comparing the anxiety, the difficulty of raising children versus having an abortion? [applause] >> that was more a comment, an excellent point. abortion is always compared to some rosy never never land. life isn't like that. anyway i want to thank everybody for coming today and those great questions. [applause] >> thank you all very much for being here and for joining us, shortly after she leaves here, if you would like to get your

book signed, we want you to move over rivera and thank you for joining us. >> you are watching booktv, television for serious readers. you can watch any program you see here on line at booktv.org. >> welcome to madison on booktv. with the help of our charter communications partners. for the next 90 minutes we will explore this capital city surrounded by water and home to the university of wisconsin badgers. ♪ >> coming up we will visit a world war i exit at the university of wisconsin madison, talk with local lawyers about the city's history and collective bargaining process

that took place in 2011. [shouting] >> governor scott walker introduced the budget repair bill in which he tried to fill a gap in the budget and at the same time proposed an end to collective bargaining for public employees in the state of wisconsin. >> we start our feature with a look at madison, architect frank lloyd wright as weakened travel to his studio outside the city to learn about his personal and professional life. >> we're sitting in the first studio of frank russell lloyd wright, b was first built in

1911 and destroyed in 1914, rebuilt in 1915, destroyed in 1925 and rebuilt, this is a close third persian of taliesin any has a story to tell. the first was an architectural solution to a personal problem which was how he and his lover could live together out of the eyes of the chicago press, and enjoy their life together because they were not married to each other. they hoped to be but they couldn't be because of frank lloyd wright's wife in suburban chicago. catherine would not give him a divorce so he came up with the idea while he was in italy with her on a hillside overlooking florence, that he knew exactly the spot in wisconsin that would be the perfect place for a highway just like the ones they had in italy. he wrote to his mother on the

fourth of july and said i am thinking of farming this spot of land. she actually conspired with him to buy the land in her own name and secret leave this place was built under false pretences as a cottage for his mother. it turned out that it was actually to be a hideaway for frank lloyd wright and my net cheney although she dropped the name chaney, she got a divorce. this was built in the spring of 1911 and they were both to get there by christmas and a huge scandal broke out when they were discovered here, scandal in chicago and there was talk of tar and feathers and other terrible things. but they were pretty unflappable. their life was allowed to continue. wright was born in richmond

center in wisconsin which is not too far from here. his family took him to wayland, mass. for a time and return to madison and he grew up in madison, spent his teenage years there and attended very briefly, a few years at the university of wisconsin. did not finish their but did get a chance to work on a building, science hall at the end of langston's 3. before he decided to take off and find his fortune in chicago. he became famous in chicago and built a lot of adventuress buildings in the prairie style, what was known as the prairie style and returned to wisconsin only after his sojourn in europe. however before he left madison his mother, during his teenage years, because she pushed her father out of the house,

divorced him, he was raised by the mother and two sisters decided he should come out to this part of the country which is where her family was, wealth pioneers, and spend his summers here. these teenage summers in this valley, and on these hills, that is where he got two things, his love of nature and his understanding of nature and also got his understanding of the cartography of these hills. even when he was in italy years and years later he could imagine exactly where he wanted his home to be. the theme of living in nature reinforced itself to him when he was in italy living in a garden on the hillside, one year later he was living in another garden in wisconsin, looking at another

river valley. which he knew and loved. once he came back to taliesin this became his permanent home. he was the originator of organic architecture and developed to the highest degree in as many years of work. what our organic architecture was is several things. the essence of organic architecture is form and function are one. everything in the house should be useful and beautiful and you don't -- that is one part of it. the other part is the house and nature are speaking to each other, interact. there is not a hard division between the indoors and outdoors, you are always somewhere situated in nature, the site is extremely important

and one of the things that is truly organic about this home which was called shining brow, it really was built to look like an outcropping of stone like the many limestone outcroppings in this area of wisconsin. to some degree he wanted his house to be camouflaged as nature. like the opinion of many architectural critics, the first natural house in the sense, conforming to nature after its and welcoming the, this was first built, and nearby, sand

carried from the river. the timber was local. and locally sourced architecture for its time. the project reworked on in this studio, and the playhouse in riverside, ill. you may remember the balloon and confetti windows are supposed to be like a parade for children's school, private school, he also, he also did the designs for this huge and very successful while it lasted midway garden which was a big beer garden and concert garden

that took up the full city block in chicago and had indoor and outdoor entertainment and opened in the summer of 1914, just before taliesin was burned down. he was working on the final details of it when he got the news. those plans would have been done here as well and there were a number of famous places, the early drawings for the imperial hotel in tokyo here and the little house was not a little house, but the little house in minnesota and the living room that is in the metropolitan museum of the american wing in new york, it was salvaged and replaced, and that living room came out of these studios. one of the main themes in "pro: reclaiming abortion rights" --

get americans to give up on year and create an architecture that was american. was all american. and stop trying to imitate german castles and french chateaus and things like that and build an american architecture that spoke about american character. and he really believed the future of architecture was going to be in the midwest and the west because the east coast. they're so enamored in europe they would never give up on it. they give of historical styles, the natural lay of the land which was horizontal, it was vertical. also to have a long with his

partners in crime, the great landscaper who did parts in chicago. instead of having these exotic boutique gardens with oriental rare specimens from around the world, that you should use, local, local plants and trees and flowers that speak to your local area. really wanted to be a truthful architect, you want the materials to tell the truth, buildings to tell the truth, he wanted the materials and the landscape to the authentic. having said that it is also true if you look around taliesin you will see that frank lloyd wright probably edited every square inch of this property. if you take yourself back in time coming to tally is in now and imagine how it was when it was built, still beautiful with the hills and fields and just

taliesin and its associated buildings for the admiration of people. we are here in wright's living room with a panoramic view of the wisconsin river beyond. he was a very passionate man. he first got married when he was out of his team's to a girl who was still a teenager, catherine tobin and they had six children and they were together for a lot of decades but catherine became more domesticated and he became less domesticated and felt the need around 1904 to spread his wings and found this person who was a college educated women with a master's degree. wife of a client, and had

literary aspirations, was smart and beautiful, catherine was smart and beautiful, actually all little older. and her husband was willing to give her up to force, more than a decade later, this is a time when a lot of personal relations, not so much a matter of free love as wright was not willing to be bowed by legalities and technicalities about who he lived with. so when catherine said know that is fine. that is how i will live my life

anyway. and the highway for themselves and the way to create the sweet life they discovered together in the hills of italy, they transferred it to the hills of wisconsin and had a wonderful time of it and were preparing to have a new life in japan in 1914 because there was a contract for the new hotel. she was looking forward to living in japan. he made a big come back in chicago and everything was destroyed here in the summer of 1914. what happened was on the afternoon of aug. fifteenth 1914 they were seated for lunch at a porche that then was in the vicinity of the window and another group of people were seated at the other end of the house in a room, there were some draftsman and laborers and one of them, a 13-year-old child

receded third. the cook serve them lunch. and he suddenly attacked with a shingling happened and clobbered them, split their heads open and then ran to the an end of the house threw gasoline into the door and ignited it and when the men came running out he whacked them with that shingleing hat e hatchet and there were nine adults in this place and he was able, only two of the mr 5 his assault and the rest died either that day or shortly afterwards from a combination of injuries and burns. julien carlson, the killer, had come with his wife, gertrude, from chicago. they were african-american, they

had worked as a catering couple for well-known people in chicago and everything seemed cool with that but something happened to unsettle julien and get him going and get him to start to be paranoid according to his wife. they started really thinking of being picked on and he kept it next to the bed. the day that was to be their last day, they were supposed to take the train back to chicago and leave taliesin. this was the day he decided to end all for everybody. there might have been one person he had in mind, a draftsman who he had some run ins with. everyone else might have been collateral damage. wright was in chicago with his sons from his first marriage

working on details of the midway gardens at he got a call from one of the two survivors who called from taliesin and call from a farm house across the street. and gave him the news and so they took a slow train to taliesin and came here in the evening and found a scene of terrible devastation with bodies strewn everywhere where the place burned down, wright was reeling, you can imagine his sense of loss. he found a wonderful woman and face suffered a lot more including scandals in the press and he responded to a condolence letter from one woman in december of 1914 and it was faithful that he did this because she turned out to be basically bad news for him as his next wife, she was able to

marry him after their relationship, toward the end they were together for nine years, and she played a drug addict and she was kind of artistic in a flamboyant way that he liked and he met the real woman, the next woman in his life, and his wife became insanely jealous and they called the sheriff to the gates of taliesin over huge fights over the mortgage and at so he was responsible in the sense that he had chosen her but she was sort of on auto control and was hit hard, they were about to get divorced when it became clear there was another woman and she

was pregnant and at that point all bets were off and there were huge public fights. finally, there was a settlement and miriam went away and they were here at the beginning of the depression to fight it and they created the taliesin fellowship, and the taliesin west, they were a wonderful couple. it was a very relentless time in his life. really pleasant and regal time of his life, in the last decades when he was being called on to design all kinds of things all over the country and all over the world's and they had quite a fine life. some criticize him at the time for being almost like grandees is that they had this live in group of slaves called

apprentices serving their beck and call and cooking their meals because these fellows were not studying architecture, and cutting the wood and cooking the meals and cooking the meals, and being required to give formal concert in black tie every week but this was also, they liked it because -- they still like it because it is part of the taliesins style of bringing civilization and the good life and high case into the countryside. he always said he thought maybe god disapproved of his life but approved of his work. >> booktv recently visited the city of madison, wisconsin with the help of our local cable partner charter. we begin the aby exploring the wisconsin exhibit on world war

1. >> we are the ninth floor of the memorial library, special collection at the university of wisconsin madison. in the middle of an exhibit called 1914 then came -- "world war i 1914: then came armageddon". this is to commemorate the outbreak of the war by highlighting the collection at the university of wisconsin madison as well as the historical society. different cut affects related not only to wisconsin's role in the war but also what was happening in each combatant country from the conflict in the summer of 1914. the war broke out in the summer of 1914 and the hungarian throne in sarajevo by at number of serbian military groups called the black hand. his goal was to bring all groups together in one country independent of hungarian control.

after the assassination of the heir to the throne austria put pressure on serbia to allow them to conduct an investigation of france ferdinand's assassination. austria acquiesced, serbia acquiesced on all of austria's demands except that austria be able to use their own police in serbian territory. this led to a standoff and eventually a military confrontation. when austria mobilized against serbia, russia declared they would help defend the serbs and germany asked russia to stop their mobilization process and threatened if russia mobilize they would declare war. russia would not back down and germany declared war and had a cascading effect which france stepped in and support russia and when germany invaded france by way of belgium, britain declared war in order to defend belgian neutrality. we tend to focus on the western

front for largely practical reasons. that is where the strength of the holdings of the university of wisconsin are. a lot of material and germany's role and what is happening in belgium and france so we wanted to bring these sources to the floor and focus on just the western combat experience. these first cases here in the collection focus on the outbreak of war in different countries so here is what we call germany mobilizing work and within the case you can see different images, crowds assembled in berlin to receive news that germany was declaring war on russia and right now keizer creating a crowd from the royal palace and the course. the more interesting aspects of what we have for this exhibit i

the material culture, there are two different pins, in germany during the war. and not to forget their colonies, this was a reminder that germany was fighting not just for its territory in europe but its holdings in africa. there is up in here to show solidarity with the combatants, little can of the german helmet which a person could wear in order to signify their loyalty to the war effort. one theme that was heavily represented in the madison, action was anti german propaganda. and a lot of this in the u.s. focused on the german invasion of france by way of belgium. in this case we have once again the idea germany but violated belgian neutrality and that is reflected in this pamphlet that

there are crimes in which a bloody knife is stabbing through the german treaty with belgium but also we have a couple of images. for example this image from reality in which the germans from the zeppelin not bombing two belgium children and a country road and calling it military necessity and this pamphlet that was given out in new york thousands of little children are crying to you to save them from germans and here the idea is again that germany is committing crimes against civilians but not conducting an honorable war and in conjunction with that there are lots of books that are being put out against germany, tell the truth about what germany is doing in belgium, tell the truth about the german war aims, or just to highlight the different atrocities germany is committing against civilian populations throughout the front, germany

versus civilization, the idea being that germany is not fit to stand among the numbers of western europe and i really liked this book called conquest inco tour, there was something flawed within german culture that led them to start this war and to engage in and just conflict against the belgian civilian population. what is interesting about the first world war is the print culture is so advanced that even in putting together this exhibit we were sort of swimming, not the first time propaganda was used but certainly a very treasure trove of propaganda. a lot of this propaganda in this case, in the belgian case is aimed at trying to get americans to put pressure on the civilian government to join the war. america is neutral until 1917 and these materials from 1914-15

are trying to to show that america needs to fight because it is an unjust conflict but there's a clear case of people represented by germany's it needs to be stopped before further damage is done to the belgian and french civilian population. all of these cases are overstated. it is true that germany would commit reprisals against civilian populations, for example if there was a sharpshooter in a belgian village in order to find a sharpshooter germany would shoot unarmed civilians in reprisal. but there are lots of stories for example. the most famous is the idea that germany is bayoneting belgian babies which is not true. one of the things that is interesting in the second world war is this leads the allies to downplay stories of german atrocities being committed in eastern europe because the case

was so overstated in the first world war. in each of the outbreak cases we tried to capture part of the mood of the country at the beginning of the conflict, to get out the message of all the different sources from 1914. in the case of france, is overwhelmingly -- france has been attacked by germany and the french nation needs to rise up and defend the home front. in this case you have for example a french soldier saying no one shall pass, germany has taken part of that, they did not gain any more territory and in these images here, french soldiers leaving straight out of paris to go and confront germany in the western front. there were a lot of memoirists britain and about the combat

experience of the first world war and one of the most popular in france was under fire. in which he recounts his combat experience. ..

the idea being that, united, we can conquer our foes. and conquer them quickly. what is interesting about the first world war is that none of the countries had a territorial stake on any of the other countries. the war that, for example, germany had in mind when they decided to engage france and russia, having no, real legal cause to attack prance, after declaring war on russia, was the war of 1870, 1871 which germany won quickly against the french army. this idea that we would be home by christmas is something that all sides shared. germany believed they would quickly arrive in paris, force a treaty, on france, take a little more territory and the conflict would be over.

nobody imagined when the two armies met it would lead to stalemate and bloodshed of previously unknown scale. within this collection at uw-maddon there is a -- madison, there is sense of foreboding, knowledge, that this will be a cataclysmic confrontation. just in the first weeks after the combat began. on the western front the armies were primarily equipped with very defensive weapons but not highly offensive weapons. things like barbed-wire, the repeater rifle, machine gun are good for holding position but not necessarily for breaking through. as the war developed, each side attempted to find new defensive weapons in order to counter very strong defensive positions that were opposite them in the western front. this took a number of developments. these included things like poison gas, the flame thrower,

the tank, the, putting guns on airplanes, all of which were aimed at trying to get over the trenches, in some way. so in this case we tried to highlight these different new war technologies. so we have a map of what it was like to be in the interior of a tank, and you can see, if you look closely, that this tank required six men and they were in very, very cramped conditions in the tank. war technology took a lot of different turns. there were for example, ski units set up to fight in the alps. men had to learn to fire while, while on skis. one of them, i think one of the biggest results of the changes in warfare were cash altys, that drove up the number of dead and one of the reasons that people, that neither side was willing to

back down was that they were trying to make the sacrifice worth something, to come up with some reason for all these deaths. that some young men had given their lives in defense of something, that it meant something. and that is also helping to drive the technological innovation. trying to come up with a wonder weapon, some sort of new technology that will finish off the opposition in order to lead to peace. they needed to force the decisive defeat. they needed to defeat the enemy in such a way that they would have no choice but to surrender. both side were surprised by the number of casualties. that is the orrery begins of this anxiety. that it wouldn't actually be a quick fight. but that this was going to be some sort of a earth-changing european event that would shift the balance of power of europe but also, shift the way in eye

european society was structured. the german high command realized they were going to collapse. that they were not actually going to be able to stop, stop the western front once america joined. so they asked a sillian government to form, to sue for peace. the kaiser went into exile which was part of wilson's demand for an unconnal surrender. ultimately the treaty signed the treaty of versailles which the germans were forced to acknowledge they were responsible for the war. germany had to pay war indemnity, reimburse france and britain for the cost of the war. germany lost all of their colonies. they lost european territories, which is personally, which helps lead to the second world war. because when adolf hitler is campaigning he is promising that he will change this treaty which european, germans viewed as unfair. they didn't see themselves as

solely responsible for the outbreak of the war. >> up next on our tour of madison, wisconsin, the university of wisconsin police chief, susan riseling, recalls how difficult it was to balance citizens rights and operational government during a collective bargaining protest in 2011. >>-in america. in the heartland. [cheering] here, in the badger state. [cheering] are we going to let -- [inaudible] >> no! >> this is why we please repeat after me. badges are strong. >> badgers are strong. >> badgers are proud. >> badgers are proud. >> badgers are mighty.

>> badgers are -- >> we will not budge. >> we will not budge. >> until our rights are restored. >> until our rights are restored. >> until our restored. >> until our rights are restored. >> can you hear us now, governor walker? >> can you hear us now, governor walker. >> governor scott walker introduced the budget repair bill which he was trying to fill a gap in the budget and at the same time he proposed an end to collective bargaining for public employees in the state of wisconsin. it is the right of employees to unionize and to get together and speak with one voice when it comes to bargaining for benefits, for pay, work conditions, work hours, work shift, all those types of things. and wisconsin woos the first state in the united states to allow public employees to collectively bargain for those things. and so this was, particularly

difficult for the unions to agree with. essentially calling for their dissolution and having employees have to speak individual voices instead of collectively. this was met with some resistance from the collective bargaining units, all the different unions of wisconsin. and people came to the capitol to protest over a 30-day period in january and february of 2011. [shouting] >> i just thought it was really interesting story especially because it was non-violent. especially because so few people were arrested. especially because, it is the way the system is supposed to work. and we don't have a lost examples of that often in our

country that people can gather, have their voices heard and something really, really bad does not happen. and that is a really good thing. and i thought it was just unique. and so i woos here one day and turned to somebody, nobody would believe the behind the scenes of what is really going on here. i ought to write a book. the person said, yeah, you should. so i thought, well, i will give it a try. as it began, the budget repair bill was introduced and then there was a weekend, saturday and sunday and unions took the saturday and sunday to organize. on monday, february 14th, the students from the university of wisconsin marched on the capitol from the campus which is only eight blocks away. there were about 1500 to 2,000 of those students. they came up and delivered aboutthousand valentines for the governor. they weren't exactly heart-felt valentines. they dumped them on the desk, the public desk in front of his

office. by the tuesday of that week, february 15th, the unions had organized and had a rally where they expected somewhere between 10 and 20,000 people. they came and the square was shut down to traffic. and they came around and they went inside of the building and let their voices be heard. by the next day the crowds grew even more. then the madison teachers, many of the teachers associations around the state started to show a massive walkout, call-in sick. with the schools shut-down the crowds began to swell. by that weekend we were up into the high 6 s -- 60s. '70s, thousand of people on the capitol square. it kept building from there. the following weekend we had about 100,000 on the square and following weekend it continued to grow and we had over 100,000 on the square. in the weekdays in between, every day there were tens of

thousands of protesters here both inside and outside the building. what is our tradition in the wisconsin, you go around the capitol square counter clock weiss. the entire square is filled with people. streets are closed to traffic and filled with people and they would walk carrying their signs and banners and things around the capitol, counter clockwise. then on the grassy areas of the capitol that was full of people who would watch people walk by, we periodically, we had tractors, farm tractors come through. we had harley-davidson motorcycles come through. very large buses, come through, drop people off, pick people up. there were, no matter where you looked there were thousands and thousands of people all bundled up for the weather, still out here, still hardy. inside the building, first three days there was no limit to how many people could come inside of the building. we had 22 to 26,000 people inside of the building. the building is just not built

for that. after doing some measuring we figured the building capacity was nine thousand people. we held to nine thousand people inside of the building any one time. it wasn't like 9,000 went in. it was stagnant and other thousands would come in throughout the day as people left. on sundays we counted as many as 47,000 people would come through the doors, be inside of the building for a period of time and move back out and go around the square in the protest march. there was a stage set up on the state street side and state street is a street that the is closed vehicle traffic. it is open for pedestrians and bicyclists but it is a natural type of place where we set stages for protest because the state street entrance is little bit on a hill and the hill goes down toward straight street. it's a natural way for you to look up see a stage, see a speaker on a stage or listen to a music act and hear it for a long distance because of just

geography. people would gather near a stage set up by unions. the unions had permits for the stages. they would set up and they would have amplification systems. they would stand and say speeches and sing songs. people like michael moore. many of our federal representatives, federal senators came and spoke on the stage hire on state street. the people that supported the governor were on the other side of the building on king street side entrance. they also would set up amplification and have crowds. their crowds were far smaller. the biggest crowd that they ever had was about 2,000 people on this side of the building, some days in excess of 100,000 people. i've been in law enforcement for 32 years. about 22 years ago i had an incident where the crowds on the university, we got into a situation where there was a lot of crushing of people in too small an area for the number of people. and after that i began to

develop, try to develop an expertise in crowds and what, how political crowd act differently than a sports crowd and how people who are being facilitated in what they're trying to do, react differently to the police than being confronted by the police, those kind of specialties. i've been the chief of police at university of wisconsin at madison tore last 23 years. at the time of the protests i had been the police chief for 21 years, so i had all this background because we deal with crowds on regular basis on the university, for all different types of settings. and so the capitol police chief, charles tubs, he look at whole situation that i had a strength of crowd management that department of natural resources thenned us out, they had a huge expertise in logistics. they do while land fires and they're good at moving people and moving people in and out of remote areas. so the capitol was pretty much a

piece of cake. the state patrol who can always give you staffing and disciplined person and tell them to stand there and do such and sufficient they will stand there and do what you asked them to do so they're very, very reliable. so there was the capitol police and the capitol police were worth their weight in gold because they knew the building inside and out. the i had three priorities every day. i had to make sure everybody regardless who they were, remained safe. second make sure that people's constitutional rights were honored. the third was to insure the government, which was democratically elected functioned and allowed to function and could continue function. whether you have a democratically elected government whether you agree with them or not, since they were legitimately elected that is the way our democracy works and we have to keep that government functioning. or else you end up in anarchy. that those were my three priorities i started the day with. we made all of our decisions

based on those three. is it safe? is it insuring the constitutional rights are being protected? is the government continuing to function. now, not to say that there weren't hiccups in all three categories because there were. in safety, there were too many people in the building. we had to get a handle on that and cut down the number. the constitutional rights of free speech and free expression that was all very well and good but there are limits to. that you can't go into a crowded building and yell fire. there are certain things you can limit when it comes to free speech. the third was the government functions and still continued to have hearings and hold hearings and they still continued to have their meetings. we wear our same uniforms every day. so we don't get into that gear that you see, unless there is a reason to do that. and, most days, you just come to work looking like you would any other time as a police officer on the street. so there wasn't the sense of

putting on a helmet, there wasn't a sense of taking out a baton and standing with your baton out, there was no need for any of that. we didn't escalate in that way. there was no need to escalate in that way. we could do everything through dialogue. now there were tense moments. there were moments where there was some pushing and shoving. but again you try to meet it and isolate it and make sure the dialogue begins right away about how did we get here and how could we de-escalate this and keep tension down as much as possible. i also believe ethically right to deal with a big crowd give fair warning. if you think suddenly to a police agency to a big crowd, the first 50 people in the crowd may know what caused it, but the people beyond them don't know. all they know is cops are moving or the cops are doing this or that, the police are acting and as a response they then get all tense and they start their thing

and are 50 people deep. the people in the front may be calm but the people 50 feet deep are no longer calm. you get pushing and shoving or bottles being thrown or rocks being thrown or whatever. one of the things we want to do is communicate, give time, whatever that was, communicate and give a day, communicate and give two days. we, at one point we were kind of scaling things down we gave five days warning. we would close the building in five days. the next day, four days. the next day three days. the next day two days. every day, we kept closing and closing and closing different portions, every day, announcing ahead of time what we were going to do the next day so there weren't any surprises. the end result that collective bargaining for public employees came, came to an end and the unions had to actually take a vote among their membership to see if they would still be in existence. union dues that normally were taken out of paychecks as an

automatic stopped and employees, then could decide whether or not they wanted to give money to the unions. there is a whole series of things. the budget gap got filled, so that there was no longer a budget gap. so the budget repair was done and was completed. then from there, i believe it was nine senators and the governor faced recall. and that took about a year to have that all come through and some senators were recalled. and the governor was not recalled. and other senators were not recalled. they went through the process and held their seats. and then we just moved forward, from that point. but i think that, in many ways the wisconsin story and in this regard is an american story. it's a story about, you know, people coming together and exercising their first amendment rights to let a democratic

government know they're displeased in a peaceful way that was completely legal on both side. the process actually worked here. we didn't have massive arrests. in the course of 30 days we arrested only 13 people and only four of those people were arrested while i was in charge. the nine were arrested before, when they disrupted galleries on the first couple of days of the protest. it is really shows that democracy can work because it tells the story of how the police can be used as political fodder or can be used as a political tool in you're not careful. and it is not our job to be used politically. it is our job to ensure safety and insure the government functions. insure that the constitutional rights are met for all

americans. ♪ >> while in madison we sat down with "washington post" editor and author david ma a necessary. mayor necessary. he talked with husband about his latest book, once in a great city about the detroit this 1963. it will be published in 2015. >> david mayor necessary, thank you for being maraniss. tell us what you're working on. >> i just finished last lines of a last chapter on a book about detroit? >> what is the name of the book? >> the name of the book is called, "once in a great city."

>> why did you write the book? can you give us a background what the book is about? >> i will give you the story of how the idea came to me. it was a little unusual. it was in february of 2011. i was watching the super bowl, which the green bay packers were in. that is my football team. i had written a book about vince lombardi, their coach. i was in new york city at a bar, watching the packers win. and at halftime a commercial came on television. i wasn't really paying attention. i was more anxious about other things. then i saw a sign that said detroit on the commercial. and then, i saw the jo lewis fist and rivera mural, all these icons of detroit, abandoned warehouses, gates of warehouses that were abandoned, both the beauty and promise of detroit. this incredible beat came on, who is eminem, who is detroiter,

driving through the city and talking about this is not new york city or windy city or emerald city. eminem comes out of his car and walks into the fox theater and this grand ol' theater and black gospel choir in song and said -- >> this is the motor city. this is what we do. >> something about it made me choke up. my wife later said, well, you know, you sucker, they're just selling cars, this is commercial. made me think about something deeper. i was born in detroit. i lived there until i was six. i identified with washington and madison, wisconsin, where we are now but detroit was really my primordial place. i said if it means that much to me i should write about it. i thought well, the collapse of detroit is very important. a lot of economics writers can write about that much more than i can. i wanted to do a book about

detroit when it was glowing and show america what detroit gave us which was an enormous amount. this book is about music, motown, which i love. cars. civil rights, labor and the middle class. when you really think about what detroit contributed to america, it gives a deeper appreciation of what it is going through. the shadows of collapse are through this book, even though it takes place 50 years ago. >> can you talk a little bit about the collapse of detroit? and how you chose those top ibbs and take us through that a little bit? >> well, as i was reporting this book, detroit was in the news almost every day. you know, at one point, the bankruptcy was filed. and it has been struggling for many years. so that, you know, that was the backdrop to my book but it wasn't the book. but you could see 50 years ago, a lot of elements of the troubles that were to come.

the economy was, then and always too based on cars although the political leaders in 1963, which is the heart of the book understood they had to change that. they were trying to get defense technologies and other modern technologies and it just didn't happen. the auto industry was essentially leaving detroit. which was a long, slow, process. the detroit suffered from its own success in some different ways. it's a huge geographical city, 28 miles across. unlike a lot of other big cities it is mostly single family homes. it was built on the prosperous working middle class that the auto industry offered it. and so when that industry suffered and left, and jobs were gone, you had all of these, swaths of neighborhoods. i would drive through the area where i lived when i was a

little boy. and probably three out of every eight houses were gone, either leveled or burned or abandoned. and so it has, this difficulty of all of this lost land and property, and hollowness it gives to the people who still try to survive there. >> how did it change? when did it standard changing? >> it changed over a very long period of time and, i found a very interesting document as i was as i was researching the book. the tendency to say detroit's collapse was caused by a series of events, including the riots of 1967. the white flight that resulted from that. the rust belt infirmities that many cities had like detroit. its dependence entirely on automobiles. civic corruption which became more of a, of a factor or, more

reported on in the last 15 years. and, harsh or hard labor contracts that burdened the city. to some degree those are true and false but they're irrelevant almost. detroit was dying before that. this study in 1950 showed that detroit already lost 600,000 population by 1963, from 1950s. its trend was continuing. by the end of the 1960s it would lose another 500,000 people and it predicted all the way where it is today, which is 700,000 people. and it was because of, of the larger forces. the beyond the civic corruption or labor unions or any of that, beyond the riots. it was the disintegration of the institutional model of detroit,

of these, huge industries, the factories being there. it was the trend away from cities in general, towards suburbs. and so these sociologists said that detroit will be left, they were not trying to say in pejorative way, basically productive people were leaving, non-productive people would stay. that is the fate of detroit and it happened. all of those other things i mentioned, certainly didn't help turn it around but it was happening already. >> how did you start, how did you do the research for the book? >> well my first model always is go there, wherever there is. i did not move to detroit but i spent a lot of time there. nine visits over the course of the period i was working on the book. found a, wonderful little bed and breakfast near the detroit institute of arts, two blocks from the walter luther library of labor and urban affairs which

had great archival material for walter ruther who was the major character in the book because he was head of united auto workers and five miles away was henry ford ii, grandson of the original founder, also a major character in the book. the archives of the mayor then, jr. roam cavanagh, who was a young irish-catholic kennedy acolyte, as kennedy was rising. his papers are at the ruther library. the detroit public library grand old edifice, a block away not always open because the financial struggles of detroit and institute of art was there. so i could stay at the bed and breakfast and walk for everything i was doing research unless i had to drive for

interview. this was off woodward avenue, main corridor of detroit which separates east detroit and west detroit, everybody identifies themselves from east detroit or west detroit. go up woodward avenue. hang a left at west bend boulevard and go a mile there is motown. this series of houses now a museum because motown abandoned detroit as did everything else at one point. that is how i did most of the research. going there, interviewing, doing a lot of archival research. all of my books, i say they have four legs to a table. one leg is the observation of being there. understanding the cultural geography of a place. the second leg is the archival research, finding contrary news documents of the period i'm writing about. the third leg, is the interviews and i found as many of the people as i could from this era. of course i had to travel other places as well. barry gordy, the founder of

motown now lives in a mansion high on a hill above belleair in los angeles. i went to see him and a lot of other people around the country. and the fourth leg, looking for what's not there. there is always a conventional wisdom about something. trying to find other ways to explore the reality. >> interesting interview that you had. you mentioned barry gordy. can you tell us a little bit about that? what did you learn? >> well he is 83 or 4 by now. he was 33 when the book is at its heart in 1963. he, what i learned, he is sort of essentially synonymous with motown. and, it was his idea. he created, he brought the artists there and he, i learned two important things about motown that gordy helped me shape but go beyond him. one is that he came from this

incredible family with four older sisters who really don't get as much credit as they really deserve. who were part of motown and much more organized with barry was in a lot of ways. he was the creative force. in the book i try to give more credit to his older sisters. and and to his parents. it was a. there is a family like so many african-american families, came up from the south to detroit and they were part of, the booker t. washington sensibility of self-help. formed a grocery store first and all those other little enterprises. so he came out of sort of that small on the onship concept. he started -- entrepreneurship concept. he started motown $800, came from the barry corporation. barry, sr. is part of the corporation and his mother.

the family had a little vote whether they would help one of their siblings with financial help. so barry got his first loan from his own family to start motown. the more important aspect of motown for me was why? why did it happen in detroit? and the book explores that in a lot of detail which i won't get into now but the essence is, the geography made it possible because there were single family homes. pianos in those homes, all throughout working class detroit. great public school teachers, in that era. music teachers and in all of the schools. almost every musician i interviewed talked about, remember, there were music teachers from elementary school, junior high and high school which i don't think you can find today sadly in some ways. the migration from the south,

bringing the oral tradition of singing up to detroit. the great jazz that was sort of the, the root of what turned into motown in so many ways. most of the studio musicians came out of that jazz movement. all of that combined. in a sense of freedom which happens in certain cities in certain times. it happened in detroit for that period. >> did you find any connection between motown and the political leadership of detroit? >> motown connects everything. motown, one of criticisms of motown and barry gordy was it was an assembly line. he would take an unfinished product, diane ross, not diana ross, diane ross when she came to motown and turned her into this incredible world class, world-known diva singer. she starts at age 17. and by 24, as everybody knows,

and there was a certain style of music through motown. so, where does that come from? first of all i think it is partly false but the notion came because barry gordy worked on an assembly alignment he worked in the lincoln mercury assembly line in detroit and, from that sort of watched the process. how do you develop something into this beautiful thing and he consciously thought about that in developing motown. ♪ barry gordy was not this, this very political, in a direct sense, during the course of my, of the 18 months i write about, he started making records out of

political speeches. and the most important political speech of the 20th century by most standards is martin luther king's "i have a dream" speech. he gave that speech in detroit two months before he delivered it in washington and there was a march down woodward avenue of 125,000 people to cobo hall and king gave the speech. barry gordy recorded it. he was about to sell it, august 28th. first date of sale was august 28th, the date king gave the speech in washington, rendering the first speech irrelevant. he also record the second one and he recorded langston hughes and many other african-american figures. so he had that sort of connection to trying to popularize in a way the politics of the time. but he wasn't directly political. >> you mentioned some of the characters, ford, walter, cavanagh, mayor cavanagh. can you tell us a little bit why you chose them and what you

found? >> you know they emerged from my reporting. i didn't start by saying i'm going to write, i mean there are many, many characters in my book but i didn't start by saying these are the key people. i thought these are the key idea and how do i, how do i enrich those? so henry ford the ii i chose, you write about gm. it is much larger but ford is always more interesting from the original start of henry ford and his notions of the assembly line his anti-semitism. he was a brilliant businessman but he had these contradictions. he also brought african-americans to detroit and hired them. he had shadows and light in his life and in a lot of interesting ways. his grandson. henry ford ii, was sort of a larger than life figure, very colorful. sort of, he was very friendly

with lbj. in my book you will see at the end there is a climax dealing with lbj and henry ford ii. the dues was duece was his nickname. he was dealing with everything that was going on at that time, political, economic. his relationship with walter ruther was fascinating because his grandfather during that era tried to beat all the unions physically and henry ford ii, had to deal with sort of accomodations of that. and with the anti-semitism and all of that. ruther, i think was one of the great underappreciated figures of the 20th century. a terrific mind, labor leader, who during this particular ear rao, the uaw, really helped, had a key role in the whole civil

rights movement. the summer of '63 was the summer when birmingham happened and martin luther king wrote his letter from the birmingham jail and many of the people who were supporting king, who were jailed in birmingham were bailed out by the uaw money. they came down with all the money to get everybody out of jail. they were really the sponsors of the civil rights movement in so many ways and walter routh they are was very progressive on civil rights, ahead of lbj and kennedy, pushing them harder. not as hard as king and ruther himself but for a white labor lead he, he was essential. and yet, think about what happened in michigan and detroit in all of the auto workers moving out of detroit to the suburbs and becoming reagan democrats in response to some of the pressures of civil rights in that era. so much yeast to walter ruther. cavanagh and his police chief

were progressive liberals trying to change the racial climate in detroit just as i am writing about it. they made a lot of dramatic changes. they were succeeding in some ways against all the odds. but that success led to four years later a riot, not success led to it but four years later detroit in '67 had one of the worse race riots in history and everything was up in smoke. he is a tragic figure. we have boisterous, flamboyant, incredible speaker, speaker at new bethel baptist in new york. he organized rallies that brought martin luther king to detroit. he is another one of the figures in the book.

they emerged from the story i tried to tell. >> if you could summarize the story you were trying to tell, what did you learn throughout? >> i learned how essential detroit was to america in some ways. helping to create the middle class. helping bring this wonderful music. the mustang is another part of the book. lee iacocca was at ford then. the mustang was being developed which became sort of a symbol of some kind of a freedom and sexual freedom and, there was all contrived in a sense trying to sell a car that way but the mustang represented a lot of that. so, you know, detroit, detroit was at center of things. even though it is in the midwest and not new york or l.a., it has so many flaws, it was really, a very important part of all of at

least several generations how we come to think of ourselves in america. but detroit, detroit, because of its myriad problems also has great promise. you go to detroit today, if you're 25 years old and wanted to have freedom and do something, you can go to detroit. you know, the property's cheap. more kid are coming there. sort of a boom of artists and tech people and, and activists. it is, it's got to some degree that same sensibility of anything can happen, that motown had when it was just starting. so, but, but parts of might never come back because of the geography of it and loss of the jobs. >> when will it be published and who is publishing it? >> it will be published next september. 2015. jeez.

simon & schuster has been publisher of everyone of my books. i have had the sail editor, alice mayhew, of all of my books. i worked at "washington post" for 38 years. i'm kind of loyal to certain institutions. >> david, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. this weekend we're visiting madison, wisconsin, and talking with local authors. up next a discussion about the influence of money on politics with the author of dollarocracy, john nichols. much. >> insnow of huge amounts of money to our politics has changed almost everything about our politics for the worst, not for the better. the truth of the matter is, historically in american political campaigns, the dominant force in the campaign, the center of the campaign was your human level engagement with people. that has just been blown apart. the fact of the matter is, now, we have campaigns that are defined by sound bites, not real

addresses, not real interactions of people. they are often defined at the state level by flying around the state in a jet and landing at an airport, having an appearance, before a couple of cameras, getting back in the plane and flying off. certainly that is the case at national level. what we have ended up with a politics very much delinked from all those human level interactions. and candidates tell me they will tell you, in fact they have in many cases, that, huge portions of their days used to be spent interacting with humans, are now devoting running down a list of names of rich people, calling them and asking them for money. sometimes candidates have told me they will spend as much as seven or eight hours a day making campaigns to ask for money. that is seven hours of campaign days, taken away from

constituents, taken away from the community, taken away from the political process, put into a scrambling, desperate search for money. it is hard to imagine something more unhealthy for the democratic process. one of the things i would like talk about to the book, critical juncture of american history that occurred late 1960s, early 1970s, the best understanding of it democracy was winning. we had a series of developments from the 1950s, maybe from the end of world war ii on, that had very much expanded american democracy. you had seen the civil rights movement which of made the promise of voting rights real, with the voting rights act, with the civil rights act. with a lot of changes in the south. at the same time you had seen passage of an amendment to the constitution that extended franchise top 18 to 21-year-olds. you also seen another amendment to the constitution that ended the poll tax and effectively

said you could no longer erect a financial barrier to participating in our democratic system. so a lot of changes had occurred in relatively short number of years. on top of that, 1960s, which were time of great opening up of our political and social discourse. at the end of the '60s, you saw a lot of that come into our politics. you saw a very, very dominant, discussion, about how to perfect a lot of things, including the environment. the environmental movement became very, very strong. and it was so powerful, if you can imagine this, that, a conservative republican president, richard nixon, bent to the demand of the environmental mom, creating a, signing into law, a clean water act, a clean air act, creating an environmental protection agency. and so the strength of these movements, environmental, consumer protection, voting rights, all started to create a lot of discomfort among the old order, among a lot of very

powerful people who had power for a long time. in the early 1970s, you started to see development of a response to that. lewis powell, who was a corporate lawyer, wrote a memo which he suggested to corporations they needed to get more involved in politics. they had to start to develop their own think tanks. they had to start to try to influence state and local elections. they had to lobby a lot more. and, they had to really try to influence elections as best they corks to begin to push back this rice of demands from great mass of people which was changing the way corporations were operating. intriguingly enough powell's memo was hugely popular with big corporations. they loved it. if you look at powell's notes and papers, see letters from corporate ceos and others, saying please, please send me a copy of your memo. we're really excited about how we learn more to become more influential in politics.

powell turned down opportunities to be richard nixon's appointee to the u.s. supreme court several times. but after he wrote his memo, he was approached again by nixon. he said, yeah, i will take the court gig and he became a supreme court justice. on the supreme court, in a number of rulings, lewis powell was either the lead writer or a strong supporter of decisions that began to open up the process for corporate money. began to open up the process for the money of very, very wealthy people. intriguingly he was opposed in many of those decisions by another conservative, william rehnquist. rehnquist said again and again, we really have to be careful with this. if we start to knock down the barriers to campaign money flowing in from all these special interests, from all these wealthy interests, we could end up in a situation where money dominates our politics. where money defines our politics. not votes of citizens. so you had this great battle on the supreme court, in the

1970s, 1980s, even into the 1990s. now both powell and rehnquist are gone. the reality is that the majority of our supreme court is a powell majority. and that majority decided again and again to knock down barriers to corporate money in politics. you really have seen the triumph of powell's vision and in that triumph of powell's vision, diminution of our democratic process. money has flowed in and come to totally dominate at local, state and national levels. >> person isn't used in the first amendment. congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. >> what is your, maybe you don't even want to touch this, as a person do you worry at all, i know you don't, well, the person you worry at all there is too much money in politics? >> no, i really don't.

i don't know what the figures are we spend less on our presidential campaigns each year when there is a presidential election than, than the country spend on cosmetics. >> that series of rulings, culminated in many senses in the citizens united ruling of 2010. that ruling effectively said, that corporations can spend what they want, to influence our politics. in combination with a series of rulings before and since. that have freed up very wealthy people to spend as they choose in politics. we have ended up in a situation where suddenly our campaigns, that used to cost a few hundred dollars, now cost hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, in the exact same places. we've seen a radical transformation of our politics. >> with all due deference to separation of powers, last week the supreme court reverse ad century of law that believe will open the floodgates for special interests including foreign corporations.

to spend without limit in our elections. [applause] i don't think american elections should be bankrolled by america's most powerful interests. or worse by foreign entities. they should be decided by the american people. >> so there was this construction of a concept of corporations having certain human rights. and, that was extended by the supreme court into politics. essentially said, well, if an individual has the right to give money in politics then a corporation has a right to do so. this is a big, big leap. it is certainly went against all the things that states and even federal officials had operated on for many, many years. it went against values that republican and democratic

presidents and governors and legislators had embraced. it essentially knocked down a huge amount of our existing campaign finance law. in the aftermath, people said, well, corporations are not going to really go and do that. you will not see all this money really flow in. the reality is, that since the citizen united ruling, we have seen a massive up tick in the spending on our campaigns. and we have going from record levels of spending to record level of spending, to record level of spending. each new election cycle we hit a new peak of spending. the growth of the amount of money in our politics has been exponential. it hasn't all come from corporations, that is an important thing to understand. a huge amount of money has come from very, very wealthy individuals, billionaires, who are giving immense amounts of money and what we really should understand is, that citizens united is not in and of itself

the definitional ruling for our sometimes. citizens united has become a catchphrase for a series of rulings, some of them going back to the 1970s. some of them coming after citizens united. but all of them as a whole, knocking down our existing campaign finance laws, and creating a circumstance where it is just incredibly he's for money to flow wherever it wants in our politics. there is a fantasy that says, that, you know, money down influence our politics. money is just given to political players because you like where they stand. reality of this is, many, many decisions in our politics are not about partisanship or even ideology. they're about an advantage for a particular corporation or for a particular individual. and people are ask themselves, why in campaign after campaign after campaign do we keep hearing candidates say, oh, we want to get rid of tax breaks

for shipping jobs overseas? that is what every candidate says. you hear it again and again yet it never happens. why doesn't it happen? well, because there are awful lot of interested people, individuals and, corporate tied folks. corporations themselves. that don't want that change. similarly, we often hear people on the left and the right say, look it. why do we spend so much on the military, when it is so inefficient? we need a strong military. we need a strong defense. why do we have all the military contractors getting incredible amounts of money, constantly exposed for, you know, waste and going overbudget and they keep getting all this money? well, reality is, that those military contractors and people tied to them have spent an immense amount of money to influence our politics through campaign donations but also through lobbying. now, most people don't see all

of that spending in any, in any kind of coherent way because the money flows in so many different directions. it comes in not merely through campaigns and political parties as it once did, but now also through independent groups and super pacs and dark money operations. and at the end of the day we have a very untransparent, big-money process where people don't know who is dominating the discussion but they clearly have to start to recognize it is being dominated by somebody other than them. and this has a profound impact on our politics. in a way, it is, throw back to what lewis powell was imagining or hoping for. and that is a situation where corporations again are really able to ship, shape the discourse. and that shaping of the discourse is very, very damaging. we see good ideas tossed to the side. we see dysfunctional idea raised up and made dominant in our

politics. and it is fair to say today, that not just candidates and campaigns are shaped by money, but really our debate itself is shaped by money. and that, to my mind a very unhealthy thing. i think we've gone in the wrong direction as a country but one of the things we do in the book is detail how all that happened. if you don't know how we got here, some people might start to think this is natural, this is normal. it is not natural. it is not normal. in fact, it is not the way our politics historically was in this country and it certainly shouldn't be the sort of politics that we seek or anticipate for the future. because if our future is definedded by dollars to much greater extent by votes. if future is money is speech. corporations are citizens. in this big battle between big money interests and it diminishes our democracy in many

ways. senator simon said, when you get elected to congress, when you get elected to the u.s. senate, coming out of this process, no matter how good a person you are, after you had a very long day and been debating three or four hours, running through all the committee sessions, when coming back to the your office and got a call from individual citizen in your state or got a call from somebody who is one of your biggest campaign donors, paul simon said whose call do you think i rereturn at night? the fact paul simon was one of the best people in our politics. a very decent man. he was speaking truth many politicians will not admit. the fact is when your campaign is defined by, dominated by money, you respond to money. and that makes our politics die linked from our citizenry and also incredibly unhealthy because, the fact of the matter is, money, big money, often has

very, difficult interests than the great mass of citizens. the history of america really is a history of people fixing problems. and we should never assume all the problems were fixed in 1787, or in 1865 or in 1965. what we should recognize is, that, new problems occur, new challenges arise. and when those new challenges come our way, we ought to meet them as fou intended. by, writing elements of a constitution that will respond to the moment in which we live, to solve those problems, to make real the promise of democracy. we've done it before. we have to do it again. and so, our book had the audacious goal of saying to people, who have already started organizing, who have already started doing tremendous amount of work, go for it. don't be overwhelmed. don't think this is impossible. it was overwhelming and

impossible to votes to women. it was overwhelming and impossible to get rid of segregation. to get rid of jim crow. get rid of the poll tax. make real promise of not just the fight in the civil war but the civil rights movement 100 years later. it was unreal and impossible to say, 18 to 21-year-olds could be sent off to die in a war, ought to have a say in polling place whether we ought to go to war. all those things were unreal or impossible. yet we achieved everyone of them. there is simply no reason to believe we can not achieve a real democracy which is money is not viewed as speech, corporations are not viewed as people and our elections are organized so that the vote matters more than the dollar. we can do it. it is a doable task. we know it's doable because the people of this country have taken on equal challenges in the past and overcome them.

now it is our generation's time to take on the challenges and overcome them. . . >> some people have no idea what the story was. one of the things that is most surprising about learning about the history is how hard matteson had to hang on to be the capital of