and his wife of 50 years judy had died that summer. five of the marines went up there to boost his morale. they invited me along to do another story and my editor tom o'hara at the post loved these stories. south florida is where veterans go ultimately and i interviewed pearl harbor veterans and took an arizona survivor out to pearl in 2001. it's marvelous to write the stories and meet these men and women. i went up to middletown with the marines and spent by think two nights in three days or three nights in four days with them.

i will never forget the first night i met william manchester and we went out and had dinner together and talk tales on his porch. he had a cane. he was not yet in a wheelchair and he made it very clear that he could no longer write. he hadn't lost his memory or his wit or his charm and he loves to read but he just could not put words to paper. that was the great tragedy with bill. i took notes and i remember one night it really moves me. around 10:00 at night at wesleyan woman student knocked on the door. she was 20, 21 and she had two books. i forget what they were but she wanted mr. manchester to sign them for her father who is a veteran. he invited her in and sat her down and six marines has 5000

bills spent the next hour and a half talking about okinawa and this young woman i'm sure had never heard anything like that before and probably never will since. these guys reminiscing. i wrote my story and a year or so later wrote another one and another one. my daughter was at umass in middletown at the time so of it, it visited her at this is mr. manchester only became friends in i've years later in 2003 after the yankees beat the red sox as usual october 9 the playoff game he was having a jack daniels propped up in bed. i was in an easy chair and he turned to me and said paul would like you to finish the book. it took me a split second to realize what he was asking me because we knew "the new york times" had done a story that was going to be no one to finish the book. he had made that public will manchester had.

i had tried to encourage him a few years earlier to find someone and he pretty much told me to drop the subject i did until that night and to say i was flabbergasted with the an understatement. >> so he was on his deathbed at that point was he not and he asked you to take over the book but he collected clumps i think he called it it was a lot of information and having read it i wondered how much and bill and and -- bill manchestmanchest er was a famous author and wrote american caesar about general macarthur. how much was he like churchill because he too was a great author. >> in 2031 bill asked me to write the book he was very sick and had been for five years but not quite deathbed yet. when he asked me he had had a jack daniels and his doctor kept him to one or two a day. i sit bill can you sneak another one in here somewhere?

he said no paul maya mentis is fully compress and it was put then in the next six months he got very sick concord very sick and died june 12004. he sent the home that weekend with a bunch of what he called his long notes or clumps and every time i'm at a place like this i remind myself i should have brought one. essentially they were eight and a half by 11 pads of paper, 50 pages each tape that the middle so what you ended up with was 50 pages of eight and a half at 22's. that is why he called in his long notes onto which he would glue or tape xerox copies of pages from books. he did this back in the 80s, well the 80s. he had about 50 or 55 of these

clumps which essentially are 100 pages each so that's about 5000 pages on which were extracts from speeches or telegrams from stalin to roosevelt or diary entries from more than 100 sources. many primary newspapers elonda times "the new york times" by character degaulle harry hopkins churchill, churchill's family, roosevelts dog. everyone had a place in the notes but they weren't strictly chronological nor were they strictly by topic. so charles degaulle scattered through 20 or 30 of these clumps that pretty much might address 1940 to 1944 but there was no charles degaulle section. and there was no way to --

bywatch elections now and the anchors are on their touch it the screen and showing the county in ohio that obama needs to win and this collating of information that can be done. this was longhand that i realized ready quickly that the notes couldn't serve me as they had built. i couldn't figure out the source codes or the topic codes. the key he had lost. he had secret codes. our acts were his doctor's diary entries. that one i deduced but others worry with an eight and it. i didn't know what that meant that might try to deduce from reading the page that secret code was on. i think i made a lot of headway that might've had to do with family so if i saw four or five entries about churchill's children with the with an

eight-minute i realized that means family. i would be doing this for the next 20 years so i had to find a new way for a way to reinvent the wheel and i had a brainstorm. i called the wesleyan library and i asked for all the books that bill had it for -- he was an adjunct professor there -- had ever taken out and they said sorry that's private. i said how about this? can you send me a list of all the books that were overdue? [laughter] because i knew bill and they said well i guess we can do that. the list was about 20 pages long. on it for all the diaries and the collected speeches of churchill and roosevelt biographies and all of of the sources essentially which i then went on amazon five or six years ago and looks for everything and assembled essentially the same sources bill had in my house

along with the latest editions of the speeches and the newly-released british archive papers and have you. and started in that way as i say to write a thousand feature stories and connect them such at the end that you get a book. >> that was eight years of labor and it shows. the book is extremely detailed and thorough and also it's a great read it and know that one of the difficult parts of channeling bill manchester was he didn't want you to just write the history. he wanted a story told. you can see from paul already that he is a great storyteller. this runs from 1940 and tell churchill's death in 19 -- 1965. one thing that i loved about this this book in the two that preceded it were the preambles. these are fit your 60 page

beginnings of the book that clue you into who churchill is and it's like a movie trailer with traits and family life and nuggets of history and talks about clementina churchill's wife. it gives you a sense of who he is and how he was full of contradictions and kinder to animals than children or vice versa i can't remember. who is he and how did you write this preambles and decide what goes in there? >> the first two books had these beautiful preambles. bill would change the terminology and early on my editor and i thought in this book for a couple of reasons we wanted this to be a stand-alone book. we didn't want people to go into a bookstore and say i'll call my goodness i would like to read that but i have to buy the first two. we wanted to stress to people that it's a stand-alone story so we did the 55 or 60 page prologue which has the film trailer as you say, a sketch of

churchill a portrait in pencil that the book flushes out. we wanted to introduce churchill to someone -- people who may not have ever met him his eating habits and tricking habits and his so-called depression which i don't think is accurate and give you a picture of of the man so that when you encourage him doing something really crazy on page 200 you don't think what is this guy because you have already met him and you are expecting to be a somewhat eccentric. he developed a suit that he could wear during the blitz. essentialessentially it was like a working man's overalls with a zipper so he could jump right into it instead of putting back on his evening clothes. his staff called it went since rompers.

he called it his siren suit because he would jump into it whenever whenever the siren sounded and then he would wear monogrammed slippers that his wife gave him velvet slippers with pom-poms with wfc on them and his siren suit one of which was lavender for evening wear. and a tin hat battle helmet and a cigar and out he would go to watch the german bombers,. he would watch from the roof of the admiralty and his aides were mortified. bombs were falling around him and he would specifically point to an area where have long fell and said take me there. they would have to go down and get in the armored car and drive to bombed out streets. he would be smoking and so that behavior common to i wanted the reader to be prepared for that behavior because only churchill behaved that way.

>> he was very much a classical 19th 19th 19th century man with a different idea about how to run your life than most of us had. what were some of the central personality characteristics? >> interestiinteresti ngly especially in volume one wood and build manchester writes about churchill's victorian genesis he was born in the 19th century and he was a victorian man with valor and honor. churchill's main virtue that he sought to emulate. and if valor and courage were very important to him. but i realized going into this that he was also a classical man in the sense that he was not a religious man. he took his ethics from pre-christian socratic

aristotelian atomic ideals. he was extremely well read and self-educated trade i realized early on this is a man who would have been comfortable with plato at the academy hundreds of years before the christian ideals defaults. i wanted to stress that. he was not an old buddy debbie too long in the sun englishman with a cork helmet on and a nutty victorian. he was a very complex classical man. >> and quite inexperienced to have dinner with him from what i gather in the book in terms of his eating and drinking and table conversations. it seems like that takes up quite a bit. >> loved his dinners but he was the one who gave me the line that his idea of the perfect evening was a wonderful meal in the company of friends with

wonderful conversation with himself as the center of it. followed i drinks and more conversation with himself as the center of it and all of the folks who knew the diary entries and i have checked to see if a particular diary entry was not just cherry-picked or someone had a grudge but everyone agreed that churchill didn't care if 12 of us were sitting at his table. he didn't care what we thought and certainly didn't care what we felt in the modern sense. it was all about churchill and he was absolutely honest when he said that would be a wonderful evening. his dr. said it was a cricket analogy but he said that dinner winston bats and everyone else catches. he was so insulated from people including at times his family, that he didn't like to be

touched and years later after the war he was standing on the steps of the casino at at monte carlo having probably lost -- he had had luck with gambling and frank sinatra ran up the steps and grabbed his hand and shook it and said i have always wanted to do that. he bounded down the stairs and churchill turned to his private secretary who is always with him and said who the hell was that? [laughter] his worlds, he was the center of his world. >> the moment that i think everyone remembers was when the book opens. france's fall in lord hacks very a powerful member of churchill's cabinet wants a peace deal with hitler and of course we know how this all turns out. tell us where the book picks up and what churchill is thinking at that time?

>> it picks up pretty much at the battle of france which wasn't long. it lasted 308 or 40 days between may 9 when hitler came through the arden to june 21 when the french agreed to surrender which just toggle churchill's mind. the french army was the greatest and largest and last in some regards in europe and the english expeditionary force was miniscule by comparison. so the book picks up with the battles for france and the french loss of will and backbone is churchill sought almost at the trail when the french asked anguish for all of their remaining fighter plane reserves churchill would have sent it. he would do things like that in his air marshals told him sir, that's it? if we send their remaining airplanes over there when the germans, and they are coming we will be defenseless.

dunkirk took place. he got the men off for the beaches but left their luggage behind as he put it come for their tanks and their guns and from that moment on bill manchester started from there into the blitz and the invasion scare. very early on i realized that the invasion scare was the function of churchill's genius propaganda. .. that come until i tell if he is going to make a speech on the 14th and there are the diary entries that he said we must keep this invasion to get an offense of army, so growing up, i always had this

image of operation sea lion with the germans about to come at any moment in the battle of britain was discouraged heroic air battle but decided the word. i'll want during those months, churchill knew he believes strongly that were not coming for one simple reason. they had to cross water and he kept in his pocket the numbers. the germans didn't have the shipping, tankers, carriers, no landing craft of the trapdoor variety and he was supremely confident the germans were coming, but he kept up that scanner of the invasion imminent at any minute. >> one of many things i learned from the book yet another is the relationship between churchill and roosevelt which was portrayed as one of great love

and affection which wasn't that way when the book opens. >> i've loved history of my life, so i didn't go into this blind, but i had an americanized version of franklin roosevelt and my father went to the naval academy and i remember him telling me 55 years ago, polly, this 55 destroyers fdr sent to england saved churchill. i smiled and talking. the 50 destroyers were virtually junk. england only got 781940 and roosevelt was very widely shared a dangerous game a slowly progressing towards war and not fast enough for churchill and perhaps not fast enough for the saving of western civilization in europe. the telegrams between churchill and roosevelt, the correspondent, conversations, i

didn't find them to be buddies, barely friends. after the war, churchill started referring to tears in his eyes with his salvos to vote failing health in order to rewrite the history, which churchill's memoirs were exactly that. >> it seemed as if another source of conflict was he was in over his head dealing with stalin who comes across differently than i would've expected. >> roosevelt toles aids if only he could sit down a lot with uncle joe, everything would be settled. he went behind churchill's back to the mortification of the american and english aides and

roosevelt in his own people said this, like a cruel joke. he liked to laugh at other peoples expense and he did that to churchill a lot. i interviewed churchill's daughter who said my father was very hurt by that, but he was never unmanned by. churchill thought this friend of his boat him more than not had church's aides, generals and admirals out what is roosevelt doing clinics we fight for two years alone before america dribbled onto the scene and the english did in roosevelt in american prize spot in the whole story of the invasion in 1942 there was no mention of even been involved in the invasion and the american press at first. it was a very interesting relationship between the three of them, stalin, churchill and

roosevelt is >> one of the unsung heroes of the book is one of churchill's many a is also a flamboyant figure it's often seemed sensitive he really got a flight in the wild version of events. it seems as if you join us were quite a bit. >> you should have kept a diary and he knew it. he could have been imprisoned for quite a long time, but that diary opens the window onto churchill and private life during the war it is just absolutely marvelous because colville is what the prime minister to chamberlain's funeral, if you will, and that in our many, many nights. and on his foreign journeys. so colville's diaries are more accurate in the sense that in churchill's remembrances of colville wasn't there, which all

have churchill's word to take for every day and at times was self-serving. >> another unsung hear you is molly panter downs was remarkable, too. she was a novelist who became the british letter writer to america about what was happening from the blitz to the end of the war and her work was published in "the new yorker" and it stands up well in history. as you draw on her work a lot, too. >> that was one of the sources i could figure out because it said cantered down. i found her one and more notes, bought it on amazon and sure enough, bill had bb hundreds of extracts from the london windows and i realized what he was doing and i did it, too.

she was his chorus, if you will, bring him into the day-to-day life of londoners, rationing for a little sugar cubes as if it was from heaven because they couldn't get meat, chicken, eggs and at one point they couldn't get whiskey and then peer and milk, so her observations, she is saying things churchill salk, but didn't write about or talk about in cabinet meetings. he was very sad about the lines of people looking for horse meat, which wasn't rationed in europe and apparently still is a. so i used her a lot because i knew l. manchester wasn't going to them that was brilliant on his part. there's been a couple of picky

reviews that said what is this? she's everywhere. yes, she is our eyes and ears into the east end of london in 70 years ago when he won't get it done or a cabinet meeting them out. there were other people over there doing a million scheier had combat from germany, but molly served as a voice to bring us a way from the cabinet meetings on the eastern front and back to london and londoners, which is really to the daycare is in the book for the first 500 pages. >> another interesting thing that is field marshal and has the same position as george marshall and the united states

is therefore an important orchestrating war. they could not have been more different. it's amazing the relationship lasted. >> churchill never fired any military cheese and his minister of defense, he could does. all of them threatened to quit all the time and none of them ever did. burks diaries are just a tear. they are a riot. the guy was literally pulling his hair out over churchill. he would read my god, i don't know where it goes without them, but i don't know where we're going with him. i checked admiral cunningham's memoirs and a mere burks exactly. so i didn't want to seem as if i was piling on church hill. brooke and cunningham in the top press are pretty much felt the same way that winston is a loose cannon and churchill wanted to

invade normandy imparted java and north africa and france, too, all at the same time. roosevelt and marshall wanted only to go to the shores of france. that's another place for churchill has got a bum rap in the state. he didn't oppose the second front out of belligerents or stubbornness. he opposed a premature second front on the shores of france and he was right. finally everyone realized he was right. if marshall had his way, they would've gone to france in the summer of 1842 and not what is bad the end of the american involvement in the european war. it would've been thrown off. so these diary entries of work and not covering and cunningham, harry hawkins, they'll get a window onto churchill in the name kerrick airs and it was my

job and build manchester again not to cherry pick, but people said this is a mixed review of churchill. well, he was the very next man. >> one thing that does come across and you just alluded to it is how we kept up the fight of that seems like his biggest contribution. it didn't matter who is obsessed with the mediterranean, but he wanted to fight them is always looking for a way to punch the enemy right then, right now. >> key west and i think it not losing the war during those long months of 1940 in 1941 almost two years they fought alone in not losing the war, he and england won the award and gave us the time to come in. during that time he wanted to hit any place he could come any week at the air, mussolini, submarine and those two years i

made a point in the book from an american standpoint, 1940 for me in my memory, i wasn't born yet, began on december 7, 1941. what happened to the rest of the year? in england it was a horrible year. i wanted that to come through and churchill in january and arch in april and june of september 1941 was still fighting alone. franklin roosevelt into september 11th address said, you know, challenge the germans to shoot at american ships in the atlantic. at one point is that if you see a rattlesnake come you don't stop think. you crush it and he had thrown down a challenge to hitler. early in september the germans try to torpedo the u.s. destroyer. a month later they did hit

another u.s. destroyer that dan about cover the sound the reuben james with 115 men going down with the ship. so there's three attacks on u.s. shipping and at that point, church of realizes this country is never going to war unless they do so on their terms america time with something far greater than the loss of a destroyer takes place. he sat on the morning after the reuben james in town, churchill body of a declaration by that afternoon. he didn't. >> we know how this sense, but one thing that amazes americans undeservedly told in the book is how practically as soon as the war and a churchill got kicked out and he was no longer in office within months of declaring the jury. churchill won his office with ot

because of the system, his party lost in there for labor took over. it's amazing he was out of office as soon as he won. >> that's another story i grew up with, the ungrateful english throughout winston the savior. the pacific war wasn't over and he wanted to finish the job fair, but the european war was over and they scheduled elections and have been inexplicably due to my father is out of office. if you look at the campaign, churchill was an old liberal. he was the old welsh man, whose name i'm forgetting begin social insurance and unemployment compensation 20 years before the new deal. churchill was an old edward in the borough, but during the war

he kept all that under wraps. he didn't want to as he told his aides, to offer shangri-la or utopia to the english people. it is going to be tough after the war. let's win the war. during the campaign, he's up loose and this is a dealbreaker for the english people. he compared the labour party socialist policies. he said in order to implement them, labor is going to need something like a gestapo. that was his word. wrong thing to say to millions of men coming home after four and a half, five years of war, they were fighting the gestapo philosophy all those years. to say these good and decent people returning to. that's what cost or show the that year. >> once he lost power, one of

his first stops he gave us very famous speech and coined the phrase iron curtain in a surprise for me the book was how badly the speech went over with his american counterparts. here is churchill out of power, stirring the pot belligerently against russia and i was very welcome. >> the russians throughout the word in april and in the u.s. for heroes. henry luce, "time" magazine, life magazine. forget the pogroms in the mass murderers and ukrainian famine. all of that wasn't mentioned. brave russians are winning the war at the russian army with 10 million casualties defeated hitler. so in 1946, most americans, including harry truman thought the russians were still euros in many thought we just can't do this to our former ally. it's not gentlemanly.

before the ink was dry in may 1945 when the germans surrendered, churchill was planning his next war codenamed operation unthinkable to fight the russians pulling his hair out may 13th or 14 he stayed winston wants to go to war against russia. that was a bit premature on by the time he made the deseret speech, he but we're beginning to see what stalin was doing, all the capitals of eastern europe were behind the iron curtain and i think about a year and a half later, truman came out with the dog during an took over american or british involvement in the eastern mediterranean and the rest is history as you say. >> on the part of the book is how churchill recognize the difference between an atomic, which he thought it was a tactical weapon in a hydrogen bomb. >> that moved me a lot and i

remember thinking, this is where the book ends with churchill leaving office in 1955. there is a 20 page addendum that do well for the final years of his life, very sad very sick. his last speech in the house of parliament, the house of commons in the team 55 was another warning that the h-bomb was a factor infinitely more dangerous than an atomic tom, which 10 years earlier he had roosevelt saw as a strategic weapon, the atomic bomb and it worked. eisenhower than mid-fifties saw the h-bomb the same way as a tactical battlefield variety, strategic weapon. churchill again was ahead of its time and he came up with the concept of mutually assured

destruction and said the only value in these things is to build enough to ensure nobody could ever use them indicated beautiful speech in march 1955 and he said i sometimes wonder if god is wearied of mankind and the little children who were playing might not either in a generation now is the last time he spoke in the house. for me, that's his greatest legacy. he saved civilization twice if you will. once against hitler and once with this concept of weak kneed h-bombs for the sake of never having to use them. contradictory, but this way were here today. >> that is the last book of the words i remembered. the big one is what you just

said. >> i really think if you value schopenhauer and plato and shakespeare and freud and victims seen in the whole legacy of the classic western tradition he saved it. if you go down outlives aware bridge for it be if hitler could get his hands on him were victims seen, it's just so obvious they were just mind boggling insane gods/evil and for two years, one man among country is fighting them alone. tallinn was in bed with them. so that was the first war and then the legacy with the atomic tom and churchill school after the war in his second premiership was to sit down at the table. he coined the word summit

meeting to sit down at the summit with the russian leaders and best men in human beings, agreed the atomic bomb -- the h-bomb simply could never be considered a weapon. something had to be done. only a person with that background and the classics of aristotelian ethics and only someone with that frame of mind would think that way. stalin certainly didn't. so yes, there's a plaque i started 30 years ago in westminster abby in the west stores about four by six secret italian marble in on it is simply says robert winston churchill. i remember thinking way back then, that's all you need to say a thousand years from now. you don't have to put anything on the plaque about what he did, who he was.

the mets will transcend the legend on a thousand years from now, people will walk in there and none of them are going to ask who is winston churchill? >> thank you, paul. i welcome questions if anyone would like to approach the microphone. you know, i do have one -- people think of churchill as being quite the drinker and you address it early ink. >> he had a miraculous metabolism. that's all i can say. i created a word document and i took from all the diaries and sources i could find any reference to all nervous about the usual suspects encode the word document booze and realized his drinking was just off the charts from morning to night. wine and champagne.

he had a bottle of champagne with every meal for 70 years and a dozen cigars per day and brandy at night and occasionally he got a little bit sloppy. burke mentions that in his diaries and attended a horrible meeting who apparently had a good lunch. >> eisenhauer walked in one day and there was breakfast time and churchill was in bed with a bottle of white wine. >> like churchill said, i don't like powdered milk. >> he drank a lot, but he was the nabors yeltsin but for. there is something miraculous and if some reporter tried to come to you know, do a story on not been bottle trick like churchill for a week or two and see how it goes, not going to happen. >> yes, sir.

[inaudible] >> no. in fact, my editor and i chatted a lot. though manchester came of age, if you will, in the mid-20th century as a writer and i'm thinking of stephen ambrose and cornelius ryan, william manchester, [speaking in native tongue] black hats and white hats. even stand up eliot morrison, the official naval historian of world war ii when our boys are at midway in his official history, he's rooting for them and then they swoop down on the chops. they saw heroes, blackouts, white hats. mr. manchester was one of them and so we agreed that, you know, my goal was to read a write a conversational 21st century

toys than the editors that if you tell a story well, nobody's going to say this doesn't sound enough like manchester. that was the goal. i will say this about though manchester's writing style and it was nifty. in his macarthur book, for instance, is a very manly sort of voice writing about general macarthur. in the churchill volumes coming manchester's prose whispers churchville. in a sense, that is though manchester putting himself in the book. it's a pretty nifty way to approach things so there is a reminder of churchill and rhetoric in the first two volumes. i hope there is here, but not as a device, just a way of getting the story told. >> you know, you mentioned about the british getting very little

mention in the invasion of africa having read churchill's writings brother crisis the first world war in history the second war. in the british perspective the americans are mentioned in a footnote like the americans are here because it is always about england and he mentioned 41 and 42. do you think churchill realized if he had the strips and dominion they needed to say of the english at the umpire was coming to an end in everything he was trying to do was to keep the empire going? >> e-mail and i'm going to paraphrase here. and our finest hour speech, they will say 1000 years from now, this was their finest hour there, specifically the previous sentence he mentioned sentence he mentioned the dominion empire. from churchill you as the umpire's finest hour and he was

so grateful every night that there were three or four australian divisions and new zealand divisions and canadian shipping and the canadian division came under france at the surrender of france. he knew what the dominion state for the empire, but he also note the americans were doing in 1940 and 41 until november 42 when he went to africa. >> could you comment on or do you have any enlightening comments to make about churchill's relationship with both truman and eisenhower as their presidents? >> when churchill first met true man, he didn't think much of him. i was churchill. he didn't form an opinion. and they didn't spend much time at treatment because churchill was voted out of office during the conference.

he grew deeply to respect truman not just because harry is either speak at westminster college, but because of the truman thought turn and the marshall plan after that. truman was seeing things the way churchill hoped the new american president would see things because america now let the world and the empire was down on the totem pole. eisenhower -- churchill held a modest lower opinion especially when eisenhower and off they started talking using nuclear weapons against the chinese and north koreans and at one point he said he reserved the right or if this happens, we will use nuclear weapons in churchill bethune and eisenhower did change it to be reserved the right to consider the use of. but again, churchill didn't have

that much -- or most out of office before church i went back into office, so he never knew him in a professional sense and churchill didn't go back into office until 1950 -- what was it, two clicks and left off base in mid-1955. the eisenhower was president for eight years of which churchill was only on the scene for about three. >> were at a time, but invites you to continue this conversation. paulson and book signing room adjacent to hear and i want to thank you for your questions, intention and coming today. it's about pleasure to meet with

>> so i got five books on my reading wish list. what i'm trying to finish now is "ten letters," and from the washington post written a year and a half ago, and it's a look back at some of the people who write lerts to president obama. we know he reads ten letters every day from everyday americans, and so he found ten of them who had written to the president with real stories of woe, especially in the midst of the economic recession. it's a neat look back and dive back into the interactions people have with the president,

and it's not so much about him, but those who reached out. almost done with that. when that's done, i'll move on to "act of congress," another guy at the washington post who looked at how congress looked at regulatory reform years ago and explained why congress is broken. bob covered congress back democrat 1970s and said there's a big difference between then and now. clearly, obvious to most people, but he finds real distucks in a few different ways, supposed to be a good read. after that, another book by a guy who works for the washington post, this is not on purpose, but they wrote good stuff, "collision 2012", a look back at the 2012 campaign, a similar look back in the 2008 campaign, and this is the look at the obama against romney race, talked to all involved, that's out in august. that's later in the year. the other one is "through the perilous fight," also a colleague i worked with closely,

two yearbook leave, looked back at the six weeks in the war of 1812 when washington was under siege and look at what the city went through and how it changed, supposed to be a good read and hope to get into that as well. if i get through two or three of the books, i'll be proud of myself p. theon other is "the great gatsby," and i saw the movie. hope to finish that up as well. >> tweet us @booktv, post it on facebook, or e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org. >> when you write a book, i mean, a lot can go wrong. that's how i approach the world. i have, i mean, i'm neurotic in the writing and reporting, and a lot can go wrong in 110,000 words. i'm shocked by if there's been criticism from inside it's in

the vain of how dare he, meaning how dare an insider give away the secret handshake, how dare an insider talk about other insiders in a way that perhaps might not be, you know, in keeping with the codes that we have in washington, and, yeah, people ask me why are people up comfortable here, and i welcome the discomfort, but i think this is journal. i. this is what we do. invite comfort. >> booktv's book club returns next month with "this town," read the book, engage op facebook and twitter, book club posts start september 3 #rd to get the conversation going including questions, links to interviews of the author, reviews of the book, and interviews with the booktv archives. >> on the next washington journal, joined by washington bureau chief on the story about members of congress whose trips

overseas are paid for by lobbyists. marsha howard, executive director of federal funds informatn for states. >> next, ben carson talks on the social and political landscape in the u.s. discussing the book "america the beautiful." he talks about the similarities between the u.s. and past empires that face decline, and how the u.s. might prevent itself from following a similar path. this is 5 little less than an hour and 15 minutes.

[applause] >> now, let me just say that's more than a quarter of a century. i'm a little older than that, but it's a real -- okay. it's a real pleasure to be here with you all this evening, i heard a lot about the blackburn institute, and i'm honored to be a part of this distinguished group. i wanted to talk a little bit this evening about some of the things that really shaped my own life and my own philosophy. you know, was one of those people who kind of knew what i wanted to do from very early on. med sip was always the thing that interested me. if there was ever a story on television or on the radio about

medicine, i was right there, just like a magnet. i even liked going to the doctor's office, but, you know, the thing that really caught my attention was church, and, you know, they frequently had stories on about missionary doctors. these were people who had great personal expense, traveled all over the world to bring not just physical, but mental and spiritual healing to people, and seemed to be the most noble people on the face of the earth, and i decided when i was 8 years old that i was going to be a missionary doctor, and that was my dream until i was 13. [laughter] at which time having grown up in dire poverty, i decided i'd rather be rich, so at that point, missionary doctor was out, and psychiatrist was in. now, i didn't know psychiatrist, but i was told they were rich people, driving jaguars, lived in the mansions, plush offices, and they just talked to crazy

people all day. you know, seemed like i was doing that anyway, so i said, you know, this is going to work out extremely well, and i started reading psychology today. i was the local shrink in high school. everybody brought me their problems, and i would stroke my chin, saying, tell me about your mama. [laughter] then i even majored in psychology in college, did advanced psych in medical school. i was gung ho, and then i met a bunch of psychiatrists. need i say more? [laughter] just kidding. my best friends are psychiatrists, but what i discovered quickly is what they psychiatrists do on television and in real life are two very different things, and what they do in real life is considerably more important than on television. they are the more intellectual members of the medical community. it's not what i wanted to do. i had to say, now what?

i said, well, what are you really, really good at? i believe god gives everybody special gifts, and i stopped and analyzed my gifts, and i realized i had a lot of eye-hand coordination. i was very careful, never knocked things over and said, oops, a good characteristic for a brain surgeon, by the way. [laughter] i could think and see in three dimensions, and i loved to dissect things. that coupled with the love of the brain, i said, you would be a natural in neurosurgery. people thought that was a strange occupation for me because at that time, there's only ever been eight black neurosurgeons in the world, but, you know, i never stopped this think about things like that. i stopped, thought about where do you fit? it turned out to be a very excellent choice for me. you know, i started out as an

adult neurosurgeon, but i very quickly learned that no matter how good an operation you do on the croppic back pain patients, they never get any better until they get their settlement whereas -- [laughter] whereas with children, you know, what you see is what you get. you know, when they feel good, they feel good. when they feel bad, you know they feel bad, and, you know, here's the thing, you know, you can operate on a kid for 12, 14, 16 hours, and if you're successful, your reward may be 40, 50, 60 years of life. whereas with an old geezer, you spend that time operating, and they die in five years of something else. you know, i like a a big return on my investment. i'm just kidding. i like old people. [laughter] actually, i'm one of them now. [laughter] actually, a large part of the practice now involves a

condition that affects primarily older people. it's a very, very painful condition of the face and used to be called the suicide because the pain was so bad. we can get rid of the pain, and i'll tell you, there's nothing like seeing somebody who had their life just turned upside down and to be able to do a procedure and all the sudden they have their life back, and, really, you know, that's what medicine is all about, being able to intervene at times like that and make a difference. now, before i go further, i want to take just a brief moment for disclaimer. you know issue everybody makes disclaimers these days. have you noticed that? i belong to this board, or, you know, i'm associated with this group, and, therefore, take everything with a grain of salt. well, what i have noticed in recent years is that it's now virtually impossible to speak to a large group of people without

offending someone. have you noticed that? you know, when i was a kid, you know, they used to say stick and stones break my bones but words never hurt me. kids don't hear that phrase anymore because everybody walks around with their feelings on their shoulders waiting for somebody to say something, and then they go, oh, did you hear that? they don't hear anything else you say. i remember once i talked to a group about the difference between a human brain and a dog's brain. a man was offended. he said, you can't talk about dogs like that. another time, i was talking to a group about how the fashion industry's gotten the young ladies to think they have to be so skinny. they look like they escaped from a concentration camp, and a jewish man said, you can't mention concentration camps. that's way too sensitive. it's like as if i said something to you about slavery. talk about slavery all you want. doesn't bother me. some people choose to be offended.

this is my disclaimer. it is not my intention to offend nip here this evening. if anyone is offended, too bad. [laughter] because i got to tell ya, i don't really believe in political correctness. in fact, i actually think it is a very destructive force that is in the process of ruining our nation. i talk about this a lot in my latest book "america the beautiful," but think about this, a lot of the people who founded this nation came here trying to escape from people who tried to tell you what you could think and what you could say. here we are reintroducing it through the back door exactly the same thing. it is absolutely absurd. really, the emphasis should not be on unanimity of speech and

unanimity of thought. the emphasis should be on learning how to be respectful of people with whom you disagree, and if we would begin to do that, then we could begin to have intelligent, rational dialogue. how can you have real dialogue when you can't even say what you believe. you can't even say what you mean. you have a necessarily artificial conversation, and our society is now full of artificial conversation, one of the reasons we are making very little progress, and it's something that i think people are going to have to get excited about once again, recognizing that, you know, our society is changing quite dramatically right now. there is a very secular segment

that is trying to change the nature of our society. they have employed political correctness as a means to mute discussion on what's being done. the only way it can be combated is that people have to learn how to speak up because there are few people with microphones and podiums who impose their will on the rest of the people to the point that in this nation where all of our coins and bills say "in god we trust," we are afraid to say merry christmas. i mean, how did that happen? the only way that kind of thing happened is when vast majority

of people allow themselves to be controlled by a vocal minority. you know, you think back to nazi germany, most of those people did not believe in what hitler was doing, but did they speak up? no. they kept their mouths shut. you see what happened? we're in the process of watching a lot of things that characterize our greatness go down the tubes because of passivity, and when people start revving things up a little bit, like the tea party, they get labeled as anarchists and crazy people because there is an establishment consistenting of democrats and republicans, who

want to maintain the status quo, main tape their power, and to grow their power and to grow their intrusiveness, and they won't want anybody to say anything about it. that's really what's a lot of political correctness is all about. you'll read about that in great detail in my newest book, but, you know, i had this tremendous dream of becoming a doctor, but there were problems along the way, not the least of which the fact my parents got divorced early on. that was devastating. some of you have been through that. you know what i'm talking about. if anybody out there is thinking about a divorce and you have children, please, think about it again. please, ask yourself, wait a minute, am i being selfish? it's the same perp that you loved and adored not too long ago, and most divorce is just

selfishness. people start thinking about themselves and not about the unit. not about the family, not about the child just a little food for thought. at any rate, my parents got divorced and, you know, this particular case, my mother discovered that my father was a bigamist, had another family, so i don't think she had a lot of choice there. she only had a 3rd grade education there, faced with the prospect of this, and we moved to boston to live with her older sister and broken in a typical tenement, wooded doors, gangs, murders, and both my older cousins, who we loved, were killed, and i never expected to live to be beyond 25 years of

age because that's what i saw, and it was never money for anything. you know, we went to the store, and my brother and i would want bubble gum or some jaw breakers, and we'd ask mother if we could get them, and, of course, the answer was the same. there was no money for that, and she wanted to get it for us, but the look of pain in her eyes was so great, pretty soon, we stopped asking. we didn't want to see that look in her eyes anymore. as difficult a life she had working two to three jobs at a time as a domestic, cleaning other people's houses because shy didn't want to be on welfare, even though she only had a third grade education, she was very observe vaunt and noticed anyone who went on welfare never came off it. she said, i don't want to go on

it. i don't care how hard and how long i have to work, but as difficult as her life was, she never adopted what i call the victims' mentality. she never felt sorry for herrings, and i think that was a good thing. problem was she never felt sorry for us either. [laughter] there was never excuse we could give that was adequate. she would say, do you have a brain? if the answer was yes, then you could have thought your way out of it. it doesn't matter what bob, mary, susan, david, or anybody else said or did. interesting thing is when people don't accept your excuses, you stop looking for excuses and look for ways to get things done. i think that was perhaps the most important thing that my mother did for both my brother, curtis, and i, and i think, also, you know, the poverty, the

hardship, that we faced was not such a bad thing. we had each other. we were happy although we were very poor. i don't think money brings happiness. it's, you know, purpose and family and, you know, thinking about others. those are the things that bring contentment and happiness, and people who focus their desires upon material things are destined to be disappointed in the long run, and, you know, i told my sons growing up they were much more disadvantaged than i was because they got to travel all over the world, do things, they never had any need for anything, and i'm not sure

that that's healthy, so my wife and i tried to create artificial hardships for them in order to harten them up to make them ready for the world, and i think it worked out pretty well. one of them is app engineer. one of them is a vice president of a wealth management firm, and one of them's an accountant. nobody wanted to go into medicine though because they thought i workedded too hard, but it was okay as long as they become productive members of society, and that was really our goals for them. at any rate, as a fifth grader, i was not doing particularly well in school, and i think -- do we have fifth graders here today? oh, okay. you guys look intelligent like you are doing well. i was terrible. in fact, my nickname was dummy, and all the other kids liked having me in the class, you

never had to worry about getting the lowest grade on a test as long as i was there, and i remember we had an argument about who was the dumbest kid in the school, and it was not a big argument. they agreed it was me, but they extended the argument to who was the dumbest person in the world, and i said, wait a minute, i said there's billions of people in the world, and they said, yep, you're the dumbest one. well, to add insult to injury, that day, there was a math quiz, and you had to pass the paper to the person behind it for them to correct it, and the teacher would have you report your score out loud. not a problem if you got a hundred or 95, major problem if you got a zero and had an argument about who was the dumbest person in the world, i said, oh, boy, they will laugh hysterically when i say that. i started scheming. i said, i know what i'll do.

when she calls my name, i'll mumble. the teacher will think i said one thing and the girl something else. when she called me name, i said, huh, and rather than writing it down, ben? nine? that's wonderful! i knew you could do it. class, understand the significance, ben got nine right, if you can do it, there's 30 questions, but finally, the girl behind me stood up and said, he said, none. they were rolling in the aisles, and if i could have disappeared air and never be heard from, i would have done so, but i couldn't. i sat there acting like it didn't bother me, but it did, a lot, not enough to make me study, but it bothered me a lot. [laughter] you know, i was one of those kinds of kids. unfortunately, there are a lot

of those kids still around. even today. you know, i have a program at the hospital, and i bring in 800 students at a time, eni show slides of what goes on in a hospital, a research hospital, and we talk about human potential and they ask questions, but sometimes i ask the questions, and i'm asking once, i said, how many of you can name five nba players? do you know virtually all hands went up? i said, what about five nfl players? all the hands went up. major league baseball? all hands up. rap singers, movie stars, all hands up. who can name five nobel prize winners? out of 800, ten hands went up. i said, leave your hands up

because i'm going to call on you. what does that tell you? i said this is the information age. the age of technology. who can say what a microprocessor is. they were worried, only one raised the hands, he said, a microprocessor is a tiny processor. that was it. that was the extent of the knowledge. extremely superficial. you know, that is really quite troubling. what are the implications of that kind of ignorance. there was a survey you may be familiar with in the 1990s looking at the ability of 8th grade e qif lance in 22 nations to solve so-called complex math and science problems. we were one of the 22 nations, and we were number 21 of 22 barely beating out 22. it was neck-and-neck.

that's very serious. in the age of technology, the information age, we produce 70,000 engineers a year in this nation, 40% of whom are foreigners. china produces 400,000 engineers a year. you know, when we talk about the role of the future, we have to make adjustments and make them make sense. we can't sit around being enamor ed as sports and entertainment -- probably shouldn't say that at the university of alabama, but, you know, i think you get it. i think we all get it. we are the pinnacle nation in the world, but we're not the first. there's other pinnacle nations before us. and gent egypt, greece, rome,

great britain, france, spain, pinnacle nations, number one no competition, going to be there forever, they thought, where are they now? what happened to each and every one of them? basically the same thing, sports, entertainment, lifestyles of the rich and famous, turned a blind eye to political corruption, lost the moral compass and went down the tubes. people say that can't happen to the united states. i think we're already in the process of that happening, and the real question is can we be the first nation to actually learn from those who proceeded us? and take corrective angst? must we still go down the same destructive path. that is really the question.

i believe we can. that was the reason my wife and i wrote the book "america the beautiful," we can, we can make a difference because we are different. this nation is the child of every other nation therefore we should have the interest of every other nation at heart. we are the perfect ones to remain in a pinnacle position for that and a number of other reasons. you know, as far as our educational dull drums are concerned, you should note that this is not the way it's always been here, and, in fact, in 1831, when alexsis came here, studied america because the europeans were just fascinated

with america. they said, here's a nation barely 50 years old, already competing with us on virtually every level. that's impossible. how could a fledging nation be doing that? he wanted to come here and dissect and see what the heck was going on over here, and while he was at it, he said, let me look at the school system, and he was blown away, anybody finishing the second grade was literate. he could find a mountain man who read the newspaper and could have a decent political discussion with them. he'd never seen anything like that before. you know, go and to some of the museums and look at some of the letters written by people on the frontier in the wild west. you'd think a college professor wrote the letters, the vocabulary and grammar the way it was done. there was a lot more emphasis in times past.

if you really want to be blown away, get a hold of the 6th grade exit exam from the 1830s. there are questions in the book, "america the beautiful," from app exit exam. see if you can past the test. i doubt most college graduates today can pass that test. we have dumbed things down to that level. why is that so important? because the founders of our nation made it very clear that for our type of government to succeed, it required a very well-informed and educated populous. ..