>> but in the stand your ground case that now we are all very well aware of, i think it goes back to what we spoke about earlier. and that is the pressure. guess what? if people started to make phone calls and putting the pressure on, it would be different. and then that would help encourage you as a legislator

help encourage law enforcement to speak out. because now they are not alone. as long as you're going behind and whispering and say hey, i'm with you. but, you know, what? every day we are losing eight kids and teenagers a day daily to gun violence to eight kids a day. >> i think is still pricing to legislation of gun violence. i have been at numerous protests and i've seen, i have seen pro-life supporters holding up a 16 by 20 or even large posters of fetuses and mothers have been impacted by abortion. and again, i'm in the business of pictures. i'm in the business of narrative. i'm in the business of storytelling. and it still stuns me why, if i am protesting that i'm kind of

get an issue when it comes to gun legislation passed, i would line up 100 mothers old in life sized billboards, posters other sons and daughters who been gunned down and killed and force led us to walk right past. >> not the glamorous pictures that we see, but actually years ago, what was done with emmett till. let america see. spent in fact they have these binders, not the mitt romney binders, but what he does is, what he does is, he asked for a photo of a young person who had been killed and the graduation photo or the class photo, what are the. would also has is the crime scene photo. and again, i know for some people this may sound gruesome but we're talking the how do you

move legislation forward. i think when we tried to have a nice discussion about gun violence, and we want it to be cleaned up, it's not as effective as opposed to forcing somebody to actually have to see the carnage that is a result. and to me that is a different manner. tamika. >> we have done that. i've been involved with thousands of protests and demonstrations with families with blown up pictures of kids heads blown to pieces and all that. the media does not cover it, bottom line. i think it's important to talk about, when we say gun violence, we talked about what area we are dealing with. because it you're talking about black on black crime are black gun violence, there is just not enough -- the media is not present. they are not there to help shine

a light on what's happening. i dealt with the death of a four year old baby in new york last year. he was on a playground at an event for another girl who was 15 who stabbed to death in that same park. we had to order special caskets because the smallest one, they didn't even have his size. i can tell you the media was there may be the first day or so just because it was the highlight of the moment, but after that they are not present. and his mother have been very involved in activity. she's been in coalition. she's gone out to protest. she's been involved in a lot of activities, and, unfortunately, it doesn't get covered. what happens is that our legislators disappear. they show up at funerals and then they are gone. they are not consistently dealing with the issue and, therefore, because those are the people who bring the cameras.

>> follow me and the reason i'm asking, again watauga how do you establish an agenda moving forward. and i would say, so for instance, how many members of the illinois black caucus -- who is from illinois? 30, okay. so here's what i would do to raise that particular issue. i would say on a particular friday beginning at 9 p.m. going until 7 a.m. all 30 members of the black caucus will be on various corners in a hotspot in chicago. each one of those 30 members will be asked to bring one of their colleagues from another party, or another fellow democrat, or whatever. all of a sudden if you 60

legislators literally standing in the community where violence is taking place, communicating, talking with people, talking to young folks about the various issues, on one of those weekends we see the report comes sunday, 24 shot, 36 shot. that is a different tactic that causes somebody to say, because here's the deal, if you have a republican legislator who is a second amendment leader who says i hear you, i hear you, but, frankly, they don't experience it, to bring them to the carnage to understand. i'm talking about a tactic so that's just one of those particular things that can be done. go ahead. >> we started something called occupy the corner and we did that in new york where we went out on the corner, all the hotspots. we covered them with ministers, with officials and with committee members every friday, saturday and sunday night from i guess nine or 10:00 at night until two or 3:00 in the

morning. reverend sharpton was there. i was there. i will tell you again. people showed up. cameras were not there, one. and two, after a while people get started is a link away. because again, the follow-through and that instance including -- it sounds good but how do we turn that -- who are we talking to a say in how to get people to actually do it? >> i think there's an answer to that, and it's important remember that it is true now, as a member of the media still i can tell you we are a lost and desperate, falling apart. there's a fraction of us as they were 10 years ago. doesn't matter what politics are. when people complain about we needed to this or that, i will guarantee you 99% o of the time it's not about the consisted. it's about incompetence. immediate is not the solution about it once was, and for sure the big event that attracted the tv cameras and is on the news that night combat that changed

the course of legislation, that is not the model anymore. the model is you've got to make you on media. you have to do that all over the place. live stream yourself. put yourself out there. and it's about theater. again, i'm a journalist. i'm not a political consultant but i've updated it is the theater of policymaking, the theater of legislative action that does attract attention whether it's in the traditional meat or nontraditional media. why is it that they continue to be hearings in congress the move from one committed to another to me about what happened in benghazi? is there any possibility that that's going to end up in some legislation or some meaningful thing? no. it's just a show that they keep doing it over and over again. you hijack other committee meetings to talk about this topic because the people organizing understand there is an audience that will react. and overtime there is a lot of news coverage of it and there's

a tremendous amount of activity around on the internet. so i would ask, when was the last time any of us saw story, and made we've seen them and i just didn't see, when was the last time there was a story about the origins of the gun that was used to kill a police officer? have we seen that story? so shouldn't it be that if you're a policymaker or legislator, shouldn't it be that not just the classic terrible tragedy stories that we are actually more fully with in terms of sadly, in terms of young people get killed in these terrible circumstances, but when a police officer dies, even the second amendment folks know, shouldn't legislators and whatever state it is the update after day after day i want to after day i wanted and where did they can come from. how did end up in this place. what do we do to make it likely this wouldn't happen again. and to be willing to be be

persistent like annika is saying. that's the other thing i would point out is that a year ago, immediately after that terrible tragedy, there was that online campaign that mayor bloomberg financed that had the actors, and some of it actually turned me off. i thought who are these actors? why are they the ones telling me what i should think about this? by people reacted to it in a lot of different ways but it had momentum. it did make a difference. then it went away. i think a lot of people just sort of -- i don't think the movement towards more gun safety legislation or gun violence legislation, i don't think it was defeated. i think it existed long enough for the movement to back off. >> and, in fact, that was one of the issues as it was unfolding with, after newtown. i mean, the opposition, they were simply waiting for it to fizzle out. they were waiting for the attention to shift. that's why one of those things in terms of how you have to

actually keep it going. go back to the other issue. i will go to the floor with questions and comments in about 10 minutes. let me ask this question first because i think it ties in to all the things we're talking about, one of the things you keep hearing is narrative and storytelling and communication. how many of you are state legislators are elected officials? raise your hand. okay. how many of you have twitter accounts lacks how many of you use your twitter account? [laughter] all right. how many of you -- twice today? that's it? to tweets. how many of you -- i'm telling you. how many of you are on facebook? and you are active facebook users. how many of you, how many of you are on instagram?

now, here's why i put that out there. because first of all, you have an increasing number of younger users who are on instagram compared to twitter and facebook. i put that out there because you actually have to be on all of them because that's what people are. i know some of you are sitting here saying man, look, that's just way too much. but the reality is, and you might be saying that, but you do realize and understand how social media works. between facebook and twitter, i've got about 400,000 followers. so when somebody send something out, that can be reach we did that now goes out to all 400,000. and so while you are leading people out there who can be getting information and to understand the point, folks are not watching the evening news

the way they used to. they are not watching the cable news shows the way be used to. i literally read and get more stories every day through my social media accounts than going through any one particular news source. and so as a legislator, you're trying to speak to issues. you're trying to create public policies. you have to be using social media to your advantage. when douglas talked about creating your own media, the same thing happened. you look at ustream, you look at live stream, all the efforts to stream your own content. if you're doing something from a particular route or whatever and you're spending your own content, you are not waiting for the local affiliates to show up to to all these constituents, go here to watch our live rally. that's out occupy wall street -- folks were not covering it. they were going to the live video stream. we have to embrace all of those ways of communication to drive this public policy issue. i want to go back to one final

issue before we go to the floor with questions. douglas, you made this point i want to come back to it, and you mentioned education at you mentioned charter schools. the issue of education i believe also is a civil rights agenda. here's something that's interesting. when we talk about what happens with education, if you look at the numbers of those who are failed, they are largely black and to spend. in terms of the numbers, look at schools, where they are located. yet those parents are saying i'm sick and tired of being sick and tired of these failing schools. yet when you have folks who come in and begin to say okay, you were on steve perry last night, one of the folks at the when it comes to education reform, when he's talking about charter schools, which are public schools, when you begin to talk about vouchers, when you begin

to talk about online, i'll give you an example that to me is problematic. indelibly, i won't name the legislator, but it was a group of folks, they had an online charter school. this legislator opposed it. came on my radio show in chicago and i said question, have you talked to any of the parents of the kids to go to the online charter school? no. have you talked to any of the kids at these schools? no. why are you opposing it? because i believe the kid should go to a brick-and-mortar school. i said, you do know that this generation of children come out the womb knowing how to use and ipad? i said, so how you look at education and retaining information is a far different than this generation. so i said, before you spin out there and go to the state

capitol trying to get this thing thrown out, why don't you go take the time to talk to the very people who go to those schools and say, hey, is this working? she finally did, so they realized it was a dumb idea to shut it down. this is a perfect example to me when we talk about education, what happens is we are wedded to a traditional educational system, and if our kids are the ones largely failing, why are our black legislators not -- and i will be real clear here, because i know many folks in this room -- many of our black legislators are the ones standing in the way of changing our education system. they might take some folks off initial but don't act like i don't know the real deal. i'm just saying that. so if we're talking about education as a civil right, and issues not always just budgets and money, how do we get black

legislators to look at it as, maybe it's not a question of just public school, but realizing that if there is a different way to make sure our kids get educated, we supported a different way, and it might mean public, private, charter, vouchers, home school, online school, i don't care what kind of school, if you're able to show results and we back that. >> i think the thing you talked about with the parents is very important to in new york city you see it happening right now with the mayoral election. parents like th the new mayor et and if afford but they said they would fight him on charter because they want to ensure that charter schools are alive and will in new york. i think you can't win the battle of going against parents because the parents want options. i support that so i think once we put that down and say we will

stop fighting it and now we'll look at how we strengthen public education because i believe that public schools should be strengthened that will look at how we strengthen the across the board, then we can get to that place. it's a difficult place. rolling, one of the major issues we deal with is this old school mentality of holding on to what was and saying we're just not going to change. we're going to abstain for the sense of abstaining. no sense for. we have to get past that and understand that things have changed. there is a dynamic shift, and your point about parents is very important. parents want to options. if you live in a neighborhood where you know the school in that community is no good, you don't want to send your kids are just for the sense of being a part of some kind of movement to save public education. we want to say we will support the public school but my child still has to be educated somewhere. >> my brother, teachers. my sisters teach. my wife, educator.

and so what i tell people is, i am against sorry teachers, sorry principles, sorry administrators, sorry school board, sorry mayors who have control of the schools. so if you are sorry, i don't like you. let me be clear, i don't like a sorry journalist. i don't like sorry media executive. so i just don't like sorry. but the reason i'm putting that out there is because when we are talking about education, any african-americans get emotional about this because education for a lot of us, for our parents, that was the gateway to the middle class. so we think that if we're going against a certain thing, i'm going against my mommy and my daddy. no. no. i'm talking about that kid you're talking about. it's also problematic for me, and steve brought this up last night and i've had some heated conversations with people, it's problematic for me for folks or

saying i don't like that particular way of education when they actually are not sending their kids to public schools. from a legislative standpoint and a parental standpoint, very difficult to say i want this education for your kid but i have choice. i know we get scared by that, and i know -- look, i understand the reality of who is funding many people's campaign, who is given to nations, but i go back to the principle. the numbers don't lie. the kids they look like the people in this room. and so do we either force a change, or do we try to say no, let's just hope the current system gets better with a new five year plan? so for each of you, speak to the issue of education reform and how do we drive it where it is about our students and those parents? because those other folks, according to case studies, more than two-thirds of the jobs,

available jobs for the next generation, the kids today will not be able to fulfill those jobs because they won't have the educational requirements. >> one thing i will say buy off on that, first i should disclose that i'm a pretty -- my personal politics are pretty conventional, democrat voter kind of guy. i grew up three hours south of here in the delta. i was in the first class of children in mississippi to begin the first day of first grade black and whites together and go 12 grades. we were the ones, i think others were a part of that in 69, 1970. i grew up in a town where my whole childhood, i'm making a movie about, was all about the struggle over the school, civil rights and black kids and white kids and whether we would be together or not. and now more recently i and my wife and a few other people in downtown atlanta starting a charter school. we started a charter school, the second one in atlanta, we started on that 16 years ago and

it's not a 700 student school on two campuses and is the most racially and economically diverse public school i in the city of atlanta that has great performance. it's not as all charter schools are great. that's a case study in which some real good has been done, and some black kids and white kids and other kinds of kids go to school together. that happens in almost no other place in a place like atlanta but even the public schools, the two or three other public schools that have any white kids at all generally speaking to have only white kids because of where they're located in the city. where some of this relates back to some of the other issues in terms of gun violence and others is that one of the other ways to try to stop things, some of these terrible things are happening would be to have a place, a society in which the george zimmerman's of the world are not as scared and not as impulse of late ready to do some terrible thing to somebody else because of what they look like.

and they set up a subject that got. and if there are more circumstances in which more american children go to school together and recognize that are shared us and shares as they were a part of that i think it has some of the impact of other things we talked about. but in terms of the more legislative part of this story, and because i've been so involved in this i could go on for a long time, but the main thing i would say is i don't understand, i really do right, i agree with you roland, i really don't understand on this more than any other thing in terms of black legislators in particular in various states that the traditional public school formula of these local school boards and every county having three or four different ones, and they are all made up of these yahoos who don't know anything about education, or because they got mad at something that happened to their daughter in sixth grade so they run to the school board, they

don't know jack about education. they are not particularly good leaders. there's some exceptions to this obviously. some of you were probably great school borders along the way but it's a bunch of amateurs, and they have budgets that are usually the same size as the county government or the city government that they are part of, just as much money being spent coming out of the pockets of your constituents. you have a history of terrible leadership for the first 100 years, because those things started after the civil war, the first 100 years of school board. what do black people get? nothing. nothing but obstacle and abuse. in the last 40 years what have african-americans gotten out of that system? failure after failure. and failure is often times when it's an african-american board or a whiteboard. what that begins to speak is the structure. there's something wrong but i've become a radical on this and my views have changed but i think there's no argument in the sense of the traditional public school

structure in america. and legislators, whatever they look like, ought to be able to say okay, let's look at something completely new and different. >> let me be clear, i know how folks view this issue. the reason i say this because i believe out of all the civil rights issues out there, i respect every issue we talked about, there is no more fundamental issue as relates to our people as a civil right as education. there is no other issue. because when you look at the numbers, we cannot talk about income inequality and talk about education. you can't talk about mass incarceration without realizing that 90% of the people who were in illinois prison came to chicago public schools. the biggest issue out of any present across america is illiteracy that is tied education. we can go down the line and education is that primary linkage, if you will, and to

your point, douglas, the advice to the legislature is, you do not support failure anywhere. if a charter school fails, get rid of it. but traditional public school fails, get rid of it, find things that are successive -- successful. but what happens is when it's time to begin to have discussion about change, we have to be honest. we have many like school board members, black city council members, black state legislators who -- i'm not sure about that -- and then all of a sudden, i'll say it, you get pressure from teachers unions, you get pressure from other groups, and that causes folks to say no, no, no. yet thousands of our kids are sitting there feeling. and so how do we move folks to create an agenda in 2014 where education is at the top of the list and it's not just a

question of, let's put more money in lex some folks of all the money in the world and still do not know what the hell to do with it. >> i think this would be something that is very, very difficult to do, because what shadows over all of these things that we're talking about today is that basically people in the black unity are just trying to survive. a lot of parents from day to day, you deem this as not being involved and passionate in their children's lives and what they need to do for the children. they're just trying to make a buck. they are trying to feed them. they are trying to make sure that they get to work every day. so there again, yeah, it's a very difficult question, how do we engage the parents? how do we engage the community to be active in what's happening in the public schools? but i think everything a struggle with on a day-to-day basis, am i still going have a job, those are all things that supersede what is happening, you

know, education. that's a huge, huge question. >> it is, yet when that kid is 18 though, and can't read, can't graduate. know, but they also put this out there because this is why, we brought it. one of the reasons black folks cannot create wealth is because women have a family member who does graduate, who does go to college, and when that african-american begins to have a job, making $37 or more, what happens is that person then becomes a financial supporter of an entire family, and all of a sudden that person can't save, can't invest, and something that person's quality of life is affected when their 55 or 60 because we're having to pay, help a cell phone bills, pavement, by divers. the reason -- look, i know some of you say generalized.

i went to public schools my entire life. kindergarten through college. by wife and i are raising six of my nieces right now. some ideal is i'm speaking from experience. what happens is we gravitate because of the issue of education. when people say, why do you believe in choice? it is because you have to provide an option for parents in a failing system. and so how do we begin to say, look, i support traditional public schools but i do support trying something else. because if it works, let's roll with it. so how do you see making that a dominant issue in 2014 and getting black legislators, the leaders on this, to pull them along? >> one of the things i think it's important for us to look at community organizations. we have to wrap ourselves around different models and the schools in our communities. that's something we have not

done. when you talk about parents being involved, there's a harvard study that says that parents will go to school meetings when the meetings are about things other than just education. so they will go if you're going to be talking about health issues, if you're going to be fighting resources for where there may be job opportunities, and so on. so i think that's also a very key component of the, roland, is broadening what we're doing with public schools and with schools in general so that people feel more attracted to be a part of the process. and the infighting that we have, the fighting we have what we can't let the wohlstetter and try to look at different systems often gets in the way of people gathering around models enjoyment in being a part of it. i think this is an important discussion. no one has seen to be abl able o get us past this point. we continue down this conversation over and over again and we have not been able to make leaps and bounds pass this conversation.

in new york, one of the issues has been getting labor and elected officials to sit down at the table and work together. we have had a very, very difficult time doing that. but it is very much so about leadership. so we hope that the new mayor in the city will be able to come with his leadership, provide opportunities for usc and other labor unions and community organizations to set down a look at these models and how we strengthen them. that has been a difficult process. i think leadership is key in how we deal with that, having leaders imposition that understand the challenges that everyone is facing, understanding the needs of all the committees and are willing to work together. out issued in new york under mayor bloomberg has been that he has been so for public, for charter, the public went to the wayside. so you have resistance from people because they will not give up the public school model. it's one thing or the other. i think leadership is key,

having people who are in position to understand we have to say public schools, who want to provid provide options. meissen goes to military school in pennsylvania. i was so afraid of the options in new york that i decided to send him to another state to live at the school. so i certainly could not sit here and talk of limiting people's options, it is also just like i have him there at school, i'm a part of many things in my team unity that strengthens the public school operation you. i think that's important to leadership is key. >> to that point, it's something that when i joined the board of students first, i said my brother is a public school teacher. my sister is a public school teacher. so guess what, i get advice from the three. now we'll have questions and statements. i know have a microphone. i'm going to hold a mockable. no need for you to grab it. if you do i'm going to hit your hand, okay? i know some of you all love to

filibuster. you are not come you're not on the floor of the state legislature so i'm telling you right now, if you go along, i will catch you. come on up. you our first. and also, turn to the camera. turn this way so they can see you. all right. >> comment. as the president-elect and the policy director, not the policy director at the chair of the rules committee where over 37 policies come out of this meeting, i just wanted to be very clear that this is not a social organization. we come here to pass progressive legislation, and we stood in maryland with the trayvon family, and we passed gun safety laws. we pass progressive legislation in our state as it relates to

education. we passed progressive legislation, and you ask the question, the first question you asked was, what does civil rights mean today in 2013? civil rights, and no one spoke to economic justice. [applause] you know? and until we have economic justice then we will have educational justice. it's about all of that. and social justice. we have deliberated for three and four days come and we bring in new legislators and we have coalesced and we continue to coalesce every single year. we go to three of four, five and six different states and we bring in groups and organizations to meet with us to talk about how we move our communities forward. so i just want that to be put on the record because this is a live presentation that the national black caucus of state legislators is a progressive organization pushing our community forward. and we will coalesce and work with any group or organization

in this country, black, white, or indifferent. and we do that and i think that we do it well. we work with the quad caucus, let the nose, african-americans. and native americans. so we look forward to continue to work with all of you all as we continue to push a progressive agenda for this country. spent one of the things i'm going to to also act we take questions and comments is talk about, and real quick, immediate strategy that it think it's also important. some of you individually have executed this, and i will explain, i think you know we're talking about. what if you got? >> an interesting conversation. a little background, i am a marine also. we are not monolithic and our approach to some of these policies. i have a slight difference of opinion in regards to gun control.

the truth is i think we need to be a little bit more courageous in addressing personal responsibility within our communities, within ourselves also spent as it relates to what? >> as it relates to gun violence and gun control. i prefer not to be told what kind of gun i can on. i would love to own an ar-15, not to hunt but for defense, but for defense purposes. we are not monolithic. >> hey, where do you live? >> right here in memphis, tennessee,. >> you need an ar-15 for defense? >> i would like to have one. i'm just saying straight out. i would like to have one for defense. here's something that is very important. in most of our communities, 99.9% of those that are killed through gun violence in our committees are killed by someone that looks like a person they killed. think about that. so those weapons are not purchased through legal means,

and those weapons are not going to be controlled through gun control legislation. those weapons are being purchased on the street. what that means is this, we need to start looking at legislation because, in this matter, because there are crimes that make us mad and there are crimes that make us scared. we need to start incarcerating and throwing away the key on those individuals that commit those crimes that make us scared, all right? it's not a funny matter, sir. i don't mean to -- >> go ahead. >> what i'm proposing is those individuals can we need to start cutting the supply of weapons off at the ankles. those individuals that supply weapons to these miners that using these weapons in murders in chicago, they need to be married to those murders who commit those crimes. >> i spent six years working in chicago. the fact though is that you have a gun ban in chicago. we had it for years but the problem is that you literally

can't drive 50 miles across the border the indiana and they have done the studies where they have shown were a lot of to gun violence is traced to the guns bought at these several different gunshots in indiana. so many other states don't have a border state that is that close, but specifically i know in chicago because we don't with it, there's a huge issue to the gun shop in india and so whatever. you don't have that in chicago and that's where a lot of the guns are coming from. >> here's the thing. i guarantee you there is not one single gang member going over the border and buying those guns. >> i'm correcting you again to what happened is others are going to gun stores, buying the guns, supplying them as well. so the point i make is, you can have legislation specifically in chicago, not there are loopholes of there. that's why i made the point you have to make it about gun violence and not just gun control. >> i think we're in agreement a that was my point exactly spill

i don't need an ar-15,. >> i'm a marine. how many of us have agendas for african-americans, guidelines or pathway for african-americans in our committees. i think we lack an agenda in most communities, most communities. >> first of all, thanks a lot. first of all, most of these places where you have your black boxes you have an agenda -- i didn't say in all of them, look, i've covered places in illinois, in texas, maryland, virginia, ohio. and so i've had folks from there is estates on my media outlets. so i understand that agenda. but to the point earlier, you can have an agenda as a black caucus but if you don't have the votes to pass as black caucus, you've got to have your coalition building to get it passed. so we will go to -- come up. question you. i'm going to hear and then over

here and then -- turned this way. make it quick. what you got? >> state representative larry butler from connecticut. i happen to be 20 minutes away from newtown, connecticut, where all that happen. we came up with our legislation to address gun violence. i could tell you that when that happens, there's this need to come up with this quick addressing thing, but not really get to the substance of the matter. okay, so it's easy to pass legislation about the weapon. but we really haven't addressed the great need, issues about the people we are actually -- who are actually pulling the trigger to let's talk about the social economic justice. but we talk of what's happening in chicago in the urban areas. it has more to do with that. also, admit to health issues of these people.

[applause] what we need to do there as we well. but i can say that there's a lot more that has to be done, while there's 26 people killed in newtown, in hartford, connecticut, that year there was 40 people were murdered. in new haven there was another trick people -- 30 people. but the focus was on the 26 in newtown. we have to press origin and talk about supporting states. we force our folks to look at some of the urban issues like the people who have illegal guns, make sure that these people have to have a permit to buy their ambition. so they can't just walk into your little story am by all the ammunition they want, okay? but the problem is they can go across the border to new york, massachusetts and rhode island and by some ammunition. so anybody from new york, rhode island and massachusetts, please, pass a law that will keep people from buying

ammunition for the illegal weapons, okay? make them have a permit to buy it. so let's start there. thank you applause but. >> all right. i'm going to go over here. stand up, stand up. spin first of all, i'm president of the ohio legislative black caucus and i have my state senator with us. we have 15 african-americans between house and the senate, so coalition building and we always had to do that over to get something done. but what's important to ever look at how during the presidential election, they said that goes all out, how goes the country. right now when you talk about civil rights, i spoke at the national action network march on washington come into my speech i talked to know more temperate solutions to permit problems the that's why i'm here today because we need a multistate initiative which we have to our new president.

because alec is going state by state. so the new civil rights movement is to one, don't lose what we already have. to fight to keep a we have at expand and make those things permanent. woman talk about voting rights, we had a temper solution, the voting rights act has not been jobs in terms of being its constitutionality. right now in ohio we are launching in 2014 a constitutional amendment on the ballot for a photo bill of rights. so we're going to move from just trying to get to the which we don't have the numbers, we are going to take it out to the people and have a model that other states around the country, this won't be easy because we never engage in anything like this. but it's worth it because when we get done and we put in the constitution, we have something that will go beyond our years in the legislature. so i think the new civil rights movement is how do we make what we have permanent? we are also fighting stand your ground in ohio while we were

rallying around what happened with trayvon martin the we had a rally in cincinnati, over 1000 people. i got a text message to say they're introducing legislation in columbus, ohio, to have stand your ground. so we are fighting that. we launched 10,000 signatures. we're continuously fighting those issues but the black caucus is to have an agenda, and our agenda is to begin to get permanent things in the constitution and we're challenging our friends and coalition. we been there with you. we ask that you be there with us so that we can make these things permanent in our constitution. >> the reason i think that is a significant issue, because in the bush v. gore decision in 2000, it was antonin scalia to ask you said that the constitution does not guarantee a person the right to vote. in fact, it said that you cannot be denied if you are a person of color or when it comes to your sex. so other states have figured out if you pass a constitutional

amendment in your state, action our voting laws based -- how are you doing? >> i'm well, thank you. i'm president from baltimore teachers union and a national vice president. i'm the only not elected state official here. >> most people -- >> not labor. i'm here with labor. we are here to also -- thank you. we are great, progressive speech. but for us we believe that education is a civil right and that it is important that we offer great teachers to our students. it is not the union that does not support great education. we support excellent teachers in the classroom, and we know that the only way out of poverty and anything is to have great teachers in front of our students. spent answer would also get rid of bad teachers and that

educators? >> absolutely. they are out to be a due process to have them find some other place of employment spent i say find another profession. >> believe me, answer has to be a lot of steps of development for teachers. we have different programs with teachers that have certifications. these teachers need support. we can't just give them six weeks of training and think they are able to educate our children. there's a lot of cultural differences that they don't understand that if you don't grow up in a neighborhood, you don't understand when we say what's up? they don't understand that so we did have a lot of provided government and that's what we are about. we are about supporting excellence in the classroom and making sure that there are choices for parents. and we are about building coalitioncoalition s and working with the committee so they can find wraparound services to

those students. >> i agree. i believe in great teachers, but bad people have got to go. i know some administrators -- i know that. >> i'm from north carolina. one of the things i heard discussed quite a bit with these issues in education and charter schools, and i think it's important to point out one of the problems with the charter schools, and i'm not somebody who is opposing charter school. i'm open, but do not require free and reduced lunch to the are not required to offer transportation. they are re-segregating our school system economically, racially. and many other respects. >> first of all, it's not the case in your state or every state? >> that is the case in our state and many other states. the thing we need to look at while our education system may be failing african-americans,

our system is failing all americans. if you look at where we are in terms of the s.t.e.m. courses, science, math, engineering, in places like shanghai, places going high, what we are to talking about doing is making a longer school day. make certain with year-round schools. maybe what we ought to be talking about is incentivizing education so we get the best and brightest teachers in our classrooms, and the top 5% in that predicament now that we don't appreciate the people that are there today, but many glass ceilings have been broken in america in the last 40 years. 40 years ago, they are going to of the mainstream opportunities that are there fo for the but i think it's important -- >> like it would talk about all of them? we are supposed to say we should be talk about this and this cannot this. what i'm saying is i think the biggest part of probably should be on the table should be traditional public, charter, magnet, home school, online,

voucher, everything. the gas once you get any kind of education, different teaching methods but in terms of one size fits all. so you have the college that the. i believe what works, works. we need to start limiting the discussion can we are limiting opportunities and i could you point about people in shanghai. but i'm talking about in america when black kids are three and four grade levels behind their white counterparts, i can't worry about somebody in china if i'm worrying about somebody in the suburbs and i live in dallas. >> i don't disagree, we have to have an open mind and open perspective if you don't have a child reading by the time and third grade we know by the time they're in eighth and ninth grade they will be dropping a. when they drop off they will be involved in other criminal activities, probably going to the department of corrections. in terms of the total picture, you talk about civil rights today, one thing we learned civil rights movement when all of the barriers were torn down,

is that you didn't have capital, access to capital, entrepreneur should, access to credit. we have to broaden our perspective to look at opportunities to empower wealth building within the african-american and latino community. >> i agree with you. i'm coming back over there, don't worry about it. how are you doing? >> doing great. my name is roscoe dixon. i was in prison for four and that is the first, i want to thank you because i got a chance to look at you for four years on cnn. [laughter] >> they have tv in the prison. spent also a former legislator. i'm glad i went to prison because he got a chance to meet the brothers. i was like a lot of folks thinking, crack cocaine babies and blah, blah, blah. had a chance to do some research and found out who did it tuesday

and it really hurt me in my heart because it was us who did it to ourselves. len bias spent after len bias died you saw those bills being passed judgment being passed in congress. not realize what the effect was going to be. spent a bill has never passed that test. tip o'neill was the speaker. his district, went home, came back, within 24 hours the congressional black caucus joined with him and put that thing together. so you have like a half ounce, you got five years, 10 years, mandatory. the judge couldn't do anything about it. the point is simply this, what i saw was good brothers, they taught me a lesson. they taught me a lesson that they really didn't like us because we didn't have a relationship with them. the point i'm making is with got to get the family back together. almost half of our folks are not voting. they are not voting because they don't have any respect for us or relationship with us.

we know they have done some things they maybe should not have done. some are innocent, as my friend said here as well, but we must -- we are a football team, and half our folks are not in the game. we've got to get them back in the game, solve whatever the problem is and get them back in again. we've got to read the book iv a lady -- >> michelle alexander. >> tennessee, idaho shows you what to do, kick them out. >> thanks. appreciate. i'm going over here with a question. i'll come back to you. going to the front row. stand on up, please. that's you. stand on the. put the pen down. i got this. >> i'm sorry, it's a force of habit. my name is tanya coke. i'm a state senator from the great state of nebraska where i represent one half of the black caucus speeches there's about five of you all in the state.

i overestimated the there is only to spent one-third of our black children in the city of omaha lives in poverty. so to your point, i have a question that was invited by your question. we and nebraska have not yet adopted charter school legislation. the way the policy is written now, there is no express prohibition from going out and creating a charter school. our challenge, and we had a big, big fight for lack of a better way to describe the issue in nebraska, is paying for public education in a state where we rely on property taxes and we supplement that with state aid from sales and income tax. certainly i want to include any and all kinds of techniques and institutions and access mechanisms the public education and to a good education. how do we pay for it? we were already what i describe is fighting on the floor or

ground to subsidize our education. >> one of the panels will jump on this if you want to but i will put this out to first. whenever i hear that particular issue, what i also remind folks is that there's a failing school that's getting some money right now somehow someway. and so when i look at numbers, i just don't base it upon here's a test score, we know in terms of how to the reading, what's happening in math in schools but if there's a school right now that has two or 300 students or whatever, and 80, 90 failure rate in the school, that particular school is getting a budget allocation. and so for me it's not a question of, well, don't take money out, what's happening at the school is in 3,006,000 per pupil and what does that multiply when it comes to resources as well. that's what i look at. i'm looking at what is failing and how you deal with that

school versus if you have a school where with a 50% failure rate, that's a different conversation. douglas, go ahead. >> i don't want to walk out of your as the charter school guy because -- >> i have no problem with you spent a lot of aspects in charter schools that don't work and any kind of school that is not working needs to have trouble surviving. that applies to charter schools. in terms of resegregation question, observations made, i get confused by those concerns sometimes but on the resegregation and you look at a place like atlanta where 10 years ago, 15 years ago to about 60,000 children in the public schools atlanta, and 5000 of them were white. 55,000 black children, 5000 white sugar to 5000 white children, 90% of them attended about four schools in the city. the black children were scattered in all these other schools that were all 90%-99%

black for the most part. i'm over civil fines a little bit it is basically that way. today 15 years later you have about 45,000 children in the public school system. the city population is growing and growing. going back to what was 40 or 50 years ago. the people for abandoning public schools now are middle-class african-americans because the middle-class white folks left a long time ago. now you have middle-class whites like me are coming back in through some of the alternative channels to when i hear somebody be concerned that charter schools are re-segregating schools, atlanta schools were so segregated already, that it's the traditional public school system that went back to being an overwhelmingly segregated world. and so i don't know how it can be to any alternative ends up further segregating something that is already almost 100% segregated. >> it reminds people go that schools are based upon an neighborhood concept. when you're neighborhoods are largely white, largely black,

largely hispanic, your school is going to be largely black, largely white, largely hispanic spent exactly. unless they make it against the law to live in one neighbor. with charter schools, legislators should be hugely cautious about, there will be people who try to start charter schools for bad purposes. there will be and is got to be something against that. a rigorous process. the ku klux klan should not be allowed to chart -- to start a charter school, we all agree with that. you know what i'm saying. but on the money cyber roland said i think is the basic into, and that is it really is i think a red herring to say that charter schools are taking money away from conventional public schools. it is moving the money for rent and moving money away from schools that for whatever reason people are less inclined to go to. there are some possible problems but in the end these are public schools that everybody attends.

and the money that goes to them is still money that is going to public schools. they don't significantly increase the cost of the system, and if they do somehow, what he means is classes are successfully learn. i do now you can argue that. >> question? statement? >> i'm from st. louis, missouri, house of representatives. what we did in the state of missouri is we had this fight with education as well. is a huge fight with labor and all of the educators, superintendents, principals are all involved. so we had a problem with charter school. it was a fear that if charter schools spread to every part of a state that it would cause failure in other schools. because charter schools were not performing, even though public schools were not good, charter schools were still not performing at the level that public schools were performing at. so we had a couple charter schools that begin as good, they are still a for profit in the

public, the money still is a for-profit and we had a couple charter schools closed with significant amounts of money and the kids were left standing outside and that issue had to be addressed. so one of our legislators, used to be a member, moved onto another public service institution, but we had a bill that we have charter school reform. so we put some things in place. we didn't say we didn't want charter schools. we just said listen, if we're going to have them, with the legislation in place to protect the children. i think that's the answer. now we are addressing an issue that's before is about -- i think all schools are important at the same time the focus needs to be on the children. but another issue that we're facing right now in education is, we are asking the parents to weigh-in. we have to pass education reform this session starting in january, and we've asked the parents. so parents are getting together and writing what they want to see in legislation for their

children. and i think we as legislators we represent a body of people. if we go back to that format that the government is for the people, if we say we the people, let the people get involved in what we are doing legislatively. because they have hired us to do a job. we forget we are making decisions for them, but not including them in that decision. so we have paired groups now that are providing information that they want to see in legislation. i think that will be the answer. >> i agree 100%. look, my six nieces go to three elementary schools. if you look at all the driving around trying to get them in, look, you all go to school at home on that laptop. but again, the thing still is though what is the choice? and does it work? that's one of the things it boils down to. that was the last statement,

questioned today. i will leave you with this because we talked about in terms of narrative and strategy at and i can tell you somebody in the room had done this, so i know alicia, i had her on my television show and radio show. also senator vincent hughes out of pennsylvania folks in other states as well to being on the issue, one of the things you should accept right now is that there's a significant black media apparatus in this country that i think many of you are not utilizing. ..

>> if you're not using the apparat, you're not going to get the story out. and so that means being able to make contact with folks at those places, and so what happens is we assume and get 'em upset, well, cnn didn't cover it, fox wasn't there, abc, "the washington post" and new york times. and when you look at the number of black web sites, when you look at the number of black newspapers, black radio stations, we have a substantial apparatus that is there. and so if we don't know what's happening in your state, if we don't know what the issue is, you can't assume that we to. and so when something happens in ohio and alicia sends me a text, hey, this thing is going down, met me get 300,000 signatures from stopping that voter up suppression law from going into effect, it was like, look, we need it in a week. i would encourage you as an

organization when you go back, you should put together really what is that black media apparatus and who are all the people, who are the contacts. and let your members know so when something happens, they're e-mailing us, they're letting us know. because that's how we're able to respond to something. hitting me after the fact when a bill has passed in louisiana, north carolina, does nothing. okay? now we're on the defensive. letting us know before something passes, when it's in committee, when it's going up for a vote allows us to galvanize our audiences, allows folks to come in and bring in troops and bring in support. and tameka knows something happens and, look, they couldn't depend on reverend sharpton to be the only voice, so it might be, yo, roland, we need your help with this. boom, this is what we're doing. fine, give me the information. so as an organization, your charge, i will leave you with this charge, you should put together that national black

media apparatus, and every member gets it so you know how to contact people to get those stories out there to inform folks, all right? i want to thank our panel, give them a round of applause, please. [applause] and, again, thank all of you for being with us as well. mr. president, we're done. [applause] >> tonight, an encore presentation of our "first ladies" series features the life of rosalynn carter. she attended cabinet meetings and traveled to latin america as his official envoy. the life of first lady rosalynn carter, 9 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> the university of akron hosted its seventh state of the parties conference in november. this panel looks at the history and future of the tea party and its effect on the republican party. it's 90 minutes.

>> hello. i think that -- am i working? you hearing me? be okay, good. hello, everybody. i am the political reporter for the akron beacon journal which is the newspaper here in town, and i know john well. in fact, he was quoted on the front page today in a story that i wrote looking at how poorly incumbents did in yesterday's election. we had 18 incumbents who lost just in our county, so that was quite a few. and so i'm very happy to be here. the tea party is definitely an interesting issue, and i planned to start out with a joke, but none of the reporters in the newsroom couldagree on anything being funny or not funny, so i'm not even going to start with that. [laughter] so with that, i'll introduce our first panelist here, and the plan is, just so you know, to have brief presentations from each of them, and then we're going to open up for audience's

questions. and i know that you'll have some good ones. first, we have ronald rapoport from the college of william and mary. meredith dost from the college of william and mary and walter stone from the university of california davis. and they wrote about the tea party and the 2012 election. >> okay. well, i'm ron rapoport from the college of william and mary. i'm the second shortest person in this trio. you know walt stone. [laughter] this any case, this project really comes out of our sort of interest in understanding the tea party at both the sort of mass level and at the activist level. and i think we were struck by what we felt was sort of a, um, sort of a gap in that there's really been very little done at

the activist level study. so much of the work has been done either going around to different tea party rallies or surveying people in a somewhat haphazard way. so what our concern was and our interest was in having sort of parallel samples of tea party supporters in the mass public as well as republican non-tea party supporters and tea party supporters at the activist level. and so this, this study is based really on these two sets of surveys. there are many common questions, and i think that's one of the real strengths of it. we're able to compare from activists to sort of the mass space. so one of our mass survey is based on a sample. it's done by ugovparlmetrics, and it's based on a mass level of a thousand responsibilities, 700 of them were people who in

the 2010 november election study that they did had rated the tea party very positively, and 300 were those who had not done so. the survey was tone in -- was done in 2011 at the beginning of the sort of preprimary. our leap sample is based on a survey of freedomworks supporters. freedomworks is a tea party group which, as we found out in our yougov survey, is the largest tea party group in the country. we have a survey of of 12,000 of them which was a nice -- and we did that also in 2011, and we followed that up in march/april of 2013, resurveying about 2600 of them. there's very little bias, surprisingly, in the -- even though our response rate was only around 25% or so.

this project's undertaken with walt stone and with meredith dost who's really going to present it, and i should say meredith has been involved in this project from the beginning since she was a sophomore at william and mary. she graduated in may. she is with the education advisory board after a stint as an intern where she was the resident expert on the tea party for the pew center for people in the press. so meredith is really going to take this and go with it and make it sound far more intelligent than i could. [laughter] >> thanks. so to give you all an idea of what's coming, we're first going to look at divisions within the republican party on issues and political style by using the mass cces sample, and then we're going to compare rank and file republicans from the mass sample to tea party activists using that freedomworks sample. once again, looking at issues and political style. finally, we look at the response

of the tea party to the 2012 elections including perceptions of why romney lost, change over time and willingness to compromise and evaluations of the republican party and its leaders. so we begin by examining the factional conflict between tea party republicans and non-tea party republicans, focusing on issue positions and priorities using the mass cces sample. this first slide shows the percentage of respondents taking the most conservative positions on various issues. here we see striking differences between tea party republicans and non-tea party republicans. for example, 76% of tea party republicans took the most conservative positions on abolishing the department of education whereas only 10% of non-tea party republicans did so. also 95% of tea party republicans took the most conservative positions on repealing obamacare compared with only 59% of non-tea party republicans.

so next we're looking at the top priority issue of respondents, and once again you can see striking differences between tea party republicans and non-tea party republicans in the mass sample. in fact, you can see that with the two issues -- repealing obamacare and shrinking government -- almost 40% of tea party republicans chose either one of those issues as their top priorities while less than 5% of non-tea party republicans did so. so i now we're going to turn to political style, and we asked respondents to agree or disagree with the statement when we feel strongly about political issues, we should not be willing to compromise. and we found that about 23% of tea party republicans said that they strongly agree with this statement versus only 4%, um, when you combine strongly agree and the agree. or 4% of the non-tea party republicans. and when you combine the strongly agree and agree

responses, that difference is even greater with 58% of tea party republicans saying that they agree that they should not be willing to compromise and only 32% of non-tea party republicans saying so. and this isn't that surprising. when we consider the recent, um, role of the tea party with the government shutdown. so now we're going to turn to the freedomworks sample to shed light on tea party activists. and so once again, this figure shows the percentage of respondents taking the most conservative positions on issues, but this time we're looking at tea party republicans from the maas sample and -- mass sample and freedomworks tea party activists. and generally, we would expect activists to be slightly more extreme ask or even dramatically more extreme than just regular supporters, but as we can see, this is not the case here. these two groups look very similar. there's little to no difference between them. and this is also true when we look at the top priority issues

of tea party republicans and freedomworks supporters. once again, the group looks very similar. however, there is the exception that the percentage whose top priority was to shrink government, um, is only at 17% from the tea party republicans whereas it's 31% of the freedomworks support ors. and so -- supporters. and so as we've shown the divisions in the republican party really exist between the non-tea party republicans and tea party republicans as opposed to the tea party republicans and the tea party activists. so now turning to the 2012 election and the tea party's negativity towards the republican party, we would expect to see after any major election that the party that loses will be pointing fingers at people and the reasons why they lost and how they can avoid another defeat in the next major election, and 2012 was certainly no exception. in fact, reince priebus of the

republican national committee commissioned a report called the growth and opportunity project that blamed third party groups such as the tea party and the republicans' lack of appeal to minorities, youth, women along with other reasons for the or 2012 losses. so in the aftermath of the election, we surveyed freedomworks supporters again to ask their perceptions of the romney loss. so once again, these are the percentage of tea party freedomworks respondents ranking each of these reasons as very important as a cause of the romney/ryan loss. as you can see, 54% of respondents ranked romney as being too moderate as a very important reason for the loss compared with only 5 president of respondent -- 5% of respondents who thought romney was too conservative. in fact, when you add up all of the other reasons why romney lost such as the lack of minority outreach, um, and the association with the tea party, only 52% of respondents selected any of those four item withs

which -- items which is still less than the 54% of respondents who said that romney was too moderate. so looking again at the question about political style and compromise, we find that in december 2011, 32% of people freedomworks respondents strongly agreed they should not compromise, but in the spring 2013 this percentage greatly increased to 45%. so now we'll look at the decline in ratings of the republican party and john boehner over this same time period, from 2011 to 2013. and so we can see that significantly more tea party activists rated the republican party and boehner below average in 2013 as compared with 2011. in fact, boehner's below average ratings more than doubled to 57% in 2013 compared to 27% in 2011. in this slide, um, we show a

factor analysis of republican congressional leaders and 2016 nomination candidates using the 2013 freedomworks data, and this resulted in two factors. one was an establishment republican factor, and the other was a tea party factor. so those numbers that you see in brent cease are the -- brent sees are the net favorability ratings where the green dots represent a net positive rating. you can see in the upper left-hand corner that we find the republican party along with republican congressional leaders such as boehner and cantor who vote very low on the tea party factor and very high on the republican establishment factor. in addition, most of these people in the upper left-hand corner or have negative ratings. in the lower right-hand corner, we find the tea party and the tea party candidates such as mike lee and ted cruz who owed very low on the establishment

factor and very high on the tea party factor, and as you can see by those green dots and the high numbers, they had very high net favorability ratings. what might be most interesting is in the middle we find ryan and rubio who have net favorability ratings at least 81 president for each of them -- 81% for each of them, and they load high both on the establishment republican factor and the tea party factor. and they have almost as high favorability ratings as those tea party candidates in the lower right-hand corner. so we would expect rubio and ryan to be in a really good position for the 2012 election, at least when we're look at tea party supporters. so although we see that the tea party is very negative towards the republican party and its candidates, we find that they were still very active for romney in 2012. as you can see, regardless of who they supported in the primary, they still rallied around romney and were very active for his campaign.

you can see that first bar, 86% of tea party supporters who supported romney in the primary were active for his campaign in the general election. but you compare that with, um, supporters who preferred perry in the primary and still 75% of those supporters were active in the general election for romney. the one outlier here might be ron paul on the very end. however, still a majority of his supporters ended up doing activities for the romney/ryan campaign. and we looked at the data from 2008, and this can be, um, said the same. it's true as well that tea party supporters who preferred a candidate orr mccain were still -- other than mccain were still extremely active for him in the general election. so as you can see, there is still a lot of unresolved conflict within the republican party. the government shutdown is just one recent example of this. but looking forward to 2016, we

expect to see tea party supporters similarly very active in the primaries, supporting a candidate who might not be all that electable or have a chance of gaining the nomination, but they're in alignment with their issue priorities. but once the republican nominee is chose b, those tea party supporters will likely rally bewith hind that candidate and be very active, and that's more due to the antipathy towards the republican party. so that's all. >> thank you. next we're going to have peter francia and jonathan morris from east carolina university. they're going to talk about their paper, "the divided republicans: tea party supporters, establishment republicans and the role of social networking, media in driving polarization." >> well, let me begin by thanking john between and everybody here at the university

of akron. staff has been wonderful. i think i certainly speak for my co-author seated to my left, jonathan morris, that this is probably one of the most stimulating academic conferences that you get to attend, so we're really very, very pleased to be here. well, you can see by the title of our paper it's quite -- there's a little bit of overlap with the previous paper. so it's always nice to see, and you'll get a chance to see this in a minute, that even though we've used different data sets and looked at some slightly different questions, some of our conclusions actually are very similar. so let's jump ahead then. all right. so we're primarily, again, interested in intraparty divisions, and the divide between tea party republicans and establishment republicans has certainly come into full public view recently. anytime a political party loses an election, there's a little bit of that soul searching that we all hear about.

and so, you know, republicans were talking about what went wrong in 2012. there was the defeats not only at the presidential level, but indiana and missouri, those looked like easy victories at least for a time, and they turned into defeats. and so what do we get? we get, we get karl rove who makes an announcement in 2013 that his super pac, american crossroads, was going to support the conservative victory project. and the purpose of the conservative victory project was to get involved in republican primaries and try to oust tea party republicans who were seen as costing the republicans some of those easy victories that i talked about. that was followed up with tea party darling -- who needs no introduction -- sarah palin responding, quote: if these

experts who keep losing elections and keep getting rehired and getting millions, if they feel that strong about who gets to run in this party, then they should buck up or stay in the truck. [laughter] i'm sure you all remember that. karl rove was not going to stay silent after that, he came back shortly after that in an interview and said that -- [laughter] we would, he would serve out his term, and he would not leave office midterm. so, you know, you got to see sort of in that little spat between rove and palin an illustration of these growing divisions between the tea party wing and what we might call the establishment wing. in fact, it prompted this question, you know, is this rove/palin dispute illustrative of a larger civil war within the gop. and by the way, civil war not a term i'm using. that's a term that a whole bunch of headlines have used. if you pick be up even "the new york times," they've described this fight as a civil war within

the republican party. and we think this is an interesting question, because previous accounts of parties have long described republicans a bit differently. republicans, if you go back to the 1980s, jo freeman did a study where she talked about the culture of the two major parties and talked about how the republican party had a culture of being closed, quiet and consensual. if you look into the 1990s, another study described the republican party as one that had a homogeneous membership, philosophical coherence that, quote, inoculates it from the effects of divisiveness. in fact, if there is a party that's been divided, it's been at least traditionally speaking the democrats. william maher who i think is here, right? wrote a book, "the divided democrats." a really important book and one that we were thinking about when we were doing this research. but even more recently then, the divided democrats book, howard dean. when he was running for

president -- which is, you know, within the last ten years -- he said that he represented the democratic wing of the democratic party. that's a reference to this ideological split between the moderate democrats and the more liberal faction of the political -- of the democratic party. so, you know, it's the democrats who have been long divided. so in light of the recent developments where we've been talking about republican divisions more so perhaps than the democratic divisions, we wanted to ask a few questions. are republicans, specifically tea party and establishment republicans, really as divided as some recent popular accounts suggest? how deep are the traditions and what issues and other political considerations divide the two factions. and then also how divided are republicans compared to democrats. we also ask a few additional questions. are the divisions between tea party republicans and establishment republicans in the media sources they use to acquire political information, are they divided there?

in other words, do tea party republicans go out and grab political information from different sources than establishment republicans? and i'll get into, um, some of those numbers in a minute, but we were primarily interested in that question because we wanted to begin to try and answer if there are divisions, are they just fleeting? are they going to go away, you know? is this just a temporary blip on the map? or are these divisions likely to persist? so there is this literature out there that says when you only hear like-minded ideas all the time, when you live in sort of the echo chamber, your ideas get reinforced, and people given to become more polarized. we were hoping to answer, at least hoping to project that, you know, perhaps if there are divisions, they would persist if there are these divisions in media sources. so that's the second thing that we look at. final question which i think is probably the more, perhaps, the most -- was the most challenging

part of the project was we wanted to specifically look at social media as well. and social media, the reason we wanted to focus on that specific question was that the tea party has made really effective use, at least according to some accounts, of social media. and so we were curious to see if the comments made on social media venues like twitter were significantly different between establishment republicans and your tea party republicans. and that required getting twitter data and doing some content analysis, so we'll -- my co-author, jonathan morris, is going to talk about that in a minute. but to get at the fist two -- first two questions, we looked at the 2012 anes time series studies, and just to give you a sense of what we're using as our definitions, tea party republicans it's based on two questions. you have, you know, the party id question, so anybody who's a self-identified republican or somebody who said they were an

independent but leaned republican, we included the leaners. if anybody wants to know why, i'd be happy to explain, but i think we're all -- i think it's pretty much in agreement that leaners should be included. and there was a question about whether you were a supporter of the tea party. so is if you answered affirmative will that you were, we counted you as a tea party republican. the establishment republicans were, again, self-identified republicans or those republican leaners, but they were neutral or opposed to the tea party. for purposes of comparison, we add two democratic categories. again, very similar to the republicans, self-identified democrats or independents who lean democrat, moderate democrats the same thing. we just used the ideology question here to break them apart. so if you were liberal to extremely liberal, then you were in that category. if you were slightly liberal or moderate, you were in that category, and then we had the pure independents. okay. let's get to the results. if you look at the first question, there are these

standard seven-point scale questions that the anes has asked for quite a while, so we looked at all of them. i'm not going to show you every single one of them, but they do -- we did look at each and every single one. i picked the most interesting more time reasons, but you can see it's the tea party republicans who answer in the most extreme categories. 31% in the one category, and if you add the one and the two, the most extreme columns, you're looking at 68%. that was pretty eye-popping to us to see that many fell into the most extreme category in that fewer services, and it's particularly interested when compared against the establishment republican category. democrats are a bit divided as well. be the you look at the, certainly, at the six category and you were to add the six and seven, there are some divisions. but the republican divisions really do stand out. this was one that we thought was really fascinating. anes has asked this seven-point question about whether the government should provide

assistance to african-americans, and on the seventh point, african-americans should just help themselves. that was really amazing to us when we saw that, that 51% of those tea party republicans answered in the most extreme category there, number seven, versus 36% of those establishment republicans. so we were really amazed to see. and, again, if you add the six and the sevens together, you're talking about a huge, huge number of tea party republicans. if you look at the health care law, this is unbelievable, right? not that terribly surprising given that there was so much frustration from the tea party rank and file over the health care law. but on the 2010 health care law, 70% of tea party republicans fall in that most extreme category. just, you know, by comparison again, the establishment republicans, only 35%. by the way, i don't mean to be glossing over the democratic numbers, but since that's not really our focus, i'm going to focus on the republicans. if you look, the democrats still have some healthy divisions as

well. to be crystal clear here, we're not arguing that democrats aren't divided, but the republicans are very much divided as well. on the environment, you can see again some divisions, but i put this one up to show you that the democrats really there's quite a bit of division there in the extreme category. if you go to the number one on the seven-point scale which is the most liberal response, a lot of liberal democrats in that category, a much smaller percentage of moderate democrats. still again, if you look at the number seven, no regulation at all, 18% of tea party republicans versus only 4% of establishment republicans. so, again, pretty big cimpses there -- differences there. if you look at other questions, president obama's handling of the economy be, i could give you the establishment republican numbers,, but this -- i just wanted to give you the tea party numbers here just to make the point of in the disapprove strongly, this is the most extreme category you can get, 92% disapprove strongly of his

job as president. 93% disapprove of his handling of the economy, 90% disapprove strongly of his handling of health care, 87% disapprove strongly on foreign relations, and maybe even on afghanistan, 63% disapprove strongly on that particular question. so almost across the board on all the obama questions. we had a whole bunch of feeling thermometer questions. obama,16 from the tea party on that 0-100, 0 being the coolest, that compares with 35 for establishment republicans. and if we go down the list, you can see very, very low ratings. but this number really stood out at us. michelle obama, for crying out loud, michelle obama, 28 from tea party republicans. so even the first lady who isn't even controversial, right? she can't even break 30 with the tea party republicans, and that compares with