[inaudible conversations] >> beginning now in tv, live coverage of the brooklyn book festival in new york. we are covering several panels today. this is all taking place at the brooklyn law school. you'll hear others talk about politics, immigration, terrorism and much more. for a complete schedule of our coverage, go to tv.board and follow us on twitter, facebook and mr. graham to get behind the scenes videos pictures and today's schedule updates. all day we will be posting gains from the festival. we are kicking off the day with another panel on economics. this is booktv on c-span2, live coverage from the brooklyn book

festival. found that

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

the mac in morning. [inaudible] welcome to the best law school in brooklyn. come on, that is pretty funny. it's too early. the locals that are 100,000 plus graduates since we opened our doors widely 115 years ago know that it the only law school in brooklyn. but we had the best law school and the biggest borough in the most drivers 50 great u.s.a., so they've got that going for us. we've got a very special edition and we're very proud of what we are doing here in producing new lawyers to serve the public in

many different ways. so i'm glad that you are here. we are going to be beginning with an outstanding panel very soon. i just wanted to note among other things that when they over 10,000, between 10,020,000 people who will be despite some iffy weather enjoyed this incredible book festival, which may be the largest free public book festival in the galaxy. my penchant for understatement. is that the topics are so timely. the authors are so diverse and is emblematic of the riches of brooklyn, which has a resurgent. one of the books that won't be discussed today in this building, the brooklyn law school is a marvelous new book

that i've been reading over the weekend. brooklyn bridge park by joanne witty, and first of all, the brooklyn bridge park as we all know it's just fabulous, transformational, multipurpose fucose carpet pop up rules. they are exercising and having our kids all the time. i don't think marlon brando would recognize that the non-location of on the waterfront from the gritty working waterfront from the 50s. but it is really transformational. what is emblematic is the working together and having solidarity rather than being evasive and corrosive we can accomplish a lot.

that enhances the businesses and educational institutions here and we all interact and build and grow integrated or is together. i invite you all to look at this book among others. i have a feeling that meant. one is that all of the books discussed at the law school will be available to purchase and any cases have the authors sign a note outside the law school and the plaza. don't worry if there's a little little bit of drizzle. you have that opportunity. second, september 17th by congressional men date is constitution day. law schools everywhere around the country engage in civic education and it's our obligation and privilege to help educate the public about the constitution and its meaning and the extent we achieve its

aspirations. so when so many of the panel topics directly address issues of voting rights with that will come in civic engagement, constitutional and legal questions and questions of citizenship. we are very happy to host as part of our constitution celebration at the brooklyn book festival, all the topics right on point. in particular, a shameless plug at 2:00 i will be interviewing in this space both nader with his new book about power in dealing with power. professor gloria marshall thomas. that's not ready. gloria, pardon me, gloria --

gloria browne marshall. thank you. i need all the help i can get on a sunday morning. they all have books pertaining to this day of the party elections. they'll be interesting this afternoon. today is also the day sadly that in brooklyn we are commemorating the second anniversary of the tragic shooting of two police serves. officers would agree most, by the way, both people of color. i mentioned that our borough president has been so in love with the book would book festival is involved in that operation. eric adams has been one of the best things about the mutual needs between the first responders of police and other uniformed up stairs and the people in the community is the former police officer had no in terms of the need for mutual respect and understanding of both perspectives. i ask you at this moment to take

a few seconds to pause and reflect on the loss of those two officers, the need for greater respect and dignity of the community and other officers serving the community and think about the families of those officers at this time. just take a few minutes to think about that and how we all need to improve together. thank you very much. on this constitution day, i invite our panel to take their places and to begin. we are looking forward to a very vigorous conversation about empowerment. >> hi, everybody.

i think we can pull it off. and sarah schulman, distinguished professor at the city university of new york and the author about the gentrification of the mind, witness to a lost imagination. some of our panelists at a family feast. don't worry because we have a wonderful guest today. the debbie gibson is the author of not working people talk about losing a job and find in our way in today's changing economy and the book we are discussing today come to the edge becomes the center, an oral history of gentrification in the 21st century. welcome. >> thank you. good to be here. >> i thought it was set up the context of how we got to where we are today and then ask dw to tell us what he found in his research. many misunderstand after world war ii there was a g.i. bill and veterans were offered low-interest loans to buy houses in the newly developed suburbs. and in this way, the u.s.

government was able to put a lot of money into the hands of suburban developers. but because suburbs were racist, this was most lay a program that went to the way through new york city and could produce the error when i was as white flight. so while many at that whites were experienced team suburbanization, which was a new cultural phenomenon that involve privatized living, and racial stratification, car culture, at the same time in the new york city we saw the beginning creation of the boston revolutionary movement. black power, women's liberation, this raw products of the open city. in the mid-70s, we have the rhetoric of the city going broke and the start of old new policy shift that was sold on the argument that we needed to expand our tax base and

wealthier people would bring in more money for social service is. today new york is filled with rich people in social services are a disaster because in the interim years we had bacon is done. so we had reached the boat paying lower taxes. in the 70s we see the ending of the construction of low income housing and beginning of the corporate welfare system have huge tax rates to developers to develop luxury housing, much of which was aimed at the children of white flight, the people who were born in the suburbs that had an emotional attachment to the city that they wish to return to. and yet, they returned with the burden of suburbanization, the concept of homogenous as headaches and racial stratification, the experience of the gated community that we find that a lot of those people who we now think of as the first wave gentrifiers came to the city with a believe they are willing to trade freedom for

security. in a sense, that is how we got to where we are today and many people believe 500,000 affordable housing units that and gentrification in the city. our mayor deblasio promised 200,000. we will go into that in a little bit more at bats. want to start by ask dw gibson when he began an oral history of the gentrification, where did you decide to start? >> they didn't quite know where to start. i started a list of people he wanted to talk to and i wanted to talk to every vote that is. a lot of it was very easy. i wanted to tack of landlords in tenants who have had troubles, politicians and developers in bags. all of the players. i share that list of the bunch of people over a lot of time and it grew and grew. has spaces to identify as 40% is

a newer wanted to engage but there is five people or 10 people but as for the spaces i wanted to engage. the places i started for much more on this street. i just wanted to sort of get a sense from people who had been stationary for a long time in specific areas, how they solve things around them. it started with a woman named barbara schaum who i imagine you might have crossed paths with it some point. she was on third street for a long time. she was a leather worker, the first person to have a drink at the stories. she was instrumental in the cooper square committee and so forth. when you spend today in her shop, it was almost like the east village was pat knight angel though. a very good starting point. barbara passed away a few to go. so i started with a drug dealer on the lower eastside east village, a guy named row will

have been born in coney island across from the fund gallery and so he wins the kids hanging out with converting street art into high-end art and a goddess perspective. i wanted to start an informal way. when i started talking to developers and city planners and there'd be a lot more formatting charges i wanted to give a more freewheeling as good >> let's start with the long-term new yorker, the native new yorker who lives in a mixed income and racially mixed neighborhood. love your conclusions when you interview that group of people questioned iraq >> you know, a few things. something about raul and i talked to him for several days for several hours. he cap statements changed, it's changed, this generic comment you might hear a lot from people

who've been in the city for a long time. i kept hitting him to describe. couldn't figure it out. one day he had a lightbulb go off and he said he and i were walking down the street one way and the cpa sat on, their worst bikes there. they put spikes down so no one could sit there anymore. we knew that day everything had changed. such a small inconsequential thing, maybe even tried, that those types of news, and those changes in the neighborhood are what really changed the dynamics for people who've been there for a long time and it also draws attention to how different types of people have different types of ideas about what should be happening on the streets. i live in brooklyn and on a saturday night, walk down church. you are going to see barbecue grills, chicken go in and everybody is out.

that is not the case in another neighborhood. so that came to mind, sort of the different people in their different takes on what is the neighborhood. it's not easy to get on the same page in terms of what takes the neighborhood socially healthy. >> it's interesting you bring up the question of public space and how it has transformed. when fewer people are living in apartment and that people tend to spend more time inside. throughout the city we've seen places where to apartment that he is to have five people each become knockdown become a law for one or two people. and a lot of people live in a small space on the lot where people live out at a publix base. it's interesting and gentrification has batted lot of laws and increased policing of public space, things that used to be a normative part of new york city life are now bitterly illegal. so what happened to growl?

>> you shifted with the city. in some ways a thing his profession aside, there's something's lamentable about his experience in new york because he went with it. he talked about back in the day when he wanted to get weed you would go into the park and see some guy nodding off in favor to get that and he would point to be what some yourself. you type about how in the 90s and two as he had clients that were flying into the hampton in the morning to make a drop off and fly back to new york and perhaps going back up that evening again. so he converted. he started catering to more wealthy drug fighters is the answer, which i think is help of and the reason i thought it was important for this book is because there is a prevailing narrative about who uses drugs and how we need to clamp down on that. growls experience, his client

are actors and musicians and a lot of white old. that wasn't the case when he started selling drugs. so i think that was sent to him that he underscored that became very. >> okay, thank you. we've just been joined by marc lamont hill who some of you may back as is an award-winning host of pet news. he's also a political contributor to cnn and a distinguished professor of african-americans that he is at morehouse. >> tell us about your new book. >> it's awesome. >> it's amazing. >> i yield the rest of my time. [laughter] >> the book itself was born not of an attempt to make sense of what happened in ferguson on august 9, 2014, when mike brown was killed by darren wilson. so i went down there on august 10th to tell the story of mike brown and i wanted to

make sense of that moment. the first thing that struck me when i was there was the sense of horror and trauma that the city of ferguson, the city of ferguson. they were there for four and a half hours, largely unprotect date, largely not engaged by the state and many of its institutions by the police, medical establishment, et cetera. i washed all there is too much background grow up and play football. they talked about the blood and the concrete and the smell of death in the air. the most striking was in his death, he was the lack of response that he laid out there for four and a half hours. one woman who i spoke to said they left them out there like ea belonged to nobody. bad ideas but lingered with me. that's what i pulled on. i realize the sense of

abandonment that mike brown fell and that everyone witnessed wasn't reducible to the interplay between mike round and darren wilson. it was about something far more sick again. it was about the fact the normandy school district abandoned one of the most the good dysfunctional school districts in the nation. in fact, the right often uses the school district is evidence of iranian school choice options. they are incorrect on their conclusion that their analysis and its dysfunctionality. might round and his family were left essentially jobless as was the rest of ferguson because of commerce in the what leaving as many of the places like st. louis and ferguson and outsource the far east. suddenly the job market evaporated. so much of the revenue now comes from stopping and arresting citizens. 20,000 people in ferguson, $60 have warned.

can you imagine 20,000 people in 16,000 of them have a warrant? so mike brown gets stopped. it wasn't because he sold some in. that wasn't even an issue at the time of the stock. he was stopped for jaywalking. especially the people in ferguson. between that and public housing, kind of a failed experiment by any measure. liberal in conservative. all of those things lead people to go to ferguson. lead people to see what happened to it happened tonight around. the story of mike round was a much deeper story than the story of a particular act of state violence. as i was going to write the proposal and send it out, we were back in new york and eric carter who had been killed -- daniel patz valeo who killed eric gardner was not indicted

and we were marching in the street somewhere back in ferguson met before that because of the non-indictment and before we knew what we knew it we knew what we were on the steward for the next year of really high profile cases. eric turner, mike brown, walter scott, sandra blanton was found hanging from a jail cell. freddie gray who as you have got gray who is yeah to have a copy of the abacus by the chiefs have g5, it better, better. i book tries to get underneath that. mike brown there was public housing and joblessness. freddie gray was about the prosecutor's offices. the way in which public defenders have been disempowered in the public itself has come under assault. sander blamed about the way they are criminalized in their interaction with police officer and mental illness itself is criminalized. we get a deeper issue of nobody

mess is partly about racism, largely in added to the legacy of white supremacy but we can't at any moment did or the fact that all of these things existed in the context of the neoliberal moment that they become a measure for ultimate decider on ultimate court of appeal to adjudicate world views. the market becomes privatization, deregulation. these are the buzzwords we as that become common sense. we are going to have these other things going on. it's really taking each of these cases to get a bigger story of what it means to be nobody in 21st century america. >> i want to ask you some thing. when we were out dependent on corporate media for information, of course black people always knew there was so much violence, but white people didn't understand that. once there is a grassroots control through cell phones, the country was forced to confront this. for white people is very effeminate in. i wonder if her black people at,

typing to constantly be subjected to images over and over again. >> the first intifada one of love by people off the hook too much because on one hand the tech knowledge he kind of forces you to come to terms with it. the black people have been offering these narratives forever. we saw rodney king didn't change beyond that moment. there is a way in which black witnesses. white people did know but now they got technology. you could know what we told you. there is a way in which black storytelling doesn't seem to have the same resonance as the white folk do it. even under the same set of trade that sent him the entire nation has been forced to come to terms. part of freddie gray, trade on wednesday.

some of it was the nation coming to terms with it sheer volume of state violence cases brought to the fore in the act of this and i cannot have it. the technology is for submission to come to terms with it. what they do is mind-boggling at times. we watch these people get shot on tape and we say yeah, that he had read in his system. yeah, but he was suspended. he didn't play well with others in. we come up with these bizarre excuses to excuse what we saw with their own eye. i'm not sure the technologies themselves are enough but there is something incredibly traumatizing about going on twitter and having to witness constantly these reenactments are replaying of the moment where walter scott is killed kobe watch him running away and the police plan to god they are righties are there. watching rodney king tape eaten. it's incredibly traumatizing.

i'm always careful how corporate media exploits these narratives because there was a year but that is all we did. i was grateful we were talking about that stuff and then i'll try and come in suddenly that is more interesting to msnbc and fox news and all these other people. austin sterling and slander case you were big cases recovered for like a week, maybe 40 hours and then we went back to whatever donald trump did or didn't say. media chases money, not stories at this point. i become very frustrated with the lack of coverage in the hyper visibility of the most salacious parts of the cases in the most traumatizing price of these cases. >> you think it is the television entertainment class at a sold-out the company to donald trump? >> y'all just don't want me to be employed. [laughter] >> that's a great question.

no, i don't. ya got that over at cnn? i think we have absolutely sold our souls, all the media to the truck machine. that ridiculous display we saw on thursday. was that thursday -- where he was sent to get a press conference confirming the president of america was in fact american. it's an absurd idea, one of key positions himself as the arbiters of this and should you we are good now. obama laid out in 2011 this is a nonissue. with this solution is search of a problem which is what donald trump does. we sat there for an hour. there were strikes in gaza. there was violence in mexico.

their stats in chicago. there's a million things we could've covered. we watched donald trump as he brought up military generals to talk about how he was able to command the american war machine. nothing to do with the topic. another topic comes up and says guess he's american, let move on. so we were exploited for a full hour. the media was outraged because not because donald trump gave a one-hour press conference. he does that all the time. >> okay then let's stop talking about him. >> or operation we didn't know what the topic was going to be. we didn't care if he exploited us or not. but the bigger question is a question that goes to the book and all of our conversations, which is as a green party supporter and a therapy for joel stein, people say you are the

reason trump is going to win. most white people are voting for donald trump as of now. that the actual issue. it goes back to the question of capital, white supremacy, white nationalism supremacy, white nationalism and those are the issues we need to wrestle with. sometimes the media created donald trump. >> i want to ask you one of our question and then we'll open it up to the audience. black life matters the most exciting social and in the united states. ..

the open casket made me feel that anchored a nation and animated certain that if activism. it made us respond to a certain kind of way. black lives matter begins from aye caramba gets its energy after. it gets is energy afterwards. there are a few things. it wasn't tied to the search. it's the first mainstream antistate, antiracism movement that isn't directly weighted at its home. where you are, even the nation of islam to some extent still

wet itself to some religious institution. this was not anchored in church and wasn't led by clergy. at an increase of such a moment that was incredibly important. they use technology in a way that has not been used before. they're speaking to needs, interests and the to young people were engaged right now. the old school still infect. people would march in the streets after mike brown's death or after trayvon martin staff. black lives matter, it's a hashtag at first. it begins on the internet. i think i was a key part. the energy from occupied reminded people that there's something about horizontal leadership that's more interesting and dynamic than her leadership. having distributed leadership is far more important than having one speaker said up until everybody what they're supposed to do. the leadership model was increasingly interesting to people. the issues were covered work

spans a. they laid the interstate. we would not just to raise. we were saying this race thing is important but we also to talk about gender violence, saying her name. but we have to talk about we are ideally and trans-hud. -- trans-identity. yet to talk with this in a more complex and dynamic way. the issues were out there and we will global in scope. the green defenders, black lives matter, me, a few partisan activists and a couple other people went to palestine and we organize complete flash mob but we also connected with people. we went to jerusalem and we connected. we connected to occupy people. we connected the palestinian citizens of israel in a few

places. my brain is freezing right now. nazareth. but what we did was more interesting is result of connections between the two. we had conversations expand the scope. when i was in a mosque people were like to talk about the purpose of strategy. they talk about what me to occupy streets. when we written ferguson or kids in gaza telling us how to wash the cutest out of our eyes. their kids telling us how to make makeshift gas best. there was a connection across the globe that allowed us to see our struggles as given. they are different but also to see the connection will be to struggle against state violence, struggle against white supremacy, settler colonialism. in the context of that the movement felt more global, more inclusive. i think that's why blm has been so significant to people. >> i just want to ask d. w. one

thing before we go to the audience. marc raise this question of the specter of violence and no, you have been doing a lot of thinking about this the difference between spectral violets and structural violence. >> yeah, you know, i was thinking on paper if you described capitalism to me i expect violence. is competitive. i think we often have unrealistic expectations of capitalism and that might be able to soften or consider things other than money. capitalism considers many. capital is as competitive. the problem for me to state violence. because i think our only hope for addressing malfunctions of capitalism is democracy. democracy isn't acting as democracy right now in so many of the areas you've just eliminated. we continue to conflate capitalism and democracy and i think and to understand those things settled and our democracy to do what he can do t told

capitalism and check, value something other than money, we're not going to arrive at remedies. >> any questions or comments from the items? yes. >> if you want to ask questions please formed a line at the two microphones. >> speaking of democracy and relations institutions, professor hill, how is the justice department taken over the ferguson to the department had an impact on the situation there? >> that's a great question. the stops are down. and 2014 there were, i think municipal court revenue was about $3 million from fines, warns consider the issue it was $500,000. that teach a sense of winners oversight, what happens. the flip of that is less revenue. it's a can't win kind of

situation. i've been back on the road talking with folk. while the stops with him a sense of connection to that unity from the police is not there. people still don't -- the arbiter stops are down. jaywalking stops don't have as much, et cetera, but there's no sense from the community that i've seen been on the ground that there's any heightened sense of safety and protection to the actual function of this digital. the complexion of the police force has also changed because now st. louis has anything to they are more forthcoming into the police department. i think they were for office of color. now there are more. again that's a small problem if you're looking at the longer run. [inaudible]

[inaudible] >> this is nothing but good for you, marc. you know i'm culpable. i'm just so proud -- we don't have all the same, like we disagree on some things. i'm not particularly pro-palestinian. a lot of my people are enslaved by air triteness i'm not really one to take that. other than that though you are just my hero. so many other people have been reading your book you talk about on the phone. we are just so moved at what you've done. you just make me as an african person you just make me so proud that i just want to express that love and credits to you keep doing exactly what your doing

because the world needs. thus i want to say. spent other questions or comments? spirit i want to comment on the debbie's mention of capitalism. capitalism and how the fighting against what we need in terms of equity for all. the fact that it's competitive is one thing, but we tend to constantly drive up the demons to say, you know, we've got to rally about this thing to focus on democracy. the two are completely incompatible. what we need to do is have a completely different system and nobody wants to face that. capitalism eats itself, and that we are beginning to see that. second case in point, ma everybody should be listening to richard wolf.

these are the things you need to look at online because you are not going to get this anywhere in the papers and all that because it's all corporate. we are going down to a dark place now. we have to recapture our intellect, we capture our energy and recognize that it's nothing but complete change is going to make a difference. >> thank you. >> this question is directed to marc. you know, thank you very much. really appreciate the perspective. as a person who is white i feel the sometimes i'm lumped into a category that i think every other white person. is there a way to have a discussion not black versus white, not these two big monoliths what we do with in a different way? >> that's an interesting question. i would love to get your feedback on this as well.

i think, i think there's a complexity, we don't ever centralize any group of people. there's not like cingular world that combined all white folk, black though, all folk, working-class folk et cetera. individual choice will have some level of agency. i would agree with you. you could be as radical, progressive as anyone and you hear white people see this for why people think this can white people feel this. i can see how that could be frustrating. at the same time if we understand whiteness in the context of power, whiteness in the context of privilege, in the privilege of social control, and consider. i think there are way shift to be lumped in. because you were afforded the benefits and spoils of whiteness, the privilege of whiteness. to the extent you give us back for can see those things i think you're on the right side of the issue. i would say that same thing about straight though, the same

thing about males, men, et cetera. i think would always tell folk who are engaged in this struggle is that the best thing the white allies can do in an antiracist struggle is be good listeners and the great organizers in their own community. oftentimes, quick example. we were down in new york on this eric garner thing in we were working. it was an aggressive progressive white men who were with us marching down the highway. before we got to the highway the start point in science and taking things to the black people like don't do that. [laughter] the police are going to come. they're not taking you white guys out of the crowd, right? [laughter] they would like you need to stop with the respectability politics. [laughter] so poorly was the way they were engaging these black women who were leading the march which we found troublesome. second was the way in which they

felt to recognize how even though they were progressive, and destroying respectability and challenging authority to school. i don't mind destroying state proper. at a certain level that's fine by just like they could recognize that despite the fact they were down for the cost and with us and did the energy and politics, the white is still for them access to protection we didn't have. when they see stop with your respectability, that's a convenient position. if they could have reimagined themselves in that place, willing to be more humble, listened differently and also not just tell us about respectability logic. maybe go back out and talked a group of white people the nick sims latest shot, they don't say their pants should of been a. i appreciate them wearing i can't breathe t-shirt. you can breeze. what a black lives matter t-shirt. that kind of move is far more impactful and far more significant to the people who will see.

those types, but i sure frustration, i understand that we all get locked into things were not sometimes but i think that might be the price we pay for this type of freedom work. >> let me follow up. i understand what you're saying. but how about just middle of the road people who see certain things and say that's wrong what happened to eric garner? they saw the on the. they know that was wrong and these are people that they may not have the time to create the street. they're raising families -- >> with all due respect, but i don't have time, i'm busy. spin they have their own causes may be. what i'm saying is they see the wrong, no question they see the wrong. they may get other stuff with allies that the other causes to deal with. kids who are sick, parents were sick, they got to devote their time to care for people but they know what they see is wrong, okay? and i think there's a lot of people like that in this world, particularly in new york city, you know?

i just feel that, how do we help the cause and make those people feel, hey, we support you? >> i guess i'm not that committed to making those feel good about -- >> no, not feeling good. not feeling good but the thing is they may support you. they really may support you. >> thank you. speak i'd like to chime in because a couple things. to that last point, engagement, you just have to find a way to trick more coffee. the last couple of black lives matter is rounds i would do, we do with my three year old daughter and i didn't have a babysitter. we just went and actually thinks in my life that i could use as a reason, not excuses, but reasons to not pashtun civic engagement has gone by the wayside. i interviewed this guy named daniel for a no history of one block in brooklyn for new york

magazine last fall. he was called the mayor of his block. lack guy, he was talking to me about the 77th blackouts and experiences that night. i was talking to about his experiences in neighborhood, and he said something to me i can't get out of my head, i never will. he said, an athlete out of work. black people are the most f'ing forgiving people in the world. the most f'ing are getting people and were. the way looked at me and said, eating in the real way. i walk down the street with a wife and daughter sometimes. people seem and i see looks i get because i'm that guy. and i am not have to accept that. i have no place to sort of get my underwear in a wad because somebody's give me a sideways look. i have to set the context i'm stepping into. the most salient point after you accept the context you're stepping into is to infect to which he said, listen. there is not one more important

word than listen. people walk into new neighborhoods, new schools and they say the school is broken. here's what we can to fix it. know, sit and listen fo for a while. people have been there know what the problems are and they will gladly tell you what the problems are. i think listening is essential essential starting point accepting the content you in. this is the historic context we are in. our parents and grandparents, my grandparents did things they shouldn't have done. we're trying to help get past that. >> we have two minutes left. any debris? >> so i wanted to see if you expand a little bit on the education issue. i feel like education and equality and specifically the ship school segregation is also something that conversation changed over the past year. i was just wondering if you could sort of see what you've been hearing from people as to discuss the schools and school segregation in general and kind of we see that our station going

in the future? >> one since each. [laughter] >> wow. and i have a new book coming out january which gets at some of the stuff. and i'm a gentrifier. what we're seeing is the resegregation of schools. we are almost moving back to where we were which isn't a problem itself. i just magically -- that's much more about resources and resource allocation. part of what the project is done, it's reality the social resource and it's taken people otherwise would not be in the schools, put them in the schools but creating a significant back within schools in terms of distribution of teachers, type of curriculum resources. what i'm saying is a real treat of schools, not in the big picture but also inside the schools because, i'm just using this is one example but a host of other issues that are making it happen including the charter school movement, oscilloscope

school choice movement and other approaches to solving. >> i would just to check out still waters in the storm. it's a good or position in bushwick that helps the ecuadorian kids and latino kids who don't have other school resources and stephen dick iran's it is good articulated on the website how he would love to do expedition in schools that have minorities in it, experimentation we would never do with the white schools. we have begin historic areas where trying to correct but that's the biggest or the quickest shorthand i could give you. check out still waters in the storm. >> thank you. if we did say our names again and the of our new books. marc? >> minus marc lamont hill and my book is called nobody, "casualties of america's war on the vulnerable" from ferguson to flight and beyond. >> i'm p. diddy gibson, "the edge becomes the center" to advance their shoulder and my

book is the mine, witness to a lost imagination. thank you all so much. thank you. [applause] yes, the people will decide at table eight. -- signing at table eight. [inaudible conversations] >> you are watching booktv's live coverage of the brooklyn book festival. the next of the panel will begin in about 10 minutes or so. that's on politics. you hear from authors mychal denzel smith, sarah jaffe and sarah leonard. live coverage continues in about

10 minutes. >> here's a look at some books are being published this week.

>> i think the trend has been clearly in the wrong direction on both sides. the congress has not been thus

in its responsibilities, which has forced at least this president to do more things by executive order. there's no question that they should come together and pass immigration reform legislation. [applause] >> and they were not that far apart. and yet the president and this congress would not sit down and talk it through. so in the book i emphasize it doesn't take, to change this it doesn't take but one thing. one person that is willing to be a leader and step up. whether it's congressman or senator. paul ryan has the potential to do that kind of thing as a speaker. i have a lot of faith in them. or a president to say i worked all the time with bill clinton. we didn't agree philosophically. he was a character but we talked

to a lot of times i didn't want to talk. he called one night at 2:00 in the morning. to focus on trish's side of the bed. she picks up the phone, and said, this is the president, handed over to me and i start saying yes, sir, mr. president. we look into that. yes, sir. i hung up, but by. i had to go back. she said what did he want? i said, i don't know. [laughter] something about central america. but here's the plan. we talked all the time. we worked through all kinds of things, budget issues, tax issues, defense issues, safe drinking water, portability of insurance, you name it. did we agree? no. a lot of times we pressed each other. we would get bad but we can keep it that was true with reagan. we met with president making just about every tuesday morning that congress was in session. at 9:00. sometimes it was bipartisan, sometimes images republicans.

so this trend of not communicating is a recent phenomenon. it started developing with the george w., even though he tried very hard to get immigration reform. and by the way, i said to mississippians, look, immigration one of the big issues in this campaign. if we' we've done what we shoule done in 2007 we would not be here now. immigration reform is not just about illegal immigrants. it's illegal immigrants. we've got people who want to coming to america that is something to offer they can't give you. one time i had two doctors from canada that wanted to come to picayune mississippi. underserved medical area, two doctors, highly qualified. you would've thought i was trying to sneak in saddam hussein. it was hard. it started with bush. i thought coming in 2006, and now this president and this congress just don't talk. that's why the deficit worries me. more than ever.

because now we're about -- i worry about my grandchildren it's about the next generation to this is a booker in congress and the president are not dealing with it. so the next president, all hillary would have to do it she's president would be to follow the rules up to a degree of president bill clinton. because he did meet with us and he did talk with us. or if it's trump, somebody, some of us have got to reach out and say, mr. president, you say you're going to change washington. the first thing you need to do to change it is to begin to communicate a there are four things you need to make washington more. number one is comedic asian. if you don't talk you ain't going to get nothing done. real simple. number two, you have to develop a chemistry. clinton made me nervous but we have a relationship. it was a chemistry that made it possible for us to turn that into action. the other thing we've lost is

vision. what in the hell are we really for any more? republicans or democrats. do we really know? do we really know what either side would actually do if there in the majority in the congress and at the white house? and last but not least, i've seen it, leadership. one man or one woman that will face, you know, the slings and arrows of the media and say we are going to develop an energy policy in america. we are going to all of the above. we are going to do it. so it could change on a dime. but it's going to take a person of strength because i've seen it. washington is a tough place. i wrote a high road and i got back down into the valley, the best thing about being in about a chilling when you get back up how you can do things better.

it can change. i don't see it right now. i don't see it with mitch mcconnell. i don't see it with nancy pelosi. i do see hope in paul ryan. i don't know what to expect from chuck schumer who will probably be the senate democratic leader. he smarter than harry reid. if ever bit as partisan as harry reid, but there's one difference. these transactional. you can do business. they don't see it that way in new york city but they understand it. that is some hope out there, but all begins in the white house. leadership begins in the white house. we've got to get a different tempo coming out of that place. place. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org.

>> booktv is backlog at the brooklyn book festival being held at the brooklyn law school in new york. it's starting now an author panel on politics. this is live coverage. >> [inaudible conversations]

>> [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> good morning, everybody? welcome. thanks for joining us. before we get started, well, first off, i'm editor of

magazine and host of podcast we are about to start, i hope you subscribe to it. i want to let you know that immediately following the panel, all three of our fabulous authors will be out front of the building signing books, you can buy books there. i think barns&noble will be selling them and they will be at signing table h. so look for them there. we have with us three really smart people sarah who is the author of necessary trouble. michael denzel smith, invisible man has the whole world watching and sarah lane adder, the future we want, radical ideas for the new century. i am pleased to have them all as my colleague at the nation magazine so this will be a fun conversation. welcome the three of you. >> thank you. >> thanks.

>> as a note, i want to tell everybody that i go by new york's best seller author mychal denzel. >> i stand corrected. [laughter] >> best selling author and you're going to start that one. >> i walked into that one. >> big overarching question of this panel and what i want to hear you start with, we are at this moment in our politics and have been for, i think, a little bit now where the outside is defining the inside, where there's, you know, it's not just bernie and donald trump, even the ultimate insider hillary clinton to be in her campaign to be with undocumented youth.

in many parts of politics, marginal ideas and all of you are writing about that. i want to hear you fist give us an idea, what brings us to that moment, if you agree that that's the moment we are in? >> urch -- uh. i certainly think there's a level of influence we are not accustomed to for manager an -- marginalized voices. on the right it is more true of the left. this is what they wanted, right?

i'm not sure that we on the left have galvanize that sort of energy just yet to push our center simply because of the opposition, right, so every time that we could -- we can push what happens is that the right goes further right and reactionary and sets off this chain reaction whereby the left gets scared and panic and they're like no, we can't listen to the bernie people right now because look at what they're i think to on the other side, we have to hold off the catastrophe, you know. that's -- we will send this from a tail sprin and spiral that we won't recover from so retrieve

back to the center, retrieve back to a hillary clinton because those policies are safe and comfortable. but i would say that there is more influence right now than we we are accustomed to and what pushes us to the center grassroots movement and a lot came from the obama era in which obama himself selling and representing some type of hope and change with that never manifesting but also a solution with the democratic party after it's like 30 plus years of shifting to triagulation and clintonian politician and that's

what happened when you have people that were sold on that idea and see over and over again how entrenched power within these halls. they take up the other means by which going through politics which is getting on the streets and organizing and you see that on the different fronts and also the belief that someone like an obama was amenable to hearing these concerns helps as well in that you believe you can push this person, that the climb isn't going to be a steep -- as difficult, but what i'm hoping is that we understand that even with someone who is like supposedly sympathetic, movement is necessary and grinding is going to have to take place no matter who we elect president. >> so the grassroots movements

that mychal refers to are the topic, beyond politics, i hear mychal's point, we are aren't at democratic party certainly in presidential level seeing outside candidacy. beyond electoral politics, who gets centered in it, do you think we are in a different place? >> i've been on strikes on this election because it's just been annoying and there's a lot of other stuff going on in the world that isn't getting covered or isn't getting covered nearly as much as it might be if we weren't hanging on every word that donald trump says. yeah, a tons of things happening. the way things get changed in this country, i mean, there are many ways, my favorite example

since we are in example, cuomo fought for minimum raise. >> it doesn't his idea? >> you had a movement that started in new york, started fight for 15 protest that i went to was right down the street from here. we should be real that he was under investigation and looking for some friends and these things were and now we have an increase in minimum wage that will get eventually get to $15 for new york city and most of down state. >> something that was unthinkable even three years ago. >> i think that when we look at -- yesterday was the 15th anniversary of occupied wall street, where did those people go, what are they doing? well, they're all over the place

, so, you know, that also managed to push the administration to at least ask for a temporary halt on construction, part of construction, they're still constructing other parts of it and meanwhile the protestors there still -- still locking down the equipment because the temporary hold is not -- it's not a win completely. >> before since you mentioned standing rock, can you give us a sense of what you saw there and what's -- this is, again, something that we really didn't see coming -- >> yeah. >> in terms of the successful organizing and pushback in one of the largest gatherings of native american leaders. >> it's huge. >> what happened there? >> i was looking on the train this morning because i'm working on the article in this subject, i was looking at my notes in interviews and interviewed a

woman who was involved in the keystone excel, some of you saw where they had tepees and horses and the networks started then and the people came together as then and she looked at old treaties between her people and other nations and said, we need to revive the treaties to actually protect the environment to stop these pipelines going through our land. so this has been building sort of the way we don't see it until things explode and there's a camp of 5,000 people in it spreading on the valley and it's kind of amazing and you don't see it, you go downhill and there's this camp and it just spreads out in this valley around the river and there's tee pees and tents and so many flags leading down because flags of

nations, there was ecuador visiting. when you look at the fact that all of the people are coming together, they're not coming together about the election, they're coming together to stop this thing by any means necessary that's going to go through their land and potentially, apipe line that's no joke to the colonial pipeline just ruptured. the colonial pipeline that just ruptured proving well point that are not safe the run under drinking water. >> no. sarah leonard, do you accept my premise that we are at a unique moment where the outsiders are driving the narrative in many cases, and if so how do we get there. >> a great question. i do think the outsiders are driving driving the narrative, i'm not sure that the outside is

changing how power works in big impartial ways yet. we are where we are because ib quality is -- inequality is rampant. we have seen since recession a sort of weak recovery, most people are not actually where they were before the recession and so that feeling of stag-- stagnation promotes need and an site, at the same time congress has been unable to pass anything for the last several years. a ton of need. and with occupy people started to take that need and understand it socially so it was no longer i screwed up.

i majored in english, i don't have a job it's my fault or, you know, i got sick, i have all of this medical debt but doesn't seem like anyone has medical debt and i must have screwed up. instead you saw projects like the tumbler that ran through occupy where people would post pictures with debt on it. this much money, sometimes it would have their story and people started understanding, there's a systematic problem here. actually, you know, there's a trillion dollars of medical debt in this country. it's not just me. sorry, student debt. i don't know the specific horrendous number of medical debt. rest assured. so people started understanding this socially, you also saw a lot of kids who otherwise would not have had experience

confronting police for the first time, maybe law enforcement is not totally on my side if they're going to disrupt my protest over debt by putting me in jail overnight. or they're going to pepper-spray me. when occupy sort of wined down black lives matter and movement for black lives became and became vital and sort of active social movement in the country and you had a moment where actually people who had been involved in occupy, most of them, understood that it was their job to just get behind this and maybe didn't know enough but they were start enough to think, the struggle with police, i know something about police. these movements go in waves and cascade and move on each other,

i think bernie sanders was uniteration of this sort of sentiments that inequality is unhinged and affects people of color disproportionately, affects to students that thought they were doing the right thing, et cetera. often people talk about bernie sanders and this sort of panic way. we had a great candidate and now he's gone and what do we do next. well, people were on the move before bernie sanders and after bernie sanders. one of the things inspiring to me, you took a candidate that was pretty good, radical by american electoral standards and instead of everyone just getting in line, actually, specially the movement for black lives challenged him at every turn and occasionally took his mic, a socialist candidate with a better criminal justice platform and that was great.

and so people have been exercising power in the productive ways using the election as a stage for ideas that we have been developing rather than as some culmination of the sorts of movements we have been working with. so i think inequality beginning to get organized, this is a very good movement to be in and exciting but i don't think we know yet, you know, what the next stage or even what will happen after this election. >> sarah, you said this too, each of these moments, each of these movements come up and the people there don't just show up and occupying black lives matter in a way that a lot of folks don't do, in many cases we have the same individuals and

networks operating across the movements, this is for all of you to chime in and help us understand how that is. >> yeah, you're looking at me i so i jump in on that, my favorite quote organizer, she said occupy was like a dandilion and when you think about occupy, so occupy was still a heavily white movement. not entirely white and erase committed people of color and trying to make it less white but still pretty white. i was talking to a woman, occupy didn't seem like it was for me and when black lives matter, this drew me in, this was about my problems, this is about my life and, you know, you the combination of people that have been in motion of something and new people that are drawn into

something that they hadn't been before so there are new people who weren't part of the movements but were saying finally, you know, this is -- this is for me and those people then can see the next thing, whatever that next thing might be. >> mychal, i want to ask you one of the things that interested in black lives matter and racial movement overall is how much of the leadership both in terms of organizational leadership but also energy people, individual humans who were stepping up are young queer people of color and who both in terms of their sexual identity or gender identity are people who in previous eras would have let that part of themselves be in the -- be recessed but different

part of the movement and i know that you have written out and talked about how you relate to that space as a male who has traditional, more privileged presentations. talk about how this movement is different in that way and how you really took it -- >> well, it's a rejection of the sort of politics that define movements in this space simply because it is a movement that centers the idea of liberation, right, like it is not about some sort of false of sense of empowerment. it is about how to we dismantle structures that oppress people, how do we move the most margin marginalized to the center and how we do that is through an assertion of our own identity, by saying forthrightly, yes, i am a transqueer person of color,

that's meaningful to me because you have to understand, as a rejection of respectability politics takes root and also influence of intersectionalty and understanding how and why different identities experience different forms of oppression and simultaneously takes root, the idea that then the spokes people for your movement can speak to every single issue even if they don't embody the identities that we believe to -- or that are experiencing those different forms of oppression falls by the waste -- waist side and we have come to see what -- we have come to see that the replication of forms of

oppression within movements weakness those movements. movement for black lives being heavily influenced and organized and the intellectual work being done by queer black women is no accident and you know their names and they're at the forefront and explicit rejection of the way in which movements have operated in the past because it's a necessity, what it does it broadens and we are not talking about when -- when the focus is on mass incarceration and the focus is on black men being arrested and em -- imprisoned we are not

talking about police apollition. when we include in that narrative of black member being killed by police, black women being sexually assaulted by police or transwomen for simply existing and sending to a prison to don't line up with their own gender identity and being further harassed and subjected to violence within those systems. it's not not a matter of one body being treated by the system, it is all these vulnerable bodies. and so now we are asking questions about the root, we are asking questions about the nature of the system.

if nature of policing is one of -- it's not a matter of personal bigotry on the job, black male bodies, once we -- when we broaden that out, the politics necessarily become more radical and we, okay, how do we imagine this world without police and without prisons. and that's the effect that -- this is desired effect of ensuring that all of these voices are heard in a more democratized space. >> you have to. if you're a queer woman of color, it is impossible for you the criminal justice system as

one problem. it's possible for you to understand economic justice it's just about access to -- to social -- to welfare. it's impossible for you to understand these things in silence and so you end up with a different movement. sarah, on that point, one of the core ideas of your collection, of your book is we are asking the fundamentally kinds of questions, what are -- what are the fundamentally questions that we are now asking in your mind that we weren't asking five years ago, ten years ago? >> sure, i will say among the people included in the question is mychal, in a sort of round table with some letters from the movement more black lives talk about policing and incarceration.

and it's often the essay i get asked about first, actually because people will be so this is a radical book, you want to get rid of the police, yeah, okay, we can start with that, sure. it's obviously the most sort of jolting to people and feels radical on its face because people are not used to thinking thinking in abolitionist terms that you are talking about, although the conversation walks the reader through pretty well. so one of the reasons we produce the book in the way that we did, essentially the book functioned as a socialist platform for the world we would want to see and some of the things are more obviously immediately actionable universal child care and some of them involve socializing the economy. what we wanted to do was take

the energy that was around occupy, for example and turn the types of rage and dissatisfaction that people felt into the sort of things that we might want and to show specifically that the problems that we were confronting in terms of debt and bad jobs and no jobs and racist policing, was not because we didn't know how to do anything else but we had made a political choice and so we we wanted to lay out and actually relatively practical terms how we could make different choices so we took on our sort of world by sphere and, of course, we can't do everything, but we looked at the environment, for example, and we thought what does a deep le redistributionist look to the environment, because when we tend to talk about the

environment in the media, well, we all need to do our part, stop using plastic bags, the fact is, honestly, it doesn't matter if people stop using plastic bags u the matter is what people own the massive producers of the garbage that's destroying the planet. we want a plant to address and we talk about ways that people can be paid to do no work. i think everyone should be able to eat. >> if we should point out here -- [laughter] >> we decided to take on a lot of the problems that were widely discussed and think about how we would get more to the root of

them and in every case that has a redistributionist framework and the way we think about it is taking a value that everyone professes to share which is democracy and extending it beyond, you know, just the voting both to the economy and workplace and creating a great deal more freedom. we have been, of course, told and in many cases raised to believe that american capitalism is this great engine of freedom and as it turns out it's hard to make and very hard to be political too when you're in that situation. when you talk to people, when you go to town meeting, when you sit on school board, if you are just struggling to make ends

meet. , if you don't have sick leaf, if we want to think about freedom and democracy, we have to give people their time back. we brought in writer that is really knew something about each of these realms, that's what sort of we wanted to offer. >> it's a notable thing to say. capitalism is open for debate. >> isn't that fun? >> even five years ago that we would be having a conversation about whether or not capitalism is up for debate. young people have a favorable

view of socialism than capitalism and not sure that everyone entered the poll knows what that means, it's just expression of dissatisfaction and there's a lot of space to define it. >> go ahead. >> yeah, i date this and i start it had book in 2008 with the 2008 financial crisis because it was the moment when whether we liked it or not capitalism was collapsing and you saw, you know, i have this list in here of, you know, articles in the economist that were capitalism at bay and book titles by people that are libertarian economists and things that were like brought capitalism to its knees, this was a thing that you could suddenly you talked about where before that, not only the thing that made us free but the only thing. there was nothing else. socialism was dead, the soviet

union collapsed and no alternatives and that consensus sort of spectacularly fell apart when capitalism sort of spectacularly fell apart. the 2008 is not over, it's certainly not over if you're in greece and most of brooklyn. >> that's right. >> and so it's taken a while for us to get here and we are still only starting like sarah said to be able to define what might come next and what that looks like but like at each turn it surprised me and i'm like already looking for this stuff. like i didn't think occupy was going to be much of anything, i didn't think that a guy that was called a socialist would get 12 million votes, wow, there are more people like me, this is great. >> in standing rock a couple of

weeks ago. >> right. >> mychal mentioned the obama era and disenchantment that some felt as part of what's happening now. generally to all of you, let's deal with the obama era here. you know what i mean, there's an undeniable thing that is a historic break with the past that barack obama has been in the white house for past eight years. it's undeniable that has -- i can remember just -- it was about -- at the beginning of his administration when i was sitting on a brooklyn festival panel and i could barely get out of the room for the people who really disliked what i had to

say about it. >> was that the one with neomi klein, i think i was there? >> it was. so we have been through a complicated process if you are somewhat from the left in the movements with the obama era, what does it all add up to? i know it's a huge question but i want to hear it. >> we are supposed to answer that question 20 years. [laughter] >> we will come back and judge your answers in 20 years. >> that's a great idea. >> sarah, i'm going force you to start. i'm calling names. >> oh, my goodness. we can't separate the obama era with the financial crisis. that defined obama's presidency, right, the election up until lehman brothers died, barack

obama beat hillary clinton because he did not vote for the iraq war, that's an important thing to say, we had an explosion in new york city yesterday and we are probably going see both hillary clinton and donald trump ramp up calls for i don't know what bombing somebody. trump has already called for bombing somebody. that's real. lee man -- leihman brothers collapsed and so what obama had to do is stabilize an economy and the last major thing that passed congress was the stimulus bill and affordable care act and was already that fight. i don't know what the obama presidency looks like if the

economy did not meltdown in 2008. i don't know if more would have gotten done, even less would have gotten done. it's really hard to judge those things separately for me. rise of donald trump, people are struggling, yes, but people don't like having a black president and that's, you know, -- yeah, i don't know how to sum up the last eight years. it's been kind of a mess. >> look, some have argued that part of donald trump is that the movements have pushed people too far. the assertion of a set of rights and responsibilities around race and around gender has pushed the

country too far and donald trump supporters are responding. >> yeah, i mean, if like a demand for basic humanity is too far. [laughter] >> you know what i mean? i do believe that what donald trump represents is the natural course of backlash in american history to some form of progress. we can quibble all day and absolutely the barack obama is a rehash of centrist democratic politics and we need to deal with that and part of how we evaluate his legacy is going to be dictated by who is president next if it is a continuation of the barack obama presidency through hillary clinton or it is like the donald trump presidency or mike pence presidency, i

guess. >> they're equally fighting. >> it is -- i mean, that is going to shape the way we view this era based on sort of a nos -- nastalgia for not crazy if that's the case. where was i going? but essentially to say, yes, it's a form of backlash to nominal amount of progress being made that we have to understand then that -- that when that backlash comes, the reaction can't be -- for me at least, i feel like the reaction can't be to retreat to the familiar and that's what hillary clinton is representing here and that's what i think is the continuation

then shape us in this way that we have -- those of us who sit on the left evaluate in a certain way as oppose today a dominant nar they've will essentially tell us that we were saved from total -- and barack obama himself. how are we going to deal with that. i'm not sure. the fact that he was president and that we were on the brink of collapse. american capitalism was in the brink of collapse and he stewarted the ship whether it's deserved or not.

we don't want to deal with the fact that there's really not any movement being built to address american militarism, we don't have anything that's directly addressing american militarism policy in the way we kill overseas constantly and how obama has continued that legacy. we are not going to -- in the ways we are going to make excuses for obama on issues of racial justice simply because of the era, he has faced the republican congress and due to existence of a black man in the highers -- highers land. what were we supposed to do?

he couldn't get 60 votes in the senate, all the things that you want to pass, blah, blah, blah, and i think that if we have a hillary clinton there's more of an opening to critique the obama era because that legacy, it will be continued and continue to see the failures of it, right, but if it's the other, bring back barack obama, please. something i know how to deal with. >> that was the bush years, right? that's the problem with what happened with the antiwar movement is it became sort of we have to beat bush, we have to get rid of bush, stop this guy from being bush or keep sarah palin away, you know, but like we -- when it all becomes about the culmination of our movement is who we elect as president, that's just such a shallow politics and we saw what

happened with it. and yeah, i think that the danger of retreating to the safe in this moment is even buyer because a lot of people are really mad at the safe. when you go to -- i have been traveling too much. i was in indiana not too long ago, you say clinton in indiana, they hear nafta. they don't hear somebody who is going to be better than donald trump, they hear nafta, there used to be a factory that i worked at and now it's not here anymore and donald trump is in there talking to them about trade and he doesn't have a plan to do anything about it. he's not going to fix it and blame it all on immigrant workers who also got screwed by nafta, but when you -- when your answer to the problems is somebody who is literally running on her experience of having been part of the 90's, you to think about how that feels to people who got screwed by that 90's administration. >> you're not going get off the hook, sarah.

first i want to tell you, so what if -- can we say, though, about the obama era as well, okay, so he's a continuation of a set of new liberal ideas that have dominated the democratic party for too long k you not also argue that there's something about his presidency and the fact of his presidency that also helped inspire the movements, right? that there's a change of political consciousness amongst black people at least about what is possible and what -- and what they can demand, what we can demand? i mean, is that a nonsense thing to say? >> i don't think that people are saying in the streets, because of barack obama was elected, we see radical justice reforms in our time. i don't think that that's it.

i think that the limitations of representation of politics were put on full display during the obama era and so when you see that even if we get a black president in office, things don't change in a way, then we need to be out in the streets and we need to be organizing and we can't put all of our energy behind a charismatic black figure anymore. it needs to be full frontal democracy in the way in which we conceive of politics, then that is the inspiration. it's not necessarily obama himself, i think that obama has certainly inspired some to a degree to get involved in the electoral process and run for office in a way that he we haven't seen before, but, again, what we see within the realm the concessions in order to be elected to these offices,

particularly the way in which like districts have been gerrymandered and the way, you know, money rules politics in the way that's like -- it's simply, unfathomable for people to be able to run because who has access to that much capital. i mean, so if you are black and you want to achieve what obama has achieved, you have to follow the obama play book and what does that mean? that means the continuation of those same things and that's like the representation politics progress but progress in the name of what? >> yeah, i've been a bad moderator and i want to get the questions in. >> somebody made the statement that democracy is a universally accepted value. that may be debatable but i want

to address that concept in a global sense. if democracy means in turkey massive support for erdogan and russia putin, for that matter, in america trump because this election season isn't over yet, so address the issue of democracy versus globalized directions in suppressing that whether it's trade deals or militarism, where is the limit of democracy and to what degree does that reinforce borders rather than tear down borders. >> democracy up for debate or globalism for debate.

>> now destroyed war-torn countries and this has not been a successfully democracy. i think in this you need to consider the difference between being a person on the left and being a state. if you are a person on the left you have allies in other countries who are engaged in struggle for democracy, human rights, you have a lot of struggles in eastern europe right over reproductive rights because of the rise of right wing there. you work with those people. that is what it means to support democracy in a more global way. you make yourself an ally the same way you make yourself an ally in america of other people who have freedom struggles that are not the same that affects you directly. and so, you know, you can see in

turkey among others academics are being persecuted and there are letters and calls for support circulating within the united states which i have signed and you can too and you can do further work to help people, this is very different from supporting political regimes in the united states that seek to use democracy as some sort of veil to allow for violence interventions and colonial activities abroad. it's important to know that there are different ways of being a partner in the greater world to democracy. i guess when it comes to someone like trump, i don't think what democracy means is just whoever gets the largest amount of votes today, we should all get in line with because obviously that's what the people want. no, democracy is a collective of

thinking people who have opinions about what is right and wrong and you fight that fight. i do think that one of the scary things of what we are looking at in this election is we have on the one hand hillary who has been very hawkish during the obama era and on the other side somebody who is wildly unpredictable and on the one hand thinks the u.s. should not be spending any money abroad and on the other hand thinks that we should like carpet-bomb isis, whatever that might mean. so we have two not great choices when it comes to foreign policy and as, i think, michael was pointing out, we isn't that true the democratic debates, so hillary said her thing and they said, bernie, what's the greatest historical inspiration for your foreign policy and he said, you know, there's this great quote, the only thing we

have to fear is fear itself. i'm like that's your foreign policy? that's where you went with that? that sort of was all he did with that. [laughter] >> apart from asserting that kissinger would not drive foreign policy which i'm sure we can all be great for but it's a foreign policy and not made merely rejecting kissinger and it became clear that, in fact, the left as it existed in the electoral realm did not have a clear position on foreign policy and did not have a sense on how you engage with struggles for democracy abroad and, of course, many people would make the argument that perhaps it is not the job of the american state to do that. but this is a debate that is very live on the left and which i think is unresolved and became obviously so in this.

[applause] >> signing on table h out front, you can buy the books there and you can buy the books across the street in nation books, but come say hi to them. [inaudible conversations] >> where are we going? >> i don't know. [inaudible conversations]

>> we are watching book tv in brooklyn festival in new york and it's a conversation about digital privacy. [inaudible conversations] >> and we are live today at the brooklyn book festival. as you can see the two authors that were in the first panels today are signing books outside of the brooklyn law school. this is the site of all of our panels for today and if you're away from your tv today and can't make it, you can check on facebook here. we will be posting c-span's live

videos on facebook and check for behind the scenes videos on twitter and instagram. while the next panel is happening right now inside the building, that is a panel on politics with mychal smith and sarah leonard. while they are talking about inside the book festival is in full swing outside. it's right across the street. there are hundreds of authors, publishers. it seems like the rain is holding off in brooklyn, which is good. if you're in new york city, definitely come by. check out this festival.

all of the events are free and book tv is covering it live at the brooklyn law school inside the moot courtroom. [inaudible conversations] >> everybody's tents are all set up. a big crowd already out here this morning. we are going to be live all day today. next up privacy panel. and then after that we are going to have conversations on terrorism, political parties and elections and military and war, immigration and conversation on

pandemics. the street festival, like i said, is in full swing right now. we are outside the brooklyn law school. [inaudible conversations] >> a full schedule of all of our events. there's a wolf. [laughter] >> full scheduled events, you can keep checking facebook for videos throughout the day. [inaudible conversations]

>> not too hot out here which is nice for a book festival. a lot of people and events happening throughout brooklyn. check out this author talk over here. [inaudible] >> main stage of the brooklyn book festival right here.

[inaudible] >> live from the brooklyn book festival today. outside the brooklyn festival. this is the main stage right here. i'm taking you behind the scenes . again it's a little bit gray, a beautiful day today. book tv is live on c-span2 all day from the brooklyn law school . right now a panel on politics happening and you can watch that at booktv.org, c-span.org and also on c-span2 on air right now .

and at noon the next panel will begin and that's on digital privacy. keep cheque more on brooklyn book festival here in new york city. we will be live all day long. >> here is a preview of some of the books in the ball. bill o'reilly and doug are releasing another volume on war new york times columnist shares thoughts on 2016 presidential election in the year of voting dangerously. eagle forum founder along with ed martin and brent make a conservative argument for supporting donald trump and

two-time pulitzer prizer, after math in american revolutions. some books being published in october, supreme court justice greenberg and also coming up in october, let me tell you about jasper, latest from dana parino, former white house secretary and cohost of five news the 5. gary young reports on gun violence in another day in the death of america and historian gives an account of rivalry between president truman and macarthur. being released in november senator bernie sanders recalls his campaign for the democratic party presidential nomination in our revolution. fox news host megan kelly looks

back on her life and career in journalist for settle for more. freedman looks at the speed for which the world is changing and thank you for being late. john edgar, african studies and literary arts profess o at brown university profiles lewis, father of civil rights martyr. ..