professing your faith, i don't want to give you my skill or expression, then that's what it is about. this reporter went out of her way and went to this really little, you know, really tinny small town, it was one of those small town where is you are sr. the store front windows and people park out in the middle of the street and went in and she saw some crosses on the wall of this pizza shop and thought here it is and walked inside cristal who is the daughter of the proprietor was at the cash register that day and asked her, well, would you serve -- would you caitor a gay wedding and the weird thick is that there was no actually service done, no goods or money was exchanged or anything like that, a hypothetical question and cristal said well, we serve customers every day but the act of a wedding ceremony goes against what we believe as christians so we probably wouldn't participate in that. i was thinking the reporter was going to a quicktrip or something next, can i buy fudge

browns and stack them up for a cake, it was weird that they went to a pizza shop and i wrote about this too because i have gay friends and gay family members. we would never cater a wedding with pizza. i'm not throwing shade on anybody who ever has, do these people not understand, our neighbors throw a block party, gay neighbors, fabulous and they had bottle service. no one is going to cater their wedding with pizza for crying out loud. anyway, that became a big story and this restaurant was all of a sudden at the center of all of this maddening debate. they had the close the shop and blinds. they were getting death threats all of this for a hypotheticalcal question. it was maddening because not only was it something that never actually happened, there was no discrimination that took place except discrimination of christian of pizza shop.

take that variable out of it is who owns your labor, can the government come in and say, no, no, you actually don't get to determine how you work and when you work and who you provide services too, we do, exactly. that's exactly it. it's about association which we already had supreme court decisions on this and so the thing about it is you're talking about servitude. this is about servitude and people are too involved and engaged, and that's the scary thing about it. you had the reporter that went to the small town and sought someone out to prove a narrative that she was building, that's

exactly why people have just had it. >> you can watch this and other program online at booktv.org. >> here is a look at some upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. next saturday september 24th, book tv is live from the 16th annual national book festival here in washington, our all-day coverage includes author talks about prize winners u authors bob, ken burns and representative john lewis, up next the southern festival of books in nashville, tennessee from october 14th through 16th and also the boston book festival followed by the wisconsin book festival which takes place at madison public library. for more information about the book fairs and festivals incident book tv will be covering and to watch previous festival coverage click the book fairs tab on our website

booktv.org. >> i think that when you -- you say that the people of black lives, they're very angry and you have to -- it i'm sorry to me that what one might do is not look at a moment in time but look at the evolution and why these things occur. the black lives matter young people have -- feel as the poem that you read from langston. they have seen comrades shot for nothing. the fernando castille, had a baby in the car, i don't know how you can justify that. we had so many cases -- >> i appreciate you, thank you. >> on your side but on the police side, i do understand they are the people we call when we are in trouble, we need law enforcement, et cetera u but we

do not need folks who have a license to kill because they have a badge and too much of that has happened. you have a little-ole man in oklahoma. man can't hardly walk straight and they have given tim a taiz e -- taser and gun. >> i mistook my taser for a gun. i haven't had my hands on either one of them. [laughter] >> to everybody's relief, i'm sure. but in any case, you to look at origin, they went to go get the most racist police officers they could to collide with the black panther party.

a prescription for disaster. >> you can watch these and other programs online on booktv.org. a look at some of the most current best-selling books. topping the list clean house in which judicial tom looks at governmental scandals during president obama's second term, ann coulter why she supports the republican candidate in trump we trust. up next in hillary's america, author and film maker daenesh warns of a clinton presidency followed by former bill clinton dick morris armagedon and in crisis of character, former secret service and a look at the

conservative book club. up next are a pair of books by fox news host bill o'reilly, killing lincoln followed by a second companion book to legends and lies series. ..

[inaudible conversations] >> next on the tv come alive from the brooklyn book festival, a panel on political parties and elections. [inaudible conversations]

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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> okay, welcome. we will ask those of you still parliament to be seated as quickly and quietly as possible. i want to get going because we have an assimilating timely panel of three outstanding authors on their important topics. welcome to the best law school in brooklyn. used to live here know that we are the only law school at edinburgh when, but it is the biggest borough in the most vibrant city in the empire state in the great u.s.a. and so we've got that working for us.

this law school is increasingly known for being a center for learning how to use law for the betterment of people, our community and the nation and this panel addresses very aspects of what is to be done. i'm just going to jump right in and introduce our first author, who some of you may have heard about before. the author of a brand-new book, breaking for power. this copies hot off the press, available as the other books are downstairs after the session. it is breaking through power come easier than we think by ralph nader. [applause] before there was bernie, before

there was occupied, before there was a community organizer who ran for president, but after there was ralph nader. he is as we all know the he iconic champion of consumer rights. his pioneering bestseller way back when in the 60s, unsafe at any speed led directly to automobile safety laws including the national traffic and motor vehicle safety act, not to mention a privacy case that our law students still study in my class about the action he brought against a major corporation, general motors to try to invade his privacy in order to discredit him. he was also instrumental in the creation of osha, epa, cpsc, national highway traffic safety administration. in addition to saving countless lives and saving innumerable

people from injury, he has sponsored and initiated the creation of dozens of citizen action groups, which teach us and remind us it is possible to make governments accountable. with that, i will ask mr. nader to very briefly talk about his book and maybe be responsive to this question. so what is going on? i mean, how in the world did we get to this state that you describe in your book? and is it too late to do something about it and if so, what can we do? >> thank you, nick. thank the participants and people in the ideas. i want to start out with the next edition. throughout american history, major changes for justice with representing majority opinion or what abraham lincoln called public sentiment.

apart from civil war, the abolition movement in slavery, the women's right to vote movement, the farmer labor movement in the last part of the 19th century and coming into the 20th century, all the various changes never took more than 1% or less. we made major changes in the 60s and early 70s with a fraction of 1% around the country and congressional districts rolling up their sleeves and getting engaged in the ways that they want to focus. so this is what we have to start with because the public is very demoralized. demoralization leads to cynicism cynicism rates to withdraw and the rest will continue to take over. the rascals being largely giant corporations that have turned washington d.c. and albany and to incorporate state. franklin roosevelt warned about in 1938 when he sent a message to congress to create a

commission to study concentrated corporate power. whenever government is controlled by private economic power, that is fascism. that is 1938. we now have this connection between wall street and washington between big companies and washington for the public shout out. the elections this year illustrate where the electoral process has been corporatized, commercialized and has left the citizen groups come in the community off limits. just like its own bubble has left democracy off limits, which means it turned us into spectators. many of us don't even realize that we are supposed to be participatedof, by and for the people. remember that? we the people starts the constitution. jefferson called us participants, not spectators. we look at tv. we watch hillary, we watch the

circus and we say look it's great, it's fun, it's hateful, terrible and then we go back to our daily routine. so if you want to ask who is responsible for the deterioration of our democracy, which means deterioration of our rates to shape our future and the perpetrators are clear. big government and money greases the wheel. but who are the enablers? the enablers are rest because first of all, we don't show out. half of democracy is showing up for town meetings, for rallies, showing up for marches. you can talk to high school students and they'll say their name and children of the parents and they are booklovers.

they will say nice things. that's the role. they don't mind civic school. they learned computer literacy. they don't connect to schools with the community to raise people who know how to shape the future of their neighborhood, state, country and the world. i thought i read a short period it is called breaking through power: it's easier than we think. i'm very willing to be challenged on documenting is easier than we think. 1% or less. we hear about the other 1%, they occupy wall street calls the top 1%. 1% or less is what it takes if it asks the following questions,

what are all the things we want to change in this country? some of them we can change ourselves, and diet, exercise. some of that we can change by organizing food co-ops and things like that. the major change is that deal with the empire, that deal with the military-industrial complex, they deal with the strategic planning by big corporations in every aspect of our life, our genetic inheritance, our education, planning our food, planning our health care. they are planning tax system. they are planning our public budgets and allocations. all of this comes down to congress. congress is the most powerful branch of government although it doesn't use it. it gives that to the executive branch. congress is made up for just 535 people. they put their shoes on like you in my everyday.

back home that got the insurance agents organize, the auto dealers organized, the real estate industry organized, et cetera appeared to we the people are now organized because although we can air our grievances and talk about our diagnostics, about injustice and put forth good solutions, somehow we never reach the congress. if you don't reach the congress, if you don't organize congress watchdog groups that every congressional district, you are leaving the most powerful acts that you have come in the u.s. congress with all the power you've given it in the hands of the big corporations. that is what is the key here. and so i have example after example after we talk about the structure of concentrated power and its abuses to the livelihoods of everybody in the planet. i have one example after another. the tobacco industry was successfully challenged.

never more than a few thousand people. the most powerful industry had on its side addiction of millions of people was 45% adults, chronic smokers in 1966, under 18% now. you don't smoke and law school auditoriums or classrooms anymore. i used to go to my classroom at princeton, i couldn't do the students. because airplanes, buses, trains, smoking everywhere. it's taboo. people said it wouldn't happen. a few thousand people say is going to happen. do you support, public opinion, some went to work. to use the congress, the state legislature. they used non-smokers the same way the exposé of no you can't do anything about nuclear arms control. really? the soviets an aspirin a huge arms race with mass rallies, new

york, washington and sadly ronald reagan looked out and he saw a lot of well-dressed republicans marching. what's going on here? now we are reducing nuclear weapons. still a huge that accidentally, but we have russian inspectors here. american inspectors and russia watching the dismantling of nuclear warheads. a lot more needs to be done, but it never took more than a few thousand people to pull this off because they reflected public opinions. there is easier than we think that's a very important morale because if each of us has to ask the question, who are we? what are we going to do? where are we going to show up? was he were we going to participate to get things done? our country is full of solutions on the shelf that we don't apply on the ground because that democracy cap.

that is why in conclusion we are having the second four days in washington d.c. at the end of september called breaking through power that are sure you just go to that breaking through power.org. you will see day after day of the leading civic activists in the country and scholars on dynamic democracy come together and basically say to the people, what are you waiting for? breaking through power. we have an equality of income, inequality of wealth, but underneath it all is inequality of power and underneath it a civic abdication of the responsibilities to shape the future for themselves, the world and their descendents. what are we waiting for? >> that's a great point. hold that thought. [applause]

>> "breaking through power: it's easier than we think." this small book is a pocket dynamo, empowerment and action. it is all in here. the amazing thing to me when i read the first chapter that i got incredibly deprived, upset, even angry. and then i discovered in the second half that you're an optimist. you really believe because it is based on other heroes in history that it can be done. thank you very much. >> pessimism has no function. >> our next author has a riveting and moving, disturbing, enlightening book and it's the voting rights were. professor browne marshall teaches constitutional law at john jay college and she is a dedicated and very affect their civil rights lawyer.

she's an award-winning tv commentator, a columnist and she's written several books, which i commend to you. professor browne marshall, i would like you to describe your book in the context of this question if you can in five minutes. you can follow up with mr. nader's great example here of laying it all out. can you cover the almost mind-boggling history that started in 19 or at the springfield massacre to the present day and answer the question is as the fight over has the word and concluded and then the fundamental question which i'm going to ask when we are done for the others to comment on is why vote. the system has been so undemocratic and so frustrating.

that is allotted five minutes but give it your best. >> thank you. i want to start by saying this. part of the reason why i wrote the voting rights war and i wrote the books i write and do the things i do is because i enjoy being african-americans. i actually like very much being african-americans. but my people have done over such great a distance faced with so many obstacles and do it with pride, dignity to fight on the streets and do what is necessary to become full citizens in this country. i'd like to give like to get by for a hundred years demise of what happened in 1607 jamestown county was founded.

and 20 africans were introduced into the colony. in 1620 the mayflower landed. we were here before the mayflower. that needs to be understood to understand the role of law has played in undermining the progress of african-americans, political progress, economic progress, social progress, you name it. it's been under my eyes despite an inside of the undermining of the progress by law in society, we have decided to push on. the political progress that i am covering the voting rights war tells us this is not a war that is going to end anytime soon because it's a battle that involves those people and what ralph nader said was like i wanted to be the amen corner. to just release a thank you for saying those things, for letting people understand that it was only a small number of

african-americans who did the work. others work in their own way. when we talk about the african-american leadership and civil rights attorneys, this raise civil rights attorney something with the last 50 to 60 years to fight that's going on in the 1600s. we have to understand the names. and in a johnson from angola, africa, who married in the early 1600s own land, had servants of the round, white and black servants. i like to say to my students, during class you can keep the list. thanks by professor sesame i don't believe in going to look up later. you may also keep that list. please understand it was a law changing to take their land away, to make that aliens in their homeland in their own land because the native land in order to vote. the thought was if you own land you are part of the society that was dictating the rights of

others so therefore you had a vested interest. when people of color started to own the land, the laws were changed to private member citizenship to mimic human aliens in their own land. so which time there has been a push forward for full inclusion, there's been undermining of rights by law society agrees the lawmakers turn to say i'm dealing with the people who would like to meet asked me to do. there have been africans in our country all of this time. however, their political power has been marginalized by the time we get to 1857, we have addressed scott decision of the u.s. supreme court was no friend to the african-americans most of the time. supreme court takes a great deal of credit for brown v. board of education and a few other landmark cases. overall the u.s. supreme court played a major role of undermining the progress of african-americans.

they represented the fear of a black planet. here's the concern i have today. we might have started off with gerrymandering by race. literacy tests, a meeting in 1890 as mississippi a democrats. democrats found during that time. who were the conservatives. they decided to come up with a plan called the mississippi plant and they said if we put this obstacles in front of the voters, these voters will not be able to change the outcome of a race. so during this time. in the 1800, they realize the african-american political power with such that it could determine the outcome of an election. so satisfied they decided to come up with these before someone had to pay him order to vote. there's the literacy test they use for african-americans but not other groups. they listed these different ways

and of course with all of these things, there is always terrorism by the kook left lane and other organizations. terrorism by individual said they didn't have a source. now here we are, these many years later after the supreme court decisions, legislation, litigation and protests combined the naacp pushed forward air defense site be marginalized. not because of lack of effort but because of other players on the scene, like law schools other for-profit organizations and law firms that have decided to take a role in this. but here we are now with photo i.d. there's been a minuscule evidence of any voter fraud with photo identification laws have been supported by the u.s. supreme court and they are going forward. what they are looking not as an undermining of the political process and the so-called great

democracy on the planet. we have to ask this question and our question should be, what are we doing outside? are we so used to it. and black people that when things come in to undermine these people of color that's a shame. they say to her neighbors that is a shame and because we feel shame on me think we are so progressive but we are not doing anything about it. legislation, litigation and protests are the cornerstones of what the naacp did to fight for voting rights but they are doing what other organizations continue to do. my question is where are you and the whole process? >> thank you [applause] >> you just saw a tiny example of why professor browne-marshall

is such an effective civil rights advocated wonderful teacher and great author. don't miss her book, "the voting rights war" that's available right now. a great read and important a good the next author is the author of lists and liberal. now "listen liberal," thomas frank is an author has published several other books and among them, the wrecking crew and perhaps his most well-known book to date until this book, what is the matter with kansas and what does the percentage of the republican party. the latest book is a scathing sendup of the democratic party. he's been a columnist for harper's and is the founding editor, but most importantly, my son, tyler study law in austin, texas is a regular reader and

e-mailed me this morning. it's a big deal that i'm getting to meet tom frank. i thank you for finally allowing me to bring this wonderful author. so describing her book at the base is for you to now turn their scalpel, which you call a pan to the democratic party and the liberals, but they ask you this. mr. nader talks about 1%, to talk about 10%. what is the difference? >> that's a really good question. how are you doing quite on this beautiful sunday afternoon and brooklyn, new york. so let's approach this. let's think about the election that is unfolding around us right now. think about what is going on. a two-party system in this country where we have the most unpopular presidential candidates of all time.

the two most unpopular in recorded history running against one another. what is the chance about? not just one party nomination, but then at the same time both of the candidates running this negative campaigns, democrats are saying we've got to stop trump. we can't get trump. i went to their convention by the way. they shouted lock her up. this is their chance. and here is the crazy thing. the families of these two candidates are personal friends. shall see and ivanka and photos of hillary, they are good friends. but you think about the situation. take a stab back. you have these two unpopular candidates, but one of them was a clearly unanimous choice of

her parties gary, of her party apparatus of donald trump of course went to the republican hierarchy from the very beginning. hillary clinton knows how it works. she was secretary of state for pete sake. u.s. senator lady. donald trump, you know, isn't really sure exactly what's in the constitution. hillary clinton is so polished, always working so hard to never offend anyone. tribe does nothing but offend people. this is what he does. hillary knows all about how a political campaign is run, how you reach out to this group and not. you go to the swing states. you do micro targeting, big data, manage the press, rend your ground and get out the vote, all that sort of thing. trump has no idea, just as whatever comes to mind, whatever flashes by in flashes by in a space occasion he seems to think

the election is some kind of celebrity showdown were at the end of the race everybody dials the eight dials the 800 number and that's how you determine the winner. look, folks, this ought to be a blowout. this ought to be like 1964 all over again, but it is not. it is surprisingly close. i still can't get my mind around the fact donald trump is going to win any state at all. he's going to win kansas for sure. i can't believe that. but allowed that he might win the whole thing. weirdest of all, this is a legitimate historical audience that we really need to answer. how is he doing this? he's doing it because you member this is a billionaire who is famous for firing people on tv. he is doing this because he is winning in louisiana six support from the white working class. that demographic group that is watching its way of life fall

apart. think about who these people are. the white working class. this is not just any old demographic group. this is a group of one upon a time was profoundly democratic. the needs of this group, white working class were well once upon a time made the democratic party what it is. this is why the democratic party exists. this is why you have a new deal. this is why franklin roosevelt was elected president four times better. folks, what happened? what in the world is going on? 10 years ago i wrote about this -- 12 years ago now i wrote about this phenomenon and what it looked like in my home state of kansas and what motivated these voters, what motivated blue-collar people to support conservative candidates. this time around this year i

looked at the other side of the coin. listen up, liberal. what makes all of this stuff possible, what makes this crazy upside down situation that we are in possible is the democratic party isn't what i just described. it isn't the party that elected frank roosevelt four times in a row. the democrats are not who we think there are any longer. this is not a party of working people. this is a parody of professionals. the group that comes first, the group that always comes first in the party's decision-making and that sort of thing is affluent white-collar professionals. the party is dominated by high achieving white-collar. either way, i'm not making this up for being clever with the text are reading between the lines. they say this openly all the time back in washington d.c.

the entire culture of liberalism is dominated by the concerns and the needs of the professional class. they're tasting food food, their vacation habits, their idea of the direction that the world is going in and that the world ought to be going in. more importantly, this is a long-term transition how the democratic party changed from being the party of roosevelt or harry truman or lyndon johnson or whatever to be who it is today. some in that took a long time to happen. the result is today the kind of liberalism that we see in washington and the democratic party is a liberalism of the rich. what we mean by that? it is not a coincidence that this just a few billionaires here and there who happen to be very liberal and finds liberal causes. liberalism itself is distinctly concert with the policy

preferences of a certain class of american, a certain segment of the wealthy. not the 1% per se, but the top 10%. that is the starting of people who make up the professional class. the people have done very, very well in the recovery since 2009. so this is a form of liberalism that has struck a whole theory of how history is moving, but the winners of history are going to be and why we need to bow down before them. it is like a reverse march in which the winner is not the international proletariat, and that the contra marriott or something like that. the people who out in silicon valley are so innovative and coming up with all of this awesome new companies, the people behind the bird for by the way the democratic convention they were given their salutes to working people on the

stage and when you are done come you go and take one back to your hotel because the democratic party has struck a special deal to move its delegates back and forth from the convention center to the hotel. this is a liberalism that is timeless favors for the well-educated and for the particular industries that professionals happen to work in an industry of course we are written at york. you look out the window and you can see the main industry and talking about which is wall street investment tanks. the democrats are in love with wall street and this is not because -- not only because they've been derived by campaign contributions. their passion for wall street, their love of wall street as a matter of idealism. they like what they see wall street doing. this is an industry that is doing good in the world.

of course they didn't prosecute the leaders of wall street for there will and selling trashy securities to their client and stuff like that. of course they didn't prosecute these guys. these guys are very understanding towards people. these are their peers, their classmates. they say these are fine, upstanding good professional people who happen to be one wrong thing. these are men of taste and good will. they look at big pharma and see exactly the same thing. is that the trade gives the democrats are negotiating. transpacific partnership. this is not a free-trade deal. it is protectionist was big pharma and extends their patterns. ralph nader, i'm sure you could tell us all about this. why do they do this? they do these incredible favors again because these are their people. this is a creative class, folks. these are the people they believe are the winners of history. these are their peers,

classmates, friends. the leaders of the democratic party are drawn from. these are their colleagues, people you protect, people you honor. but then you look out workers, members of the working class and the people losing because they deserved to lose. these are people who are losing because they didn't go to college or maybe they did go to college but they didn't study the right subject. they didn't study stem subject but a work in industries that everyone in d.c. knows has to die. these are industries that don't deserve to live. is nothing about working people that draws the respect of the liberal class in a locker. so basically every economic problem is really an educational problem. everything can be solved with more education because education is what worked for them personally.

the last thing i want to say, we talk about inequality. inequality is as inequality is this president obama has said the defining issue of our time. this is a great overarching concern that is going to affect all of our lives. why does it get worse when you have not just democrats and the white house, but a man who we are told is the most liberal possible democrat we will ever see in our lifetimes and inequality gets worse and worse. why is that? at the end of the day, the professional class leaves and inequality. of course they believe in it. their entire -- all of their privileges founded on status and their higher status. >> well, that is quite a gloomy diagnosis. ralph nader's book tells you how to fix that problem. your book is less about their future and professor

browne-marshall's book talks about her long struggle is for the kindle. there are three worth reading. for this session today, i did some research which is to say i called my son and taxpayers, tyler. he sent me a courtesy at the institute, something that alexander hamilton wrote about the election of 1800 before hamilton was a broadway star. you know there was a tie in the electoral college and jefferson and her were tied. so hamilton didn't like either of them and jivaro, mr. jefferson, though to revolutionary and his notions as a lover of liberty and will be desirous of something like orderly government. mr. burrell is nothing but himself, thinks of nothing but his own grand i spent and will

be content with nothing short of permanent power in his own hands. no compact he should make with any other power should enhance except his ambition can be relied on by himself. and then he goes on to say that mr. jefferson i suspect will not care much. mr. grove will tear everything and he urges his colleagues to vote for jefferson. in some respects you might think it déjà vu all over again. they are not really thrilled. if the system isn't working,, why bother to vote? i'll ask you, tom and then we will go across to mr. nader inquiry at an open up for some questions, short questions from the audience. >> i am really negative. now i understand why you say that.

that was a very negative presentation and i apologize. i am going to vote and there is an optimistic side to this. i'm going to vote to stop trump. i will tell you straight out. there is a lot of hopeful things going on out there. you look at the bernie sanders campaign. that was amazing that this man was able to get as far as he did. a man who by ordinary standards of american politics would be totally unacceptable in washington d.c. he is totally unacceptable. look what the guy did. he got millions of those present in like 12 million votes. it's incredible what he was able to do. like i said, i'm not a fan of donald trump and look what he did to the republican party. this is like the personal sidearm of the billionaire class, the republican party. they worked on this weapon. they've engineered this weapon. they've honed his weapon. they just use it to do whatever.

it's the property of this small class of billionaires, the coat or other types. this guy comes along and wrecks it in a very short space of time. there is something kind of awesome about that. i also think of -- in another case, a lot of people don't remember that it's a hopeful story. it is a story about people doing things that will ultimately be harmful for themselves that resulted in sam brownback and him doing these awful things to the state. it's also helpful in the sense that it's the story of working class people taking over the republican party and not stay from the bottom up, organizing at the very lowest level and doing it in their spare time. there was no money in it for them and they manage to conquer this party. as i say, the end result is

disastrous, that they were able to do this in the nothing of resources. >> you're a closet optimist for someone who spends the first 20 pages of the book with false title since 1992. mr. nader, why vote if things are so bad? >> you can vote for third parties. the major movements of justice of american history were launched by third parties. they never won a national election, but it was the liberty party in 1840 that took the stand abolition of slavery. there's women's suffrage parties or labor pharma parties. they never won a national election. but they put it all on the table and they all came from small supporters. voters who didn't vote for the week for the democrats and

republicans, but they did vote for parties that stood for collective bargaining by workers, regulation of banks and other on behalf of the farmers for progressive taxation, 40 hour week for social security, for medicare and later for the early environmental movement and consumer movements before they were picked up by the two major parties. the two-party tyranny is rigged to state laws so that attracts you. it puts you in a trap where they say okay, you know, be a realist. only one of us can win republican or democrat. if you vote for anyone else, you're a spoiler. you're wasting your vote and every four years the two-party solace now is not the time to go for a third party. they never tell us when the time is as a result, they inflict a web of propaganda over the public starting with our

educational system, starting with the corporate media using our property, with a power back so that rate from windward youngsters we grow up corporate. we grow up looking at tens of thousands of ads. we see the world through the corporate prisms and you can just test yourself and your friend and your children. just ask your children or your friends, when you hear these words. crime, violence, regulation on welfare. but he think of? you think a street crime, poor and welfare, you think of government regulation. you think of and wars. and you are not wrong. but quantitatively, corporate crime kills far more people. corporate crime and negligence. there were 14,000 homicides last year on the streets and in homes.

14,000. 60,000 workers die every year. 60,000 die from air pollution, coal industry and others. 250,000 people die from negligence at johns hopkins study last friday, last march. at 700 today. on and on, the silent violence of corporations, which should be preventable are not even on the political table. we don't even talk about it at the water cooler. that is what i call fact, power of fact, deprivation. the other one is if you asked people what they own and they go through the house or savings account or a car, motorcycle, how long will it take before they stayed together we have the greatest wealth of the united states? will the public lands onshore and not sure with all the

natural resources. we on trillions of dollars of government r&d that built out these industries and the fact they did it themselves. the aerospace, pharmaceutical, containerization, silicon valley, computers, biotech, nano tech. you don't even know them without your tax dollars coming out of the pentagon and national institute of health. we on the public airwaves or the radio and tv stations control it 24 hours a day decide who says what and who doesn't, support this whole presidential debate commission which is a private company created by the two parties in 1987 to get rid of the league of women voters debate can control who gets on or not and they do a terrific self-serving job of that. all of this we own. we don't have her own audience network. we are the landlords. they are the tenants. they passed no rent.

you see are power deprivations and lastly clear away the myth of controlling process these corporate style, and once we realized that money not only influences legislators, and nullifies are both because they are a huge left wrist support. alliances in this country and public opinion of the major re-directions of our country in the book is divided and ruled of gun control, et cetera. look at areas where left, right and great. there against corporate welfare that not all straight and they want to break up the big banks coming in 90%. they want revisions of the anti-civil liberties movement for the patriot act. privacy, manipulating your right against search and seizure, it better. or for criminal justice.

state legislatures are passing juvenile justice with left, right support. i wrote a hold book on this called the left right alliance to dismantle the corporate state. they don't like wall street. they like main street. they don't like empire. to get ron paul and his supporters. but we need to do, there's plenty of reasons to vote. there are more reasons to run they still build a democracy. they are elected offices at the local level. city council, board of education. it is just incumbent to one-party state like massachusetts, texas.

>> if you don't vote, you don't count. voting is a voice. he got to have an opinion on how your community is run locally on a statewide level, the civil rights attorneys, civil rights the soldiers in this war for voting rights gave their lives and their livelihoods. they gave their energy and some of them like charles hamilton houston for themselves to death. the voting rights that they were able to achieve and the protection ignored everyone, not just people are african american or people of color. that's it needs to be understood. the african-american civil rights movement of the conscience into the constitution and because of that, because of the heartbeat that was given to it, we have to pay some respect to those games if we don't vote, we don't count. that is what is on his

tombstone. he was an naacp voting rights activists who was burned alive. and he said he wanted those words on his tombstone because if you don't vote, you don't count. >> what a wonderful powerful and no. i'm so proud this program is part of this petition day observations and what we were talking about is professor browne-marshall noted the extent that we need work to do to completely fulfill the aspirations of the framers of the constitution, what this country should be about even more. i thank you all. i am sorry that we won't have the opportunity here before we break to the next panel to take your questions. i am hopeful that maybe in the

plaza with book signing going not that we will be able to thank you for attention and get this panel a big round of applause. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> you're watching and listening to the tv on c-span2. another panel discussing political parties and elections. in 10 minutes, the next author panda will begin on the military war. this is book tvs live coverage from the brooklyn book festival.

>> and i tell a story about being not campaigning. i've been in the state senate and now i was campaigning for congress. another one in tennessee had put their name on a ballot. i was the first woman to let it in her own right. for women who had followed. i was in a county that had what we call a little café. and i had gone in and they didn't have many women that served in a lack of office, so is passing up my campaign material and i went over to this gentleman that you could tell had been out farming and handed

him a card. i said hi, i am state senator marsha black bird, i am running for congress in the sure would appreciate having your vote. so he looked inside little lady, what qualifies you? that's a giveaway being called little lady. what qualifies you for the u.s. house of representatives? and i thought well, you know a bit of her mother, room of their chairman and a girl scout cookie mom. so i think i could probably handle the u.s. house of representatives because i've handled those jobs. your mind you didn't want to bear in mind i had just led a four-year plot to keep a state income tax is. that didn't go. i was like, you know, those jobs as being a grandmother chairman,

go start true life skills that you prepare you for working with people, working with diverse groups of people and we've been able to help lead groups and entities and organizations with transferable skills. people will undersell when it comes to the job that she can do. >> did not impress them? >> yeah, i think it did. he looked at me. he said little lady, if you win this thing -- i said you know what, congressman treats me just fine. ..

both sides of the war on drugs through the lives of two laredo, texas teenagers employed by a mexican drug cartel. we are back in new york tuesday for a talk by chuck colins, great grandson of meat packer oscar myer and we are live between talks between pulitzer prize winners and more.

that's a look at some of the author programs book tv covers this week. many of the events are open to the public including the national book festival. look for them to air in the near future in book tv. >> it sounds that you are making the argument if you narrow what makes trump so loathsome to people in power is immigration, what makes him appeal to go others is his opposition to immigration. >> yes. >> this is about immigration? >> i think so. i mean, i love the policies,, i think immigration is the great unifier. >> the fact that you wrote a book on the immigration and have it on the mind, do you think evidence that this is really about. the exit polls don't tell us that. >> right. >> don't suggest that immigration is on number within

on people's list. >> jobs, terrorism, cultural changes. they're all synonyms for immigration. americans are nice people. i think they have the sense specially with the media telling them this, they say immigration as if they're saying something mean about immigrant and they're nice people. we like immigrant and trump always says, he loves hispanics. my favorite tweets. [laughter] >> other than the mexican-rapist speech. you like the taco bowl speech. >> that was faking -- making fun of multiculturalism. [laughter] >> you can watch online on booktv.org. [inaudible conversations]

>> and now more live coverage of the brooklyn book festival. author panel on military and war, this is book tv on c-span2, television for serious readers.

[inaudible conversations] >> welcome to the brooklyn book festival which is by the way the largest free literary festival in the country. so if you enjoy what you see today please consider going online and making a donation because we would like to keep it free.

so today this is a really amazing panel, we have two people probably mostly everybody knows who they are. molly is an artson writer in new york and she's written for publications including the new york times, paris review and the guardian. her work is in the permanent collection in the museum of modern argument and book join blood. larry is writing on human rights and serving for many years as director for the writer's advocacy organization. recently wrote introduction to mohamed, guantanamo dairy which we will talk about today and other books between the lines, mexican and central american immigrant and families and friends and torture report, what the documents say of post9/11 torture report. he lives in brooklyn.

janenie could not make it to let you all know. both i want to start by saying both of these books are incredible and if you haven't read them yet, you should and one of the reasons i think they're so great, obviously they are different, molly is more or less a memoir and is a dairy -- >> it was forced out by secret litigation that process that took about seven years. >> and any one who is a writer and reads this, you can never have an excuse for why you're not producing. the writer is incredible. one thing i like about both of the books and we will get to the writers, even though they are different, each one is sort of kind of -- serve cultural history in the last 15 years or so, post 9/11 america in their own way, you really get a sense of kind of what's been going on, i mean, we can get a little bit to the way things are now and

each one is a great way to get context, there are type capsule books, i guess, is what i'm saying, we won't only talk about guantanamo but since that is a common threat, molly's book is a memoir, do you want to talk a little bit about that? >> sure. in summer of 2013i got the chance to visit guantanamo bay to do investigative, series of investigative reports for vice, the time i visited gaun tan another 150 men of nearly 800 muslim men who were and generally brought to guantanamo. 150 men remaining and the majority of the men were on hunger strike. i was able to visit guantanamo bay for vice and when i was

there i was able to attend the pretrial hearings, alleged master mind of september 11 as visiting prisons themselves. guantanamo bay is one of the most censored places in the world. a place where every journalist and photographer has to wear a sign that says military escort all of the times, all photos in guantanamo are looked by a military -- by a member of the military and deleted if they don't meet standards of security. it's forbidden to speak to the prisoners even when you see the prisoners you see them through a one-way -- a two-way mirror so they won't know that you're there or make any attempt to communicate. faces are sensorred at guantanamo. names are sensorred at guantanamo. the entire place is built on

racial. but i draw rather than take pictures because i work in obscure medium, i was able to say things for accurate. >> i'm curious, they probably weren't used to an artist being there? did that confuse them censor wise? >> there's an artist basically since -- i want to say at least eight years. and she's an extraordinary artist and i feel like her work that she's done at the court is actually like the eye of history there, it has the transparency and accuracy, however, yes, there's basically just jim and

one other artist filtered through there but artists in general haven't visited the way that photographers, reporters have. it was a strange thing. i did once have -- had a pair of glasses that i use today see from the back of the courtroom and they were confiscated. [laughter] >> larry, can you talk about the story behind the book? i mean, the story behind it is almost amazing as the book itself. >> sure, i can not begin writing about who gets to tell the story of the u.s.' interventions in the middle east without noting the fact, the fact that i'm sitting here talking about this book and not mohamed who is, i would say, the most graphic illustration about, you know, about the problem about what gets to still the story and

exactly what molly was saying about the intense and purposeful censorship that surrounds guantanamo and detention operations as a whole. i can't help to think that mohamed who would smirk at the irony in a moot courtroom with the suggestion of fake justice, so mohamed is a 45-year-old man who has a remarkable story. he was one of 12 children of a quite a poor kamel -- camel trader in sub-saharan africa. first person to fly to europe and get degree in technical engineering. a couple of times when he was a student in 1991-1992, he did something that a lot of muslim

men is he traveled to afghanistan to see what he could do the civil war against the communist government in afghanistan and he trained in an al-qaeda camp. at the time when that conflict collapsed, mohamed decided he was done with all of that. that's over, i'm going back to germany. he lived and worked in germany throughout the 1990's. went back home, because of those past associations he was on the u.s. intelligence radar screen. after 9/11 he had been questioned and questioned before. he got a call from the national security director asking him to come in for questioning.

they said drive your own car, he will be home tomorrow. his mother said, i just cooked dinner and he drove to the police station and he disappeared. sent him to jordan, interrogated to jordan and then to afghanistan -- then sent to guantanamo, that entire time his family thought he was still in the local prison, they. >> bringing him food, they were bringing him money for upkeep for an entire year until his brother read an article about this former german resident who was in guantanamo that was his mother. subjected to one of the worst tortures in guantanamo, special projects interrogations that left him in an isolated camp echo in guantanamo where he was for almost 14 years. in 2005 he sat down to write that incredible story that i just told and he wrote it in the isolation in camp over the

course of the summer, he produced a 466-page handwritten manuscript in english, his fourth language aen -- an incredible document. you can line it up to declassify document that is describe interrogation and it's day for day and sometimes word for word, the interrogation sessions but much more than that. it's a deep, deep look at the human interactions in most dehumanizing place and it's so good that the u.s. government wasn't about to let it out. so they like all materials at guantanamo prisoners looked it away in the secured facility outside of washington, d.c. and it sat there from 2005 until 2012 when his attorneys finally won a long secret battle to get the u.s. government to release a declassified version. i was handed a cd-rom,

declassified version, written in sharpy and i took it home and popped it, the manuscript minus 2,000 redacted passages. that's what became guantanamo dairy. >> i'm glad you mention humor aspect, it reminded me like he's caught in the awful, awful like system and they're actually parts where i found myself laughing and it's not -- because he had such a great sense of absurdity of what's going on. i think that's what he really captures. it's not the awful pain, the physical and mental torture but just the ridiculousness. total ubcertainty.

>> guantanamo is built on the notion that the men em prison there are boogie men and stripped of past achievements, who they are in their communities, thoughts and emotions. victims aren't really victims. what he writes is he writes himself back into the land of the living, writes to being an individual and and awry intelligent person and that's

really one of the greatest strikes that someone can do against an institution like guantanamo which is entirely on people like sahi and going to orange jump suits. >> exactly the way they claim humanity. the way you released it with redactions. in a couple, few spots, three to four pages of black lines and it's experience of reading what you're not reading. >> it was an interesting process. i work for penn all of these years, anticensorship person and it's very difficult for me to swallow that my job had to include accepting the fact that a significant portion of writing was going to be remain obscured by the government that controlled his faith the whole time. i was a bit rebellious against it but there was no way that i could not include redactions.

like the whole process of editing the book was learning so many ways in which i was writing and one of the ways that i was wrong was my desire to eliminate redactions on the page because they are the physical embodiment of that force that's a character in the voice, the u.s. government, the voice and the more i lived with the voice, the more i came to recognized not just censorship of blocked bureaucratic force but there are moment that is you could get a sense of the sensor of the individual. mohamed is describing, kept locked in a sensory deprived trailer for two years, doesn't know day or night for almost a year and he finally leads him outside and gets the warm cuban sub and he has a puerto rico

guard contingent and the guard reaches out and touches him on the shoulder and says, don't worry, it's going to be all right, you're going get home to your family and mohamed writes, i could not help breaking in and the word is redacted and the next sentence is, i don't know what's wrong with me lately, just one -- one word of -- one kind word in this ocean of agony is enough to make me cry. clearly the word is tears. what is the national security purpose to obscure the word tears? >> i have no idea. >> there's something about the visceral impact of the word and image a censor moved by that, jarred by that moment that the only instinct of reaction was to try to blunt that in some way in the manuscript and the other big example is more profound and disturbing that one of the things that they do during the book is systemically eliminate

female pronouns she and her. when you're reading and you have something that's clearly a pronoun that's been redacted, you know that person is a woman. now why are they doing it? they're doing it because the majority of the female characters in the book are female interrogators who are instrumentallized into sexually assaulting him. we made them sexually assault prisoners. the censorship process is a lot about shame. >> there are two ways to tackle it. this is something that i dealt in my own work in guantanamo. the first is i'm an artist or

tor bidden to writing the face of officers who advise them on specifically tor sures. i'm forbiddening in drawing that conforms to it but hides existences or i can emphasize it. when ii -- illustrated and showed how they were faced and the black sharpie government censorship is that it makes the

-- impossible if hidden. >> a lot of the censorship was an attempt to cover information in the public realm. the editor of the book was make sure readers had access to the information that i and anybody we wanted to take the time to learn the story to find. when we first ran excerpts and got a note from hacker in europe, i could remove redactions, oh, really, not true. it can't be done. but it was, you know, i left them because that's part of the story and continued drama and he gets to fill them in when it's released. at the same time, i did anotate

the book whenever he's describing in the transcript of the hearing before the review board, same information, i would refer to that in the footnotes, readers can get the sense, a that everything ha mohamed has said is corroborated in the now declassified record. everything he says and then b, that it's out there for all of us to look at and the government continuing to try to censor it is trying to push us away from information that's actually in the public realm. >> you have a subtitle of this panel is who gets to tell the story and i think that's a promound -- profound question. one of the things that's interesting about your book, molly, that part of it is about basically you discovering yourself as a journalist and you jump head first and produce amazing work.

that's like -- in your case you had no choice but collaborate. most journalism is not collaboration between author and subject. i'm curious, how important is that, do you think, how important is really having subject as active participants? >> foreign journalism is collaborative than the foreign journalists who would like to give them credit for. drive, translate, protect, get out of trouble, tell people what to look for and what not to look for, give education to people who parachute in and people generally unacknowledged. they generally don't get bylines and

existence isn't even acknowledged in the text and when possible i've try today least acknowledge the -- acknowledge the work that these people have done with me and i just think it's a matter of justice, otherwise you're like pretending that you just like speak all of the languages fluently and know all of the things that you don't. in the economy is an incredibly problematic part of foreign journalism that doesn't have to be but -- and can be done in an ethical way if people were credited like tv producers were but in actuality done in a pretty messed up way but in terms of other collaborations that i've done, one series that i'm really, really proud of is collaboration i did with a syrian journalist for vanity fair. native of raqqa and invaded by

isis and do journalism under cover. marlon started sending photos that he took in raqqa of children going to the trash to finding things to sell or the long bread lines or isis fighters in hospitals recovering and i would draw from these and he would do accompanying texts. he did in raqqa and aleppo and we are currently working on a book together now and i feel so privileged to get to work and to learn from such, you know, an extraordinary peer and such an extraordinary journalist, so perhaps it's more natural to me because i'm an artist and able to go into my role as an artist and have someone else take the role as a writer or work with

them in that way but i think i've learned so much from this collaboration and been so lucky to have them. >> i think when you start with the professions i think you internalize the norms without thinking about it, because you kind of came in as an outsider that helped you have a fresher perspective of what journalism can be. >> that's a very good observation. it's very similar to the fine art world which is, comes from the art world and you're broken to the fact that the model is that you work for an entire year on paintings, fronting all the costs yourself and you give them to a gally and they hang them up for months and what sells does and what sells doesn't and you take half. that's a terrible model, how did that model -- how does prepare models in the industry and how do you live? that's just how it works.

when you're an outsider or just, i don't know, weirdo like me who spends too much time in my room, you very often think that it's the way things work and seem perhaps very, very strange and you get different ideas on how you can do things which sometimes are maybe innovators. >> larry, i want to ask a weird question, why did this come out? instead of going through it and redacting all the things, like you say half of it becomes a experience trying to read around redactions. why didn't they just censor it all. why let it see the light of day? >> they did censor it for a long time. it's such an important subject and so we can only say that i collaborated in the way because

today i haven't spoken to him, we are not allow to exchange males or hello greetings through employments, so, you know, i was a collaborator by proxy of working turned broadest instructions, please, do what needs to be done to bring my manuscript to the public. the other thing is that i don't -- that was fine with me because i'm not so much a face-to-face collaborator as the way a journalist is producing news. i have dealt with it in many ways in my life. i love literature that's produced by ordinary people in the course of their lives and findings way. the first book was letter from undocumented immigrant from méxico and central america. correspondence that they sent home which was very much like, you know, like great poetry as a

great tradition of it. so this was a manuscript that had been written self-consciously as a work of literature so i was working from that sense, the collaborative process is one that requires the consent and approval and participation of the person who wrote the text. i don't think a text should get published without the approval of the writer. that was a very difficult process for me just to go through. but as far as why it got released? i mean, it's a really good question. i would say the technical reason is that by 2012 his attorneys had been fighting for seven years to get this declassified in some ways. by 2012, we had a mountain of declassified documents about prison abuse in guantanamo, iraq and afghanistan. 140,000 pages of documents.

there were two major government investigations won by the senate armed services committee, one by the department of justice based on fbi complaints about fbi and guantanamo. both of which have dozens of pages particularly about mohamed and interrogation, the government can no longer claim that the story was secret. i guess the only thing that and by 2012 these are not monolithic institutions. there are people that would like to bury this information forever, mostly because it points out to some requests to accountability that include criminal prosecution. i think that within the institutions an we see it within the documentary record, there many people that want this information to get out there and they want america to acknowledge

these things and move on. so i think in 2012 it was a mix bag. i think some people wanted it out but i think -- others wanted it suppressed and others out. obama administration was, you know, had proclaimed that it was going to try to close guantanamo and there's no more useful book to press that case than guantanamo dairy. a manual of how not to, you know, not to -- to conduct detention and interrogation operations in the current political climate. so i thought, you know, i didn't feel resistance as i was going it and i continued to believe that there are people in the government that are glad that this material is out. >> in theory he's free, right? >> not in theory --

>> on a list that he could be released? >> he did, he had a review meeting, obama administration 2011 announced that it was going to set a new kind of hearing process for the men in guantanamo which are more or less like parole hearings and judge whether or not would be a threat if they were released. it took almost five years for those processes to really quick in and get going but mohamed had a hearing in june and he was cleared for transfer. 61 men in guantanamo and mohamed is one of 20 that has been cleared. the process moved fairly quickly. he's determined to move everybody that's been clear before the end of the year. but as you may know, the house of representatives just passed a bill last week which -- which bans the administration or forbids the administration from transferring anybody out of guantanamo anywhere even those

who were cleared for release. it's a shameful piece of -- shameful bit of publicity stunt but it won't pass the senate and the president has said that he will veto it and it suggests to me that this process may now stall again until after the election. we are talking about a man who has disappeared from his home in november of 2001, his family was told in 2010 when he won his habeas petition that he would be coming hope, the family started cleaning the house, they waited five more years, six for years until he finally got a periodic review board hearing. they were told again that he's been cleared for transfer and are expecting him any day and now -- i got a panic day two days ago when the bill passed from mohamed's nephew, what does this mean? just absolutely freaked out.

i had to give him an embarrassing lesson in american political process but, you know, i am reasonably sure that he will be out before the obama administration is over. i'm very hopeful that he will get to go home rather than some strange-third country where he knows nobody and has no resources of any kind. but, you know, you know the climate we are in now and we can't say that for sure. >> so often when politicians or analysts talk about these things, they talk about them in terms of geopolitics, what country can we rope into accepting people and what it means larger gain between super powers and lest -- less powerful proxies. people cleaning their home

because their loved one is going to come back after 16 years unjustly incarcerated. they don't talk about humanity. it's very easy to aline all of the stories into big gain things about u.s. or russia or al-qaeda, but if those stories aren't told f the stories of individual people aren't told, then all sorts of abuses and terrible things are permitted. >> i want to make sure we have questions. questions? come on, t a rare opportunity to talk to these -- yeah. [inaudible] >> microphone. >> yeah, sorry, there's mics in the worry. >> a couple of points. first, did you ever read robert's book on censorship,

prerevolutionary, they became literary critics, i don't know how weirded out, but kind of curious about that. >> one quick comment about that, my understanding and i'm not allow today know any of the things for certain, my understanding is that he has written fiction in prison and there is a process by which his attorneys can try to get things cleared into a form that they could be released and aparticipantly the guantanamo censors don't even know how to approach it. [laughter] >> also one more question there seems to be -- i don't know want to call blackout, gray-out about yemen, i know this is big geopolitics, if you don't mind discussing that america is a--

align with saudi arabia and i wonder if you talk about it? >> it ties into guantanamo. the vast majority, all of the vast majority of the people who are cleared for release are yemanis and the reason they're still in guantanamo is that yemen is a sponsor of terrorism and now yemen is at war. in terms of why there's a blackout on news from yemen which is very true, there are two things that play, the first thing is america is selling the weapons that saudi is using to bomb refugee camps and hospitals and schools. the other thing, though that yemen is an extremely dangerous country to report from. the brilliant journalists who you should all follow and long-time journalists, besides syria one of the most second

most dangerous to report from. you're absolutely right. war on yemen which is terrible, terrible scene of starvation and also complete disruption. >> i want to ask a question and maybe impossible to answer. what does this actually do? people that make a change. does it have effect in movement? does it take a brick out of the

wall at all? >> sometimes, yes, and sometimes no. you never really know what you put out that's going to change things and if it will change things in the way that you want. classified documents that she's released from wikileaks. you go to a refugee camp or you go to a neighborhood that's been bombed or you go to people who are having the worst times in their life and you say, hey, guys, tell me about that terrible, terrible thing that happened to you so i can write about it and maybe get an award. that would be a good use of your time and, you know, it's quite -- they questioned why they do this.

besides all the usual things there's a value of serving history, that history is not written that if stories don't get told that first repeated thing but these things have to exist. that's the only immortality anyone has, right? >> have you founded -- easy to find outlets for the journalism that you want to do or too conservative for the types of stories you want to do? >> i feel most welcome, most spoiled person b. perhaps in their 40 years and cultivated expertise but -- but i don't know, news outlets don't

want them. i think that those are the people who are actually under threat. i'm lucky. i had support from the start and they're great. >> on the question of whether these things make a difference, i mean, i think there's an inevitable process that happens in any situation, in any time and moment where there's been a systematic human rights catastrophe. you know, many countries have gone through formal process, reconciliation process, accountability process of some sort, at the core of story telling and the process that we've suffered and detention interrogation program is this mass of censorship and the names

. knowing names to knowing stories to hearing their voices. that's a progression that takes often a number of years, but, you know, until the senate intelligence committee of 2014 about the torture program, we did not, the committee staffers who wrote that report fought for almost two years and lost many of the fights about redactions but one of the things that they won was the right to keep the machine's names. so the first time, there's a footnote in the report where the first time you hear about 10 to 15 of these names was a one- sentence who was held, that's a

whole novel, right? there's a whole hint that there's stories. what that report has opened opportunity for small number of men to file lawsuits in federal court and able to submit their own testimony, tell their own stories, be video taped telling the stories. it is a process that takes a long time and it's a process that's an essential for any country to recover from a moment like this and we are at a moment now that, look, there's no denying that this stuff happens, the whole world knows it, you know, there are hundreds of hundreds of men who are helping extremely conditions in afghanistan, in iraq, in guantanamo u around -- the only people that don't are the american people, so we find a way to push this process to the

point u and we get to watch them and hear them do it. [applause] >> and there's something about story telling that just -- he goes back and it's such a way to go about this and someone in the mist of all this, how do people want to hear the story, very instinctive idea of what makes a good story. >> it's absolutely true. it's an incredibly gifted writer. he does all of the things that we ask, you know, we expect from writers. he remembers experience through all five of his senses, smell, taste, sound. he has an extraordinary sense of beauty, these moments and he's

being escorted in a police security van to the hotel -- or to the airport to be put on a rendition flight and sunt set after a dust storm, the description of the dust storm starting to, you know, call to prayers chattering the beautiful things. incredible sense of irony. just love that we are here in this room. >> so all of those things, he has all of those things. he's a natural story teller and he has, i think, the most extraordinary thing which is the faith and the power of truthful story telling to make a difference. i mean, this is an incredible act of faith, this man in an isolation cell in 2005 coming out of the most brutal intense prolonged interrogation that is we launched on a person after 9/11. his leaf that if he just told the story, told it well it would

somehow get over the walls and reach us and it would change his faith and the way we thought about this whole ordeal, drama of guantanamo is an extraordinary thing. >> we have essentially been at war since 9/11 and you could argue that before that. one thing that's interesting about the idea of writing the war, it's not explicitly about war, it's the fact that constant state of war informs content. most of it is not about but so much when we move into the 9/11 stuff, i couldn't help by feeling -- i'm thinking about the occupied wall street. you can draw a straight line in what occupy want to do and the constant state of warfare. there's a real connection. i wonder if you can talk about occupy. i thought it was one of the most interesting parts of your book. >> occupy, five-year anniversary was yesterday.

i had been working as a writer for a long time because occupy was an experiment with being radically inclusive and saying saying that everyone had a place to stand there, some of the places where i felt comfortable to use my art in the political way and because i was surrounded by all of the journalists and these two months of seeing friends arrested, because of all of that inspired me to write and even yesterday i was thinking about it, occupy, you change nothing and yet you perform this chemical change in your participants and change that you could ever have known. >> the fact that the 1% is a phrase that everybody knows what you mean. before occupy, i don't think that was the case. >> no, occupy is two things that popularize the idea --

[laughter] >> people finally figuring out what it is to get trapped for a few days in the criminal system and humiliated for no real purpose at all, perhaps who knows and really amazing kind of poster around occupy as well. >> i did. such an amazing time. so i live basically across the street and i turned my living room in the press room for all of the journalist that is were covering there and got tire offed hanging out in mcdonalds and give them whiskey and i . . . -- horrible thing that happened the day before. send a file, someone get it out and it was there.

like a palace system like occupy and you did it and it was there out in the world. >> by the way, i want to once again give people an opportunity to ask questions because this is -- by the way, how are we doing on time? >> i think we have like five minutes. >> five minutes. okay. >> my question is on the theme of this, what is a big theme that both of you had to learn as americans to tell the stories of people who were not american and who are being harmed by america and the second is, as you did this work as a journalist, what were the emotional consequences

for you and specially thinking about how to tell a story in a place that is so invested in denying that story? >> fantastic questions. i will start with the second one. i think of all the stories that i have covered, guantanamo hit me the hardest and exactly the reason that you said. i remember being on on the ferry back to the plane and the young guy that was being forced-fed twice a day, the government knows they never did anything and yet they will never admit that they were wrong, detain people but never admit mostly were guys, they're just dudes, they will never admit that because that shows crime and

fear on such a massive scale and i thought as long as the u.s. government doesn't admit that, they're going to keep torturing these guys and force-feeding them and keeping them in this system and thus the u.s. will never ever be able to redeem itself just for the small thing because it won't admit that it was wrong and that hit me very hard when i was there. >> i think we should actually wrap it up. >> really quickly to say for me as far as editing mohamed's book, it was a process of learning the small and subtle bigotries and prejudices that we all have. it took me about three to six months to shape the manuscript and get -- it took me about a year to undo all of my mistakes that i had made in editing and those came just -- even though i knew he was a truthful story teller and had the record, i was thinking he would get things wrong, cultural reference.

at one point an intlog -- interrogator was there and he said, we are not -- you are not going to starve, we will feed you off your ass. we learned about rectal dehydration. i thought he was doing exaggerated flourish, it took me all this time to realize that, lineally bien he was -- line by line he was telling the truth and he would move general to specific in skillful way of something who was not a professional writer. that's what it was for me, learn to go get myself out of the way