let's all -- let's all work on making this a nicer country. [laughter] [applause] >> it was great. >> you were so good. [inaudible conversations] >> okay.the program, please go signing table. >> yes ma'am. >> anyhow, i'd like to introduce you to - - which i to line them up and turn of political affiliation. on the far left, we have doctor manuel pastor. is a professor of sociology and american studies and ethnicity at the university of southern california and the author of

state of resistance. what california's dizzying descent and remarkable resurgence means for america's future. in the middle, we have new yorker staff writer, lawrence wright. and to my left we have new yorker and new york times magazine contributor dan kaufman. - - and the future of american politics. fight. [let's get personal before the road trip too far into politics and what's going on and what the heck the future may hold i was hoping, i could get you guys to talk a little bit. all of you have a deeply personal connection to the work you've just come out with. i'm hoping you could tell us a little about them and how it

shaped the project. i will let you start if you want. >> all right. well, i up in texas. abilene and dallas. i was in dallas during the kennedy assassination. something that marked my life because when you are from dallas during that period of time, people heated you. they hold you responsible. you actually did have a sense that people thought you were a murderer. it was also politically off the rails. i fled texas and dallas as soon as i could when i graduated high school. i went to college in new orleans at tulane. it was the city least like dallas that i could find and i thought i'd never go back to texas. in 1978, i was working for a local magazine. some of your old enough to remember. i went back to texas to cover the 12 men that walked on the moon.

and one of them was walking on a little german town called newport rules,new braunfels , t. i found myself at a dance hall and a band called, asleep at the wheel was playing and george strait was opening for them. the boys were dancing with longnecked bottles in the back of their blue jeans and the girls had these aerodynamic skirts and everybody talked like i used to. the music was so familiar and the food and i thought, something's going on in the middle of texas. i was living in atlanta at the time. the lights were out in the middle of georgia. so i called my wife and i said, something's happening in texas. coincidentally, a month later, i got a call from the editor of texas monthly and we moved to austin. and that's where we've stayed ever since. this book came about because my

editor at the new yorker asked me to explain texas. and i reminded him that i get paid by the word. so, the book came out. a lot of my colleagues have a hard time understanding why am still there. >> all right, thank you. >> my name is dan kaufman and i grew up in wisconsin, in madison, which was famously divided as 30 square miles surrounded by reality. it was actually 50 square miles. i was also a fact checker for many years so i cared about these things. but in 2011, i moved to new york many years ago. in 1990. in 2011, scott walker, the governor launched an attack on the labor unions, public sector unions. my parents were involved with

this protest to some degree. my mom was testifying too many people, many people stay throughout the night. they stayed in an effort to delay the bill. people from all over the state point not just madison, throw down there and deliver these two-minute testimonies. sometimes driving 45-6 hours, simply install the bill. one morning i awoke to an email from my mom who was a very engaged citizen. there was a lot wisconsin had historically encouraged citizen participation. this is not just in madison but deeply rooted in the progressive era. she wrote me a very passionate email around these hearings that she witnessed. so i started writing about what was happening in my own state. it was just a little blog post for the new yorker website around but they call the cheddar revolution.

it just blossomed from there and it culminated in this book. but during that period i became much more, i reacquainted myself with my own state and got to see many parts of it that were not familiar to me. particularly like native american reservations in the far north. and milwaukee which i didn't know. my family is from chicago so we would often travel there to go to a big city. it was very eye-opening for me too although i knew the state fairly well. i got in with better through the six-seven-year odyssey. >> i was actually born in brooklyn. [laughter] my mom grew up in spanish harlem. i was loved being here for so many reasons. but mostly because spanish is spoken with so many curse words in new york. i sent a tweet out today saying it was sort of wonderfully nostalgic to hear - - be every

third word. spanish speakers got that one. we actually moved to california when i was six months old. in 1926. because my sister had asthma and the doctor said moving to los angeles would be good for your asthma. this was back in the era in which smoking filtered cigarettes was considered a way of toughening up your lungs for the future. so i up in california. and in some ways, it was his golden era. an era in which they were significant problems in terms of racial restrictions and housing and labor markets but the sense of a growing economy. a state that was investing in itself and its education and the kind of tremendous possibilities there were out there. when i went to the university, paid almost no money to go to

the university.back then. i became engaged politically. i was an urban organizer for the united farmworkers. when i graduated at the end of my book, i graduated in 1978. that's when prop 13 took on a position that cut property taxes in the state. and grandfathered in older, whiter homeowners. sort of locking in a generational advantage even as it was starving the state of local resources that would be needed for the next generation. i was asked, it was 1978, the university of california santa cruz. if you know about that university, it's quite the university. its mascot is the banana slug and at that time it had no grades. when i graduated, we refused to let them announce honors or who the student speaker was.it was me.

we did a little gorilla theater and i emerged from the gorilla theater and gave a speech about proposition 13 and i was going to wreck the state. and it kind of turned out to be the story. in a way, i wrote this book is a bit of penance because i realize i should have just thank my parents for all they did. instead warning the state of what was to come. got very immersed in the social struggles and that's what informs this book. >> thank you. for banana slugs, the cheddar evolution. back in the early 30s, u.s. supreme court justice at least popularized the phrase, laboratories of democracy. - - where power is concentrated on a federal level but also diffuse. right now we are having issues at the federal level.

i did see your hat ma'am. for all of you that can talk a little about current experiment. anything you might find noteworthy from a laboratory perspective in your state. whatever it is you think might be most influential or we could learn from the most. obviously, not all of those things are things we want to run from but possibly, we should. >> sure. for many generations, wisconsin was a laboratory for democracy. it pioneered the first unemployment insurance program. social security act was drafted by wisconsinites. loyal to an idea called the wisconsin idea and either was that placed a moral obligation on the university of wisconsin to serve the citizens of the state. the first worker's compensation bill was passed in these laws were replicated across the country. a lot of the new deal was altered by wisconsinites. more recently, the state has

become a conservative laboratory.i love my book details this shift. the attack on the labor movement was located in many other states to bearing degrees. most recently in iowa where they passed a taccone inversion of what's called at 10. which severely restricts collective bargaining rights for public employees. this has contributed to atomizing the state electorate. unions function in many ways, there are wages and benefits. but there's other things they do. they form a kind of way for workers to get together and share ideas about policies. it's really one of the only infrastructures on the progressive side and that is why they been targeted. so fiercely. this is a movement that goes back really to the new deal.

there were a lot of people that never accepted the new deal. many of them in wisconsin and some of them started the - - society which is also in but more recently this movement against public employees was spearheaded by ronald reagan when he broke the air traffic controllers union. scott walker, the governor elected in 2011, consciously told a blogger in person meeting david coke that he was mimicking reagan's act and this was going to change the course of history. and in fact, wisconsin did vote for donald trump and many people including myself, feel that at 10 which has decimated union membership in wisconsin contributed to that change. there's other ways that wisconsin has become a laboratory for the right . environmental laws. these environmental laws are being drafted by the companies themselves. that is really changed and i

think you see this process all over the country. but it may be most visible and a place like wisconsin that had a very different past. it's such a stark contrast to how policy used to be created there. >> thank you. manuel. >> yeah, so, when you see the title of the book. state of resistance, you might think was prompted by an election bid and it was but not by the one you think. it was prompted by the election of presidentobama in 2008. when it seems to me a lot of progressives , liberals, bum rushed to dc. thinking policy change could take place there. instead of going back and doing community organizing and social movement mobilization. that would have provided - - when he was right and held him accountable when he was wrong around the gigantic increase in deportations.

into that vacuum, stepped the tea party. they were astroturf in. they actually spoke to real grassroots anger out there. in the eight years of the obama presidency, 900 seats in state senates and state assemblies passed from democratic hands to republican hands. so i started writing this book in the summer of 2016, thinking like everybody else that hillary clinton would win and that people would make the same mistake of forgetting about the organizing and movement building and infrastructure for progressive social change. and instead try to change dc policy with clinton. and then of course the election happened. it made the book shift directions but actually also become quite more relevant. because when i realized the day after the election.

i know how i realize because i had such a deep hangover. it was difficult to think. that the nation had just passed through its prop 187 moment. prop 187, the famous ballot in 1984 in california that stripped away services, social services and educational services from undocumented immigrants. but that wasn't the only element. what people forget is in the early 1990s, 45 percent of the country's net job losses in the recession of the early 1990s occurred in california. people often forget that rush limbaugh again his talk radio career in sacramento in the late 1980s. so that perfect storm of demographic anxiety, economic uncertainty and profiteering from political polarization. we did it first.

in california. and yet, 25 years later, california's one of the first two states to move its minimum wage to $12 an hour. it's proudly declared itself a sanctuary state in terms of refusing to cooperate with immigration and customs enforcement on most criminal justice matters. it's leading in terms of climate and trying to set new climate standards. and it's got a tremendous set of other sort of progressive shifts that have happened. it's kind of the opposite of the story in wisconsin. what i've been afraid of and we can talk more about, this book is a counter to the following thing. some years into this transformation in california, there was a famous newsweek cover that had the title, altered states. referring to california because we are a hallucinogenic. about our sort of recovery and had a picture of jerry brown. it said how jerry brown saves california. that such an appealing kind of

story and end american story when you pin it on one person who's going to save you. he screwed the state up when he was earlier. he spent time with mother teresa. he became inspired and came back. let's think jerry brown. the real story is about the social movement building and community organizing and mobilization and digging into electoral politics that helped to transform california and inspiring the nation now in the form of alexandra cortez. and i wanted to tell that story. >> alright. [applause] all right larry, what's brewing in texas. >> sort of the opposite. when rick perry was governor of texas, who used to call them - - of democracy. [laughter]

the conservatives had been in control of texas for so long that the mainstream conservative agenda is long since been acted. it's the tea party that still has his hunger and practically every statewide - - every single statewide official in the state is republican. the opposite of california. where no republicans statewide office. but what's happening in texas is so consequential because texas is the second-largest day after california. it stands between california and new york.but it's the fastest growing. in 2050, which is not that far away, it's projected to double in size. at which time it will be about the size of california and new york combined. this has real consequences for

the future. there are things about texas that are wonderful and worth emulating. it is an amazing job creating state. and that's why people come. they don't come for the scenery. people storming into the state because there are jobs available. and yet some of this job are creation has come at the expense of social programs like becoming defiantly low tax state. well what is it that taxes, when you cut taxes, what suffers? primarily, the job of a state is to provide public education and infrastructure. and indeed those of the things that are most suffering. 10 percent of all schoolchildren in america right now are texans.

and yet, we spent $2500 per student less than the national average. we are 49 out of 50. it's not a poor state but were doing poorly in terms of educating our citizens and future workers. given what a major portion of america that represents. it has catastrophic consequences i think for the country. this upcoming legislature promises to be yet another attack on public education. in the recent nation's report card, texas fourth-graders ranked 45th in the nation. which is better than you would expect given that 49th out of investment. but in the last legislative session, thankfully that didn't pass, there was an attempt to take public education money and awarded to private schools.

i don't know what's behind this exactly. what kind of mentality it is. is it just racism? it would be easy to make that case. but it's so shortsighted and unfortunately, a lot of the programs that we are implementing and have implemented in the past in texas, our models for the national government. if you look at the texas economic model and the values it represents, it's replicated so much in the trump administration that we pioneered in ourlaboratory . the model for what the incoming administration has chosen to do. >> thank you. manuel brought something that i will selflessly ask. i'm also a journalist. you brought up how you've been working on your book for quite a wall when the trumpet election happened.

when we were walking over, dan mentioned he had a proposal for a book out on wisconsin before the election. before that put a shift in the spotlight. i know it's really easy to see people come out and see how theydovetail with the current moment historically but so many times these projects are so long-standing , as a nonfiction writer, you're kind of hanging off the back of the car that is reality. and bumping along with it. i wanted to ask dan and larry if you had an experience similar to manuel's at all. for you already working on when the election happened and how did you pick it or not. what you were doing? >> i think when david frederick assigned the story he thought texas would play a more prominent role in the election. because there were all these texas candidates in the primaries and people who had affiliations like jeb bush and someone. even carly - - carly fiona.

she's a texan. in the whole field of republican primaries and i think david thought that it would play a bigger role and ted cruz would be a bigger factor. he was wrong about that. but, in a way it freed me to write a book that was no so entirely tied to politics. because i wanted to include history and the culture as well. and politics in texas is a great show. it's never disappointing. so i had plenty to write about. >> yeah, i have been working on writing many articles about the transformation of wisconsin. and put together a proposal before hand. and then i think trumps victory solidified in people's minds, mainly my editor, that this was

- - what had happened in wisconsin, a pre-staged the election results. and i think paved the way for them. similar things happened in michigan. the attacks on labor. i think you are expressing a lot of the country. it's turning into a version of what happened to wisconsin. and i think that became a much more widespread interest. ...

>> and the ideology that drives it is the kind of radical and they have an infrastructure to propagate that and it was very successful in wisconsin, so -- >> and you brought us there already, but anything else that you want to tell us about how you adapted when the unexpected happened? >> the original tiet to feel book was america fast-forward which was title of the first chapter because the demographic changed between 1980 and 200 in california, two-thirds white and to the majority of people of color as demographic changed in the united states between 2050 and what people forget is how red a state california was. we gave you richard nixon and

ronald reagan and there were many republican statewide republicans office holders in i -- and i think it's not the demography that changed the shift of the state, eliminated bilingual education, eliminated affirmative action and launched to a much deeper criminalization than any other state between 1980 and 2008 while in the rest of the state the state prison population went up for four fold in california it went by six fold. so we were america fast-forward in terms of the bad and i think part of what happened in california was something that i have seen happen nationally too. the left got tired of losing, we

are proud when we win with values, we lost but we were really clear about our values and people's lives get messed up in the process and so people really begin to develop a different way of doing voter engagement. something we talk about in the book, basically community organizing meets electoral politics when you are trying to engame people between elections and sort of maintain the context, you can get occasional voters and try to use the civic act of voting which is sort of a democratic i think we all accept as a way to get people to go to marchs, city halls, to council meetings, et cetera, to get reengaged in politics. they are turn things on things like raising taxes in 2012 and

2016, beginning a process of incarceration which happened in nonpresidential year in which you are not supposed to be able to get younger and voters of color to come out. there's been a real sort of shift to engaging with politics and having community organizing meet politics, i think that's made us much of a difference as the demographic shifts but the election of trump medma realize that it was more urgent to get this out and also pretty -- to give out lessons of optimism about what america can become if we don't give up and assume the other side won't win. >> all right, you both give me ideas for questions and anticipate my questions, so on the america, what would it become tip, we have done in terms of your connection with the states, we have done the president and i'm a nerd and

means we are heading to the future, i'm hoping we can talk a little bit about what's going on in the states and where we are headed, is it a message of hope or imaginary tale? >> well, i had some thoughts while manuel was speaking, when i was a boy, texas was blue and it's the state that gave us lyndon johnson and the great society thanked was in a time where nixon and reagan were coming along as you point out stereotypes that we have of two states is where we are now but the truth is there's constantly evolving and i think of texas and california as being like double, they resolve around each other, always in opposition, you

never agree on anything but like our governor, our present governor, he's always talking about the danger of californiazation and the examples he gives are dreadful things like plastic bag bans an burdensome tree ordinance and lately plastic straws, these are destroying america. and i'm in a band, even the drum near my band has a bumper sticker that says stop californiacation of music, i don't know what that means. the concept of california is what we are not and work it is other way, when i go to california and people say, where are you from and i say texas, you know, i get that a lot any way, where in texas, austin,

forgivable. [laughter] >> this sense of being at odds is also accessment to vigor of our democracy and allow them to express themselves so differently and with sometimes dreadful consequences as we have seen in wisconsin, you know, in kansas, places like that where the economies have taken a nose-dive because of ideology and other states a lesson into what happened when you do those things. >> i warned you are this will end up in cage match, it's getting closer, dan. >> where do i see the future? there's been a revival of some of the protests around like when the movement fell and governor

walker did not revolve, it's like someone had died and there was, maybe some triumph among some people around supporting walker but wisconsin, it's a very divided place now, the politics of resentment have really created a fisher in a state that's difficult to heal. when people lost bargaining rights, it's more than, again, more than wages and benefits, it's their dignity and the ability to have a elective voice and their working conditions, that mattered more actually because the unions gave the concessions on wages almost right away. it was really this idea that they could have a voice and not be subject to these wins, so a

lot of anger. i have seen resurgence it was actually during the sanders campaign, some progressive elements were revived and sanders won the state by 13% and he seemed to ignite some formant feelings that i hadn't seen in a lot of people, one of the people in chronical, who ran against paul ryan before he dropped out, he was labor organizer when i met him in 2012 and campaign caught fire because this anger and humiliation that had not been dealt with. on the other side, you have this republican infrastructure which is there and as far as i can see it it's not going anywhere, it's a long term, roar that's willing to accept peace-meal gains.

one of the books legislative council and generate model bills and a lot of times they are very small bills that will chip away a public education and so forth but they had this accumulative effect and the movement goes back to 1970's and i'm looking at that on one side, i also some structural things that they institute in the state, voter id laws, used to be the easiest to register to vote or one of the easiest. now it's become one of the hardest, the gerrymandering is so intense that people became demoralized and it was so extreme the partisan gerrymandering that the case went to supreme court who sent it back down because the plaintiffs denied have standing, but so there's a resurgence and trump is deeply unpopular at the same time i don't see these structural changes going anywhere and i think one thing i wrote in my book i feel like,

while i would like to share manuel's optimism it's easy to destroy progressive achievements than to rebuild them at least that's what i was feeling at one point during the reporting of my book. >> thank you, and manuel, take us home? >> yeah, there's certainly been political changes in california aside from not having a republican hold statewide office, there's been just many actual progressives with community organizing background who stepped up to be speaker of state assembly or president pro tem of the senate and the change has been dramatic that in the last section orange county which gave us the john burt society gave us a democratic for the first time since dawn of men, very significant change. one thing that hasn't come up

that was part of that change was learn to go deal with race and racism, becoming, you know, there's an article out today in "the new york times" from political scientists taking a look at what really happened in the 2016 election particularly college educated and noncollege educated voters, a new book called identity politics which is arguing that it really was a racial anxiety and in particular not just economic hardship but relative to other groups thinking that other groups are getting ahead that drove those photos and we somehow think -- a couple of things after the election, you remember that big conversation about is it race or is it class because americans can't hold two ideas in their head at the same time, i think what we realized in california is that race and racism were so toxic that they were getting in the way of us focusing in on what we needed to do economically and so we needed to address race and racism through conversations, through public policies, et cetera, and i think

that's been kind of important lesson to bring up for the nation. california, though, i think has a long way to go right now. in a way the politics have changed but a lot of the ground has not changed, we are now the fourth most unequal state in the united states. we have the highest rate of poverty if you adjust for housing costs, we are still kind of, you know, crawling our way above texas in terms of spending on education although it's looking better because we have decide today spend money disproportionately on english learners, low-income kids and foster youth and we have thicks pointed in the right direction and we will need to go something which is important lessons for progressives againly, people focus on winning power, we need to focus on wielding power, how you can actually use that to improve people's lives and we take our eyes off the ball,

imagine how much more popular obamacare would have been been if the website would have worked the first month and congress was shut down but the website wasn't working as well, so people who want to make change need to start thinking about gompance and not just winning. >> thank you. [applause] >> we are nearing the end of the road trip with the three gentlemen, we have time for couple of questions, if you have questions that aren't statements or opinion and have a question mark at the end, i will take them. sir in the front. [inaudible] >> texas is majority-minority state but hasn't had political shift california had even though demographics have become more

nonwhites and i'm curious if you had explanation on that because liberals in the country we get off on the idea that the country is going to become more nonwhite and therefore more left-leaning and i'm curious about your opinions in texas? >> the question has to do with why in some ways minorities haven't made the impact in texas that, for instance, they have in california and actually our demography is very similar, we are both majority-minority states. i think only hawaii and new mexico might be in that category, we have about the same 40% hispanic population. hispanics vote in california and they don't in texas and that would make a big difference. if you take ethnicity out of the question who doesn't vote anywhere, are the young, the poor and the poorly educated and there are a lot of hispanics in texas in those categories, but i think there's a more important

thing is happening with hispanics in texas, they've never had a candidate who spoke to them who spoke to disenfranchise and charismatic and spoke their own language, there have been hispanic candidates, one wealthy houston businessman ran for governor but he was not that kind of candidate. now, it's an interesting test coming up in november because there are two people running for senate and one the incumbent rafael cruz who is the hispanic who doesn't speak spanish very well and also canadian. [laughter] >> and his opponent robert frankies orourke known as childhood since beto who speaks spanish fluently and comes from

the border, if he is the masiah figure he's aligned with hispanic community, he's gone to every single of 1264 counties, he's been to every one of them often times speaking in water burgers, the only way that's a community hall in the -- if he wins it's legendary and consequential as john tower's senate election in 1960 when texas began the great revolution, when people say will texas ever become purple or blue , in november it could become purple fanned that happens, it totally recalibrates national politics because with texas in play then the whole

game changes. >> very quickly, demography has possibility but demography is not destiny and unless you actually motivate and activate and shift political conscientious, you're not going get the results you're talking about. >> thank you. all right, i think we have room for one more so we have 3 minutes. all right. in the back and i think we have a microphone. thank you. >> yeah, i wanted to ask manuel, what's the status now of both in organizing and al their role in politics? >> continues to exist, continues to play a role in politics and

two senses one is dfw itself and impact on labor in the state and the second that you can go to almost any latino labor leader of a certain generation and they calm up to united farm workers so head of the county of federation of labor responsible for mobilization of undocumented immigrants who then mobilized, latino permanent residents and u.s. citizens to vote and transform los angeles came up to the united farm workers and just about to be elected to state senate but you can see that it really had a big formation on people but today it has less of a presence. >> all right, so i think the moment, i hope many of you will come say hello t