[inaudible] how do you do that? >> in some ways is just rolling the dice. sometimes, my first book is a very funny book in the last book was smoother and easier. it could be because i'm 20 years older and 20 years more experience. .. >> said kill your darlings. a lot of times i find things that are the most beautiful art always the most important . >> i think you're answering the question i was going to ask but i didn't hear the

question, would you repeat the initial question she had? >> we were talking about how you decide to any things down. i've got a minute left. >> readers can help you determine what needs to go. i think writersde tend to keep these things close but it sounds like you were at a point let people read it and get feedback and i think that can inform the process. >> mark feeney had written about a volume and i said b dissect te ruthless and he was ruthless. [laughter]ou it is really helpful though. that's the hard thing but it's helpful to have someone level with you. i think we all need that as writers and as readers, we need someone to help us see what's on the page. if it is very quick i can take a

question very quick. >> it was a huge surprise for me. i really got to like her writing the book she had this wonderful sense of humor. i'd talk about the love letters richard nixon would talk about the rain is gone and there is a rainbow out and now they are thinking only about the vagabond princess, i'm not making this up as his richard nixon love letters. [laughter] and she would write back and say why don't you come over on wednesday and i will burn a hamburger from for you. [laughter] [applause] thank you so much for being here you are welcome to join us over at the signing area and we can have more questions and more discussions. thanks again.

[inaudible conversations] book tv on c-span2 live on the campus of the university of southern california at the "los angeles times" festival of the book. the 21st year that we have been covering this festival. the 23rd year of its existence and the c-span bus is here as well you can come over and take a tour and see if we have free bookbags i'm handing out, it's clear this year. we are passing out books as well

if you are in the area come down ifand see us we are here today d tomorrow, several more hours of live coverage today and now joining us on the set right next togh the bus is the author of te book we the corporations howwe americans is mrs. bought their civil rights. before we begin you are telling somebody that stopped by at this book is a 200 year back story to citizens united. what does that mean? >> the ruling help the corporations for the same right as individuals to spend their money on election ads and this of course started the controversy and was followed a few years later by the supreme court in the hobby lobby case. they get religious liberty rights under a federal statute and i just wanted to know how did they come to have the most fundamental rights and as i looked into the back story what i found was fascinating that there was a long 200 year

history of corporations fighting for equal rights under the constitution. mike women and minorities though they don't protest in the streets. they've been fighting in the supreme court and have a remarkable track recorde of success that in some ways is greater than the success of minorities and women. >> when did the fight in the supreme court "-begin-quotes >> guest: the rights on business corporations was decided in 1809 so just shortly after the founding of the nation. to put that in perspectiveth the first case on the rights of african-americans wasn't decided until 1857 and 1873 so corporations for a half a century earlier fighting for constitutional protections and whereas the women and minority lost most of their cases to court up until the 1950s and later corporations won thee case

and 1809ar and have a remarkable track record of supreme court since then. >> what's the effect of corporations as well? >> when they have constitutional rights they use the rights to fight against regulation, laws that regulate business in the interest of consumers or investors or the public at large, that is what a constitutional right is. usually they win but occasionally they lose and they can go to court and is a that violates my constitutional right so you might think of it as like a jedi light sabers they use to try to strike down the law regulating business. >> we are familiar with the hobby lobby case of citizens united. what are some of the rights granted corporations from previous pieces? >> it turns out citizens united and hobby lobby or the most visible manifestations of a larger phenomenon and the tip of

the iceberg or metaphorically the tip of the iceberg and if you look back through history it seems they have won a wide variety even for citizens united and hobby lobby, so they won under the fourth amendment three unreasonable searches and seizures, the rights of due process and equal protection, better protection for criminal defendants h under the constitution. indeed corporations have the same rights as individuals today. >> host: (202)748-8200 east and central and want to talk to the author aboutur his book we e corporations. (202)748-8201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zoneshi. is it a negative thing corporations have the same rights as people? >> guest: it is a complicated story when we see the case like citizens united this is because

th... they havethe same right ao spend on elections and we realize they have the ability to amass resources individuals really cannot match. we are not creating an equal playing field between businesses andd people and at the same time they've been innovators in constitutional law and one of the things i show in my book is that they are both innovators in devising civil rights litigation strategies that would later be used by for instance the naacp and fighting racial segregation and cases involved in the earliest cases that breathe life into some of the most important rights like freedom of the press, freedom of the press or the earliest most important pieces by broadcast corporations and indeed even to this day we think of the most important cases brought by companies like "the new york times" or "washington post." the popular movie the post other than about it is this corporations asserting its constitutional rights.

>> host: so that's a good thing. >> guest: the story is complicated sometimes corporations need rights. there is a movement to an end thtoconstitution and say they he no rights under the constitution's and while i emphasize with the attitude that they have too much power and the supreme court has given them the rights to immunize themselves from certain kinds of regulation or spend money on election ads i think corporations have no rights goes way too far. corporations need protections for their property rights so the government doesn't take their buildings to build a highway without building compensation. they needed to process the government can't say without proving it beyond a reasonable doubt and of course fox news and c-span and other organizations that are maybe more in the corporations and i don't know about c-span but fox news they

need protection against government censorship and they wouldn't have it if they had no rights so we need a more nuanced approach other than they have all the rights of the people or none r of the rights. >> host: there was a famous statement mitt romney made in iowa i think in 2012 telling somebody corporations are people too. is it a bad thing corporations can donate money to campaigns? if they have that right box >> guest: americans confronted the problem over 100 years ago and wes think that roosevelt isa great trus trust fund of its anti-corporation and fought in a big cost and in some ways he did but also he ran his campaign, one of the first presidential campaigns to be financed almost exclusively with corporate money so that's how he won the reelection and indeed his receipt of corporate money kicked off a huge scandal at the

time it was thought to be the scandal of the century about big corporations giving teddy roosevelt campaign money and at the time, americans rose up in outrage and passed a law banning corporate money in elections and thought been how we about corporations for 100 years that they shouldn't be spending money and influence elections in fact be for citizens united i foundd court cases where busines corporations went to court arguing their earlier campaign finance laws violated their rights and unlike the supreme court today 100 years ago the court said no the rights to influence elections belongs to natural persons not artificial. >> host: weren't corporations allowed to have pacs for a long time? >> corporations and unions formed the committees for quite some time. this was a good example of

thinking about corporations and they way they gained political power. the packay was devised by the unions as a way to get around restrictions on contributions to political candidates and for years while they used in the 1930s and 40s and 50s they stayed on the sideline because theys, were no not short of the legalitsure of thelegality and s convinced congress to put it into the wall that they could form these packs and make it crystal clear and the next thing they said okay we can do this and within ten years theater three timethey havethree times s as neither unions and it's an example of how we often find in my story often progressive reforms designed to meet the ends of labor for outcasts have often been turned and exploited by corporations to protect their own interests and rights. corporations are good at leveraging reform to serve the

ends of capital. >> host: are they treated the same in the law fax or unions people to? >> guest: many of these pertain to corporations also pertain to unions and some of the important union cases lead to where they gained free speech rights to form packs for instant the supreme court says that's okay those were cases that court says corporations can do is to consider its examples how there've been connections between the two but what we are seeing interesting thing is the expansion of the rights of the corporations u and the limitingf the rights of unions and there's a case before the court this year the court seems likely to make it harder for the public unions to raise money to spend on things like collective bargaining and other things like that. >> host: do you know the name of that case?

>> guest: it's called the janice case and it has an interesting history. this issue first came to the court when justice scalia was on the bench and went back into the private conference and decided that five-4 to strike down the rules and limit the power but thethen discover you died discod before the opinion was released and that vote doesn't count so the final decision came out through the code for-4 and the moment he was confirmed to the court case case was brought rigt into the court to get it over the justices quickly. is called we the corporations from this debate for american business when their civil rights. adam winkler is the author and bob is in overland park kansas and you are on book tv. >> caller: hello. i wish i was there with you all. i used to live in california and

there was a humorous period in the newspaper one day there was a fellow pulled over for driving the commuter lane as a single passenger he contended he had a corporate starter in his passenger seat since citizens united declared corporations to have the right said any delay that is a chocolate about my question is what do you think of the term limits in terms of our federal politicians being able to have a moratorium on participating in lobbying? i've heard five years as one of the proposals put togetheret but then also there is a corrupting influence that i think is scary.

your thoughts on some of this? >> guest: that's a great question and a great story about the guy that had a corporate charter. corporations are people so i can drive in the flame. with regards to lobbying, one of the ways corporations exert a lotti of power and influence ovr regulation ands legislation is regulators and lawmakers often find themselves leaving office and going to work at corporations that use that as an incentive structure and it creates a system in which they are more reluctant to regulate since the teacher employers. corporations exercising power overve legislation and regulatin over congress and administrative agencies. one of the stories i tell in my book is have to understand how

they have been successful in the course of the law and how they use the constitution to expand the rights and powers even when they lose in the legislature, they have another chance to win in court and we think that the court as a protection of minorities win over the course of its history it's more a power of interests like corporations. >> host: what's your front lawn and new york. >> caller: excuse me, hello. i want to give a shout out to the tv. i love c-span2. thank you for your book and for investigating this clinical topic in a time of serious transition to say the least. i wonder what your prescription is for solving some of these issues. >> guest: that's a great

question also. i avoid any prescriptions in my book. a if looks back to explain how we got here rather than suggesting a way forward which is a complicated question but one place to start is a line that supreme court drew 100 years ago back when the court history was business friendly known as the walk there is a the supreme court was inundated with cases brought by corporations seeking extensive constitutional protections and the court back then drew a line that said corporations should have property rights but not what he writes so the need of protecti protection. the government could take assets no one would form a corporation that wouldn'tra make sense but theysh said they shouldn't have the rights of personal liberty is associated with bodily integrity, personal conscience and political freedom and 100 years ago they upheld campaign financet laws contrary to the

thrust of citizens united and cases like the cake shop for the killer david cook worked this year where there was a question about businesses have the right to discriminate against certain consumers if they don't want to serve those customers. the supreme court 100 years ago had cases just like that ands said no businesses don't have the right to discriminate against certain kinds of customers they don't want to serve the line between property and liberty rights doesn't answer all questions bu the quet it's the first step to addressing the problems of corporate rights in america. >> host: as a law professor, can you draw a line between the cake case is perhaps a car company saying we don't want to sell you a car is there a line in? n >> guest: inthe cake case involves a colorado baker that refused to sell sell it takes a

same-sex couple with religious motivations and he makes custom made cakes and this would force them to speak in a certain way if he's forced to make this cake by the law says you can't discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. if it rules in favor of the baker it will be somewhat limited to maybe businesses where there is some sort of an expressive aspect to the profession that w but we have confronted these issues before in the 1960s businesses challenged the civilig rights at and made similar claims requiring them to serve african-americans would violate their constitutional right into the court turned these cases the way he answered no businesses don't have the right to discriminate against customers. it's a lesson i hope they don't forget. >> host: in the latest coming from lopollingfrom los angeles. you are on with the author of we the corporations.

>> caller: i should be there but i'm not. i wasn't feeling well. i'm glad to have the opportunity to ask a couple of questions. i know you would probably shy away from opinions but is a danger towards fascism in our current administration and i'm watching as i'm just really concerned about it and feel like we are in a constitutional crisis. should we be thinking aboutr having a what do you call it when we get together and review of the constitution i don't know what the word is. >> guest: constitutional convention. i >> guest: >> caller: to look at items that the second amendment but in

solo but that doesn't even apply in the same way that it would right now. and i'm worried about corporations getting so big they are running everything. the banking industry is one industry that i saw where one bank was fined a billion dollars -- >> guest: you ask a good question about whether we need a constitutional convention. people are feeling uncertain about it whether it is the checks and balances and whether they are really working or not. it remains to be seen whether they well. there has been a push by some to

have a convention both people on the right want a balanced budget amendment and to get rid of the protections that they don't like and maybe some people on the left of it i'm not a big fan of the idea of a constitutional convention i think right now americans are very utterly divided. i don't see the kind of statesmen running the country that have the wisdom of the founding fathers so i wouldn't be prepared to replace their handiwork so quickly that we need to think seriously about what kind of amendments might be worthwhile. there hasn't been an amendment in 50 years where there were some.it we ha have constitutional amendments in eight years and they were all consequential so we might think of the reform although maybe the convention is the way i would go.o.

>> host: next call was from virginia in spring valley new york please go ahead. >> caller: yes, hello i'm glad to speak with you all. i watch you every saturday. my concern is speaketh by the corporations having unions. it seems to be a predominant factor that most places in the south don't have unions. [inaudible] >> guest: unions have been struggling. l today is a historic low. they are suffering tryin tried o organize and suffering and s moe

with the changes of technology and how it's changing businesses and how they operate, so we definitely see the unions take a hit in recent years and corporations do play a role in that. they've been active in pushing for the right to work laws historically. big businesses keep workers advised if you will not find collectivity to exercise more bargaining power but longing for the days of the union to come back isn't realistic and not clear how that's going to happen so we need too find other ways o protect individuals and workers from beginning to is by employers. >> host: toward first book gunfight with was that about? >> guest: another surprising history of guns and how

americans have balanced gunfight with gun control. we often hear the story's part of our founding heritage into the laws that regulate guns invaded those fundamental rights tbut the story is more complicated than it's been telling us for all these years. it's a part of our history and tradition into the same time so uncontrolled and the founding i'm control and the founding father's handgun safetyaf regulation and wild west the heart of th the the gunk which e olmost restrictive gun laws in e nation and for many years the nra was a big supporter of gun control and pushed to regulate and restrict guns on the street, the sam same wall the challengen court today as a violation of the second amendment so gets much more interesting and fascinating fan perhaps the one-sided view we might w get fm the nra.

>> host: vancouver washington uri with the author. >> caller: this dovetails with my question on the cookin cabin, scalia and the conservative wing of the supreme court are very much oriented towards constructionism. my question is how would madison and munro and jefferson, atoms at the 1809 case how would they look at corporations and all the rulings forhi the? washington and franklin were gone but how did a few corporations? >> guest: it was understood through the lens of partisanship inin the battle of the bank of e unitebank of theunited states. the case involved the bank of the united states that was the richest and most powerful

corporation in the founding era set up by the congress but established as a private business corp corporation and so the public. some were in favor of granting the bank institutional rights because the bank was under attack by jeffersonian states rights advocates who thought the bank was a national power they wanted to bring down and so even the founding fathers were split on the case that it's important to recognize and it's a difficult question for people who believe in a regionalism to argue that they intended to protect the corporations when they wrote it. there is no evidence or ratifying conventionratifyingcoa convention of any whether the corporations should have the same rights as people under the constitution that's a difficult

question. it's to expand the ratings to protect the corporate right. >> host: montana, you get the last word. >> caller: something i've been wondering about for a long time is the government and corporations, can the government t ttake the charter back and hoo they do it ask that's it. >> host: thank you. >> guest: the government gives them more processed than today. they can be revoked and there is residual power in the government is establishethat is establishes can lose their chargers.

it's often thought of as a corporate death penalty if you will, but very infrequently used by states, so the corporations managed to gain the rights of people that they remain to be immortal and not subject to the same kind of penalty in most instances. ..

>> or universitiesnd formed those businesses take that precedent and that is their right. >> to the citizens united case with american businesses? >> live coverage of the 23rd annual l.a. times festival of books continues.

>> to encourage people to participate and think of the government at all levels with thatll extraordinary event you

are all helping to continue the conversation. thank you very much if not already.a subscribing it is easy to sign up it is everything you need to know about california politics so also looking why president trump is amazing panel is not in this room. [laughter] just be sure you are in the right place. [applause] now we will have an interesting conversation with three incredibly talented authors with lots of points of view. >> we will have a book signing in the dining area.

>> the view from flyover countr country. [applause] >> is even worse than you think and what the trumpet ministrations doing to america and what the hell just happened to ourou country? we will keep the bios that sure we want to get to your questions so i will just kick it off from this morning that president trump with the attack on the new york times with the coverage of michael cohen?

what is the take away from president trump personal lawyer to be pulled into the investigation. >> it is a real danger. it isn't a business dealing with what could be called with russians and his lawyer in this case with the agreement that he drafted you don't have to be a lawyer to know literally it is the worst accredited law school in america. but it open the door to all sorts of relationships to money laundering which i am confident over the years and

cohen and it is significant that president trump tweeted mothis morning that michael would not slip on him. if he hasn't done anything wrong there's nothing to flip. [applause] >> i agree. and when he tweets in general so to have this to be wb quality going after the new york times and he claims there is many photos of them together and that's is the serious question of corruption

those legal matters that you are referring toie from money laundering they think these are the tactics and those have the demand for many, many years with the new york press before covering national politics they do have a relationship talking to each other extensively. >> the premise of my book is that leads to bad outcomes but that everything that is happening around trump is important but also in the last couple of days to be the director of nasa a politician who central qualification

running a museum mental saw oklahoma to be sure if climate changes the essential driver to take on the threat to the entire species that is almost nowhere so no wonder that the koch brothers is talking in the bathroom but looking at what is really happening form policy so talking about a book you had written why did you choose to write about forgotten america? >> i think most of america is forgotten it is a collection of essays about the social

trust and i write about national issues from the perspective and they think as the year goes on more and more america with racial strife and poverty that version of trust. >> and then talk about the erosion of the social contract. and one other thing that i . out the great recession does not have the geographically equal recovery.

and then drive through the inner-city o areas. and taco bell and burger king but it does cause a lot of suffering for people who live there. so that conditions can improve. >> extensively about donald trump but you write it is worse than you think. but how do you choose to take that angle? >> in 2016 i wrote the book of his criminal past and the deep

involvement and things like that but losing the electoral college what will not bet covered is the coverage which is the white house it is fantastic and vastly better which is daughter of the excellent new york times reporter that is far better than id imagined but the coverage of the government.

>> with the first 150 days of the administration should the people around trump put into the government the political termites? and then to have this horrendous bill for repairs. their names are not in the ec public record. they are persuading people to resign at the top of the pay grade who now processes the oil royalty checks. and with the news media that is severely lacking. >> you right trump is a result of that story?

talk about that and how you approach that. >> i think there is a fair amount of anger and frustration but underneath that is a lot of sorrow and confusion in my collection night in the middle of the night once we do the results my kids were ten and eight and three and then i thought my god what it wouldld be like to be a parent of color or a immigrant or a muslim parent and then i thought how in gods name will i explain this to my kids? how do i explain the adult world who brags about sexually assaulting women and insight

violence at his rallies and over the racist and bigoted? and would not be allowed on the playground frankly? so i come at this not as the apostate journalist but as stories to construct reality that is what has allowed the species to extend the bonds of human kindness self-governance and all the good things but if we tell bad stories that are fraudulent or naïve then inevitably we will come up with bad results so if we don't examine the stories.

but if you don't interrogate what brought that person to power then you are vulnerable with that bad political actor so this is a way to explain to my kids this is before the country was even founded and that is a bad story intended to create that pigmentary alliance keeping them from focusing on economic justice with america as the representative democracy that should put that myth to bed and there is a whole series of other bad stories of what we can get to to have a conversation about those because i feel like my head in the news cycle like putting my hand in aha blender.

>> one of the things i will point r out that includes the f bombs i will not say that but there is a testimonial hiller will -- here to say i can handle a bad story better than anybody as long as it's true. i love that. so i thought i would ask you to pick the fact maybe it is undercover but that affects the entire country. >> where do i begin? the biggest effect is the shifting of expectations and accountability for justice beingt served. it is predictable he would win

and ifn,e he did he would try to govern as a criminal and using executive privilege and then to do things like the autocracy and obviously they would be in violation of the constitution so you come to rely on the system of checks and balances what we have learned the system relies just as much and that both are very fragileom and we keep waiting for accountability to come even like kuschner who is supposed to be solving the middle east but still we have a complicit and complacent gop i don't know where this is going to end the more of the

expectation of justice and responsibility in the executive branch as we encourage people to keep expectations high it is reasonable to expect autocracy. [applause] >> she is right but also we see government of the worst to be the most corrupt how many of you know what the rce p is? nobody? >> david told the. [laughter] donald came into office with a transpacific partnership. that it needed a fundamental

fix because of thed corporations and the favorable to monopolies but the tpp and it was intended in large part to obtain the ambitions of china to extend the reach of international waters and written previously how the chinese military strategist and saidas to prepare for america and how that was sucked out of the country and how they did it. so he kills the tpp and did nothing china has a regional

comprehensive partnership 15 countries plus india. when i was in australia last fall every person i spoke with from high level informed people to the chambermaid at my hotel said the same thing, australia must pivot away from washington and toward beijing because with this trade issue australia is a the most best ally even the french and canadians this will not hurt you tomorrow but it will hurt your children and your grandchildren. to cause serious long-term damage it is a huge public gift with the right wing republicans with the communist regime in china.

>> yikes.es [laughter] i think the central thing that i realize is how much all of us turn away from the compass of self-governance like a self driving car and people rnderstood that right of your pooch in a new no way he could fight the united states but he wants to make russia great again.d and he knew every empire brought low by internal division and one of the central things that we was

like a fingernail on a chalkboard of how much the bad stories predominated or endlessly debated almost no coverage with what they devoted their work toward and the mechanisms of government with a corrupt alliance with corrupt business and corrupt government we have turned away from that with that spectacle of that wounded masculine ego. i do think whether we watch and discuss or rapture we all followed a have on -- and returned with a are supposed o be about which is the competition of ideas.

>> there are some here with the media's role was a coverage of politics in general and something that we have noticed how many people are looking for policy? hillary clinton education plan? they are not as caught up in the cable cycle but now we also see in the youngest generation is actually like the white papers the candidates put out. and with such deep reporting over the years with donald trump and his reporting's you compare him frequently to the

mob and the way he operates his b businesses so explain that. >> donald is not a businessman. i am a cofounder of a successful little company managing a hotel he is a cash extractor he runs businesses the way the mob does when they get their hands on a business with the loan sharks his casinos are the first to fail en atlantic city because his competitors reinvested profits putting better mattresses or a painted wall with wallpaper he would just pull cash out as fast as he could those that are the least capitalized will be the first to fail and his word.

so there is not now or never has been one scintilla of verifiable evidence trump has ever had a billion dollars. when i broke the story in 1990 he was not a billionaire for four months he called me a liar that he had to put in the public record is net worth was minus 290 million why said you are going -- so writing in the choir or are worth more than donald trump.t. [laughter]y there is no long-term strategy or policy.ou if you look at all of the previous presidents and all of them try in the context to do well for the country he is utterly corrupt new york city politician because his president was assassinated

when his cronies came down from manhattan he's a gentleman i'm the president of the united states and from him we got the civil service act which is incredibly talented and dedicated hard-working federal workforce with law enforcement and biolog biology. >> it is about making him richer but for most with the self-described genetically superior expert on 22 differentt subjects except you cannot recall donald trump.

>> so obviously this is different types of viewpoints but it seems we all try to understand america and between what you have learned and your reporting will happen over the next two and a half years but i am curious what is happening in forgotten america and those forgotten places that people are moving past. >> we have a new cycle with one years worth of scandal. one thing that i don't like is the idea of two americas with red and blue i write it

america is purple like a bruise so what pulls us together is that sense of collective suffering it is something that we see it is obvious trump could not have gotten and if he cannot exploitation which he always has. to find the most vulnerable industry all the way up to the apprentice during a recession continues with the tagline you're fired. this isis also about his financial debt in the volatile personality which means it is very difficult to control or predict because if he feels he

is going down he could take others because he cannot stand the scrutiny he craves attention but he shuns scrutiny. so more that he is exposed the more dangerous it is not just for america but for the world it is difficult to predict with all the shady people that make up the administration that have their own positions. >> are people paying attention to that? be maxim people are and there has been some ehrlich work to pay attention but i see him as the inheritor of the audience to shape with the fairness doctrine in 1987.

[applause] whoever you are there used to be a mechanism and then said my guard my -- god the founders never talked about this that can control the minds and hearts so they come up with a series of measures to say you have the response of the and that means all shy -- aids and that is common sense it is the job of broadcasters to debates controversial issues when it was repealed by reagan so with those right wing tacos

going -- talkers began and that they rated this room then another set in america where 247 that are paid to exalt their grievance and then to say getting them focused with their healthcare. but the fact is the fairness doctrine but basically it was a spoiler plaintiff propaganda.t but the rise of this other media essentially propaganda. but david and sarah were onto this early on but he viewed

the audience talking about the same line of nonsense with a culture historian. not just your imaginary gun but they are coming for your life. f and how can these ideas eresonate? because we were not aware they started to take over with a significant and politically active part. >> as a creature of television

and to exploit that that taught me a lot during the campaign he could tail if the cameras were recording live with the light and if they weren't he would say something a little flamboyant and then they will start covering him live on cable. >> spending time at the new yorknd times and how government policies were creating the trilogy of books and the bottom 90% of americans have smaller incomes than 1967. 90% have real grievances and you take into account the

ereduced plans and benefits and especially with job security they feel worse than the 60s he watched me on television he instilled the message that i had anybody who runs for president on that platform people in washington are picking your pocket with goldman sachs and general electric. it was those insurgencies and fears. >> we will get to that.

>> so that age-old institution and to have the structural cannot remember the lack j of the extreme inequality i am from the generation that has no real adult experience in a functional economy. and then regardless what the government has to think about but i do feel younger people they are suffering and struggling.

and the american dream that is the story your grandparents tell you. i don't think we have a dream now we have circumstances we have reactions so we are at an unfortunate historical juncture witnessing the erosion of our democracy and it is important that looking at that historical precedent and those that have been f exploited by grace and economic inequality then to figurere out how to remedy this. people say we have to get rid of trump going back to normal but normal was not good for a lot of people. [applause] it was good for the elite or for the rich white men very rich white men so we need to

reconsider what normal life is supposed to look like. >> talking about this idea and the need for discussion or what led to the rise of president trump. >> i am not ready to say that. [laughter] but i do have a chapter that is the bad story the court jester's will rescue us. i think the rise of propagandistic paranoid degrees of the right wing media has been under scrutinized and under regulated frankly so they are out there portraying america as a horror show and carnage to understand the basic principle from the reality you

don't want to talk about the systemic problems keeping people mired info y poverty than you could have another area thatea ratchets up as they pour over the border so the right has constructed a horror movie. and onhi the left the response is that story is coherent to justify how they feel with declining you to one -- you can declining utility nothing like poking at people's primal emotions to get them to ruth politically or otherwise been on the left i think we have reacted to a sense of despair and confusion about our dysfunction and the corrupt government reliance between big business with a sense of

distress and anguish and and we need therapy about it but what thesera other brilliant comedians do and i think it is very emotional but they drain the body politics of the outrage that we are looking for other people to solve this problem but we are the solution to the problem and we are the subjects of history and objects of history if the pendulum is going to swing back to be more commonsensical we have to be the engineers of that swing and i write about this broadly in america everything turned into the adjunct of the entertainment world and what jon stewart does god bless him he does a lot of good things but he has

converted civic dysfunction into disposable laughs. if you think about it the line he has been preaching just to make people laugh media as corrupt and politics is totally corrupt they are all bums was the most successful line that trump was preaching at his rallies. >> and want to make sure we have a lot of time for your questions and we have gotten a little dark with two more depressing questions. [laughter] but next to say that trump is a clear and present danger to the whole world so talked about that potentially something good coming out of the north korea discussions. >> not everything will go badly. before trump took office i was

very concerned if he could find the excuse to suspend the constitution he would do so but the good news is now that the military officer corps they have a deep distrust of donald trump i don't think that will happen. [applause] >> but he talks casually about killing 25 million people in north korea. and were he to do that everybody would withdraw and separate from us. he is creating enemies for us absolute poster boy not just i sold that has been on the run since the obama administration but every radical jihadist in the middle east and is the poster boy and from back in thefi fall that was confirmed by people all over the middle

east. donald does not know what he's doing quite literally one of his professors said he is the dullest student i ever had i quoted him in my book to say that essentially the world's greatest expert on taxes of all time i am an authority on taxes.se especially the new tax code for america. >> can it fit on a postcard? be making don't even have to file the tax return. [laughter] but the essential point he used to be a great expert but testified under oath he knows nothing of accounting i am also the world's greatest airplane designer of all time nobody knows more than i do but what is awaiting? lung -- a wing?

[laughter] >> looking at charlottesville i view this as a turning point when the perception of the president so i want to start their with this but what is the view in flyover country of what happens there with a conversation r about race and the intensity and rhetoric g from ferguson? >> and to clarify because of the way with everything between that but that diverse perspectives but in terms of reception but what is interesting to first recognize

that trump was racist and a white supremacist but was afraid to say at i think this forced people to say c it in my mind when you launch a campaign on rapist and murderer's and then go on from there to denigrate basically every ethnic group or campaign should have been called out and castigated by the media from thehe start he should not haveve been able to even get on his feet. [applause] but unfortunately it was treated as entertainment or play down or he is kidding but even if they are kidding if they have that attitude then you are in for a terrible situation he does not condemn the kkk or the neo-nazi groups but people were forced to confront that and we have

problems of systemic racism it isn't just feeling or identity politics which is really civil rights and in this country it is on the decline voting rights are in trouble to have these concrete things that have gone backwards especially the last five years that need to be remedied it will take a out of i will tell you living in st. louis there is no reform after ferguson there was protest and media attentioninhe but things have remained the same black teenagers and black men and municipal governments are still ripping off the black drivers there is in jail called the workhouse we didn't get change we need actual

reform so when somebody comes out like trump with the bigotry, you cannot treat that as a joke and assume the worst to protect the most vulnerable that is our responsibility. [applause] >> if anybody is interested i will recommend our prize finalist which also won the pulitzer prize for nonfiction. >> i want to jump in on that. >> just quickly one thing that became one of the best stories in the book is we tried to tell a story about the

economic anxiety people found it very comforting that it could be a remedy in fact there was a candidate trying to take on economic injustice with an incredibly successful grassroots campaign that was bernie sanders but the social scientists reveal that actually that prediction for support for trump when show resentment and that secondau predictor is called the authoritarian mindset solutions to complicated problems immigration, and not being an authoritarian the only other thing i could trade down is this has very real applications in terms of the larger corporate interest with a law and order candidate running a campaign with a fear

of a planet if that is your pitch then you are more thanre likely to distract from the real conversation we should be having of the criminal justice system that is the real conversation you have to worry about with mass incarceration and systemic problems but if it is just law and order and you can getct yourself elected, the real despicable actors in all of this in my view are the folks who said i don't like what he says but i will still pull the lever they went for tribal loyalty which is most people. i loved everything he said i stand behind him me and my comrades. [laughter] but it was everybody making excuses but if you are the law

and order candidate getting into office first make sure you pastor kony and measures for undocumented workers and then you privatize. and thoseib that contributed to thee campaign run that prison industrial complex it is happening right in front of our eyes. >> that is a good transition to my second question 198 days from the midterm elections i'm sure everyone in this room is registered to vote. so what is the state of the republican party right now as there is an opportunity to winco that control with u.s. house in very competitive races throughout california?

what are your predictions for the midterms? people that supportha the president and what happens next? >> republicans have been asking they fear no consequences whether repeal of obamacare user policies no one likes including those that voted for trump normally that would make them change their policies but they don't care. you have to ask why? why do they feel they are not at risk? because there are mechanisms to win if you laid the results of the election and we already saw that in 2016 with new voter identification laws with foreign interference to hack on the database and if you combinen those it is a

situation you can manipulate the vote. we need transparency and theseity through elections and one other thing is that russia does interference is a serious problem that we need to address which trump is not willing to do the one thing i can envision the gop doing is for what is possible they may try to dismiss that when and this could be illegitimate and there is no reason but not to

have them with that narrative and then to have transparent elections watch out for the voters and don't take anything for granted. [applause] >> i think the democrats will undoubtedly take back the house but what are they for? that is a problem i can tell you what the republicans are for, the reason the economy is not better that if we get the rich more but they won't do until we get them more. so the way to pay for that as you add 10% to the national

debt that is publicly traded impasse more subsidy laws like the trump tax pill one -- bill provisions and then you finance this by taking away from the disabled in the elderly and the sec. things like that. that is clear but what are the democrats for? they need to have a campaign what they are for and what they will do for you and get the program that appeals to people they won't have majorities in congress although they should be the majority party. >> a couple of things, when you are the minority party you have to figure out a way with your path and with this movementec, essentially getting

people so exhausted by civic discourse because that dark matter in our democracy with the 2016 election with 104 billion americans that is 21 and that is a tool that putin even saw that sometimes it is a conscious effort literally threwer voter suppression but just as frequently simply to get those younger voters and turned off the whole thing and with our reality and that kind of crisis. but.

>> if the chairman of cps but to be in a tacit alliance those who want to make everything dirty through politics it is disruption to see happen if they bank on that so there is some signs of hope he won because he talked withve people those that are going around texas and the lintel -- a little rented car talk about what is happening and how to improve their circumstance. i will tell you we know exactly the left policy should be running on i will read it to you because it is so clear

that the conflict of the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress in our day it appearsrs as a struggle with the right of self-government with a special interest and then for defeating the popular will at every stage under all circumstances to equalize the opportunity to destroy privilege and give to the life in citizens of every individual to the commonwealth all i ask is what you for in the civil war. that is teddy roosevelt. [applause] he said that 1910. it isn't that complicated. it is pretty simple you have to callout the people in the

castle with this classfa of warfare people on the left are so in the thrall that they cannot look at the basic morality and with that religious tradition and the political realm and partly the reason he did so well. >> that is a nice way to wrap that up if you are interested at the l.a. times central there is a more conversation about that we have time for ane few questions we will get as many as we can to make sure

your statement ends in a? >> i have been here 20 years struggling with the friends back there to know if i can ever make any headway that is so polarized and split do you have any thoughts. >> yes in st. louis you get the full spectrum but what i found is one set of common ground with that state or national parks but another is

corruption but if you can distance from those individuals with those principles that you deserve better than that helps to find common ground. you don't expect them to agree with everything. >> steve has mentioned bernie sanders a few times and to feel the democratic party is complicit by running those corrupt primaries of the

nominees.at >> i am happy to weigh in. >> i to hear what you say. so to have this debate right now and reforming their primary process in some very small organizational structures and if they do win back some control they will have the debate over the leaders and how the process is playedan out in those were the strongest fundraisers but this is something they are wrestling with their identity if they will continue to keep in mind bernie is not a democrat the 17. >> what i would say is i am

less interested in a particular candidate a was bernie's w reporter and a hillary supporter we were one of those households but simply because he wasrt articulating what was the more important position to take and was not tainted by what hillary clinton by circumstance and misogyny was saddled with the reputation of the insider as to a public servant and i think she was treated despicablyow all around but who waspo just dressed you look at the perfect candidate so what is important i just want to hear what people wants to do and what policies do they want to pursue having a root out corruption with the system essentially that is a centrifuge to concentrate

wealth at the top? unconscionablyio as the nation is as abundant hours hours and a politician who can speak to that i don't care what they look like or even what party they are and if they speak to that in the steinbeck language i am in. >> oneaf more question. >> after the parkland shooting i was impressed by the high school students so i am wondering when the white house reporters will get the guts to tell sarah huckabee sanders and will stand up to her? >> two things the reason is they have a journalism teacher who's a program wins an award year after year after year and it shows why journalism is so important because all we can

do is make a record if you don't get people to act so to these reporters and the white house to tell off sarah huckabee. [laughter] furthermore she is doing a >>ne job all by herself showing who she is. [laughter] >> thanks to everybody so much. thank you to everyone. [applause] if you think that journalism is a viable thing then support it. thanks for being here. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations]

>> booktv c-span2 live coverage l.a. times festival of books the last author discussion was on the trumpet ministration you heard what they had to say by the waste era will be out here later to take your call and david k johnson was on a month ago in tucson and this half hour before the next author discussion begins we will talk about trump supporters only what do you you think about this discussion? t

let's get to the call janet here from the l.a. area sherman oaks if you were listening to that panel what did you think? >> caller: i was listening. greetings from southern california which has been completely overrun. i am 58-year-old multiracial citizen and i knew that something was wrong when every block that you drive down a guy who looks like huck finn or daniel boone or calamity jane is homeless and everywhere you go, it is hispanic who have all that union jobs all the jobs. if you are not hispanic that i

have a very thick accent but the bottom line with the trump supporters like myself is reality. when your entire family now khas to pull together to pull in their belt the reality on the ground there is no work for regular american citizens but the forms are brought in from especially the latin countries. they have kids very fast our citizensum cannot even afford a stick of gum it is called globalization but in southern california people that come here from other countries especially like mexico or

tijuana or honduras they don't share our founding they could care less american exceptionalismut means zero. >> thank you talking about immigration one of the issues hfrom the last author panelis also healthcare the russia investigation and paranoid media and is one of the authors said that president trump is a clear and present danger to the world we will hear from another president trump supporter you are on booktv. >> caller: thank you. i am the voice of the east coast i am a trump supporter only that the idea of voting for hillary clinton made me nauseated so this discussion that we just heard is benevolent because it has no

sense of balance at all. it is a bunch of people who would like trump to fall off the face of the earth. and make us all happy. i don't think that this is the kind of viewpoint that will make our d country better place even if the democrats win in the next election in the house which they may. i don't support all of trumpet but i do support some of what he does and what he is doing. and you heard nothing, nothing even close positive from that panel. >>host: thank you from huntington new york now we will go to brian in michigan what did you think? >> caller: >> you know the rules.

we will put him on hold. >> you know better than that turn down the volume on your tv. >> he is gone. what did you think of that author discussion? >> i thought it was one-sided i watched c-span quite regularly it has become more left leaning i used to enjoy it because it was middle-of-the-road i am a trump supporter i think we need to give him a chance i don't know if he is a liar he is doing very good things maybe he shouldn't tweet so

much but give him a chance i say the democratic party and with another candidate they could have one but they didn't even though i liked hillary in the '90s i think in the 2000 she injured herself and that is my opinion. >> that is connie from rialto california. >> if you like president trump tune in tomorrow we will be here tomorrow one of our guests will be on for an hour taking calls he has written a book called moral narcissism he is a screenwriter here in hollywood and used to be a liberal now a conservative as

you know we do not have control over who was on thee panel at the festivals we do like to present different points of view tony from utah what did you think about president trump and what is your view? been a guy like to see what the other side has to say and my view is it was ridiculous. he is been in office 15 months and they started out blaming him for everything they talk aboutve propaganda abc nbc cbs the main new sources of america since day number one so when they say we are all influenced by propaganda i'm sorry in 2012 when obama was elected they ignored it.

and i am just tired of it. and we voted for him because we don't like brown people but i voted for trump i don't like him i will support him because he is the president but there hillary was the only other person on the ticket and she is worse than trump. >> things for calling in indiana what do you think? >> caller: yes. this is wonderful stuff i love it i am a trump supporter. i am a pastoral counselor and my answering service is taking additional clients within the last hour. of the trump arranged his him

--dash disease is a great business formula counselor friends are excited making a lot of money off of this from what is taking place on the left bring it on. >> south of indianapolis one of the things that david k johnson said during that discussion was that president trump what suspends the constitution if he could. we will get a reaction to the last author, discussion. >> we are live from the l.a. book fast on the campus of the university southern california in los angeles a beautiful sunny day steve is from two

rivers -- three riversiv california. >> it is very predictable being the los angeles times with anything that they disagree with but not to present any issues racism is used for a blanket statement it is absolutely sickening there is no debate whatsoever over principles they are not a principled party it is relative they don't understand the lack of boundaries and what is based on socialism and the immigration of psychology because they are in a codependency. thank you. >> the next call is from california you are on booktv. >> what i heard is a bunch of people who majored in

sociology complaining if they majored in a real degree they would haveve a better job they complain because of higher wages and corporations and the social security system will not be there for us also how we say for entire other than investing intr corporations that is what he is trying to do to build up for retirement and it is also ironic that if that seminar was held on monday morning i don't think anybody would i show up i am a usc alumni i doubt any of us ever would have gone to hear what anybody had to say. all of the liberals have nobody walking up to them during the day. >> what do you do in santa

clarita? >> i guess we will never find out. 150,000 people are thousand people are here this weekend at the l.a. times book fair on campus next we will hear from fort myers florida. >> i just want to say i have always been a democrat. i am 89 yearsw old but now a trump supporter i supported him and will continue to support him. the best thing that has happened to our country is what he is doing. everything he promised he is doing. he is not a politician. that is why he was elected i think he is doing a great job and i will be a supporter for himuc through 2020 thank you so much. >> mary from fort myers floridaa with the coverage from

the l.a. times book fair listening to trump supporter's only to get their viewpoint on the last author discussion the authors participating that was uniformly negative about the byesident we want to hear a variety of viewpoints sarah will be out here later to take your phone calls. but now from portland oregon what is your reaction to the author discussion? >> it is wednesday when president donald trump was on morning joe this is what god is doing this is what christ is doing.

because america goes morally. i really am highly educated and i graduated from your country but then with that last issue cannot last. this is what the statistics show d all of them msnbc all of you are against the truth.

>> thank you for calling. now we will go to louisiana what is your view? >> my view the press that we are getting against the president trumps tweet and foreign relations with a country like china and north koread he puts this added pressure onto the machine with dethe trade war that would come with china we see the pressure like any other politician before hand is creating more effective approach to say there is no longer a need for missile testing i think he is one of the most effective

presidents and the tweets he is using is becoming more effectiv effective. >> what did you think of what the authors had to say? >> i do agree he has overstepped his bounds but ultimately i think our president just like any as before can be seen as hard on any topic just like jackson or it has shown the real dedication to their views but sometimes they are to criticize i guess. >> what do you do in louisiana? >> right now i am a high school student i am 18 years old captive my high school

debate team. >> thank you and good luck henderson west virginia it looks like wyoming for a minute are you with us? and now johns creek go ahead. >> caller: yes. i appreciate you having the show i think the irony is the reason trump one in spite of his language is because of people like that. what i think that shows america if you don't agree with that liberal orthodoxy then you are deplorable.

you are uneducated and you are the problem i think they will help him win again. you can disagree with the left on policy instead of someone saying why you disagree to save the american industry doesn't limit anyone else with the science involved or you are a denier like the holocaust. i am an immigrant so is my wife why do you disagree? you could say we have let people in the country since 1965 including illegal but we have a right to solvency if you don't agree with him with

iran but you can never engage people it is perfectly fine i don't dispute them to have their views but i am allowed to have my views and the l.a. times and the reason the majority of people and i am and every graduate and a small business owner but the people that emigrated but they should take the setback and that is what i saw in that presentation one people after another but they all say thehe same thing. >> what do you do in georgia we are you fromas originally?

>> born in south africa when i was 7i grew up in a democratic home i voted democratic twice and i own a company here. >> thank you for calling and participating. maryland what did you think of the author discussion? >> i think it was very unlike any in fact i enjoy your show. i watch very often but to the point i am a trumps supporter and i voted democrat most of my life until the past election. the point that i want to make is for the message and the message that i received from the candidates did not speak to me but only mr. trump and i honestly feel democrats, i don't understand if you don't

like y the message why can't you give a better message than to give a better ridicule? take that same energy to be negative more so than it would take better energy to make a positive message for the people. i'm just saying that i wish the democrats would make their point of the message and not be so critical if they were to take office tomorrow and theiv president yielded to the democrats i cannot support that because they haven't given me a message i don't know what they are supporting. i vote for the message thank you very much. >> from the washington suburbs in maryland now from baker city oregon what is your reactionhe? >> i only saw part of the show

so i have a flawed comment my goodness. these people need to take a deep breath thank you. >> we have time for a few more calls from west virginia denver you are on booktv. >> yes. i am apo trump supporter what thee democrats that is all i have to say. >> st. joseph missouri, go ahea ahead. >> i'm here. >> go ahead. >> i think he will go down in history as the best president he is not a politician he just

does and says everything that we all want to say he is my hero. i am grateful long time. >> we have time for two more calls this is chris from maryland. >> yes. i echo what the previous caller said i am a lawyer my brother is a neurosurgeon we are all educated and we all supported trump the left does not wanto to debate anything they just want to call names and disparage and call itou racist if you support trump review supports the borderre wall it is the same old story from them and i agree they will not win because people are tired of it they are tired

to be disparaged that is my comment. >> that is chris from maryland , when you hear the term recent stories de novo what is your response? >> there is no response. you cannot defend that it is such a disparaging term how do you explain you are not a racist? looking at the clarence thomas escalate supreme court justice it doesn't matter the color of his skin it matters of his ideas that is the way conservatives wager but liberals who either drink kool-aid or you are a deplorable and a racist and a homophobe. and persons believe that same-sex marriage is wrong.

that is a tenet of our faith in the sense that could all make us homophobes that that is all you hear from the left it isn't just flyover country a lot of people liberal areas of the state like me that don't buy what is going on in the city but that is the great divide in america so we could have a debate about those but it won't change. >> calling in from oceanside california hello steve. >> i am a trumps supporter.

[inaudible conversations] we're ready to go. so just got a couple of late arrivals you guys great. thank you all for coming welcome to this panel on labor. we're going to dispense with a lot of routine introductions because we've got four great panelists and books to talk about and only an hour to go so we're going to go right into it and read biography in material that you have. rick -- who is written the end of loyalty which is a finalist for the los angeles times book prize and current interest. rick, your book more than --

we're going to talk a lot about strategies going forward in the labor movement and what works and what doesn't work and why, and what new form of labor activism might be, and rick's book goes back and looks a little bit at how we got here. so if you want to start off and also i've asked everyone to say one things about themselves that's not in their biography that you would like to know so something about somebody and how did did we get here today is this >> i have a really good mid-range jump shot so that's something -- so how do we get here? i guess if i were in charge of the panel i would have called it the long decline of labor. not the new of labor i guess. so long story short after world war ii, major corporations, in concert with big industrial unions in a lot of ways, kind of forge the social compact between

employer and employee in this country, and comes with a lot of asterisks not everyone was treated well in the work place particularly of people of color and women. there were definitely lots of short comes and problems but by and large a huge swath of the american work force and saw health benefits and these things and those in the private sector retirement security all of which improves steadily really from the late 1940s until the early 1970s. and then there was a break in the system, and we can get into all of this thrmp a lot of causes, everything you know we're still talking about a lot of this. from -- globalization, automation, and decline of union self-inflicted a lot driven by employers hell

bent doing on everything to beat back with organized labor. the fracturing of work into job and contract jobs and big work and so on. you know all manner of outsourcing. the shift from kind of factory jobs where you could walk in with little education and find a path to middle class and shift to knowledge work on one end which is great if you have education and skills training. but not so good if you don't and are if you can be employed at all for a low end service job. and then so all of these factors all of these forces began to -- emerge and then accelerate and converge i think over the last 30 to 40 years. but i would add one of the last thing which is that ting that the -- kind of embays lean on the fire of all of this maybe david will speak to this too -- has been a shift in corporate culture so there's been a dramatic shift from --

ceo and corporate leaders if you look at the way they actual talk and how they acted through this sort of golden era of this they spoke very explicitly in term of a stakeholder model that they needed to take care of all of that you are constituents if you will. so their customers -- their employees, the communities, they operated in and their shareholders to be sure but groups ab they try to balance interest of all of those different stakeholders. in the last 40 years -- corporate america has very explicitly shifted to a shareholder is first shareholder is above all of the other stakeholders we want to maximize shareholder value often in the short term at all costs. and so in that scenario, we've now tied ceo pay to jacking up share price often in the short-term. when you do that workers begin to look like an avoidable

exfence they don't look like things you want to invest in and accordingly, composition benefits stag nangt for vast majorities of work force for pat 40 years and job security eroded work entraining down for front line workers and so on. so i think that's the long story short. >> and that's a good segue into you david and your work on what can shareholders do to try to you know change that equation that he described a little bit plus one great factor about yourself. >> the great fact. well i guess only fact i can think of is i actually was actually struck by and really like the blast of sunny, california opt -- >> what did you want to call this book? >> i was talking about the panel itself. >> but the book i was always going to rise for working class share holder at one points it was something like labor versus

goliath was a title in the running for the book. ultimately didn't make the cut but i think that gives you indication of where i'm coming from the book i think everybody is looking arranged right now, and seeing labor and seeing workers of this country in a very desperate situation. in large part for the reasons that rick just described and so a lot of us are looking forward to what are ways that we can move things, change direction of the country has been going on this, and one of the tools that is focus of my book which is this paradox of people don't think of is this invisible form of activism that has arisen inside labor inside working class institutions which is shareholder act. we "don't ask, don't don't thins being shareholders but, in fact, through there is a last, you know rick mentioned earlier about how a pension have disappeared in private secker to there's one place they're still left which is in public sector in state and local governments, in fact, the side of the story

of that event that isn't often told is that those pensions are worth conservatively 3 trillion dollars and there are a number of activists working inside labor and union and pensions and elsewhere who have figured out how to shareholder power can be used. to advance the interest of workers and that's most of the story actually telling many this book it actually starts off a -- with a supermarket strike that took place here in california about 15 years ago. at safeway supermarket. and something very interesting happened in that fight which it was a traditional strike workers went out on strike, after the company had gone on acquisition that went nowhere and lost a lot of money trying to make up for losses they tried to cut pay for workers and cut benefits for workers who went on strike. and, in fact, the strike lasted five months. in the i tend didn't work out al that well an that strike, looked like company beat the strikers. but it was followed by a very interesting shareholder campaign.

led by illinois funds and washington and imon and massachusetts funds to unseat the ceo to try to go after some of the board member who had been responsible for driving company into that ditch so i look at that as sort of and early first episode of this and then go on to tell the story of these other activists who are trying to do it everything from -- fighting to reign in ceo pay. reporting that ratio of ceo to worker pay just being -- you used to be you go back to 50s it was 20-1 what the ceo relative to the meeting employee now 350 top one. one company last week reported a thew to one. okay. trying -- these funds also are leading with lawsuits they actually sue when they're defrauded they brought the enron case to world come cases they've tried to go after stripping the -- chairman of the board role from certain ceos who weren't doing a very good job in the last piece

of it is they've been using their investsment power to create jobs. rights investing in projects through responsible contract or policies like created by new york city pension fund that basically say we're not going to newscast unless you are paying fair wages and pay your workers benefits, et cetera. so i think in the 21st century, where markets are so important extremely important to have a voice inside them. yes legislation is important, elections are important. lawsuits can be about important. but i also think it's important for workers to have a capital strategy campaign. and a thinking about capital strategy using their own retirement fund that's basically the tack i take many this book. >> so bernie and suzanne both written about a subject close to my heart which is farm workers. and -- farm workers don't have pensions in many ways among most marginalized workers and if you didn't ground breaking work on

sexual harassment in the teeld -- field years before me too. can you talk to us a little bit about -- what led you to that and what -- what got those, you have women who have the courage to talk, i mean, there's a lot of discussion now about -- women afraid to come forward and here people who are the poorest and organizers who argue it is the least to lose but what got you into that subject and what are your thoughts in the light of what's going on now? >> well, i became interested in this subject because i'm just generally interested in immigrant workers. my family is an immigrant family and so i've always been -- particularly i think of the tuned in to the experiences of immigrants to this country. and then in terms of the me too question i started working on looking at sexual harassment and i'm talking very extreme sexual harassment. among low wage immigrant workers back in 2012.

with an amazing group of reporters from uc berkeley, and local public radio station called kqed that resulted in a documentary called rape in the field also a number of other radio pieces in -- in tech pieces and so on. and what we found through that reporting was that -- extreme sexual harassment and i'm talking again sexual with assault and rape were a open secret in the field. it was a scenario where supervisors were very aware of their power to hire and fire and to meet hours and, you know, over time, and/or give hours or just hire for the season. and they knew that they could, you know, make quid pro quo demands and do certain things and get away with them and so we -- spend ab year looking at that issue, and that led us to look

at -- an industry with similar dynamic had is night shift janitorial work that left to rave on the night shift and i do want to say that really amazing woman is here in the audience today. name is era moralez sitting there from the front row who led the charge on this issue and so many respects because she was one of the very brave overwhelm decided to pile sexual harassment complaint with the u.s. equal employment community commission years ago when she was is sexually assaulted on the job. by her supervisor cleaning a branch in the middle of the night and i think this isolation piece with farm works and night shift janitor and domestic workers sometimes hotel workers, you know the isolation is this -- circumstance that is used against the workers. for erika, and for so many of the other night shift janitors

that question spoke with sometimes they're the only person working in the building. and when the supervisor, you know, wants to take advantage of that situation, you know, some bad things happen. but i think what this book tries to really show is that there have been women who have been speaking up and fighting back for a long time in low wage work and farm work in domestic work so it is fascinating to see this me too movement and it is fantastic to see so many people being willing to come forward for the first time and really i think this -- this shattering of a bit of the taboo around this issue. i do wonder why, you know, when erika and so many other women were coming forward, you know, this same type of floodgate open then and you know i did ask erika recently and other farm works and other people that i've been interviewing over the years how do you feel about me too? and i think they all say i think

we're so proud and we're so -- glad that women are speaking out in a way that they never have. but what about us? and why haven't we been heard and aren't we stars too in our own world and our lives? and so i think it's tremendous. i think what me too is doing now and accomplishing is again, tremendous and i'm -- i think that there are now greater efforts to be more inclusive and i hope that -- workers like erika and others will really be, you know, at the fore front of that. >> susan, your book deals with the coalition of a worker which is like tweeted the other day when people ask me who is doing good work organizeing farm workers i say collision of the work is in florida and anybody who is interested in that kind of work should check them out. you have a very interesting past to getting there. you're not the obvious suspect to be writing about farm workers and tell us how that happened?

>> sure, so i actually grew up in the defense industry in the pentagon to be more correct. [laughter] and i'm at the corporation where i'm seen as party graduate school so it's not necessarily what you would have imagined as working doing a lot of work with farm workers. it was accident or fate that i came to this story. i was new dean of graduate school traveling around the country to interview board members, and was carrying arranged copy of gourmet magazine which this is 2009 one of their last and last issues and i'm a foodie i'm a decent cook but i care about food policy so attentive to that and pay a lot of attention to sustainability et cetera, with i'm readings this -- issue of gourmet magazine and it's like roast chicken for two. elegant and easy -- and then i hit on this article by barry about the tomatoes you're eating maven picked by the hands of a slave.

and it was shocking to me and i do public policy for a living i'm aware of an awful lot of issues but i had never thought about the people who pick our food and that was my loss. i learned about wage theft sexual abuse to mods modern day slavery and i tucked it into my bag i needed to meet a board member and -- turns out i was going to naples, florida which is 40 miles from amacrali i go up to meet david, and it's not going great. he's an 80 something-year-old chinese engineer not connecting and he says something about -- because i had read this article the night before, i was tiebl say the tomato pickers in florida -- and turns out he was the only individual fill philanthropic supporter of the group at that time so the combination struck me there was a message in there. and i needed to write about this.

and a remarkable story and i agree with you who is doing good work with farm workers who is -- actually making transmeeting transformal change it is workers themselves, and the model they offer which i'm sure we'll talk about is one that applies not just for agriculture. but for a whole range of low wage work. >> stay on that for a second to talk about the workers being the model. because this is something that i think is, you know, there's -- organizeing and a example of workers really are being involved and what do they do to maintain that work involvement and for it to be, you know, an experience in which you're generating leadership as well as an empowering workers like erika to stand up and to have support for what they're doing. >> so the interesting thing is i don't think they empowered workers. they were workers. who were empowered they empowered themselves. they came together in the early 90s, and recognized they

started they used -- an approach that came out of haiti out of brazil popular education, and used that to understand their own situation place themselves in context in the system and then start dividing actions to go after it. and the model itself which is they now refer to worker driven social responsibility in contrast to corporate social responsibility. involves workers education, monitoring of very, very effective monitoring which is not true in most social responsibility where workers themselveses are doing the monitoring and recording it. without fear of retribution that's violation of this what is now called the food program. immediate investigation, resolution of complaingts and here's the key this was the sick it's market sanctions. so if a grower violates the code of conduct, they're immediately removed or us suspended from the program and lose 60% of the

majority for tomato and they're now spreading into peppers and strawberries and it's those very quick resolutions market sanctions that gives this a power that no other program has. >> do you want to jump in? >> it's really interesting. i think that -- both believers in terms of workers may have organized to have actual power in the marketplace, and apply sort of consumer pressure, you know which they've done. it is very powerful, and a applicable you know that what david is talking about in terms of i think the capital markets are huge piece of the solution ahead if there's going to be one to put pressure on corporate executives with a lot of rules incentives that need to be changed within the current system of the way they're compensated in way shares can be purchased of companies and unlimited manner and so on. but what's interesting on each, you know, on each of these, there are sort of counterforces going on. i think this is what -- we have to keep in mind is that,

you know, it is kind of like this titanic struggle it is unfortunately you know, labor versus goliath, and on the goliath side, you know, you're not only have the sort of kinds of activists who are pushing companies to behave the right way. who have a lot of power in the markets through the pension funds that they run and the shares they hold. but there's a whole slew of other, you know, pressures from wall street and so-called activist investors pushing companies again to treats workers as costs that can be cut that are emphasizing efficient about city over generosity and social responsibility and they're also putting pressure on ceos -- to behave very differently. so i think there's a titanic strug the in the same way workers can band together and also so kind of folks bernice is talking about and susan they were written out because they were women and people of color.

so domestics and farm workers were cut out of labor law protections in a early estate but now we're again because of these pressures more and more companies are are pushing more people going from w2 workers to 299 contract workers fastest growing part of a labor market they too lack a lot of protections and the kinds of wage structures and benefits that traditional below arrangements have so there's a real fight going on i think. >> that gets us to one that's been unspoken thing about what is the role of unions and are you going to come back. are unions going to what would be resurgence and what are they playing today and beer these talk about the work you're doing in a different kind of forum and which is the no the same as a contract. but can be can be can be useful in terms of activism as well. what -- so both of you david and bernice

talk a little bit about what the collaborations between act a activist and union and where you see that going in the future. >> so what was really astonishings was the way in which actually it's amazing because it is here locally that this all happened rights here in los angeles. the fciu united workers west, they decided after they saw rape on the night shift the documentary looking at sexual assault in the janitorial industry they decided they could no longer turn a blinked eye to this issue. so because they have a decent number of women in their leadership at this point, and a some of them were sexual assault survivors themselveses, they really took this issue on, and a in a renewed way. and it's been astonishing to see what they have accomplished. they not only fought for a new contract that built in some protections arranged sexual

harassment. they also started to demand public attention for this issue issue. so they started using tactics they were familiar with by holding rallies and marches and a speakouts but this time around sexual harassment i think they were literally marching through the streets of los angeles holding up signs that said, end rape on the night shift they were on sacramento on banners and stopping traffic again with barns said end rape on the night shift and got activated on this issue in an amazing way and they didn't stop there. they decided to push for legislation. state legislation that would improve the training opportunities for janitors when it comes to sexual harassment because what they had observed was that -- a lot of the workers weren't familiar wail with what sexual harassment laws provided. in terms of protections from this type of behavior. so sometimes they didn't even know, you know, what might be considered sexual harassment as we heard from some workers they thought this was the culture of the building at night and they

didn't know that they could be protected from it. and further more i think most -- meaningfully, they started they got together with with the east -- east women l.a. east l.a. women center, and the california association against sexual violence, and a nonunion organization called maintenance corporation trust fund. and they banded together to start to think about how can we create a peer to peer training program so that it could be part, you know, support group. but also part leadership training, part, you know, you know training workers themselveses so that they could go out and train other and peer to peer that is been successful in many others. initially they were concerned that they wouldn't be well equipped to deal with something like sexual harassment and conversation within the union itself was -- you know, we're not social

workers. we're not psychologists. this is a really scary subject for us to be touching. you know, trauma and sexual violence this is outside of our purview. but -- you know, at a certain poingtd, the leadership within the organization said, you know 70% of our membership at this point are women. if we're not addressing this issue then we're not addressing the needs of our membership. so they forged ahead and they create ared those partnerships that created this model -- they're now thing their second or third cycle of it. and what was amazing about having created that kind of built-in leadership and kind of activist group was when the legislation was moving forward, they had a ready made group of women who were ready to kind of testify at hearings. you know show up in sac member toe get on the buses and lobby -- and tell their stories so they really i think transformed the way that had unions can think about handling something as --

seemingly scary as sexual harassment and i think they've been a model for this and i think what's really exciting the way their starting to collaborate with farm workers collaboration and the fair food program, so one other thing i think that was really fascinating too was the way in which the union had to also address with, you know, a little bit of from within the union itself from some of the male membership that was one of the biggest kind of fraught moments there was literally a moment where they decided they were going to make sexual harassment a strike priority. and in that meeting, you know, hundreds if not a thousand workers out there they they knowns a strike priority and some of the women in the room actually booed and that was a big turning point for the union where the union president had to -- stand up and make announcement

and say you have to acknowledge this is happening. don't tell me you haven't seen it. or that you haven't done it. and this is ending now we're as a union deciding to take this on as an issue. and from that, from then on it was -- you know front and central as one of their primary priorities. but it took that level of kind of internal strife and dialogue and real dernlings determination and creative thinking to get outside of the box how they could handle sexual harassment. >> it's really interesting because it comes at a moment when unions are trying to figure out how to deal with, you know, a very hostile environment and a supreme court decision that is going to -- decimate their membership in terms of public employee and so i think -- unions like fciu are looking for ways that they can -- influence the conditions in the work place in different kinds of ways and nontraditional ways. and that's -- true of your folks as well, yes? >> absolutely. i referenced it a little bit

earlier. but -- for example, with the building trades union, and the new york city public pension funds, have both been involved with a adopting these policies. you know thing i think it's a different around ma but it really has what everything to do with the problems. rick was pointing to before, right, which is this constant squeezing outs of workers and mistreating of workers, et cetera and what they did is they doptsed these policies, and they tried to institute these policies basically say that if you're going to put this workers cap we're going to put our workers capital to work it's not we're not going to in this situation to exploit workers not hiring union with labor, hiring contractor who is have tones of injuries. in their records, et cetera. and you know, the fact of the matter is that in this instance money talks. these pensions and unions have serious capitol to invest and many folks have turned around and basically said okay.

look, you know, for example, black stone, and major private equity fund recently announced okay for infrastructure projectses we invest in we're going to adopt this responsible contract or policy. why do they do that in part they do it because -- they want to be able to get -- the pension funds as investors and this becomes virtuous circle for the working institutions for these pension fund smiewtions themselves because you get these workers what can they do? they can contribute. ... >> not in ways that there are bad stories out there where these pension funds have been investing in privatization. we've been hearing a lot about

privatization which is basically taking public services -- toll roads, bridges, courthouses -- and they're being privatized, sold off to the private sector. what people don't realize is a lot of that money that's coming to finance that has even come from these public worker institutions. so what's happened, a lot of these activists have figured out, wade a second. either we should not be investing in privatization, or we have to promote these kinds of responsible contractor policies. again, it's an example of using this labor's capital to advance the interests of labor. but rick also said something i wanted to touch on which is about a backlash and about the forces on the other side. because in order to engage in this kind of maneuver that i'm talking about, the use of labor's capital to advance, yes, their retirement funds and advance their interests, okay? in order to do that, what you need are things like calpers and the new york city funds, these big pension funds that

collectively -- the workers in these funds are not wealthy at all. they are working class, middle class people, okay? they're not individually wealthy. but when you aggregate those retirement funds into, what, calpers or is $350 billion now, suddenly that's an investor that people really listen to, that wall street really listens to. i provide a lot of examples in the book of how they can exercise that power. one of the more, you know, amusing ones was, you know, a number of these funds were invested in hedge funds, and the hedge funds were turning around and taking, say, teacher pension money and then attacking teacher pensions, going after teacher pensions. and all the american federation of teachers, you know, randi weingarten was on this project, what'd they do? they just made a list of these hedge funds and basically said, here are hedge funds that are

taking teacher pension money and attacking teachers. and i have this wonderful letter where they say, wait a minute, we love teacher pension funds. we're never going to do that again. [laughter] take us off the list. you don't see stuff like that very often these days coming out of labor. but just to get to the backlash point, we are -- everybody's probably heard about a huge pension reform movement in this country. in fact, california is ground zero for it. not too long ago americans for prosper ity, koch-funded organization, ransoming like life on a government -- ran something like a life on a government pension tour. all you hear about is, boy, we owe these workers a lot of money, and i'm not sure we can pay. there are economists out there who will tell you that's not true, others who say it is, but there's a whole other side to the story which is if they take those pensions and they break them up instead of one big

calpers, if you break them into millions of individually managed accounts, you know what happens? that shareholder voice dies immediately. i'm an individual 401(k) holder, and i'm lucky. i know i'm lucky. many of us who have anything are lucky. nevertheless, these 401(k)s are garbage, the fees are too high, and is -- and we're all totally atomizedded. the comparison is like a 401(k) is like right to work. individual investors, we never vote, we have no idea what's going on, we don't know what the ceo gets paid, we don't know how our funds perform relative to the s&p 500. we're perfect. we're the perfect investors. we turn over our money, and we understand nothing about how it is used. well, if you take these big pension funds and you break them up into lots of individually-managed accounts just like ours, guess what? their powerful shareholder voice goes away too. nobody cares if david weber adopts a responsible contractor

policy, by and large. i mean, it would be nice, and it would be nice to organize individual investors, and there are some efforts to do that. but you break up these big pension funds, turn them into lots of individual accounts, and all that shareholder voice goes away. i call it economic voter suppression. that's how i look at it, the silencing of this economic voice. and so i think we need to pay really close attention to it. every two years in california it seems like there's some kind of ballot initiative to try to take these pension funds apart. all across the country, cities and states, and wes occupy of the -- it's one of the backlash points that we need to be careful about not just letting it prevail there. >> so, susan, let me go to amokly for a second because they made a very conscious decision there not to be a union and not to have a union involved. why did they do that and then segway from there, and you mentioned before to make sure we get to it, what is the potential of replicating the model that

they have there which is not dependent on a union? >> well, i think it was not so much a decision not to be a union as simply a different approach to organizing. because they organized themselves, they were focused on the community coming together to address the situation they found themselves in. and so they don't work with an individual employer. they work across an industry. >> but so does, i mean, so does seiu with janitors. so -- >> but the philosophy was very much let's organize the community as opposed to trying to do workplace organization. the effect has been that, again, anyone -- whether they're in the union or not -- they benefit. whether they're in the coalition or not, they benefit from the results that come out. but they also are able -- it's a very different approach to leadership. and one of the slogans of the coalition, one of the philosophies is we are all leaders. everyone has the opportunity to lead, everyone can lead in a

different way. you may lead by your action, you maybe lead by animating a community worker meeting, you may animate -- lead by being a spokesman. you may lead by developing an implementation plan. but they all participate and they all have opportunities for leadership. it's incredibly important to do this because they are an immigrant -- a migrant work force. and so they're moving all the time, they're changing employers all the time, they're changing location all the time, and you have new workers coming into the community all the time. so to be able to have that approach where everyone can lead is critical. >> but they also enter into contracts with, in a different sense. do you want to explain what that is? because it is a contract, but it's not a contract in the way we traditionally think of -- >> well, the contract is actually with the buyers. and so as opposed to with -- they have a different sort of arrangement with the growers. the fair food program is a

partnership between the workers, the growers and the buyers. but the first -- and the buyers are major retailers; mcdonald's, walmart, whole foods, burger king, etc. the first contracts, in fact, legally-binding contracts, are with the buyers. that the buyers will only buy fair food program tomatoes or peppers or whatever the produce is. and that if they are aware of, made aware of a violation by a grower, the grower is suspended, and they may not buy tomatoes from them. so that's the legally-binding contract. it protects the code of conduct and guarantees a premium, a fair food premium of a penny per pound for the tomatoes that they purchase. i should note when every buyer participates, it doubles workers' wages. so a penny per pound makes an enormous difference. the relationship with the grower is the sign was called a fair

foods agreement. they understand what the code of conduct is, they get access to the market, they agree to allow the audits, the monitoring for the workers and to address violations immediately. and if they don't, they lose that market. >> and is that replicable, and if so, to what extent? >> it's easily replicable in factory labor, and you can see the responsibility model was used in the bangladesh accords. it's not exactly the same, but that approach was used there for the garment industry. you could see how you hold the brands accountable, so those who are buying -- the buyers of whatever you're making in that factory -- you can have the same relationship there. they are, as bernice mentioned, working now with seiu in los angeles in particular to look at how they might i apply this in a different way and other ways to make it more applicable where you still have a contract labor be model like you do in

california. i should note that in the fair food program all workers become -- they went from a contract labor model to a direct hire to the growers, so it is a very different relationship. big difference. and you know what's great about that difference, it's not just a legal difference, it's that the growers themselves started looking at the employees as very different. they were not just an input, they are now employees and people who are part of this economy together. >> back to your point. >> yeah. i just wanted to add a little wit of context because -- little bit of context because i, you know, admire these programs and i think there are solutions that, again, with great persistence -- which we were talking about earlier and, you know, courage can ultimately, you know, we hope scale to some degree. but, you know, again, if you look at the longer arc of this, you know, just in the private sector -- so as david's pointed out, much more robust although endangered in the public sector in terms of actual unions, organized labor able to bargain

collectively under a contract and represent masses of workers. and we've gone from, you know, a height of 35% of the private sector work force being organized in the mid '50s to 6.5% today. so there are very few, you know, the seiu's a great exception. there are very few unionized workers in private sector america today. this has been because, again, unions have made a lot of their own missteps over the years. there's been some corruption, there's been lack of focus on organizing. again, the seiu being a great exception to this, not reinvesting and innovating. all kinds of issues. but mainly, a woman at cornell has done tremendous research on really showing a very concerted effort by employers, by the employer community and employer groups to beat back unions through whatever means necessary, both legal and illegal. and the illegal part just

becomes a cost of doing business if you're caught and you get fined. it's way better than having to sit at a bargaining table against a union and negotiate a contract. and i just want to say what the effectiveness is. so what the scholarly research will show you is when you get to about 25-35% of the private sector work force being organized, there's a tremendous spillover effect. so it really lifts up workers who don't necessarily carry a union card. other employers, because they're worried about having to keep up to attract workers and the fact that they may be organized themselves if they don't keep up, they lift their own pay and benefits. and there's -- and that was that spillover effect is what really did help this huge swath of the american labor force to rise in this post-world war ii period. my book looks at four companies -- general electric, general motors, kodak and coca-cola. so ge, gm and to some exen tent

coke at the bottling plant level. gm heavily organized, ge, for a long period of its history, heavily organized. coke, somewhat. kodak never organized but in order to fend off organized labor kept their wages and benefits high because of this spillover effect of. we've lost that, and it's a tremendous reason why we've had stag in and about wage -- stagnant wages and declining benefits for 40 years. >> i want to ask a quick question about the writing process. and if people have questions in the audience, we'll take questions in a second. so there's a microphone somewhere, right? you got them? okay. but what to leave in and what to leave out. something you left out that you regret. >> actually, not much. i have a friend in the audience who's laughing at me because she was on my case to leave things out all the time. [laughter] but i had a great editor. i actually had -- i felt like the story came together in a way

that i didn't need to leave as much out. the key thing is to bringing the voices in and to letting the people of the coalition of the buyers, of the growers to speak. so it's a matter of bringing that in as much as possible, and maybe we didn't need all the background. >> yeah. i'm really similar. i think always the challenge is what to leave out. and so if i have any regrets, it's probably that i didn't leave out enough. you know, i spent seven years researching and writing this book, and, you know, you collect a lot of material, you know? i've got boxes in my garage that could crush cu you if they fell on you. [laughter] so that's always the challenge, is how do you try and tell the story. and to me, it's a what to leave out question, not what to put in. >> i struggled with how to balance the storytelling aspects of the book which are three-quarters of the book with the sort of policy takeaways, legal takeaways.

how much should it just be -- hopefully, at least with the strategy i ultimately settled on was i think a lot of people, i think the activism i write about in this book is invisible. these people, the activists themselves are invisible and the work that they do is invisible. and it's difficult to appreciate what they do, and it just sounds like labor's capital. so part of the strategy was just tell the stories of some of these fights. hopefully, by the end of chapter six if you've read these stories, you're now like, wow, this stuff is important. and now i'm ready to hear, all right, well, here are the threats and here are the policy challenges, and here's why it's important to protect it. i hope -- that was at least the strategy that i, that i tried. but trying to balance that was something that i spent a lot of time thinking about. >> and you have a complicated issue to explain too, probably more than anybody else.

but i think all four books really do a great job of bringing voices in. as you said, susan, and building the story around characters. all of you do that in making what could be a dense subject really, you know, very vibrant. >> well, i'm a journalist, and so we're always charged with writing shorter and shorter and cutting and cutting. and so actually having a book-length treatment for something was a dream. [laughter] it was the first time that i've ever had an editor ask me to add material and add context. [laughter] it was dreamy. but in all seriousness, even with that privilege, you know, we've met so many incredible women over the years in this reporting, and i couldn't possibly include them all. so that's where i feel like sometimes there's a little bit of a hole or a gap. and i tried to include as many as i could, but ultimately something does have to get left on the cutting room floor, very unfortunately. >> questions from the audience.

>> [inaudible] act the labor movement in case -- [inaudible] on the janus case in the supreme court about, you know, public union dues? >> so just to -- so -- >> do you want to explain what it is? >> sure. so, i teach law at boston university, so this is the stuff i deal with a lot. the janus case is a case that's before the supreme court of the united states right now that an opinion will likely come, will come down in june. and essentially, for decades now the law in this country has been that unions can't -- you can't be forced to contribute to the political activity of unions.

but if you're a worker and you benefit in terms of wages, in terms of working conditions, in terms of benefits, if you benefit from the collective bargaining the union does on your behalf, you can pay what are call fair share fees. you have to contribute your fair share for the benefit conferred upon you by the union. well, several years ago justice alito invited a direct challenge to this on first amendment grounds. yet another example of how the first amendment of the united states, which was once used to defend the publication of james joyce or j.d.ing sallenner is now being used to gut campaign finance regulation or to kill workers' rights or whatever. but i digress. [laughter] >> okay. what's the impact. they're going to lose. [laughter] >> so after they lose, basically the court will likely hold that the first amendment says that these agency, that these agency fees violate the first amendment. and, therefore, that unions can't, won't be able to collect

them anymore. so what will happen. all right. a couple scenarios. first of all, when similar things happen, something similar happened in wisconsin. there was a catastrophic decline in union membership. 60, 70% decline in wisconsin. couple thicks though. things though. one -- so that's one scenario, which could be a very significant drop. possible, more optimistic interpretation is that the unions are well aware of in this this -- aware of this fact, and unlike wisconsin which i think happened quickly and unexpectedly, they've had a lot more time to anticipate this janus case and to make, to renew the message to workers who are contributing to these unions, listen, look what we do for you, look how important we are, look how much worse off you'll be without a union. remember that if and when january -- janus comes down. i also think this recent round of teacher strikes in kentucky, west virginia, oklahoma, i think

there's one anticipated in arizona right now, i think this is really changing the conversation and the perception around unions right now even though they're not necessarily union-driven. but i think a lot of folks now see it's appalling to see what teachers are paid in oklahoma and the textbooks that they're teaching out of. i think the first time the country is really seeing the price of trying to cheap out on paying for workers and paying for teachers in a way that is more visible than it's been in a long time. i would like to believe that that has changed the conversation, that people will still try to stay in these unions. but time will tell. we will see what happens. >> yeah. and, i mean, the more pessimistic interpretation is that unions, even unions like seiu -- which has been talked about a lot -- will take an enormous hit in their membership if people don't have to pay. and while they have been doing worker education ask trying to

address that and got kind of a break because of the case, you know, which was delayed by the death and so forth, i think the other way i would spin it positively is that it has forced unions to give their members a reason to belong and to reinforce that message as opposed to taking them for granted. and it's forced them to make the case that this is something more than a pure transactional relationship. so that would be the upside. >> there may be some other, some interesting ideas percolating. there are some places where collective bargaining is actually outlawed. well, maybe now if the supreme court will be consistent, there could be some good first amendment documents cutting the other way. we'll see. i mean, it certainly is very, you know, this is a case that if, in all likelihood, if merrick garland had been put on

the supreme court of the united states would have come out the other way. >> but he wasn't. >> anyway, these things matter. >> [inaudible] roosevelt tried it once. didn't get very far. >> i mean -- >> it's a little beyond the scope of this panel. [laughter] let's go to another question. >> i'm a retired -- [inaudible] i'm a retired santa clara county worker, so i'm under calpers. and i'm thinking that, as we all know, just like social security my pension check comes not from the money that i have put into calpers, but from the workers who are working today. and if those workers disappear, who's going to pay for my pension. >> good question.

it illustrates perfectly the point that it's important to keep them in the system paying, to pay well. look, the reality of pensions is that there are, you know, not every generation is the same size, right? we know that the baby boom is a big generation, we know that the millennial generation is a large generation. my generation, generation x, is smaller. so there are issues of intergeneration aleck bity. intergenerational equity. and the three sources of funding for pensions are employer contributions -- in that case from the state employees like you just mentioned who are contributing to it now -- and, you know, investment returns, etc. so that's why i think the kind of activism that i describe, you know, in the book is important because it builds on all three of those legs to try to use this capital in productive ways that, you know, contribute back into the pension fund. so, you know, it's, you know,

all of these, all of these kind of retirement funds whether you mentioned social security, i mean, in some ways people think calpers is in trouble. i mean, you know, social security -- calpers is actually a pot of money that exists somewhere, that it's actually present. you can find it, you know? is -- there social security is basically an iou from the government, and currently there are some folks in the government who are very eager to undercut it. so all these are factors. contributions, etc. i don't think that, you know, your scenario like, well, you know, if -- i don't think everybody's going to disappear from the state of california tomorrow. i mean, there are people who are working here, and the reality is relative, coming back to what rick was saying earlier, the public sector is one of the last few places where there are decent jobs, it is the last place where there are decent

jobs that pay decent wages and have decent retirement been fits. and so that's important in order to attract talent, maintain good quality lifestyles for the employees. you know, i was, i actually was up in new hampshire a few years ago on these issues, and one of the issues that, you know, you find up there is that new hampshire has to pay really good, wants to have good pensions because they need to attract people to come and live there. you know, look, i'm from that part of world, so i think i can say this, but, you know, at least weather wise it's more attractive to live here. so i don't think you can boil it down all to just one issue like that. i think that there's a matrix of considerations. but my ultimate bottom line is even if there has to be reform to these pensions, even if we say they've got to be reformed for the reasons that you describe, that reform has to

retain -- in my view -- some collective shareholder voice. if the reform is going to be breaking up calpers into millions of individually-managed accounts, then it's going to silence all the shareholder voice that they have. that's really where i'm coming from. i'm not taking a strong view one way or the other on the, you know, funded issues. there are economists who are more expert in that than i am. i'm just trying to make the case whatever form that pension takes, it should preserve the collective voice. >> we have time for maybe one or two more questions. >> [inaudible] >> i really, it really bothers me when people make speeches instead of asking questions, but i'm still going to make a little speech before i ask -- >> okay, we have four minutes, and then they're going to cut us off. >> i'll be quick. i was recently retired from the university of michigan, and i

was a member of a lecturers' union which is a contingent faculty union. our contract expired yesterday. we're negotiating a new contract right now. michigan went into right to work a couple years ago, so we are going to be in right to work next week, so a lot of these issues about getting people motivated to come -- and we're aft, so my question is this move to contingent faculty in universities is widespread, some people say it's like 60-80% of faculty now at universities are contingent faculty as opposed to tenured faculty. and a couple of you are academic, so you might have some opinions on what you think the future of these kinds of folks are in terms of labor. we have people who make less than the poverty level working full time, so we have a lot of relationship to these other kind of folks that you were talking about. some of us don't, but many did. so what do you think? >> you know, again, i think this

is an accelerating trend across the economy, and again, it runs counter to, you know, a lot of the more positive things that are also being done at the same time. but, you know, the best work on sort of contingent labor, if you want to call it that which would include temp workers, contract workers, on call, you know, sort of non-tradition allay boar, gig workers, uber drivers and that kind of hinge, if you add it -- that kind of thing, if you add it all up, you get about 15% of the labor force. and there's some that would say 35-40%. we can go into the details. i think those numbers are too high, alan krueger and larry katz have done the best study on this working off old rand stuff, and they're at about 15-16% of the labor force now. but this is what's significant, the net new jobs that were, that are in that realm of

non-traditional contract kind of labor, temp kind of labor, that accounted for all of the net new jobs over the last ten years. so this is the fastest growing part of the work force. and again, it's a way for companies both to cut costs and to absolve themselves from taking responsibility for their workers. because now that's, you know, you're on your own or that's the temp agency's problem, i don't really have to deal with this. one very quick and very positive thing if you want to leave on a positive note, there are some -- we can find good examples, and i think they are important models. so just this week survey monkey -- if you know that company up in silicon valley -- announced at least at their headquarters complex, and it's a small number of workers, but they were going to change their policy. and all the folks who are their contract labor, so their, like, i think maybe their receptionists and their security guards and jobs like that, there are a few contract agencies they

work with, they were going to raise their pay and benefits to the same level as their full-time employees. and they did it very explicitly because, as a company, they just thought it was wrong that there was kind of this two-tier wage structure and this shadow work force that wasn't, you know, benefiting in the same way as their full-time workers. .. i think we all need to support them for doing the right thing and at the same time director money, investment away from companies doing the wrong thing. >> that is a great note to and

on and the panelists will be signing books in assigning area one which someone can direct you to. you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> this is book tv with live coverage of the los angeles times festival books. one more author panel coming up in about half hour or so on

civic engagement. we are live from the university of southern california campus and the c-span passes here, are set is here and we have one extra future we want to point out to you this year and it's a 360-degree camera. if you go to book tv you to page you can get a 360-degree view of the festival of our set the bus. it is sitting right over my right shoulder and showing you you can go to book tv youtube page and get a different perspective. it's interesting to see the 360-degree camera. joining us now on the set is author sarah and you heard her earlier on the author discussion

on the trump administration. her new book is called [inaudible]. sarah, 2016 happens and you write something about donald trump. what did you write? >> i spent all of the 16 warning people that he would win the general and primaries and if he won the general he would govern the central autocrat which is to say he abuses his executive position for his personal wealth. >> how did you know this? >> i have an important, nation of experience. i studied the style of governance in middle eastern countries and it's not serving the people but i live in a state that voted for trump i live in

misery and encountering a lot of people who plan to vote for him for a variety of reasons. before that i went to new york and work for the daily news and dominating the tabloids. it was effective. >> host: you write in your book that america is purple like a bruise. >> guest: yes, i think the idea that there are two americas put forward in 2000 and a red and a blue that are divided is wrong. i live in a purple state and the state that is a mask. every state is a mix but it's a matter of degree. unfortunately with us together and before trump was in as well as a collective suffering of pain and a lot of us have not recovered from the great recession. >> host: there are, you talk about that in your book and will put the phone numbers on the

screen. if you want to participate in our conversation this afternoon. sarah, you write in your book about the flyover country that it hasn't ended. you are not so worried about improving but worried about getting back up to speed or at all. >> guest: i think i have a say in there that survival is not an aspiration. if you can survive on the basic levels you can pay her bills and you don't lose your home and if you have a job that provides benefits then you are ahead of the game. most people i know and this is a range of people whether a ged or phd are unable to find work that reflects their skill set and unable to find work that pays their bills. that's been going on since 2008.

the previous administration would brag about low unemployment and i never thought that was a key issue. it's underemployment and the high cost of living. i feel it more out here in la than i do in st. louis. even in st. louis which cheapen poor people still struggle. >> host: why did your friends tell you they were voting for donald trump? >> guest: i did as them relatives but people, yeah, i covered as a journalist and i heard a variety of reasons.

people went to the rallies and those just voting but probably people were riled up and found a lot of his demagoguery attractive and his racism was an appeal. others were going to look at and many people were desperate for work. they wanted an infrastructure program and jobs and what they wanted most ironically was a sense of ability. they felt things had gone out of their control and they wanted their lives back again. what has happened is that trump has brought more chaos and not make good on his economic promises. he is let down his own voters. >> host: you are an opinion journalist. >> guest: absolutely but at the time for those writing pictures and when i interviewed someone i don't myself in the story. i let people speak for themselves. i'm not going to pretend.

>> host: do you feel that new york and la don't pay attention to you? >> guest: i know they don't. they will ask me to come out and talk about real life and i will say i live in st. louis. there are 3 million people and i'm not on a farm. it shows disrespect for the midwest for the diversity of the midwest and it disrespects those who live in rural areas and urban areas. i don't feel our opinions are considered unless a tragedy happens. it's a hurricane or whether it's ferguson or the aftermath for its the election of donald trump. when most americans happen journalist would come and stay for a couple days and come out with a summary of our entire existence. it comes off as superficial and judgmental. >> host: as someone who lives there what did you think of ferguson coverage? >> guest: i was covering it but i thought it was bad. i felt that they were treating it like a summer games. a lot of people were wanting my community to burn which is a painful experience we had experienced pain. when michael brown died that process started as a vigil and people were mourning in the

street because in 18 had been killed and his body left out there. it turned into much more than that. it turned into a movement but some of the coverage was good and respectful. a lot of it was exploitive and i didn't understand the historic conditions of sickness that led to this event happening. they didn't know the structural problems and that's the advantage of local journalism. it's much better when it came to prison the national. >> host: one of the things he said in the other panel is that no arms have been enacted since ferguson. >> guest: you the same mayor and ferguson and you have more attention to issues like giving tickets or feeling black citizens with racial profiling in order to make money. a lot of it comes down to the small municipalities in order to keep afloat but it's immoral and we have 90 in the area and so all the attention has gone to prison so you have 89 the exact same problems be neglected. it's and jenness and warm up aware of what groups of

experience of black people and half for generations but there have not been a meaningful remedy. >> host: sarah, earlier you said you did feel ignored and did donald trump have some legitimacy and. >> guest: i see him as a con man prayed on people's pain and prejudice. i was upset that he was successful and he did say some things that though they were lies felt true. for example, at one point he came up statistic that 40% of americans were unemployed and that is incorrect and i heart sank because it felt like it was feeling like 40% of people were unemployed and that people appreciated hearing and let's face it donald trump has been around a long time and no interest in the heartland. the only thing he does is gary,

indiana and suck them dry. i doubted his sincerity but he did understand the conditions of life in the suffering. >> host: the view from flyover country dispatches from the forgotten america. first call glenn in freeland, michigan, good afternoon. >> caller: thank you all very much. i'd like to say for a moment just about the michael brown thing, if i make. one of the reasons his body was left in the street was because the police had to get away right away they would have been accused of even more of a cover-up. michael brown was a man tried to murder a police officer and he tried to about trump one of the people voted for him was because because of the arrogance.

if you think clinton or some other staff had been hacked then they would have made a fortune out of politics. giving speeches for hundreds of thousands of corporations like obama is doing now. do you think that if clinton had been elected he would put out of the [inaudible] and we would've had tara. blowing up -- >> host: a lot on the table but let's see what he wants to

respond to. >> guest: i'd like to reevaluate michael brown and how to put yourself in the position of his parents and yourself in the position of his community and would like to see the body of someone you love left on the street and unable to be seen in the grief you might feel. i like to reflect on that. in terms of trumps paid policy i agree with you. >> host: movies in east dublin, georgia, you are on the tv with the author. >> caller: good afternoon. good evening. i've read any number of and she did not win the general election. i thank you know that pretty lost by 2.9 million votes and that's an oversight on your part. secondly, the previous call is exactly why these people voted for him.

you say there's a purple america but there's a black america, white america, another of other americans as evidenced by what happened in philadelphia at the starbucks last week. we were not as a black person i can tell you were not conned by the person in the white house currently. we knew exactly what he was. there's any number of academic studies showing that the people who voted for him to not vote for him as a measure of them appealing to their economic exciting because it's really it was found that the voters had a $72000 a year in income. i thank you know that also. the reason they voted for him primarily because of cultural exciting and the changing democratic. not the least of which is the embodied by the person preceded him in the white house. so, i think you're giving these people with too much credit and not necessarily going into telling the truth about these people are and what motivates

them above and beyond anything else as it relates to like this person embodies what they actually and how he appeared to them and why they voted for him. >> host: let's leave it there. sarah, what would you like to respond to? >> guest: i basically agree with all of that. racism played an enormous role and his voters were motivated by racial resentment and economic anxiety and as you say the majority of that of black americans do not vote for chop and white americans trump in office. those groups, everyone is hurting and you to see that. it is true. as i covered the election what different types of people on his racism incredibly appealing and other people willing to overlook it. in my mind that is not acceptable and that's a problem

but it is still two different rationales and different sets of problems. >> host: cj in pennsylvania. >> host: will move on to john. john is in kansas. >> host: i apologize we're not getting calls. i didn't want to ask you about this. this is from zelma saint mission or something like that and it says to analyze trump america we need to have a conversation about material wealth in consumerism and getting ahead of each other. >> guest: that is true and one

of the great misconceptions of american life is this zero-sum attitude that a certain demographic group gains the other group loses and you see white americans especially older white americans expressing that belief. as we become a less light country they felt that personally turns them and i wish the people didn't see it that way because i don't think that is accurate and one person success of their ability to make a better life for themselves takes away from others but that is the sentiment that trump and the gop in general has been trying to manipulate well before the selection. >> host: terry is in compton, california at usc. >> caller: sarah, as a generalist i want to know if you found the people in st. louis voted for trump have reevaluated those and i'll be disappointed in light of the fact that he is not blurred an obstruction plan.

>> guest: yeah, i have talked to trump voters who regret the vote for economic reasons and these are the type of people who didn't like either of them to begin with. they didn't like clinton or trump. they voted gop or they were pro-life and there's a mitigating factor. in that sense it's not the states he lost. he lost the more disillusioned person. to hear not to worry about is temperament about his writing and his ability and hatefulness and about our economic plight that people blame folks. including our local representatives as well. my day job is a journalist. >> host: for? >> guest: [inaudible] >> host: and this is your first book and it came out on the same day is james cummings book question. [laughter] thing or bad thing? >> guest: i think that conley was wrongly fired and i'm not a

big fan of him and the more he talks the less i like him but i don't think he is unpatriotic or unqualified but i do think that he showed poor judgment in his actions. i also disagree with him on stuff like the criminal justice system where he thanks that you shouldn't use the word mass incarceration is a makes people and spat. that's not a sentiment that resonates with me so much. >> host: matt in boulder, colorado. >> caller: my question is this. around the country there are literally tens of thousands or more people in official positions carry out government policies and would be affected by orders that trump might give. during the campaign and since then he has discussed many policies and practices that would violate national law and

international law and some of those have been knocked down in the courts and others have not been been proposed. as an anthropologist what advice would you give those of us who want to organize so the people in those positions taken hopes that they will uphold the law that how can we increase the chance that when push comes to shove those people will his orders and do the right thing? >> guest: that's a great question and i'm glad you are interested in this. encourage more citizens to take note of this. the law is only as good as the people interested. sometimes you people aren't good

at all and then the people who are in a tough position were returned to us and the politics of our executive office. i think what we need to do is respect the law and emphasize that get to your local officials and get to know people looking in the organizations. show support for the one on principle ones as the jobs no good reason. speak out and show the citizens that there is a body politic and were not alone and we are not alone and together we have much more of a better chance of upholding the law in effect a change that would individually. >> host: page 180 of your book, the view from fire the country, what debate whether race matters, which people debate whether poverty matters and then debate whether gender matters. about five years ago and unfortunately it is true. the media is dominated by white men working mostly on the coast tend to frame our discourse.

there's been more awareness of that in social media has led to a new type of conversation but then you get questions of authority and questions of power and i'd like a more diversified media in terms of every respect. 80% of op-ed colleges and and i'd like more geographically diverse media regions are not so conglomerated. >> host: next call comes from peter in new york. >> caller: do you think that trump will win in the 2020 election or what proportion or what is your odds on trump when he in 2020? >> guest: that is a good question. that depends on how free and fair our elections are. that's not the question i would answer until the midterms but i will tell you what i'm worried about is in 2016 it was the first election after the partial

repeal which led to new voter id laws and disenfranchisement of immigrants and white voters and we had russian interference and that is not going away and we been warned about that and we've had gerrymandering and gop to deem illegitimate and i think we have to consider that. when we look at 2020 but we've seen unusual democratic waves like alabama that signaled the democrats are on the rise and trump may be on his way out but things moved to fast i can't really say anything for sure. >> host: sarah, you mentioned that you became an opinion journalist during the 2016 campaign. did you strongly one way or another that? >> guest: yeah, that book you have there is opinion journalism right i did that. i felt alarmed by trump in a way that i never have by any other

candidate and that came out of studying former soviet union and studying these dictators and understanding how trump could use those proclivities in american system and an entertainment system. i work in media and media is a financially decimated industry. people think trump is dumb but he's very good at a few things and very good at pr and identifying people's weaknesses in exporting them. i saw a passive victory for him and thought he would cover unjustly and i did what i could to one people of what could happen in hopes it wouldn't. >> host: you tell a story one of your columns about a reporter atlantic wanted to publish but didn't want to pay. >> guest: that is common and they got called out for that.

some of those publications have changed their ways but journalism has become a profession of police because a lot of the most prestigious places pay three poorly and people i know have left the industry for pr and that leads to that diversity problem that i spoke of as well. was people can afford to get these credentials they are requiring nowadays like an ma in journalism and most people can afford to work on paid internships to break into this industry and nonwhite people people who grew up in poor families are affected more and that leads to an insular representation of american lives but it doesn't jibe with reality. that is a shame. >> host: gene in washington, you are on with the author. >> caller: thank you. what i wanted to say is there are a lot of people who voted for trump not because they liked him but because he was pro-life. hillary was too over-the-top in the abortion situation. and i agree with most everything

she said. >> host: jean, did you vote for president trump because of that issue? >> caller: holding my nose, yes. >> host: there you go. >> guest: i met several people like that. i've met folks who were pro-life and i met leftists because they couldn't stand trump but they were pro-life and they couldn't bring themselves to vote for a democrat candidate and that was essentially what they did but they felt that trump affected their value system negatively in a different way. >> host: nancy in citrus heights, california. where is that? >> caller: is a suburb of sacramento between downtown sacramento and [inaudible] >> host: nancy, we cannot understand a word you are saying. i will have to move on. the phone was to distorted. we will try chris in silver spring, maryland. chris, you are on the air. >> caller: i think trump

attracts the people who are opposed to the democratic leftist near moral paradigms. people don't want that and it's one of those side issues and there's personally of racial issues they get added and that is not the main thrust. trump has contributed to enough liberal politics and they spelt bowling go to get elected to enrich themselves. hillary is a prime example of that. [inaudible] >> caller: i didn' >> guest: i didn't quite understand that but he exploited a sort of populist campaign and exploited [inaudible]. i like to point out the trump is a direct product of nixon. those who worked in nixon's campaign and the cohorts looked up in this criminal purpose that

is very with trump right now. that connection is interesting in the number one person i'd encourage everyone to look up is roy cohn and how he influenced trump. we're all living with his go straight now and it's not a good place to be. >> host: to take off of that color mentioned on your author discussion earlier you were asked or you volunteered what do the democrats stand for today and what is your answer to that customer. >> guest: it depends on the democrat but i think they are correct that we need to talk about not we but i am voting democrat to get trump out but i thank you need to address the people in the us and not just under trump but during the obama administration and we need to be

honest about the problems we are facing and not remembers partisan issues but government failing to serve the public. people need to step up and admit what they screwed up in the past and promised sincerely to remedy it in the future. the people of america can smell bs and i think they are sick of being deceived and sick of being talked down to and they will not accept platitudes. that's on everybody but i do think people see the urgency of trump and they see it as different than a typical republican president and they will vote to get him out. i think they should vote to get him out because he's dangerous for everyone. >> host: chloe in miami beach, you have the last word, 30 seconds. >> caller: a try to rush it. can't wait to order your book. i love the fact that you are in anthropologist. one of my favorite writers is

julian and that is her back on. she covers wall street as an anthropologist. my question is do you not think that one of the problems in our country is a binary thinking so you have grievances only in the people for whom [inaudible] is a religion in the opposite is socialism with bernie and -- >> host: chloe, will have to leave it there. sarah, last answer. >> guest: yes, i think binary thinking is a problem and you need to look at any issue with the complexity and nuance that another author discussion coming up. this one is around the topic of civic engagement. one of the authors you will hear from is nadine strasser, head of the aclu for about 20 years. live coverage of the la times book there on the tv.

>> good afternoon. welcome to the la times festival of books. this is the speaking out in the fighting back panels if you came to talk about empowerment and action you came to the right place. little housekeeping stuff. this is being aired live on the tv so we will be hearing time schedule to the second. we are doing a question toward supply in up to mid answer it's because were done because of the tv schedule. your cell phones are on, please check and make sure they are turned off or set on silent or vibrate. because this is a book tv there's no personal recording of allowed. the book signing "after words" will be signing area one which is somewhere up there with better description as you go. a lot of times folks want to talk to the panelists immediately "after words". please meet us at the book

signing area because we have to clear this room out. the panel will be putting a formal and ask a few questions of folks and then open questions from the floor. we find this historically it works this way and we could talk for two hours and have a grand old time and bore the hell out of you guys. it's more fun if you ask questions. when it comes time to ask questions because this is on live tv we will have microphones handed to you. i will have you raise your hand and wait for the microphone to get to you and then have a question. ask questions, don't make speeches. [inaudible] i've been an editorial writer for the past

three years and prior to that i was a reporter for decades covering everything from killings to customer to presidential primaries and blood i write history books and my most recent and the assassin about religious zealot castrated himself and shot john oxbow. it's in that capacity and moderating that capacity today. we have ashley farmer of oxford university. her book is remaking black power held documented and an era. it's a subject my light reading and subbed has been vastly overlooked and doesn't get the attention it deserves. [inaudible] ashley writes that

those helped lay the ground black party and your book ends in the 70s -- >> yes, 79, 80. >> we can talk about that later but on this end we have [inaudible] teaches at the new york law school. earlier in her career she spent 15 years as president of the american liberties foundation, the aclu. [inaudible] i do a lot of

reading of the good stuff and this is a really good hand guide to what we have and how to get to this position. you also might find it's provocative and the short version is no matter how onerous someone's views are they must not be muscled because once you allow that then it lies in the hands of have the power we can talk about that in the depth is gone. in the middle susan [inaudible] it's a powerful memoir of life growing up in los angeles. south la, it was a very little life with sexual abuse and drug addiction and stints in jail and

prison and that is just the first half of the book. it's a powerful and painful. the second half of the book is about her realization that much of what she was doing and what happened to her as a function of racist and dysfunctional system that affects people of color. she got clean and began the new life nonprofit. it's a remarkable story and very well written and takes a clear look at the inside of broken lives in of personal redemption and the power that one person can achieve by speaking out and fighting back. despite were here today. susan, please tell us what finally enabled you to get a hold of yourself and turn your life around and what have you

break that cycle? >> i always wanted to be my best self but having the support and the resources that bind that so i landed in recovery home in santa monica. upper-class community, full of resources and is able to access those resources and leave their stronger. >> is a remarkable anecdote in the book about jail in beverly hills when how the system is structured against you. >> yes, yes, in court there was a person in the cell with me and she talks about going to a place called council of rehabilitation center and i had always talked about how it would give you a civil commitment and get help

and so i went and advocated for myself in the courtroom that day. i was able to get the program myself but that was after four prison terms. >> [inaudible] >> no, i was never ever. one day when he walked in the courtroom -- well, there was a picture of my mom in the newspaper and my mom was putting on the light where my son had gotten killed by an lapd detective and i took that paper into the courtroom and i see this and i still got sent to prison. >> the killing of her son wasn't la city police driving a car -- >> lapd detective and it was an accident but it wasn't an accident that he never got out

of the car. it wasn't an accident that lapd never said i'm sorry you lost your son, how can we help? you know, so, that sent me smiling into alcoholism and addiction and try to medicate the pain. that is what sent me to prison. that went on for 20 years and i stayed under the authority of the california department of corrections. in and out, in and out. >> and no facility to help you break that cycle? >> and luckily i sat down with someone who told me about the place in santa monica and in those times in those days you dialed for 11 and i dialed 411 and got the number and called and i was so fortunate to land there and spend time there in the community where people were not incarcerated for possession

but given support and community service and aa and defer to treatment and support. and unlike why did i get that? >> i can't stress how compelling that switches from the first half to the second half. will come back to that but -- i lost track of my notes. [inaudible] can you explore how susan experienced the ultimate history and the much larger perseverance in organizing for community activism. >> it's interesting for the way an individual can prevail and incarceration but also in ways in which you transform it and i see the woman that i write about in the black power's movement

that they have contact with that in most of the time that you see these women become politicized it's around issues of police violence which we been dealing with since the beginning of time. you see them politicized around the black panther party and you see them politicized around not having work and being poor and impoverished and you see how one person's actions during the group and from that they organize mass incarceration, drug abuse et cetera but you also see how the state fight back with the rise of the counter intelligence program to stamp these things out. one of the things is a connection between my book about black women in the 1960s and 70s and black power and what susan talks about is you see how a movement based around black self-determination and black community control at the

individual level or the everyday level of being a woman in america or part of a group really did spark transformative ideas of how we should police black communities and how we should respond to police violence and organize to not have to rely on the state. so, i really do see it as -- you know, your work you're doing they missed the legacy of that. this idea that we are still battling the same issues that they transform but i imagine the things you do in your nonprofit are the same kind of community building and consciousness raising activities that you see the women in the black panther party or, you know, other groups in new york and la. >> let's go deeper in history and the role of the domestic workers were doing a century ago. how did they come together and what impact did they have?

>> the book begins talking about african-american women in new york were drastic workers. identified your only job could be a domestic worker. in the 60s maybe with a little education you might become a schoolteacher but by and large the majority of black women in the north, west and south are domestic workers. it compelled by this communal experience of being at the bottom in dealing with racist violence in dealing with sexual expectation usually in the homes of these white communities and dealing with the fact that you can't make a living wage it organized and politicized around this idea. they become in the intersect which the political climate particularly the commonest party which is sympathetic to their working-class flight. i try to show you in the book is how these black women workers were an analysis of race and sexism and expectation and it

comes together to create a formative political block but they went on to organizations into mentor those of the 60s and 70s and teach them how to organize at the intersection of this racism into capitalism and anti- sexist oppression. >> your book doesn't intersect closely with the other two but there is a commonality with the speaking out part. happy to support the latest free-speech we agree with but we want to grant the same freedom to those who we disagree with. but what about those who preach hate? [inaudible] can you talk a little about the hate speech and organizations as the and a cp and how white supremacist may be able to speak -- >> scott, with all due respect there's an enormous and overlap

between my book and one of the books by susan and ashley. the concept of hate is inherently subjective by definition. if we invest government officials including police and law enforcement with all of the endemic racism that we see in the so-called criminal justice system. we should not be surprised if the discretionary power to decide that some words are hated and hateful and harmful and dangerous that power is not going to be used in a way that is finally to activist such as the one that ashley writes about in that susan embodies herself. in fact, today black lives matter has been attacked as a so-called hate group and its

advocacy has been attacked as a hate speech. state legislators have been lobbied in the southern poverty law center have been lobbied to treat it as a hatemongering group. so, if we want freedom of speech especially for minority voices and dissenting opinions and those who challenge the status quo we need to have a sufficiently robust freedom of speech that extends to speech that is deemed hateful by the majority and certainly the black panther activists were repeatedly in martin luther king and civil rights demonstrated said that for the same reason. >> you write in the book where there is illegal speech and

could you distinctly talk about -- >> i'll try to be distinct but i have great respect for free-speech jurisprudence as a result of writing this book. basically the law is commonsensical and you may not punish speech nearly because the legal system and the communities law enforcement and government officials didn't like the message. that can never be a justification for suppression of speech but you may punish it if it directly causes pacific eminent harm such as the genuine threat or intentional incitement of violence or targeted harassment. when the speech actually does cause harm it can be and is punished. when it is just that we dislike the idea, it is protected and we have to raise our voices. getting back to the theme of the panel to denounce that hateful idea and support the people who are disparaged by idea.

that counter speech has been very powerful as we saw, for example, in the wake of charlottesville. >> let me give you a scenario. if someone was giving a speech and says someone ought to go hang that person versus someone says you, go hang a person. >> the second one would be a threat in the first one would probably be protected political speech about public issues and it has to do with an objection about what that person is done and in fact many of the civil rights demonstrators and activists against police violence have been subject to censorship because their abuse of making threats when their denouncing someone who's engaging in illegal arrest. there's a famous up in court case where the young african-american man during the

vietnam that era had been drafted and they feared he would be drafted because he got a low number in the lottery that they were conducting then and said if they ever draft me and put a gun in my arms they will not make me shoot my black brothers in vietnam. the first person i want to get in my site is lbj standing for lyndon b. johnson johnson, the present. the supreme court said no, that hyperbolic political speech, johnson would not have been in reasonable fear that he would've been shot and this is a very strong powerful way to express of frustration with the legal system. >> and a political message. fascinating stuff to me. susan, how hard does it affect you as a woman of color with drug abuse and how hard was it for you to get your voice heard?

i went to hearings in sacramento and it felt like we were talking to the wall. >> yes, when i did get stronger and began to understand the law and how those laws were impacting my entire community i began to go to sacramento and began to talk to legislators and speak out and i'd sit there and watch them passing laws regardless to my testimony laws that i knew would be harmful especially laws around young people. it seems like i was talking to deaf ears. for a period of time i would leave sacramento in the next day my entire body would be in knots and i could hardly move. i elected to stop going there for that.

but now they hear me. now i'm asked by legislators to come up with different policies and come and testify on different bills that are in sacramento and other places from sacramento to dc. so, what i say is keep talking. they will stop. i didn't stop talking but i did stop going for a period of time. i was getting physically ill from watching all of the harm that was taking place there law. >> so, when you stopped going to sacramento what was the status of your foundation?

you were just in that first house or have you already gone out? >> i've had to build the second house. >> i'm asking that because [inaudible] >> i have five homes now. my next step is to create a national network of safehouses for women to be transition out of prison and jails back to their community and be able to have the opportunity to rebuild their lives. >> and how many people work for you? >> i have a staff of 25. >> and how many are lawyers? >> six. >> do you think that helps you get hurt? [laughter] >> the law can be powerful and a powerful tool. i was just reciting laws to the sheriff's department.

there are thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people there who need to be registered to vote and we go in and register them to vote. my number one trooper there's a glitch in her clearance so i had to remind him of the code that allow her to be clear through the law department. law does help. >> this might be simplistic or obvious but we have the right to free speech but we have the right not to listen. can you talk about the friction we been seen in recent years in college campuses at the moment? >> the supreme court turned the term hecklers in the -- so much of it was formulated because these were tactics including shouting down and threatening speakers and demonstrators by

hostile audiences. these were tactics used to try to silence civil right speech and civil right demonstration and the supreme court said hecklers may not, in effect, veto the speech that people want to convey and that certain audience members want to hear rather government has to punish those who are heckling. so, you use law enforcement to prevent violence and you do not censor the speaker to prevent violence. >> briefly in your book could you expand on this? there was a situation in missouri years ago when the clan and the white nationalists did their demonstrations and looking to agitate a reaction and you see if conservatives go campuses to jar a reaction.

but one person had a stopwatch and took pledges from folks who are sympathetic or anti- the clan and were going to a fundraiser so they collected a dollar for every minute it went on and the longer they talk the more they raise money but they e was young buck people and that's what the donation 14. >> i could give a number of examples and there's a chapter on ways that are not consistent with freedom of speech in the quality that are more effective hateful ideas action. the southern poverty law center was monitoring is something i admire put out a guide last summer for college campuses because unfortunately the old right is recruiting on college campuses and the splc

says do not give them the oxygen that they are seeking and don't play into their strategy of gaining attention and sympathy that they otherwise would not have had violent counter protests or through trying to shut them down. when i was writing my book couple of years ago nobody had heard of my loading uplifts. it wasn't until berkeley denied him a platform that he became a household name and it was the same strategy used by the nazis in germany. they loved the fact that they were prosecuted for engaging in hate speech which was a crime in germany at the time. the child became a platform for them, a propaganda device for which they got sympathy. don't play into that strategy and ignore them or mark them or rebut them. >> the white cloud there were

clowns or something? >> again, some young men and i hate to generalize but that seems to be a particular target audience for hateful recruiters and they loved the idea of battling and it makes him feel the relic but if you treat them like clowns and throw white powder over there white advocacy somehow it's not as -- >> it defames them a bit. going to ask ashley and open it up for questions from the floor. if you have a question just hand and i will pick you and bring the microphone to you. ashley, you write about robert williams and i interviewed him a couple of decades ago living in western michigan and you wrote about his life in the role she played to stand up to the clan in south carolina. >> north carolina. >> in my right that i should

look at them as a power couple [inaudible] >> robert is a community activist, a guy that grew up in the early 20th century and went off to war and you come back and once you've seen the way that people treat you like and you don't have to take it and you come back to north carolina and organizes it. it's a really good talk about the limitations of free speech and exercise of rights so he joins the naacp and at the same time gets a chapter of the nra and under the second amendment aren't the members of the munro chapter of the naacp. he goes on camera saying i'm tired of people shooting at my

house for protesting segregation and tired of my house being and in my community being a friend. we will arm ourselves not to shoot them but under our second amendment right to defend our communities. as a result he has this huge slip with the and aa cp. they are fearful of how it will look for the black people to be arming themselves even though he did so after repeated attempts on his life. one of the things that the book shines a light on is the role that black women played in this as well. most people think this militant image of the panthers or this militant image of robert williams is a story of 1960 struggle. my book shows it's from the 1920s through the 1980s and black women are just as equally engaged and have this vibrant history in which they are pushing these ideas and more so than the men that we herald as the new leaders of the movement. mabel williams, his wife, is a schoolteacher and was a domestic

worker and became a schoolteacher. it's someone who is just as active in monroe working with him. ... >> freedom of speech for the protesters and demonstrators in charlottesville and afterwards, with has been considering the question of should we automatically refuse to disman free speech rights for anybody who is bearing articles and one with of the complicating factors is that we did just apparently

defend free speech rights for those bearing arm as so it's not a simple question at all. >> especially when you have the second amendment overlay like okay we'll take that one but not that one. and light of -- all of the years ago it always surprised him you know that he went overseas went to the army -- >> army in world war ii and they taught him how to shoot, how to kill and xted hill to go home and sit by shooting at the neighborhood. that was something that his -- yeah. >> and just to add toking that you know panthers did can it armed police patrols in 1986 it wasn't until a household name when they went to sac moan toe because designed to basically criminalize these panthers on police patrol so okay that everybody should exercise second amendment right and they did to police. and again they didn't shoot might be but stood a safe

distance away in order to reduce police harassment and only when they spilled on to the floor had in sacramento in attempt to go watch this vote that people kind of outside of oakland started to know about the black panthers in that way. so it's also really complicated about who get that right and at what time and what legislation comes in to criminalize people who amendment right when is don't like -- >> after the civil war during one of the major waves of -- relegating ann american to second class citizenship was not denying the vote but denying right to bear arms considered essential. >> yeah. yeah. fascinating history. so i have questions out there. my -- remember don't ask until you get microphone. make c-span producers happy. >> hi. thank you all for coming this was an incredible group to hear from. i had a question for ashley, i think that you were just discussing how these movements

oftentimes the turn towards like creator militarization or aggression is often figured as like a male impulse in your research, does, is that what is evident or -- is it more complicated than just like men are angry and -- >> yeah. so a part of this issue is that we tell history, you know, from the top down man to woman. so first people people kind of uncover particularly in minority communities since being the men at that particular group. however, one of the trends that you can kind of see throughout my book is -- that there is a strain of black women since slavery who have argued for a ksmg couple of things king thely one of them is that, you know, there isn't going to be this reck arening in which the white community allows equal citizenship so as a result a lot of people should separate to form their own community in their own kind of economic ecosystems. as much as possible, the second is, you know, that you ought fight fire with fire.

we talk about the violence against men. but you know black women were alleged in high rates black women also sexually abused you know these domestic workers i'm talking about talk about you know carrying some knife or schiff with they will when they go to work as a deterrent from, you know, trying to make it through the the day of cleaning people's houses. and then you'll see for example, if you read the book lots of images of black women who were members of different -- black powered groups. being artists kind of creating revolutionary art and this this art, they are purposely drawing black women with guns. right they're personally drawing latino women guns and purposely draw aring them as kind of the defenders and protectors of the community. so that's one of the ways in which black women are trying to assert that they believe in this politics. and kind of reproduces politics but also say that really -- you know, the claim to this kind of revolutionary it life or or this black power life snot really maleness but your equipment to militancy instead but across the board from the

20s to the 80s there's a strain of kind of self-defense in militarism that -- you know the book is really trying to uncover that we haven't really looked at yet. >> maybe too complex to get into in this form. but why do you think that was? is it because -- what america feels armed black man not so much an armed black woman is that -- is that black male versus female -- or all of it? >> yeah i think some of it relies back to slavery about the big british black man an nothing kind of caught if id than had the firm of birth of a nation, as a turn of the century so question of this idea of this kind of black male, this quick with like animalistic tendencies that leads to domination and we sou that for example, when we talk about like ferguson and mike brown or shooting this idea or trayvon martin right this idea that this -- man cannot exist in a world

where he's not intent his life goal isn't to harm white people. right. but that also creating different role for black women on the one hand gives them more cause to protect themselves because they know that while they may not have the same stereotype they are also seen as people that are strong, immune to pain. you know, deserving of violence. but also with, you know, in the sense that, you know, they're going to take it out these men then they need to be there to protect their communities as well. >> all right. thank you. question on the side how about down here? yep. up, up, to the microphone 237. the current issue of national geographic is devoted to race in america and the cover has a picture of two girls. one white, one black. which strongly affected me they're twin sisters i'm wondering how thought of that might affect you guys -- [inaudible conversations] >> anybody want that one? [laughter] >> i'm like you it is

interesting. very interesting. >> well, i mean, it's interesting too that they chose to represent it through women that's certainly about the moment that we're in. in terms of a political conscienceness to understand racism through the lens of women or two sisters or two young girls in that focus in that way. but beyond that -- >> i'm thinking of twin studies and sadly we can predict that there are different fates for those two people have so much in common that -- >> different experiences. >> separation -- given our climate. >> different. down front. wait for the magic microphone. >> we're going to run these volunteers ragged by the time we're done. so i think -- thing question is for ashley. reading about the nation of islam and, you know, sort of role that women play in that

organization, obviously, women not just on the front lines but also running programs things like that and then there was this tension that seems to me between supporting men and also -- kskt advocating for themselves as full human beings and wondering what you thub that attention -- how it is -- >> so my -- my answer to this is whenever somebody asked me why i study black power. the common assumption is that black power was incredibly sexist right. so always odd to me because i don't know how it can be more or sexist than any other time period but it had gotten a bad wrap but they are three option option and it is exemplar so one is that you ac by and form a separate women's organization to organize issues buzz you feel cycled.

third option what my book is about and i think honestly the most viable most popular option is that you try to change that from within. you know, and specifically, you know, what you'll see from the women that i researched is this effort to kind of match their -- to kind of make them match their ideal right so you can't be out here talk the revolution in oppression all of this stuff but oppressing half of, you know, be oppressing other people in that standpoint. another great historian wrote a book about women in the nation of islam. it is called promise to pate patriarchy and shows women found value in the nation. right it does a lot for people. if gives you a space that's communal validate your beauty and at the same time has aspect so she talks about how they kind of outwardly go to this at the same time kind of behind the scene it is that, you know, let me tell you what we're not going

to do. [laughter] so there's that standpoint. i think some place like the panther party, you see them out really having it out in speeches and in the the black e pane panther newspaper, and you see minds change by 1970 newton is fully on board with women -- you know women's liberation and by the set -- early 70s folks like elaine brown are running the party entirely and it is actually mostly women at that point. and so -- i think it's one of the things to get across is one we should not see these as static things that we're more of a negotiation between folks even within an organization. and a second thing you know trying to get across is that people's minds do change. there are poem that may start this one space and really through this kind of struggle move to a really different space of understanding about women's roles or gender equality with et cetera. >> ashley you're reminding me of coins conditions that i describe in any book where there are special and sensor the use of

the black towers salute by women in particular. one, of course, was at the super bowl and other you remember a year or two ago -- female african-american graduate at west point. came to group picture and somehow, it seemed to be especially controversial and especially threatening that they were women kind of interesting. >> i mean i think another thing is superinteresting in terms of the speech and controversy too is that we have controversy about colin kaepernick and him kneeling how he's been -- and donald trump called that hate speech. >> but the wnba kneeling for far longer to a greater extent calling kaepernick ever did but there's something about their way of doing it that doesn't seem hateful or disrespectful of our symbolism and our flag and versus this black man or this series of black men doing so sphwroation see how even within a minority group these kinds of ideas and what is hateful

or unpatriotic or what's violent or inciting violent is different. >> how much of that is related to sort of american cultural sexism -- >> yeah. football players -- and women not so much. >> yeah football player, you know, people you know is to that stereotype to a extent there's something about wanting that kind of black male body to -- admit to idea of the american nation. it's the symbolism of the nation state that there's a problem with black women doing it but not so the tame extent because we can control black women bodies in other way but this is something where football player almost gets out of that. by virtue of being a hailed symbol by virtue of capitalism and so -- the way in which we make them submit is by agreeing to phil fit into a mold and when you don't you're out. yeah. >> it's fascinating. questions on this side. no there's -- yep. and then somebody behind you i think had a question. start with you and then --

>> great. so i have a question which is drengted at an expansionive view of free speech how does that grapple with what i see are two problems first is mingling of political ideology with violence white supremacy a portion of which believes in genocide of racist in other inferior races that produce likes of dylann roof. and with which i think minority populations have had to bear that burden as we can see in increase hate crimes and sort of accordance with the sort of hateful atmosphere speech we have with right now and i think second problem is -- it in expensive of view much free speech is speech as a marketplace -- and how does that work in the current context where technology people are able to choose and cure rate for themselves their own experiences and what they wish to be exposed to and in so chosing become radicalized in adopt these ideology that sort of are political but then also violent. >> two fantastic questions.

so with respect to the first one, i want to be very clear that a so-called hate crime such as what dylann roof engaged in -- is absolutely punishable and not only that, but is more subject to greater penalty than what would be the same crime but without the hateful motive right? so you take what would otherwise be a crime such as assault or a murder or vandalism and if the victim is deliberately singled out because be of the hateful or discriminatory reason, the community deem its that to be a -- more harmful crime. both to the -- individual directly affected and to society at large. so every state except one in the national government treats that as a hate crime subject to greater punishment. then when you're talking about speech that -- is divorced from an actual criminal act, if the speech is very tightly linked to a crime

or violence in a tight direct way, then the the speech may be punished. right, so intentional insightment of eminent violence threatening somebody in a way that instills fear in them that they're going to be subject to attack. that can and should be punished. but if we loosen up that causal connection and roll back to what used to be the standard before the civil rights movement, speech that had a harmful tendency that might indirectly perhaps at some point in the future lead to violence or lawlessness. that became a recipe for government to punish whatever ideas that liked and that was exactly why martin luther king wrote his famous letter from the birmingham jail that's why women who challenge laws that outlawed contraception and abortion were in prison because that ep speech

might leave somebody to break the law. so i agree, there's a risk in allowing speech that might potentially lead to violence. but in my mind it was a greater risk of empowering government which is going to be accountable to the status quo, to the powers that be, to the money, allowing government to say, oh that speech is potentially dangerous. and your second question was -- please one word -- it >> it's about how free speech and expanse based on idea that -- marketplace and ideas -- >> thank you so much. ofng the marketplace of ideas is no more well functioning than the economic marketplace and you specifically were asking about so again, it's like what is the lesser of two evils. do we distrust the marketplace more or government regulation and civil libation base on long experience and advocate for right of whether it be political

or racial or ethnic or sexual orientation you name it other minorities but definition who lack political power i'm not willing to trust the government. now, the positive aspect of these big tax companyies with their extraordinary power which i would like to see curbed in many ways but there's something positive which is not only does it make it easier to disperse most hateful speech, it also makes it easier to respond to that speech effectively and my book contains a number of really inspiring examples of how we have changed people's minds i was thinking of when ashley was talking about that and a susan has a lot of experience with this directly where even confirm hate amongers leaders of hateful groups were engaged in very patient and compassionate and

everyone everyone thetic with chose who hated their ideas and did not treat them as a beyond. so saw in them some possibility of redemption. and really inspiring whole group called life after hate based this chicago -- that consist of nothing but former all white supremacist who saw the light and now are devoting their lives to preventing other it is from going that way or even recruiting them out. so i really do believe in the power of counterspeech and i think that, it's going to be amplified through the technology communication technology. we have to work hard, right? we've got challenges. but it's a powerful tool that can do a lot of good in resisting hatred. >> just a minor footnote to that one of my books was about dennis versus u.s. --

1940 first world war ii anti-trial, and law these guys were accused under and convicted and fellow supreme court serve up to nine years in prison, was needed illegal to advocate for the necessity of the u.s. government. or even to teach. to teach advocate and evidence against that things that they would written and things they had owned and conversations but one of them was sitting new york city councilman. but the the idea of communism was full to the government which at that time had authority to do this that these lost up to nine years of their lives. they saw years later and unworst part that have decision but this is what happens when you give them power to decide. >> but communist party was very closely working for civil rights and that was part of the reason why they were seen as hateful and dangerous. >> many in the country and in the first chapter of my book

some deported under smith act and many of them were jailed or husbands were jailed under the smith act and because thrfsz a religion between, you know -- promoting civil rights or being -- you know, critiquing government for not living up to its principle of democracy andism is diverted all of that. >> that's why you can't ever give the government the right to muzzle because they decide who will muzzle and why. any questions on this side? one down here on the right. microphone person here -- sir i was lookinged at the back. >> my question was for susan you said there was a time where you stopped to go to sacramento to lobby for -- you know -- seek change or prevent harm from being done. but now that you are invited to different legislatures what have you found that has changed has it been -- the election of different state representatives or -- just a moment has changed?

>> i think there are few things that change when i stopped going to sacramento -- you know, let me inform you they began to organize the community. i began to develop a chapter of -- [inaudible conversations] and it is a group that introduce the box for i begin to organize our community to build power. so you know this was 14, 13 years ago. and since then, a lot has shifted in the country around that incarceration. there's not enough that is shifted and not enough information and talk about the magic of women that are the largest growing segment of the prison system. you know michelle alexander book

shined a light on what was in the country and so there's a huge shift across the board you know, we had california that the federal government take over the medical system because it was taking over to the the system and under conservativeship and medical system, the numbers of people who were incarcerated, so money that's been spent incarcerated the type of crime that's be being -- people are being incarcerated for so all of this sort of built for steam and momentum around you know what do we do instead of what we've been doing. so that's been -- a large part of it. and then there are people incarcerated people all across the nation now there's so many of us and organizing ourselfves -- and we're standing and we're pulling one another through, and we're standing up and we're

changing laws you know one of the attorneys at a new way of life is a child custody attorney. i just hired her last year. because we're losing so many of our children because i went to prison and what the court does is take my bean places it and hour or rei get her back or you'll never see him again. the other -- five attorneys at new way of life are attorneys that -- handle conviction relief and employment people around able to work. a couple of our clients went right here to the school. and they got social work degrees. and now they can't get a license. so we represent those clients. but much has shifted. there's more of us who are coming back into the community and we just want to be good citizens. but if i can't have a house or

job and i can't keep my kid what am i? what do i have to rebuild with? so -- you know, much has shifted since those days. 15 -- 16, 17 years ago. and one of them is the organizing and the power and the -- the determination not to lay down, not to give up. you know, not to say okay well you can do me anyway. no you can't do me anyway i deserve just as of as the next person. >> you're one of more compelling aspect of that whole movement nationally is what's going on with florida trying to get -- >> about to get it back. >> that's organizeing florida get the vote back. [laughter] [applause] yeah. so going to put on a big conference to bring from in about 500 incarcerated people and we're going to -- middle of september we're going to be there on the ground in

florida. you know, saying, you know -- you want to become a citizen let me vote. isn't that good citizenship? so yes. it's important stuff and this side any question withs? any questions in the back? over here -- my question is i would like to know how we can do to prevent in a -- conservative forceses to use freedom of speech to protect corporations like for example, this case about unions and this case about, you know, like -- about campaign financing. so what can we do to prevent, you know, the first amendment to be used? you know, to protect corporations? >> that's a complicated question for this reason that concern some of my favorite organizations in the world are corporations including the american civil liberties union.

and the national association for the advancement of colored people to mention too the naacp to mention too they've been talked about here, and the laws have not drawn a distinction between not for profit advocacy corporations and -- for profit corporations, so susan you know how -- you've gone through the process of -- of organizeing and some people many people have concluded that they can more effectively exercise their free speech rights if they ban together in not only associations but associations that have the various benefits of corporate status so i think we have to be a little bit more selective and -- ask how can we counter ideas that we dislike if we dislike how certain for profit corporations are spending their money and by the way, the law also applies to labor unions.

also wanted toth gaer their i think one of the most powerful things we can do is use the power of the internet to have full and immediate disclosure where contributions are going because then we can track and we can spotlight and we can criticize is a certain elected official, how much money is he or she getting from entities for that matter corporate or not because a lot of major donors now are very -- wealthy individuals and we want to know that too right so i think the important point is -- the amount of money is it making a difference in how that politician is voting? and then we -- if leading them to talk votes or do other actions that are inking the with the public interest, then we should shine the spotlight on that. and i think in recent elections that has been done.

to quite an extent people have been embarrassed to accept money from certain organizations. i think that nra we can use a lot of advocacy now, and said no more discounts to the nra. yeah. public exposure. yeah. almost out of time here. like 90 seconding ago i think. and thank you all for coming in i would like to thank panelist books are ashley farmers remaking black power of women transform ared era. susan burton becoming ms. burton from prison to recovery are leading the fight for incarcerated women and hard cover version and advance one -- the i'm sorry hate -- we did, >> hate, what why we should resist it with free speech not censorship. >> that's -- that big words. signing area is that way and

folks help you where you need to know and i like to thank you all for coming and hope to see most of you back again tomorrow. thank you. [applause] and that wraps up booktv's coverage of day one of the los angeles times festival of books held on the campus of the univ