we are now back live in madison for the book festival. the report on the republican takeover of wisconsin. book tv all day from the wisconsin book festival. >> hello. i am fred wade, the president president of the madison

institute. i want to welcome you here this afternoon tiered partnering with the festival to present this event. for those of you not familiar, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that presents programs and issues of public policy each year. if you'd like to learn more or the more aware, you can go to our website. we have a sign-up for future e-mails if you like to do that. i want to thank the madison public library, the madison public library foundation and on behalf of the institute, supporting what we do and the foundation, the charitable arm of the capital times. it's an honor to introduce dan

kaufman who was a madison native. grubb. the 1980s. he is also a musician. he has written for the new york times magazine, the new yorker and the nation. the best review of his book to date is one by bill leaders. he capsulized is what the book is about as he's eventually telling how the movement grew during the century. and the way that legacy has been dismantled and transformed since the governor was elected in the legislation in its wake. perhaps the most summery of that was a review by elizabeth. basically said wisconsin has been transformed from a progressive action into "

showcase for right-wing ideology inquiry. i will introduce dan kaufman. please give them a warm welcome. [applause] >> thank you. it is quite amazing to be here for many reasons. i want to thank the wisconsin book festival and its director for bringing me back to madison, my hometown, to speak about this new book. i also want to thank the madison public library for creating this wonderful event. it is a bit of a trip to be speaking in this building where i worked as a page 30 years ago. i was a high school teacher then. spending my afternoon checking material out for my patrons. vhs tapes.

that tells you how long ago it was. i first began dreaming of a glorious escape to new york city i did manage to make it to new york. i quickly got a job in my field shelving books at the strand bookstore. a year later i was lucky to move up to take a job at the new york topic library. i just want to say that that high school library job was a form of my education. i encountered riders. continuing to inspire me to this day. one day my own book would appear in the stacks by another high school student dreaming their own dreams. the origins of this book began one saturday morning in 2011. i awoke to find an e-mail from

my mother. as i mentioned, i grew appear. my father taught at the university. i would not be standing here today without exceptional schoolteachers. in my mother's e-mail that morning, she described arriving home from the state capital at 1:00 o'clock in the morning. she had waited with hundreds of others to testify. all but eliminating collective bargaining rights. walker's actions barked away for demonstrations at times exceeding 100,000 people. an occupation at the capital. fourteen democratic state senators for illinois to block the forum. all of which failed to prevent passage of the bill. for my mother and many like her, the beginning of a year-long battle.

an effort for the new york times following the wisconsin into a story of how dark money to national donors and conservative organizations help to dismantle the legacy in every area. labor rights and environmental protection, voting rights, government transparency. the title toppling the states traditions. over the past seven years, wisconsin is seen one of largest declines of the middle class of any state in the country. a 30 year high. among the worst in the nation. the university of wisconsin madison has fallen for the first time out of the ranking for the top five research schools. one study estimated that the states population which deterred from voting in the 2016 present

old does presidential election. >> i think it is because wisconsin once had what any citizen may admire, even covet. clean air and water. transparent government. good public schools. a strong tradition of labor rights for its workers. because of those attributes, the state became an attractive target for national conservatives. he and his allies could do it anywhere. if conservatives cannot tolerate estate, what kind of future is therefore the american citizen. also detailing the national political implication. signaling his intentions for the measure.

as many of you may remember, two weeks earlier walker had met privately with diane hendrix. a billionaire donor to the campaign. the documentary filmmaker. asking the governor if there was any chance we will ever get to be a completely red state and work on these unions. assuring her wisconsin would change. asking if wisconsin never become a right to work state tiered walker responded enthusiastically. we will deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions. since 2011, the union density had fallen by 40%. that is the same percentage as alabama. four decades it had been solidly republican. after the 2016 election,

transform any of the electric was there. did not lay the groundwork. but the march 2011 sign a back 10, a dramatic reform of public sector labor laws by wisconsin scott walker certainly did. to understate it, it has been enacted in a dozen more states. the party will cease to be a competitive power in american politics. the effect of laws like the electric have left an even deeper scar in wisconsin and nation's electorate. the intention to divide the state citizens was announced in the 2011 inaugural address. no longer live in a society where the public employees are the has and taxpayers that foot the bills are the have-nots. donald trump has a different demeanor than walker. he is still similar politics

even as he employs different victims and perpetrators. in reporting this book i was grateful for the inside of the university of wisconsin political scientists kathy kramer whose own book delve deeply into the roots of walker's appeal against rural wisconsin. the effect after the 2016 victory. i went into my fieldwork asking about immigration because i thought it often brings up issues to the social class which is what i was interested in. it never came up. i think we see the sanctioning much more clearly after the election. some of those things now sanctioned are now for bidding. now they are on the surface. kramer mentioned an incident last year. a girls high school soccer match in elkhorn, the teams were in the middle of a match when a small group of fans began shouting racist chance. donald trump build that wall,

they yelled at the african-american and latino players. the girls too distraught to continue walked off the field. one of the girls was cradled in the arms of one of our assistant coaches for good 15-20 minutes. he believed the girls on the team would be scarred forever by the experience. he knew he had been. seeing the impact on the skids is something i will never forget he said. kramer, the legacy of divide and conquer politics is profound. how do you turn that around, she asked. the kinds of people who care about what has happened have already taken sides, for life. they know who the enemies are. how do you turn that around short of a world war or great depression? are to my struggle now is a question of whether we really have a mock receipt. i believe that there is a role for ordinary people to do something about what is happening.

i'm hoping so. i think so. if that is the case, what do do we do? how do we ensure we have leaders at stand on flatbeds and say, hold on, do not go at each other's throat because there is a better part of us here as opposed to you are right. she pointed in the air towards an imaginary enemy. they're the ones. the fall of wisconsin takes a deep look at wisconsin's past year to having something to offer to us in the present moment. one of the people in the book is named jim leary. he devoted his career to exhuming that past. since the 1970s, leary has been unearthing the forgotten music and folklore of the immigrant and native communities and brought his findings the songs of french-canadian lumberjack, ironworkers and mexican farmhands to hundreds of small gatherings. like when i attended last year in the small town in wisconsin. the 65-year-old with the

ponytail and bushy eyebrows, he hopped on a small wooden stage and began running through a playlist that recounted states history through labor songs like the awk appellate cranberry song. a lighthearted homage to solitary among cranberry diggers one critic in his review of the fall wisconsin says it like this, the music of the past, not its future. i do not believe that is true. i included that scene and others like it because i think they offer an important insight in the past and the present. the same reason i included the testimony of two remarkable wisconsinites who were confronting political challenges, not unfamiliar to our own era. in 1873, the chief justice of wisconsin edward g ryan gave a commencement speech to the graduating class at the university of wisconsin law

school. controlled by the railroad and timber industries. they decided to would run for office and they control the legislation that was written and past. a new dark power, ryan told them the accumulation of individual wealth seems to be greater than it ever has been since the downfall of the roman empire. the enterprise of the country are aggregating vast corporate congregations of the capital. boldly marching. not economic conquests only, but for political power. this talk issued a chilling morning that marked one of its listeners. fighting bob forever. the question will arise and arise in your day that perhaps not fully in mind. which shall rule, wealth or man? which shall lead? money or intellect? who shall fill public stations?

educated and patriotic freemen or the futile corporate capital? another historical lesson was given by woodcarver. who in 1910 became the first of milwaukee's three socialist mayors. at the time children may be forced to work 16 hours a day in a factory. a worker killed on the job might leave his family destitute because of a program of worker's compensation to not yet exist. in these memoirs, describing a vision for milwaukee's democratic socialist. some eastern smarties called eyes that socialism he wrote in his memoirs. he went on. yes, we wanted sewers and the workers homes. we wanted much. oh so much very more than sewers we wanted our workers tapped your air. sunshine. planned homes. we wanted living wages. we wanted recreation for young

and old. we wanted vocational education. living a life of happiness. we wanted everything that was necessary to give them that. playgrounds, playgrounds, parks, lakes, beaches, clean creeks and rivers, swimming and wading pools. social centers centers. reading rooms. music, dance. song and joy for all. that was their democratic movement. that pragmatic idealism is worth remembering now. perhaps the conclusion like viewers describing the fall of wisconsin that are hopeful. perhaps the people whose stories form the heart of this book. by and large ordinary citizens. the people, these are people like mike. the chairman of the bad river tribe lake superior chippewa.

an enormous iron or mine a few miles from its reservation. or union ironworker and labor activist whose challenge paul ryan galvanize progressive movement. a wedding photographer who led a one-woman campaign to recall the senate majority leader. or former republican state senator who was leading a bipartisan effort to rid wisconsin of gerrymandering. they embody the democratic ideal etched into wisconsin. democracy is a life and involves continual struggle he wrote in his autobiography. it is only as thorough as every generation. love democracy. resist with all their might encroachment of the enemies at the ideals of representative government can be nearly approximated. one other person i wanted to highlight was a bad river tribal elder named joe rhodes. now well into his 80s.

i would like to read a little bit about roads. a chapter called the seven fire. afterwards i would be happy to answer any questions. like many other bad river children of his generation, joe attended st. mary's. a catholic mission in boarding school where the reservations administration center. his mother sent joe to school as a day student was also a st. mary's graduate. she had tried to go to the public schools in ashland, but there was no bust transportation then. she tried riding the train. she was late for school every day. they raise hell with her for being late. finally, she and her cousin found a way to go to boarding school. st. mary's was founded in 1883. part of a wave of native american boarding schools whose assimilation goals were enforced with corporal punishment and other cruel means.

1892 speech george mason university, richard henry prep an army officer in civil war veteran who founded one of the most influential of these, the carlisle indian industrial school, outlined his vision for native american education. a great general had said the only good indian is a dead one he told the audience. in a sense, i agree with with the sentiment. it only in this. all the indian there is in the race should be dead. kill the indian in him and save the man. st. mary's exerted a great influence on the tribe. by the time rhodes attended, it had become less repressive. we did do powwows and dances he said. social instead of spiritual. the school discourage native languages, ceremonies and religion. he is still scarred from the school suppression of his native identity. they used to tell tells only had an immortal soul. nothing else in the natural

world had a spirit. my mother would take my brother and me out to the ceremonies back in the woods. we would learn from elders that everything in the creation had a spirit. that was one of the first conflicts of the gradeschool kid that i trouble understanding. the wolf was a blood brother. solis and catholic geology. the reason for that, the wolf is always vilified in the western tradition. european literature, you can go all the way back to children's fairytales. red riding hood, three little pigs. then you get into some of the adult tales. the wolf is one of the most powerful symbols of wilderness. that is why they want to exploit it as a resource. they can do that in good biblical conscious. he called his use with great fondness. living with traditional grandparents. i grew up in the time of kerosene lamps, outhouses he said. the water from the -- it was

clean enough to drink then. as was water from lake superior its self. spending time outside with his grandfather was most important. a master hunter who taught him how to set traps. gathering medicinal plants and harvests. his grandfather did not become a u.s. citizen until 1994. until the citizens act was passed. 40 years old. fighting against all of this corruption that was happening. that made an impression on roads who had become one of the mentors in the fight against the mines. his age, voice and scientific it and traditional knowledge made him a persuasive person. heading upstairs to the empty floor.

believing the battle to retain the national heritage is being waged on two plans. a temporal one in a scientific argument. events like the passage of the bill can be interpreted as part of the mythology. during the man mining site, an analogy between a monster. the wind ago. she tack. a comparison occasionally echoed in public speeches. the ghosts of lost force to each human flesh. the spirit of greed. the more they eat, the hungrier they get. they ran through a litany of the changes walker had supported. promoting mining. gone from just a few sites to a hundred. removing many of the hilltops in

the process. a study by pierce at the university of wisconsin eau claire showed that area surrounding mining sites contain levels of tiny particulates. far exceeding the epa threshold. another worry of the opposed 6000 farm trying to build near the shore of lake superior. the farm would generate millions of gallons of untreated liquid manure runoff threatening to pristine water sheds that feed lake superior. the reintroduction for the first time in a half-century of a wolf in wisconsin. four decades the wolf was listed as the state endangered species until the department of national resources fostered a rebound. a target wolf population significantly below to sustain

the animals long-term stability. wiggins and rhodes are well-versed in scientific cases against his policies. he has a degree in biology. they also see the dangers oligarchy. in prophecy they tell us we are living in the age of the seven. he began telling the version of creation. the world was created by the great spirit according to the greatest vision of all time, he said. first, the physical world then the plant world, the animal world and last of all the human world. let's skip part of that. it takes a long time to tell that. let's go to the human world where the great spirit came down to the earth and took particles and dust from mother earth placed it in the secret shell. breathing life into it. the great spirit then lowered from the sky world. down to meet his mother. took my pen.

which means the original people. in my notebook. his mother was mother earth. for the first steps taking on mother earth stood up and briefly demonstrated a dance. when we bring the shakers and percussion instruments in, we commemorate that sound out of the darkness of the void. even before the creation. pausing as a waitress refills or cup. thank you. the great spirit looked down into the darkness. the only thing was the sound. the great spirit decided to send it out. all over the darkness. all over the universe. in doing so the great spirit extended a great deal of energy. after sending those ways out over the universe. the great spirit laughed.

while in that deep sleep he was to experience the greatest decision the universe had ever known. seeing the four orders of creation. also felt all of these human emotions that went along with it when the great spirit woke up, he decided to create everything that had been experience in the vision. at the onset of the creation, everything with your energy or we might say pure spirit. four everything to take on a materialistic form. the great spirit remembered that sound that had been heard even before the creation. rose tapped on the table. the sound had risen. the great spirit created all of these things.

the word for heartbeat and drum is the same, he noted. when we use the shakers, these percussion instruments, we are commemorating the sound that was heard even before the creation. lowering down to meet his mother. asking to go out and walk the earth. a name all things in the garden was created. expressing loneliness. did not have a companion. that is a wolf. to be his companion. walking the earth together. they were companions. they became blood brothers. the great spirit spoke to them again. the wolf, original man, stood in the presence of the great spirit. the great spirit spoke to them. in many ways the two of you are like. when you take a mate, it will be

for life. your social order will be very complex. given the totemic system. the wolf was given the wolf test there were prophecies in. from this day forward, i'm going to put you on separate paths. this leads up to our prophecy. i talked about these different ages. maybe just prior to when the berlin wall came down. rose laughed. i don't know exactly when it happens. the great spirit spoke of a fork in the road. right now all humankind is standing at that fork in the road. we will be confronted with the choice. one fork in the road which said to be a hard service. we see that as the fast lane. highway that pollutes and upsets

the natural bounds. the more natural path. it depends on which choice the humankind makes as to what will happen when the next new age is ushered in. this is where the wolf comes in. whenever human beings encroach on a wolf territory, the wolf retreats into what we know as a wilderness today. a very powerful symbol for what little wilderness we have left. you may no longer have a place to retreat. if that happens, you will soon pass out of existence. you will become extinct. you, if your brother passes out of existence, you will soon follow. you will die of the great loneliness of spirit. you, if you pass out of existence, all other humans will soon follow. the wolf as was the fate of the human race will be the same.

before i left ashland, rose returned to the prophecy of the seventh fire. he has been given a very special gift. we use the word for that gift. loosely interpreted it means medicine. also encompassing the knowledge and wisdom of how to live in harmony for the four orders of creation. that is at the very foundation of our native spirituality. it is a different worldview altogether. along with a gift is powerful that comes with the great responsibility. we turn and we look back. one and ancient knowledge. we pick up those sacred bundles that are fallen by the wayside because of persecution from the u.s. government and missionaries

trying to release their identity. our responsibility to educate. harmony and balance with the natural world. returning to the idea that humanity, it was at a perilous crossroads. these corporate window goes have no respect for the natural world. the motivation is based on greed when they acquire more materialistic possessions than what they can spend in generations then they get into power and control. which is even worse. rose laughed darkly. that is where your democracy is threatened, he said. that is what is happening right now. i will be happy to take questions now. [applause] >> we will open up the questions

in the room. it will be far away for those of you in the back. we will use this microphone for questions. we encourage you to come up and ask questions. we will open it up to questions from our viewers. coming up to the microphone and thanks again, dan. >> surely there's a question out there. >> only halfway through the books. what i am wondering is can i have an ending? >> some viewers described it as hopeful. i get this question asked a lot. i think there was the impulse,

of course course to be honest to the facts of what has happened. i also see that my protagonist, the heart of the book refused to give up, despite after defeat. that is one element, i suppose, of hopefulness around the book. you can see their persistence. each one of them continues to insist on restoring wisconsin to its previous ideals. i think by documenting that persistence and chronicling it, i think there is an element of hope as long as people remand remember that the state does not always have to be so divided and so empathetic 02 science and common sense. in the spirit of representative democracy that persisted here. many many other places. there is an element of

hopefulness. politics included. i think it is unclear what the future will hold. i just want to say thank you for writing this book. i just got to the part about janesville. the neighborhood paul grew up in the first campaign i've ever donated to. i think it is really important that people like him running. i wanted to ask you what your thoughts were. ab you've addressed this in your book. articulate how we can combat that. just your thoughts on that. >> good question. good point. it is not a spoiler. paul ryan lived in a very wealthy section of gainesville.

one of the things i found the most interesting, and somewhat disturbing, he has forged a self-made theology around his background that has contributed to his efforts to attack the medicare program. using that money to attend college. to help pay for it. i think that's a great thing. as many of you know, he's been attacking the welfare system. working a high school job at mcdonald's and a few other odd jobs. as saying e centrally that lifted myself out and anyone can just as a lack of will. a philosophy that helping people through government programs,

somehow robs them of their agency. he is exaggerated quite a bit. leaving a significant inheritance. his extended family is one of the richest families in the area he has kind of forged a blue-collar persona. he often talked about his brown bag lunch. taking a tour on his harley to wisconsin every year. simply an effort to politic in his forthcoming campaign for governor. he also went to parts of iowa.

yes, i think that mythology is very powerful for both sides. a union organizer that i met when he was very obscure labor activists that was involved in this desperate campaign to organize the fellow ironworkers against the right to work law. i think randy has elevated the issue of why congress, there are only three tradespeople in congress today. that would be the fourth. people talk about diversity which is a great thing. racial gender diversity. not many people talk about class diversity and politics. it is an important thing missing from the perspective of our politicians. >> i have not read your book yet

you must read this book. they will say why? i want to give the elevator speech. why did wisconsin fall. if you have to answer it with one point or three points. i know there are many. in your opinion, and thank you for writing the book. i cannot wait to read it. can you bring it down to one or three things? >> i will bring it down to just read this book. justin brief. you know, wisconsin progressive tradition has been eroded for a long time. with the introduction of money politics. with the supreme court case. 1976. continuing to pace. the key party wave of 2010. a very conservative republican

often driven by powerful infrastructure that had been in place since the 70s seize power for the first time. for the first time since the late 90s and the first time in year. and, that, is pretty much it. a lot of these policies are drafted by national organizations. documented in the book. they have created a program to transform states and to a kind of libertarian model. a specially attractive target. i just briefly mention, a lot of the states, the erosion of support had been happening for a long time. outgoing democratic governor jim doyle left office a few weeks

before walker was inaugurated, he bragged to her reported that he had more public employees than any other governor in history. no prominent politician saying these people do great work. they invest in our infrastructure. raised in a very long period of time. both parties, i think, have hired a national trends. very little public investment in the united states. that was being played out in wisconsin as well. the schools get worse and people get angrier. the ones that can draw their students to private schools and so on. it is a war on the public fear that is been going on for a long time. read the book. >> good afternoon. anna totally outset across

country event is a little while ago where paul ryan was present. i think he must have had a family participant or something at the event. it just kind of funny that someone mentioned paul ryan. i want to ask the optimistic question. what are things that make you possibly on the other end are pessimistic about the potential this may change in wisconsin. >> the biggest impediment is a limitless amount of dark money. i mean, it is not the only determinate, but in close elections, it could really swing the bounds. i don't see that abating, especially with the court now the way it is anytime soon. i do not know how that gets on tape old. it is not everything in a populist campaign. can raise a lot of money.

they have been very successful through grassroots means. i think, ultimately, there is far more money on the right. i think one of the reasons wisconsin had a progressive tradition is a band donations to candidates a long time ago. he did not institute a lot of the laws like the workers compensation. including direct primaries, this was new. really important to opening up the process to people. he really felt in that quote that i read earlier, active citizenship is eccentric. this is why i highlighted these people who are really just citizens. with the exception of a democratic assembly woman. they are just citizens.

they had an unusually strong tradition. there's a lot of people still committed to that here. i suppose that that is the optimistic side of it. >> i'm a former public school teacher that was very present in all of these protests. it inspired me to now be at all school public affairs. i know what my perspective is. i'm wondering within the context of everything you studied, public school teachers are so much part of the affected group. i know from kramer's book, somehow have become part of the enemy. >> i think there's a bit of fatigue from hollowing out.

there's a lot of school closings including an elementary school in his home district in wisconsin. in elementary school just closed people have to fund school through these continuing resolutions. it is a little bit like what happened in kansas. not quite as extreme. you have this libertarian ideology. staff stops functioning. the roads here are a perfect example. kramer also highlights some interesting psychological studies in this australian journal that shows even after cutting a perceived enemy down, you don't actually feel better. in this case taking away higher

wages and benefits from the teachers. she documents how there is still this resentment. i do think that a possible antidote, if a political party, that is why read the statements at the end, went back to a tradition of universalistic programs that might help anyone, i mean, it was instituted during a period of intense economic insecurity and you had a group of politicians. you also had rural communities. some places the only people with health insurance might be the only people that work at the school. i think that that kind of politics of resentment can flourish.

>> thank you so much for writing this book. i moved to wisconsin about a year ago. working at uw madison, no less. i was speaking to a labor organizer over the summer who was very act been preparing for the gubernatorial elections upcoming. he said that while the democratic party was very motivated to participate, what they were finding was republicans were also very motivated to participate in the upcoming elections. the polling was barely even. especially optimistic of some sort of landside victory. that is a general sense we have.

one of the things that strikes me is a reason for this. public goods when investment disappear 10 to erode kind of slowly. what he has he done that is really that. wondering from historical examples from the book. people you are talking to. a way to recover language. what public goods offered to everyone. rather than special interest groups. >> i talk a little bit about that. they did have a platform to

attract a lot of people in wisconsin. they can be very effective. a lot of economic insecurity. look at alec and some of the model bills. it could be just this particular law might chip away $40 million. our goal is to dismantle public education. what we do is have vouchers. that has proven very successful.

it was originally limited to 300 students. now you have a bill in wisconsin that will make universal vouchers in 2025. i think that that is significant change. they were only able to do that by the situational thing. he is a due politician. he sensed maybe it was going to far. maybe he restored some funding to the public schools. a soft underbelly of his support people were getting really concerned. i think it is a also the conservative media that can amplify this message. you sought in the kavanaugh

hearings effectively done to kind of flip the sentiment. they showed the palm trees. they transformed into a riot. maybe just watching that. they're working very hard. they don't have some of the benefits of the people there. it seems it is a clear path into that resentment. especially when there is no counter message. >> it seems like there is a natural component to the story. there was a story in the new york times not long ago about how the coke brothers have supported or created americans for prosperity. americans for prosperity was

very involved in the rise in wisconsin from a nobody to governor. since he's become governor, he has basically gotten along with their line of thinking. i guess the question i have, how we as ordinary people can look at this story. a look at these corporate wolves and what we as individuals can do when we don't have resources of the coke brothers behind us. unfortunately, i am just a journalist. i am a chronicler. my job, i felt, was to document this and highlight these stories . what it happened to wisconsin through these people. who stories i think were quite

compelling. i do not have the answers and would not feel comfortable suggesting any. i do think that hidden in the book, you know, people's efforts , as well as the history that had come before, are very informative as it said in the opening remarks. when i uncovered the material about edward ryan, it was amazing that they had struggled with, perhaps, even more corporate control over the legislature at that time. it was even chile reformed. it took a lot to get it. i think that there is always that possibility being precluded did not think that it was hopeless. he would just go out and speak for hours on end. and tell us, i mean, it's

trickier trickier now in a lot of ways. because of the infrastructure in the conservative media. i do not think it is impossible. i just have not seen a lot of people articulating a similar type of message. when they did, the sanders sanders campaign, an elderly man in the 70s, not exactly a dream candidate for political consultants really catch fire. i think that that kind of message, which was really not that distant from fdr's new deal you look at the most successful democratic president in the 20th century. franklin roosevelt. there is no question. look at what he offered. they still have not been able to destroy. why? it helped everyone.

eventually. most of those came from wisconsin. some people have said the new deal was just a wisconsin idea. drafting the medicare program. there is an important legacy. >> i enjoyed your book. thank you for writing it. i'm curious what you make of it on the national stage. how that might be interpreted. how you use the things that were achieved. >> it was kind of a question -- plus, donald trump was the first republican candidate. people forget that in addition

to the nativist and racial resentment, he also railed against free trade agreements and defended social security and medicare. very unusual for a republican president. the rest of them, more or less -- i'm not saying trump did do things. i guess you would call it the conservative vision. limited government in this kind of rhetoric. i think the failure -- i do not think people thought there should be a border or fence between canada. in the united states. there were obviously mishaps and mismanaging. i think he was one of many people that had this philosophy. they all failed.

keep all, there is disputes between the coke others in trump on the core issue or the tax bill in feeding money to the wealthiest, they are incomplete alignment. the epa is ran by an act number. scott pruitt. this is that same agenda. in 2016 when i was reporting the book, vice president pants came to the meeting that i was at. basically to reassure her that trump was one of them. i think that walker's failure signifies that there may be is a hunger for more popular investment.

he was not attacking the safety net during the campaign event. this unusual narrow victory. also over the republican field. >> we will get to those as well. right now we will turn it over to book tv. >> if you are watching us on book tv and have a question for dan kaufman about all of wisconsin, the numbers numbers are on the screen. you can dial in now. for those of you in the east and central time zone (202)748-8021. if you are in the mountain and

pacific time zone and like and have a question, you are more than free to come up to the microphone. dan kaufman, this is a state that has elected both baldwin and scott walker at the same time. what does that tell you? >> also elected mccarthy twice. >> there you go. >> it has always been, to say that it was always thoroughly progressive would be misleading. this bipartisan spirit endured for a long time. particularly around issues of voting rights and transparency. always had a clean government for a long time. that was adhered to largely by both parties. the late 60s, the republican governor with the one to institute collective bargaining rights for all employees. even tommy thompson created a

new low income health insurance program. also set aside a lot of plans for conservation. i think the real shift came when the politics were more nationalized in 2010 two-party wave. they were not really about the forces in wisconsin, per se, but these national forces. >> was asked the audiences. is there anyone here at the wisconsin book festival in madison? who voted for donald trump in 2016? [laughter] anybody vote for scott walker? this would not be a representative crowd. >> not at all. >> is madison different from the rest of the state? >> oh, yeah. [laughter] there is a famous saying by lee dreyfus. madison surrounded by reality. that was adopted as a t-shirt.

a proud monitor. i think madison is the center of the university. there is not a state university that has had more of an impact on its populations in the university of wisconsin. that tradition goes back to the late 19th century. a lot of these reforms were drafted i professors there and there was an eco-'s calls the wisconsin idea in which there was a kind of moral obligation for the universities faculty to help the citizens of the entire state. :: :: :: ::

>> there was a campaign in the 70's that had been rebuffed to just that so i think that the support for unions as income inequality has risen to astronomical heights and you also saw teacher hikes, there hasn't been a lot of work stoppages in a long time. >> wall street journal editorial, anybody see this?

don't rush the stage, i'm just reading for the journal. governor scott walker's collective bargaining reforms have saved wisconsin from becoming a fiscal basket case like illinois. and a new study suggests they are improving student learning as well. [laughter] >> it's right here. >> i know the journal is 100% accurate. i would say two things, one there's really excellent research by doctor thesis in florida, i'm forgetting the name that actually show it is opposite. what has happened since act 10, there's a free agency that is happening in wisconsin, schools, lower-performing poorer school districts are losing teachers to wealthier district who is can pay more in benefits, so some people might be doing slightly better but across the board this person had shown toast scores of

math and science have gone down. they might lose their physics teacher all of a sudden and not be able to replace the person, there's a shortage, tremendous shortage of science and math teachers in particular, the other outcome has been a tremendous decline in people that wanting to into teaching, the university of wisconsin has seen a two-thirds decline in people pursuing education degrees, so i think no offense to the journal but i think that's not entirely accurate. [laughter] >> next call for dan kaufman from virginia. >> hi, how is it going? i just would like to ask, you probably already talked about this but i didn't see most of the lecture but just how how did

wisconsin flip sides on being liberal state to conservative state, is it going to switch back to liberal? [laughter] >> thanks, david. not sure about the second part, that's always unknown. i think it was both long coming and also very fast at the same time. as i mentioned a lot of this erosion of support for public institution that have been going on for some time, decades really and then in 2010 it happened quit abruptly, you had ambitious governor who was in a sense auditioning for powerful conservative who famously took a prank phone call impersonating david koch and there was a lot of position on the right at this

time, and i think he went about trying to go further than what had happened before with act 10 instead of just negotiating wage and benefit cuts he wanted to undermine the principal of collective bargaining and he boasted about how this was going to -- in prank phone call how it's going change course of history and compare to actions of ronald reagan's break of air traffic control union. in a sense it did change history. inspired similar action, just last year iowa passed similar measure to act 10. i think it's changing the political culture to a degree, not all the way but to a degree of these places. >> the name of the book is the fall of wisconsin, conservative conquest of progressive and future of american politics. chris is in michigan, chris, you're on book tv with the author dan kaufman.

>> greetings, i was curious to know if the author thought that as a population of citizens we may have lost the capacity to vote in our own interest, simply because it seems as if we have become increasingly tribal and a lot of times it appears that we are just ingesting the messaging that people with adequate money puts out spin on what they want, the messaging to be interpreted as and to mean, so that was pretty much my question. >> i think voting against one's interest it has to be clear that somebody articulating your interest on one side. i think there's been a lot of

disaffection, a lot of nonvoting that has kind of determined the outcomes of recent elections, for example, in 2016 donald trump actually received 6,000 fewer votes in wisconsin than mitt romney had but hillary clinton received hundreds of thousands fewer than barack obama had just 4 years earlier, part of that is new voter id law but a lot was just unclear message, i think, also failure to campaign here, so i think people votes has to be to inspire people to vote and has become these impediment to voting are not insignificant but they have to be inspired to vote and there was very little energy around, for example, her campaign. i'm using an example, i remember talking to head of uaw who in 2008 was turning away volunteers for barack obama's campaign and

8 years later was dragging people who he knew were voting for trump. as far as voting against interest, kathy kramer talks about, i see her point. i think it's hard to tell someone that and it's not entirely accurate, again, had 5 large campaign rallies in wisconsin at each of them he railed against nafta, other free trade agreements that had hallowed out eastern wisconsin as well as defended social security and medicare. one democratic state senator told me in some ways trump ran as a democrat, not -- all aware of racism and so on but to ignore the other side of it is really to miss something.

across the midwest has really created a context for messages like trump's as well as bernie sanders'. i think it's gone from that people are looking for stronger remedies and i think, you know, on the one hand republicans have a more robust infrastructure to amplify messages which plays to narrow victories but, i think, governor walker point to lower unemployment figures, it's really deceptive ho how people are doing, wages have been stagnant for decades and that is not changing and a lot of the jobs that are replacing the old union manufacturing jobs are jobs without benefit and not

family-supporting jobs and that has created context for support for someone, you know, what trump was -- was selling. >> gloria in boulder, colorado, hi, gloria. >> iwas wondering if dan kaufman and his conversations with people around the state of wisconsin had an insight into why the teachers of that state helped scott walker. he ran more or less of union buster and astonishing following election especially outside the state to see reports that teachers had helped get him elected, thank you. >> i don't know if there were that many teachers, there were that many union members, i don't know the breakdown. as far as walker in his first campaign, he did not run on destroying collective bargaining

rights, he, in fact, he said to newspaper that that he would use collective bargaining to negotiate wage and benefit adjustments and cuts. that said, he did use divide and conquer and he would praise, for example, the building trades in a lot of his speeches, allies in the support for his mining bill and like trump he's been able to please the labor movement to peal off significant portions of what might be democratic coalition. he won a third of union households in all of his elections and that is divide and conquer, at the same time attacking act 10 and price said after him, he told me that after the right to work bill was instituted, people from his local came up to him and apologized for voting for walker

because they had believed that and they kind of thought teacher and public-sector union is a different kind of union when really what bries was saying was the idea that they are trying to attack and not the union itself and that proved to be true. >> now, for the audience we have about 5 minutes left, if anybody has a question, please come up to the microphone, we would love to hear it from you, jean in north carolina. >> hi, my folks were in germany after world war 2 and you could have people there that hitler was not that bad of guy and just misunderstood and with that propaganda and conservative media like fox news do you think we would have functioning democracy in the country? >> i never say never. [laughter] >> i don't know. i mean, i certainly think it's possible and there are pockets erupting all of the time, but,

yeah, i think the conservative media is very effective at setting terms of the debate and has been doing it very effectively for a very long time, but i don't know the answer to that question. i mean, in a sense, you know, the united states was born -- it was never democratic, i mean, there was slavery, women were not allowed to vote. there's been incremental movements towards fuller participation and it was big part of that. and now receding a bit, but there will always be a battle for that, you see the battle over voting rights again and that is troubling but at the same time as many people who refuse to accept return to that particularly people in the south who were denied voting rights during up until the 1960's and i think people will always fight for those ideals but i don't know if it ever has been a

completely democratic system. >> and here we have a question from somebody madison public library. >> thanks, you kind of just responded my comment, question that i was thinking that we just had a report about a tipping point that we have 8 or 9 years before our climate reaches a tipping point and kind of feels a little bit like this election might be a tipping point just in terms of what you were talking about with voter suppression and gerrymandering, if we can't get some of the legislatures and congress changed this year even our vote is what's going to counteract money and what will be thing we can use to fight back against it, i guess? >> yeah, i think it's a critical period, i was devastate by the

un report, not something that seems like you didn't know but to be confronted with the reality is severe and, you know, there's the examples of how extreme has gotten, you know, the book is filled with them, tia nelson, gaylord nelson's daughter, barred from speaking the words climate change at her job managing a state florist in wisconsin. it is really critical. this election, i think, all elections in the context of climate change are incredibly critical because we are running out of time. and the moves that president trump has made have been really extreme to actually accelerate this process, so, yeah, very critical election. >> are you still writing for the new york times magazine and the new yorker? >> yes, i am. i'm working on some more pieces which i won't talk about right here but yeah, for the new

yorker i have been writing a lot. i wrote a piece about the governor's race in wisconsin coming up and also essay about labor day. >> and his book that we are talking about is the fall of wisconsin and donald is calling in from alaska, did i get that right, donald? >> no, but that's close. i'm a teacher here in alaska and one of the things that -- i see this going on in the future to be a big political issue because kids don't have money, they don't have homes, if they don't have homes, they don't have good jobs and so forth and so forth. [inaudible] >> did anyone catch what he wanted to talk about? i heard education, teacher and then we lost him.

maybe about homeless students. >> homelessness question. i mean, i think it's part of the erosion, the homelessness, there's a huge housing crisis especially in places like new york and los angeles where housing has become so unaffordable and even a lot of working people, people working full-time jobs sometimes more than fiems jobs cannot afford to live. huge issues. i guess it's an issue in rural alaska. >> is there income disparity in madison, wisconsin? what's the reason? >> well, i think it's growing, the decline of the labor movement. now e, in the 50's people were in the unions, there was a lot more equal, there's also the corporate executive didn't make several hundred times what the average workers made.

a lot of it was the labor movement. >> all right, time for one more call and this is lou in henderson, nevada. >> hi, thank you for taking my call. i had a quick one, there seems to be similarity between what happened in wisconsin and what happened in montana, the move destroy collective bargaining and the concept of unions in montana resulted in a politician being busted and he was taking illegal contributions that were funded by conservative groups who had an agenda, they we wanted to destroy unions, they we wanted to get this guy in office and they gave him a format and a background and a bunch of workers to work for him, this was all funded illegally. is that similar to what happened in wisconsin or is this a completely different can of worms, thank you very much? >> there's some similarity, i

know the story of montana briefly. there was a criminal investigation into governor walker by the milwaukee da, the john. doe investigation and ruled against groups that had been accused of funneling money for reelection campaign during recall but during the course of that documents were leaked to the guardian newspaper that uncovered a lot of this relationship people like sheldon given to wisconsin club for growth and has been actively legalized and gotten rid, so yeah, it's similar but different and montana has also been very dominated by legislatures from alec, and there's a new film

that i haven't seen which is excellent about dark money about montana story. >> the book is called the fall of wisconsin, the author is dan kaufman and he's been our guest on book tv. thank you. >> thank you, appreciate it. thank you. [applause] >> coming up in about 10 minutes dona fratis will be here at wisconsin book festival, the book is called consent on campus, you're watching book tv on c-span2.

>> here is a look at current best-selling nonfiction books according to new york times in wall street journal. fear, look inside the trump white house from the washington post bob woodward. in the second spot on wall street journal's list is rachel girl, wash your face. on the time's list in pieces, memoir by actress sally field, in third dichotomy of leadership and navy seal and time in combat. and in third for the journal is reese whiterspoon. up next presidential leadership. for the wall street journal it's cravings, a cook book by chrissy teigan. on the wall street journal's list sally field memoir.

and for the times it's educated, terra over childhood in idaho mountains and introduction to formal education at age of 17, "the new york times" puts historian, 21 lessons for the 21st century in 7. the hub community cook book, next on times list neil tyson, the journal has account of battle with colon cancer, chris beat cancer. former nfl quarterback tim tebow health advice, this is the day. on the times list, personality of 13 animals on how to be a good creature. wrapping up xar snon wall street journal "the new york times" best seller's list is dorris

leadership for the journal and in the tenth spot, belichick, biography of new england coach. you can watch their programs online on our website, booktv.org. >> c-span launched 20 years ago and since then we have covered thousands of authors and festivals spending over 54,000 hours. in 2017 professors cornell west and robert george who have opposite political views but often lectured together appeared in monthly call-in program in-depth. >> how many times have you been arrested? >> i've been arrested? >> yeah. >> going jail. he's the jail guy. [laughter]

>> the last time in ferguson i think it was, st. louis, whatever it was. i got a call from my brother. how much brother do you need. he knows i'm broke as -- [laughter] >> but that's just the love and respect and support that he he has. >> you can watch this and all other book tv programs from the past 20 years at booktv.org. type the author's name and the word book in the search bar at the top of the page. >> here is a look at books being published this week, charlotte pence, her father vice president mike pence on where you go, former white house photographer compares and contrast the obama's administration in shade. in them, republican senator ben sasse of nebraska shares thoughts on how to address the

country's political divide. former fed chair allen greenspan and the economist adrienne provide a history of the american economy in capitalism in america and in she wants it, emmy-award winning writer shares personal experiences with sexuality and gender identity in hollywood. our look at this week's new releases continues with eric and tim humorous take on current political landscape in donald drains the swamp. in the library book, the new yorker susan recounts the 1986 los angeles public library fire, pulitzer-prize winner examines the political think offing four -- thinking of four of our founding fathers in american dialogue.

and military historian max redownts -- recounts the vietnam war. >> if you want to know what's going to happen through your life and the world, probably the best book is the bible but the second best book is resistance. everything that's happening has been happening today, don't worry it's covered in resistance and there's been talk about unindicted coconspirators, i think we have that, chuck schumer and nancy pelosi. as for michael cohen and his plan, offer to take a bullet for the president --

[laughter] >> i don't think any of us realize that by bullet what he meant was a light spring breeze. [laughter] >> but as is described in the book and i do cover both manafort and cohen, wow, 2 years and all they've got is a campaign finance violation. i am disappointed that the president fooled around these two floozies and didn't have the decency to do it in the privacy of the oval office. [laughter] >> the crucial point of the campaign finance violation issue after all of this time is number one if it's all true and he's guilty, oh, my gosh, he'll have to pay a fine. the second point is, the crux of any finance violation which i know msnbc is not covering, i'm

not sure any other networks, something that you wouldn't have done in your normal life. i think donald trump has kind of a long history of paying settlements, paying drifters, why isn't settlements of trump university an unfair contribution to his campaign. it's the same thing and, of course, if he did it, really other than that, do you really care, yeah, his name is on the buildings, doesn't mine if ivanka find out or baron or his wife, has nothing to do with that, just the election, if that were enough to win a conviction, john edwards would be executed already for what he was doing. [laughter] >> the book really does cover everything. i think you're going to enjoy

maybe not as much as the bible, but i will go sign them now and thank you all for coming, thank you number one for breitbart, thank you breitbart for every day. thank you. [applause] >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [laughter] to decide to to

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assistance coordinator, i'd like to thank all of you for attending this talk today with donna freitus to speak about her book, consent on campus. organization made of 53 rape crisis centers across the united states, we provide training and technical assistance of those doing ground work as well as state level work advocating for policies and services to meet the needs of survivors. thank you so much to madison public library and all sponsors for making this event possible. at this time i'd like to remind all of you to please silence cell phones to avoid interrupting author, i'm so happy to introduce donna freitas today. she's the author of sex and the soul, juggling sexual sexual ans affect, how the media is driving

generation to appear perfect at any cost. freitas is associate for center of religion of society in notre dame. a problem within sexual violence field seen firsthand in work with campuses arguing that our current strategy to approach consent education seems to focus more on protecting institutions than students and fails to address the monumental need on college campuses. excuse me. dr. fraetas is doing important work on behalf of survivors and i would like to personally thank her for that, without any further due donna fraeitas. [applause]

>> all right. thank you guys for coming. so i thought i'd start with acknowledging the moment that we are in to talk about this topic, so i wrote this manifesto about consent on campus and here we are in this very unusual particular political moment in our country where we have spent the last month or so speaking about consent in ways that i think have been incredible, hearing women's stories and then also in ways that perhaps for me have been the most depressing ever and probably certainly

since november 2016 and, you know, it was an interesting moment to be talking about consent but also i'm teaching this year full-time at delta university in long island and the week of the kavanaugh hearings i coincidently hopped last spring, i put this on syllabus for this day, the day of the kavanaugh hearings and also that day i was reading with another class a virginia wolf. as preparing for classes, i couldn't believe that the coincidence of this and i felt chills reading the handmade's tale and thinking about the

resonance and thinking about the repercussions of what might happen and i continue to think about that and but also i was really struck in particular by virginia wolf, she has this section, chapter 3 if you want to look it up. corky little book, it's very short, you can read it pretty fast but it's a series of lectures that virginia wolf gave to college in 1929 and asked her to speak about women and fiction and what is the future of women in fiction and she spent a lot of time talking about money and how women need, you know, to be economically independent and also they need space and time, space from the distractions that women often have in domestic space and from children. but she has this moment where she's standing in a library and

she's looking on the shells, she's going from era to era and she first talks about, she looks at all the books on the shelfs and she's noting in particular that there isn't a single book up there by a woman and then she's going through history and she sees women, begin to appear just a little bit, et cetera, and she's really bemoaning the absence of women's voices and she's talking about how, you know, for so long we've only had the perspective of women's lives and stories from men and men are often angry at women so she's talking about male rage in this chapter and so i'm reading this, male rage, i've seen that before, and so she's talking about how important it is that we fill in those gaps in history, that we fill those

shelves with women voices that there are these gaps and, you know, the men, the male authors need to make space for us and so i sat there thinking as i was reading on the train because you know i was little late preparing on the train and i was like, wow, i was thinking about me too over the last year because this is the anniversary, we are just passing anniversary of -- of the harry -- harvey weinstein scandal and i thought, well, haven't women and survivors been filling in a big gap in the last year, you know, we are -- we are, you know, filling in this virginia wolf was just talking about how important it is for the hidden to be made visible and she was talking specifically

about the hidden inner lives of women and the concerns that they have, the people that are, the people that they are that are so easily flattened and how women seemed to be jealousy and vanity, they want to be pretty and then they fight with each other and she was talking about how women write about women write in a different way and make the stories known and i was thinking about the chapter of history we have been making known in the last year and which i think is extraordinary and also how angry, you know, certain people in our country are for the ways in which women and survivors of sexual assault and harassment are making known

this chapter of our history that was previously hidden. and so i have been thinking, you know, i think especially the week of the hearings and following i felt sad, depressed, enraged, so many different things but i'm trying to hang on to the fact that these voices keep coming and there are so many of them sadly because there's so many stories for us to tell around this issue b, you know, they are not going away but i think there's a way in which we can sweep all the books off the library shelf and i think we will put them back up again and at some point the space will have to be there. so anyway, virginia wolf has been raveling around in my head as has margaret in the last few

weeks because of me teaching them and they have helped me, i think, to take heart and the other thing that really helped me take heart given the last month was just an event i did last night at colombia university in new york city with a group of students who run the colombia review, literary magazine at colombia and they did a special celebration about stories about consent and sexual violence and harassment and they had, i opened up the event and gave remarks and all the students of colombia came one by one and had incredible stories, these pieces that they had written about surviving sexual assault, about their sexual experiences and of all different kinds some were funny, some were sad and all of them were so brave and i thought, okay, i'm going to hang onto this because

this is -- this is beautiful and incredible, we can't stop because we are demoralized. so anyway, i'm tearing that do into the room today and one of the -- i think that's a good segue into talking about my book, so this book consent on campus actually says manifesto on it, i never thought i would write a manifesto but anyway i did and i think what's sitting about thinking about virginia wolf and margaret atwood, the colombia university, the brave university students who read incredible stories and poetry last night and songs, they played songs is one of the things that i talk about in this book is the importance of stories and story-telling and i

started this book way longer, way before the me too movement gained all the steam a year ago and one of the things that i think it has confirmed for me is the importance of story-telling and this issue and so i want to talk briefly about how i came to this topic and then a little bit about what i do in the book. book is really -- it's a manifesto, it is an argument i have made about how we are talking about sex on campus, consent on campus, how we are not talking about it and what i believe we need to do to contend with sexual violence and to transform it to actually confront it and to change the structures of sexual violence on university communities and beyond that through stories, so i came to this topic.

it's not a topic i thought i was going to be doing all of this work but many years ago, feel like a long time ago when i became professor, i would teach my classes and one of the things i was always trying to make whatever it was that i was teaching relevant to my students and one of the things i learned quickly they we wanted to talk about sex and relationships and everything to do with them and so i would somehow try to like sneak in something on the syllabus where we got to talk about and that was the section of the class that they were most into and i finally, you know, offered an entire class on dating and sex and it was a life-changing class for me and it's because i learned so much from the students and the students were so brave and n that class and and one of the things that i learned from them that i didn't expect because they all seem today empowered

around sex especially being semiester -- semester and they were talking about hook-up culture on campus which is a dominant culture but one of the things that became clear over the years and when i decided to do all of the research about sex on campus and hook-up on campus, i was curious if other than my students felt the same way and were struggling in similar ways. i started to see how structure coercion and campus culture around sex and i think it reflects the wider culture around sex and there's a kind of -- there's a lot of pressure that the students are dealing with that often they don't want to do and i became really

interested in the forces of that and how they affect the students, you know, students at college and why -- how students responded to these and how why didn't react more strongly against them, why was it so powerful, why couldn't they change it on their own if they were unhappy, why were they continuing to participate but but i told you how my students were brave and we wanted to change the culture, i did big national study about sex on campus and one of the things that happened during interviews, when i was traveling to around to different universities was that students were reporting sexual assaults to me during interview process but they weren't naming sexual assaults and so the beginning of sex and the soul which was mentioned in the introduction, that book, the introduction tells the story of one particular young woman that

i had interviewed who told me the story of a sexual assault during her interview and it was actually -- for her it was a story of a hook-up but for me it was a story of sexual assault because it was a sexual assault and that was clear to me, but she just brushed right by it and shrugged as a regular hook-up and after the interview, how did she not know that that was a sexual assault, and, you know, what does that mean that this experience which is so clearly did not have her consent, she was passed out during the encounter and she woke up to find someone, i won't say what they were doing, but to find herself in the situation where someone was having sex with her. you know, why is it that she would just shrug something like that off, what about it that she

not know to name it and that happened a number of times during interviews and it happened many times since when aye talk today students in campus about this issue and one of the things that it was really interesting was that after i did research and you invite me to speak of this on campus, you know, i wanted to talk about sexual assault on campus. i was like, we have to talk about, we have to talk about this, i've had student reports sexual assault without naming sexual assault, we need to discuss this and universities were not very excited to talk about it. [laughter] >> they were sort of like, oh, no, just come talk about your findings about hook-ups and i think that was easier because there's a way in which we blame students for hook-up culture and if they don't like it it's their fault, we don't feel like it's a part of it. there's a distancing, this is a student culture, we need to tell them how to fix it. so, anyway, people really don't want to talk about it and then

in 2011 this letter came out from the obama administration about title 9 and i'm sure you've heard about title 9 before, i'm a child of title 9 because of sports. i was of the generation. i was born basically the year that title 9 was passed. as i got older title 9 because sexual harassment and sexual assault and in 2011 obama released this letter to universities and colleges to have united states and said, you have to deal with sexual assault on campus, you to educate around it and if you don't, we are going to come after you basically and you might lose federal funding and so suddenly all around the country universities when i came to visit, boy, did they want me to talk about sexual assault because i became part of their

checklist if i spoke about it they could say, yes, we have done this, we have done our title 9 work and for better or worse that is how the conversation about consent on campus changed on college campuses. 2011 letter, april 2011 and a series of subsequent letters that the obama administration released about title 9 and what schools had to do and so schools began to deal with sexual assault in a way that they had never dealt with it before and that is good, like that is a good thing. it depresses me that universities had to be threatened to contend with it. i think of universities as these extraordinary places with ideals that are supposed to be places where we do -- we talk about hard things, hard questions and that we -- we practice social

justice, we practice good citizenship and so i want universities to do this of their own volition, not just because they are worried about losing federal funding, but that -- the obama administration coupled with a lot of big national scandals, i'm sure many which you're aware of, for example, from colombia university, carried around her mattress for a year in protest to how the university handled or mishandled her accusations of sexual assault. so we have all of these scandals and we have university scrambling finally to deal with this and perhaps ironically now that betsy devos is about to undo everything around title 9, universities have put into place measures and so they've put into place structures and i have seen

the change over the last 7 years and it hasn't been perfect but it's happening and my hope is that, you know, in theory we don't need the department of education to deal with sexual assault on campus.

they have extraordinary minds on campus, they are meant to be communities where you deal with the hardest issue ors in our world. that you deal with trick ariest most complex conversation and try to figure out how to move forward that's what universities are supposed to do. i believe it shall i believe they should be practically oriented i believe they should be changing the world for the better and i believe that universities are equipped with all along to deal with structured violence in our culture the question is are we going to decide to use that privilege and resources towards that end, and so -- i -- i see change happening but what i haven't seen at universities are universities deciding we are

going to do something about this? we're going to do something about sexual violence. not just to comply with the law but because we believe that this is an important issue and you want to transform it. and we're not going to do this on campus just so that we're in compliance. we're going to go way further than that. we're going to put the minds and resource on our campuses to work to figure out how to solve this issue. to figure out how to dismantle the structures of sexual violence. because universities are do that if they choose to. so -- this manifesto is about -- kind of enters the discussion that's been going on or resources that are in play right now at universities which are basically compliant with title nine it is not sort of going beyond that generally it is this sort of basic compliance, and it's saying or i'm saying -- you know, right now consent

education what we're doing as it stands is all if the how we're teaching how to consent. so we're sort of stuck around the conversation of like consent is yes means yes and no means no, and we're making sure students are getting that skill like this is what, you know, consent is you know and generally some sort of education program students do but it is pretty surface, and there are few schools that go beyond that school conversation, and so -- this manifesto is about how we can't just, you know, educate about why of consent we have to educate about the how. i'm sorry we can't do the how but educated about why the why. why consent in why should we care? what does it mean to -- to deal with this issue? is this a question of sexual ethics is this a question of who we are as a beam is this a question of self-unctioning as a person, and all of our relationships not just sexual relationships. this is a big conversation, and

i think it -- it reveals the impoverished -- impoverishment in sex education in this country and in general. and i think -- one of the things things that wt do a good job of is teach our kids as they're growing up to figure out and ask questions of who we are as sexual beings we don't empower them arranged their sexual decision making and i spend a lot of time talking to college students saying well what does it mean to have sex to you they're like i don't know. and i remember having a conversation with students a number of years ago where they were asking about -- they're like it started out by a bunch of seniors sitting arked and they were like why is accident is different than holding handle? like this is asked seriously like why. why is it such a big deal so they started talking about it and i was like well what is good sex to you what would good sex

be? and this stumped them and they were like what do you mean well what is good sex when do you like it. how does it happen and they were like i don't know. and i was like you're having sex but you've never thought about good sex, no. no one with has asked us that before. and i thought did you not know to ask that well we haven't invited you to ask that have we? and so i believe we need to begin to empower kids but certainly once they get to college they need to be asking these big questions. they need to be asking big question about sex and consent not just how to consent but why should we care at all, and so i spend a lot of time convincing college students that, you know, you're in college. you have more resources than you'll ever have in your entire life at your fingertips i think you should devote time to figuring out to how you are as a sexual being and write some

papers you know do some research decide this is your project you can just decide to do this. so that's one of the things that i think is important so the other piece for me is has to do with, where the -- where the, you know, the faculty staff and admin come into this conversation, and one of the things that's happening with con sent on campus right now and all of the education arked around the entitle nine is centered in the administration generally at comings from human reare sources from student afathers i used to be in student affairs i love student affairs. but -- often the education is, you know, it is a one hour session at the beginning of the first year of college often by a comedian where they consent education in some health education and that's about it. and then consent education is over. and -- you know, whining you're talking

about sexual violence you can't deal with it in an hour and faculty have to step in and it did you want have to be all of the faculty on campus but one of the things that needs to happen is we need to get consent education and conversation about sex in general into the classrooms. we need to -- that because that's where you deal with such complex issues. and so -- part of what needs to happen is faculty needs to empower, be empowered to talk about this issue. to begin to teach about this issue to take it seriously. and tenure faculty need to empower the rest of the faculty to be involved and teach around this issue. because it has one of the issues that economy tends to devalue anything gender bodies or private is something that we tend not to think of as rigorous or academic. and so there are a lot of hurdles to get through.

but, i think that this question, questions arranged consent who we are as sexual beings not just a how of con sent but why this gets to the core of who we are is communities who we are as universities, with the purpose of a university. so i believe that university is fulfilling its purpose to take up this issue. so one of the things and then i'll open up to questions. one of the things i propose at the end of -- of this book is literally like my fantasy curriculum for how we would how we would deal with consent in the classroom from all of the different disciplines and one of the things essential to that is story telling and -- getting the students and the community to acknowledge the problematic stories they inherit

in our culture around these issues. figuring out tow to interrupt those story and then writing new stories. to -- that our intended to confront sexual violence and a sexual violence and to transform it. so anyway, i'm as a faculty member myself a round table or it is called a soap box -- specifically about consent when first brought it up people were like we were get student affairs here and yes we can invite them this is the faculty to talk about what do we bring to the table here because they're already bringing stuff to the table what do we bring to the table? and so i restricted it to faculty only. so -- i really believe one of the ways

this issue will change on campus one the only ways we're going to really see change is if we deepen and broaden the conversation around this issue. and i think for that to happen, it to happen in the classroom. so okay i'll stop there. and your question and comments. yeah. >> i'm going to jump in first sorry but we with need to use this microphone here broadcasting it is extra step but here it would be great and we encourage our questions so please come up, thank you. this isn't a question but a redges spoke highly of virginia wolf who was inspiring. you owe it to yourself down a street to book star called a room of its own. >> i saw that. i thought virginia wolf and i was running, though, because i had to change and -- but i saw that and i thought it

is everywhere i look i've been caring it arranged in my bag everywhere. so thank you for that. >> so you hingted early on in your discussion i'm curious what your perpghtive perspective is between the hookup culture and me too movement. >> let me very quickly -- so i'll define a hookup maybe some people haven't hooked up here before so i don't know maybe we're from different generations. i don't know. so i'll just say very briefly that, some students generally the way they define a hookup with has like three criteria and they don't -- i am coming up with three they just describe it and i see three.

so it's brief, there's some sort of sexual intimacy it can be anything like making out for a minute. it can be -- sexual intercourse of various kinds so there's a really, really broad really, really broad so some form brief some intimacy and not supposed to get attached, and then the unofficial criteria is alcohol students talk a lot about how without alcohol nobody would get together and alcohol is essential ingredient, but -- but that third thing you know you're not supposed to get attached -- that's the one that really stumps the students they talk about how they're not good at it. they are -- they're ashamed they're not good at it so one of the things i think that is so, there's been such a. feminist debate about hookup culture and feminists i don't know, so piffle like i've gotten critiqued a lot or people you've

critiqued it i've been a feminist since i was born and i feel like the best i can be that critiques hookup culture at this point because it is so -- cohearseive and so many wanes one of the things you know -- one of the basic things that i learned in my feminist education was feminist about is boys, choice, and empowerment and those three things are not there in hookup culture, and you know, i think people imagine or like so in siri it is supposed to be this -- you know this incredible like fulfillment of sexual freedom and liberation. however, you're not liberated if you're cohearsed into a whatever it is that you're doing or sort of just going along with the wire culture and performing what you think you're supposed to be doing as a college student opposed to -- listening to your own desires, trying to figure out what those desires are. like what do you want what does your partner what and so -- you know, hookups in reality not

in theory they're supposed to be superliberating in reality they're disempowering take way away student voices they don't feel like they have a voice and feel obliged to hookup and i sit there and i think i don't care if you hook up if you want to that's great but if you don't want to hookup why are you doing this so i feel like so much of -- they're very disempowered around this but in particular the thing i think that should concern us around hookup culture not just individual hookups but a culture of hooking up -- is it shall the way that it structures apathy and careslessness towards one partner that third criteria into sexual intimacy, and a so -- i'll give you an example and this is where the me too stuff comes in, i think. a number of years ago i was in -- illinois and i was having pizza with with students, and i remember it was the pizza where you like dip the crust into those disgusting dips they love

students love those things so they're all dipping -- and chatting, and they were telling me like oh hookups back here, and so they like two of the students like popped up out of their chairs like we'll demonstrate so you know like in a hookup you might like this person, that with or have a relationship but you can't tell them that so pretty much you're like i don't care about you. i don't care about you and they did this thing like they turn their back and did this to themselves so they're like i don't care about you either and one of the students sit was like hookups are like a competition to see who can care the least and so -- i may laugh. and we talked about about why and they talked about being afraid of being rejected et cetera, et cetera so i said well what about -- like what about sexual assault in there what about con sent and they were like what do you mean? and i said well if you're so busy turning your back -- on your partners and -- pretending like you don't care, like what -- do you even notice whether or

not they want to be there and they were like -- so i think, you know, we can joke arranged about it. but i think that structured into a culture of hooking up which is the culture that dominates at most universities is a kind of it shall resistance to caring about your partner and ultimately consent at its most basic level is an act of care right because -- even, even if the most basic level you're checking in with your partner. so you are not, you know, dismissing them as worthwhile. you are actually like -- if we're going to care about con sent you're confronting the fact that this person deserves my attention. i have to have some form of attachment here. i have to have some form of care, and i think hookup culture there's an anti- sexual ethics that students learn.

they become ashamed it to care about their partner and a about sex. and so i think there's a paradox. i think -- a culture of hooking up sets up a paradox for consent education. and i think we need to deal with that. like i don't think we can blindly advocate for hookups so antifeminist so i think there's a conflict but i don't think that giving up on a culture of hooking up as it stands which i think is a cohearsive culture means that we have to give up sexual liberation or empowerment but i think we need to think more. i think we with need to think deeply more -- more, more you know in a more complex way about what does sexual imparment sexual liberation look like.

you know, in general today? in the context of sexual ethics. what would a sexual ethic look like? that would be tolerant inclusive, and empowering. and you know sort of step outside the values and the ethics that we typically see around sex and sexuality from the right it was a complicated question so -- i have a question because i feel like college is too late and you talk resources at universities have -- to put towards this issue. most were public high schools don't have those reare sources. and like our rape crisis center here in wisconsin occupies our high school a day a week to have office hours. for kids in high school -- and so i just choir that they're learning all of this and then they're coming to college with like ideas performed and having an opportunity to learn something else but i have two

girls who are in high school and it worries me a lot. >> yeah. i mean, i think we need to be starting talking about this in middle school or earlier and one of the thing like all of my friends have parents sorry all of my friends parents of 12 yeertds i'm not going to say this on tv i was going to tell you about a story of friend of mine and her son but she would kill me if she saw this but let's say she's dealing with the fact that he's 12 turning 13. [laughter] and this issue. but i think all of our kids from the time they'ring are little, they have a sense of relational ethics because -- i mean i do this with college student like i sit there and i say oak tell me about your friends how do you act with your friends and they can tell me they begin to articulate an et thetic arranged friendship. and what does it mean to be a good friend or to be a bad friend they know, they have very strong opinions about about this. and so they sit there and they articulate for me a relational

ethic, of course, they've never called it that. because we've never empowered them to call it that or invited them to articulate their sense of ethics but they have theming and i think for me that's the place we start right because like your kid can be four and you talk to them about what it means to be a good friend so this is conversation they're having their entire lives but we don't necessarily name it ethics. we don't necessarily draw it out of them on purpose as a way of getting them to express it as having a kind of ethic. but as they grow up, i think that's where you start. and all parents can do that. you know, and your kid is not oh mom don't talk to me about that because they want to bring up sex. but like, i mean, when you start there, i mean i do this with college students i get them to articulate a relational ethic because they have one and what about your sexual partners does it apply and they're like --

so you know, we are somehow trained our kids not to make these connections. we're not necessarily providing them the space or the invitations to have their conversations to explicitly articulate them to become critical thinkers about relationships. like that's what is at the center here. right we have to get our kids. we as parents as people need to be critical thinkers about relationships. all relationships. we need to become aware. that is part of how then when you have a conversation about consent and why it is important, it is already meaningful. you don't have to convince anybody. because it becomes obvious it becomes oven. you already have a sense of why you care. who you are as a person, and what relationships have to do with you as a person. you've articulated that so i think -- we need to do that. like early on, and i'm happy to talk to high schools about this issue. i think high schools are pretty terrified of conversations about

sex ed this is part of the problem. but so i think -- you know, that conversation is possible. we with just is need to stop being afraid of it because, of course, when we're afraid, the worst happens. rights we don't talk about it and then i feel the students in college. who wish someone would have talked about these things way long and i'll say one more thing, of course, which is as i talk to my friends about their kids like don't talk to me about this. they don't want to hear from their parents. i think we with need to become better at figuring out who are the adults in a child's life maybe not parent. maybe somebody else -- who we can trust to have these conversations with our kids. because i ran away from my parents, of course, they didn't want to talk to me about it. but i didn't want to talk about that with my parents. but we need to find it is not excuse like my kid doesn't want to talk to me about that. well if they don't want to talk

about you but they don't want to talk -- who does your kid feel kivel enough to talk about this with that you need to do the work you need to do the work to find out who those people are. we need to identify them. it has to be some of us it has to be some of us so i think -- that's the other thing we need to do. and those people need to be in place before our kids get to high school and before certainly before kids get to college. so -- other questions? hello. can you give a conform examples of how faculty on campuses who aren't teaching class about sexuality specifically would integrate this conversation? i feel like quite i can't fir it. >> well, so -- so i want to be clear so i don't think we have to reinvent wheel here so i think it would be great to do a whole class on this issue and going to like develop it and it is going to be --

designed like a first year seminar something like that, and so it would be great if faculty decide to specifically offer courses in this issue. but i think -- the best way to see what we've already have being taught and what faculty are you teaching on syllabus, and how can we, you know, how can we use what we're already teaching to discuss this. and so you know, just think about like disciplines like psychology, education, so, i mean, i -- a number, i sometimes teach at the funky great books program the best thing ever i love it but we one year we had -- six measure for measure on -- on the syllabus and i'm not a shakespeare professor but there's a bed trick. in that play -- and if you don't know what that is you can look it up but consent was an issue. and so -- for one day that semester or two days because you were for two days i -- i wases like okay we talk about the bed trick in this

shakespeare so literally one day soy pulled out haverstraw university policy and i was like all right let's look at this and discuss it, and then we're going to use it these les pos to judge the characters and shakespeare. and this students it was a first tim they had ever seen policy even though in near e rei they're supposed to force to look at it in some sort of online thing but of course they don't really look at it so they were like what is this policy so talked about this policy and they were like all of these question, and tell questions about alcohol because alcohol in the policy so what if i'm drinking then, you know, so we have that conversation. and then -- a really intense discussion about, you know, would characters in shakespeare play get kicked out would they -- have to go before the judicial hearing what would judicial hearing and evidence would they have and what arguments they make and students decided it was a bummer for a character that

all would be expelled so -- anyway, like -- it's just a matter of every department in the country in the university on every university -- somebody teaches it is about love. right why can't we decide not to just go there with plato let's talk just about the text but why can't we decide okay when we talk about this i'm going to open it up to -- let's talk about love on campus in light ofplay symposium and it doesn't have to be directly about sexual assault. and i often think the most important education we can do is the kind where we're just talking about everything. we're talking about sex, love, dating, we're not just talking about sexual violence there's so many ways in and when we were planning getting together to plan this -- event i told you about next semester a soap box. one of the things we were trying

to think how can we get science people in here, and we were like okay what about medical con sent what if we think is that a way in for -- because there's lots of different kienldz of con sent, and -- how can we be thinking about it really like broadly from all of the different explain and fields so i don't think it is everybody teaching courses sometimes i think it is just, you know, what, i see a way in with a thing i teach and i'm going to let the conversation i'm going to make the decision go there and a invite it. so -- any other questions okay -- religion -- full? >> so thank you. so that's a complex one. i would say it should be a friend.

what i mean by that is so i do a lot of work with catholic campuses, and boy are catholic universities amazing at social justice. and they have such especially students are such activists. however, we don't so catholic universities do not necessarily do a good job of getting the students to think about all of that social justice work in the the teaching they have social justice marnlings on catholic emphasis how do those apply when they go to the keg parties on friday why do you export your social justice work across the street at the soup kitchen but you forget about it when you go to keg party. so i think it is a simple shift is right there so we have to make that little connection. like all a of the ground work for talking about --

i mean, this is a social justice issue right consent is about ethics about human dignity. the value of all persons i mean this is -- respect for the human body. that's all social justice stuff, and so you know i think in many ways -- universities that are good at social justice teaching should be leaders in this conversation because i think we need to allow talk of justice to come up when we talk about consent and sexual assault. so -- so i think that at its heart or foundation religion could be, you know, friends of the conversation but, of course, you know sex is a third rail right? of religion, and you know i know that from talking to students who identify as, you know, who go to religious universities. who identify as religious ors there's a sense of you're not

supposed to talk about it or my faith is antisex or afraid of sex, et cetera. but -- i don't know. i guess i've spent i do a lot of work with christian universities and catholic universities and i have been encouraged by how open they are, the conversations how much they desire to address these issues on campus. i see anxieties arranged it or sense to get in trouble, if we, you know, from the powers that are in our tradition or -- at our university. by bringing this up by talking it be. but i think i would say that i think most universities regardless of their affiliation ultimately there are people on campus who care deeply about their students and they know this is an issue and they want to talk about it. but i think -- you know, right now in our wider culture, religion feels often feels like one big foe.

i come from an era from the the 60s when we imagine that we had invented sex and -- [laughter] and it's amazing to me that our children have to imagine they've invented sex to every generation accounts to believe that in any case i went to a women college for first four years and we warned each other about which male professors were the predators and that's the way we took care of our -- of each other. when i came to the university of wisconsin i saw the the full blown playground that a university university professor had in the way of young graduate students especially in my or particular department which values thetics highly so there was a delicious crop every year. so i'm wondering about how

you -- arranged to do what we called in my time conscienceness raising and getting at the amazing amount of privilege that it is on campus for those interested in whether it's magical act or access how do you make them teachers without doing something to make sure that they're going to be emotionally safe teachers of this material? because i think unleashing some people on this material could be really conflicted and kind of gruesome and kind of dis gusting in my own imagination. >> so -- yes. it's not for everybody that's what i said before. it doesn't have to be everybody on campus. it has to be some people, though. and i think when i tay tock faculty on campus i usually say

you know who you are because they do like -- i'm one of those people somehow i ended up in this conversation, and i'm very comfortable with it and i've been doing this for -- years and i don't know. like i feel like it's just -- it is what i do, like i have a very kivel sense of boundaries around this issue when i talk to students but i feel like i'm able to have a honest conversation and it is a tricky conversation. but just because it is a tricky conversation doesn't mean that we are -- we with step away from it because it is too costly so i -- i fully hear and understand your concern. pane i think we have to pay attention to who is having this conversation absolutely. but we can't not have faculty have this conversation because we're worried about certain people an i think just like

faculty who -- who feel like i might be called -- this feels like my vocation, obviously, i wrote a manifesto like -- [laughter] so i never thought i would write a manifesto i did so it is like my calling my vocation. i think it is different degrees for faculty members they know like they know already if they would be capable of doing this and it could be an opportunity for a predator right? it could be. there's no doubt about it. i think what we have to do is what we're already doing is we're paying attention to who predators are on our campus. and i think that is -- you know part of, you know, people know it is the whisper network you know like that's already been happening, and so i think it is complicated but you know, faculty who been arranged for a while they began to volunteer for this conversation

they were red flagged you know people those red flags would go up and that's not a perfect answer. but i don't know that there's a perfect answer. so i really do believe that even if like not having a -- a perfect answer is not a reason not to do it. so then we just fail our students. >> thank you donna so what we're going to do now is continue taking questions but after this wisconsin book festival we're bringing questions from the book tv viewers. so we'll turn it over to booktv to bring in some of those call-ins. if you in the rule stl room still have question withs come up to microphone we'll include those as well but we'll bring in question withs with booktv. and with donna so thank you. and if you are watching you can dial in for author her new book is called consent on carwas a

manifesto 202 area code if you live in east and central time zone, 202-748-8201 for those in mountain and pacific time zones and before we get started and we have some callers on line so don't hang up. we don't want to not give you the chance. to talk with donna but i did want to ask about one line in your book professor, and that is -- sexual violence issues are diminished as are all women's issues. what did you mean by that? >> well -- [laughter] well that has to do with -- what i was talking about earlier with regard to how do we empower faculty to take up this issue? and the classroom -- because there are a lot of biases around women's issues. we often dismiss anything to do with women women's issues. the private, the personal, emotional. the relational.

all the topics that we take up in gender studies psychology, education, we often you know -- whenever you're dealing with children and you're an adult there's a way in which -- which so many topics so many subjects are diminished or thought of as -- not sufficiently rigorous area of academic inquiry and i think -- sexual violence because of the association with women's issues or as a woman with's issue falls into that category. and so one of the reasons why it is difficult for us to take it up in a intellectual space like in the classroom is because that. >> now i want to follow-up up on last woman comment or question to you talking about generation that et cetera -- but this is sexual assault

sexual violence on campus a new issue? >> well, no, obviously, not. i mean -- one of the things that's happened with me too -- i think, is we have, you know, women coming forward with, you know, decades, decades and 50-year-olds. you know, stories about their experiences, and i think, you know, one of the things that has been so intense but also so important and why i started talking about wolfe at the beginning of this is i feel like we have with unearthed or revealed a chapter of women's history of very big chapter of women's history that has, has previously been hidden. except with with regard are to on campus no, i don't remember when i went to georgetown university under granddaughters, and i was told at the beginning of my first year of college that

there was a 25% chance i would be sexual assaulted while i was there and this is in the 90s. and i was like really are? this is not something they threw it out there and gave it -- but that was back in the 90s and i think these statistics have been studied this whole time except you know one of the things that has changed is that you know part what have we are confronting and dealing with is we're trying to empower victims to speak about it. because this generally been so much shame and self-blame around sexual violence. fear of retaliation you know from all sorts of corners, fear of repercussions for, you know, not wanting to talk about it wanting to move on, et cetera these are all things that silence people from coming forward. but one of the other things that has changed is -- you know, because of title nine

colleges in a very structured intentional way that they had not necessarily done before are are putting into place the spaces and the resources for women to come forward, and so that statistic has been there for a long time. but i think we're hear hadding more about it because our, our society and culture are changing around it and making space for those voices. >> all right let's hear from some of our viewers around the nation, and maryann and augusta, georgia you're patient on with donna please go ahead. >> thank you. i'm very grateful to hear this discussion and appreciate it very much. i'm a retired psychologist from private practice, and because of that, i was one of the few females in our area in private practice and, i was selected

sort of in a great deal of my practice had to do with sexual abuse and harassment and so forth. so i'm very grateful to hear this discussion, the one comment i would like to just offer is it makes me feel pretty sad to hear that -- that so many young folks are feeling ashamed it about the attachment that occurs with hookups. my own sense and this is just my observation from many years of work and experience and training. is that all human beings, all human beings with -- assuming normalcy have profound feelings associated with all touch. the more intimate the touch, the more powerful the feelings. i don't think we can get away from that. i don't think it is anything to be ashamed of. i think it is human. so i would hope that that could

enter into the discussion when things are being discussed about why attachment is associated with sexual touch. it should just built into us in my opinion, and i thank you for allowing me to be heard and i will hang up to hear the discussion. thank you. bye-bye. >> donna. >> well thank you for your call and your comments, and one of the things that i wrote about in manifesto was how hookup culture is a shame factory what's what i called it because students experience it as shame factory and i'm not a big fan of shame and sex, and you know, one of the things you know, i think hookup culture it is like the 1950s except back in the 1950s you were ashamed if you'd sex and today you're ashamed if you care about sex. and you know, my feeling i don't

want students to feel ashamed about caring and i've had so many discussions with students you talk about how, you know, the hardest thing in world now in college is to walk across campus holding hands. because holding hands is a statement of attachment, of feeling toward a person it is a risk. you're going public about your feelings. and they're not ashamed to have sex, of they feel like you've go get it done like they talk about it often as a kind of chore and i had a young man -- i spoke about the columbia reading that i went to last night he wrote incredible piece about being a young gay man and has a first sexual experiences and how -- e they were also anonymous and how -- each time he kept -- waiting or for this magic to happen, and it just never

happened and then he would feel everyonier and everyonier and emptier and he thought sex would be with a great thing and trying to figure out when would that happen and not feel so empty and -- it was such a poignant pose and he did a very funny way, and it's expressed not being able to have nonattached sex or sort of be successful at that, and so you know, i don't think there's anything wrong with students, you know, getting together and having a one-time encounter. i just think the way in which those encounters are happening in a -- culture of hooking up or incredibly problematic and i don't students to be afraid of feelings or ashamed of their own vulnerability.

and ashamed of feeling attachment and so i think that's one of the things we have to contend with, of course, because -- ultimately if we're going to be talking about consent in sexual violence we are talking about establishing at least some sort of baseline relationship. between partners and that is a kind of basic attachment so anyway, yeah. shame is -- is everywhere i turn in the conversation on campus. i hear about shame. and it makes me sad. >> and is watching booktv in alabama. good afternoon. >> how are you doing today? i have two questions that i would like to ask. your students do you find that quite a few of them were previously abused or molested?

previously before any sexual assault occurred or any sexual activity occurred? and my second question is, >> what's your second question? >> my second question is, do students know how to set expectations between both parties to see if something is con sen consensual or not? or both parties agreeing -- >> before we get an answer from donna why do you ask those two questions? >> i'm trying to see trying to figure out exactly what is the basis of the whole conversation, i mean, is it based on just sexual assault or is it just a hookup or is it consensual? is it -- a misconception or confusion between two parties or how exactly is the layout of the

conversation? what are are boundary here? >> bows and expectations. >> in general -- past abuse you know from growing up it is not something that has often come up in conversations with students. it is rarely come up. so i would say that you know the conversations i've had with students are all around, you know, their experiences of sex on campus with each other and hooking up, et cetera. and so -- you know this is -- this is not necessarily a coming out of a conversation where you have people who have been abused in the past or they may have been but they're not discussing that in the conversations that i'm having. i think what does come out a lot is students who talk about how i've never had good sex before or sexual history is --

is kind of like that young man from columbia who was talking about how he just can't, you know -- he can't seem to figure this out. you know he hasn't had a good experience and waiting for it so i feel like that's a common conversation so you know one i would say typical stories that i hear around hookups which -- should concerns us around issue of consent is not a story of sexual assault by definition. but it is a story where con sent is very murky and it goes something like i've heard this over and over again from both young women and young men once story of their hookup will be something like i was at a party -- we were drinking, you know, like i was talking to her she was talking to me, and then suddenly we were in bed having sex. and so one of the things that is missing there is -- you know in that story is and then we decided to go home and then we decided that we wanted to have sex. and so the, you know, that sort

of affirmation of sexual agency like i chose and decided to do this is missing in that story. and you know, i essentially you know it is like suddenly the sex is happening. we don't know who started it -- but it is going on. and -- [laughter] students will say hookups happen they happen, they happen, and they'll be sometimes they happen to you. and so -- you know, there is this sense of this happens all of the time at college. but one of the things that often, you know, happen it is in that, you know, discussion is it's just, you know, sort of there. like it is in the east or the east and they're doing this and not necessarily choosing. it is happening to us. so students sense of their decision making to participate and experience of a sexual intimacy i would say is often very murky. that doesn't mean that these are sexual assaults. but it just means that there's something missing in our sexual

decision making process. what we're not talking about it or owning we're not necessarily self-aware about our sexual agency so i would say that -- as far as like history and sexual experience goes, a lot of it sounds like that. >> we have about five minutes left with our author donna. con sent on campus, manifesto is name of the book. if you do have a question -- from her you can come over here to microphone but in the meantime we're going to hear from priscilla in montauk, new york. >> hi. well with -- i actually the question, the answer that you gave to the previous question deals a little bit with why what i'm thinking about. but -- the idea of consent is different with different people. and those who have studied in your class might have a uniform idea of consent while other supreme a different ideas of

consent, and i don't think that i at least i haven't heard the courts or legal aspect of figuring out exactly how do they prove consent, you know what are the requirements for consent so that when, when young men or somebody are accused of sexual abuse, we know what those different requirements are legally. i haven't heard that now maybe it's because i haven't heard it. but we hear people saying that they -- they accuse somebody of doing something without consent. but i'm not really sure what all of these things are and how, how do we use this -- this idea of innocence until proven guilty? >> ma'am. >> well, that's an incredibly

difficult question, and i don't, i don't really believe there is some sort of magic definition. i think of consent or like what determines it for sure by the law, and -- i think when we simplify or try to define it, with you know i don't think there's a one side fits all answer. sex is so complicated, and one of the things having university that is -- i think is frustrating is you know, i think people are trying to say like it has to be verbal. you know or if you've had any drinks, you know, everybody wants like how many drinks like we have to define like if you have three drinks then it is sexual assault by two it's not. then o.c. it is different for everybody right -- if i have three drinks -- you know, i'm going to be like stumbling home. but you know, if my husband has three drinks like he's have four

more and he'll be fine he's bigger than me. so i think that -- you know, when when we decide this or that we're missing the point so it is kind of like what the person brought up what if some faculty that we don't want to be talking about sex on campus start talking about sex, and you know well -- it's complicated. we have to prepare for that. we have to think about it might happen but thaw doesn't mean we're not going to talk about it and not useful for us to give these hard and fast definitions about alcohol. we can talk about the relationship between alcohol and ability to consent. but we can't necessarily decide that any alcohol means you can't consent because that's not true for real people or real life and whaing we want to do with the young people in our lives is prepare them for real life for me -- one of the things that saddens

me about title nine in university is that we had to be a law and it had to be a law that force us into this conversation. it should not be a law that forces us into this conversation. we should be having the conversation because we care about the issue. when we get to having to use law we failed, because what we want is prevention. and so -- welcomely luckily i'm not a lawyer i'm an educator. i don't know what answer is regard to when we get to that point where law has to step in. we've just lived through a month of -- of trauma for both people around this very issue. and the fact that a woman who brought accusation didn't have proof it was a he said, she said. and i don't know what the answers are in those situations. but i do believe that we can't just default easy definition or one side fits all definition at

least that's not what i want to happen at universities. i want that complex conversation to happen. >> we have about a minute left first i want to say thank you so much for coming out to speak us it has been an honor to hear you speak as one for a huge public university down the road, you perfectly incapslated a struggle in moving social justice issues past compliance and risk management more towards restorative jtsz and we're doing it because that's how folks want to be treated. so what are your solutions or suggestions or hopes and how we move past it because sometimes unfortunately telling our upper administration this is going to make people feel god and safe if not convincing enough. >> i mean, i think -- so one of the things i wrote about in the book is i'm not a fan of managed reporting because what i think it does is it disrespects agency of the victim all over again. [laughter] so it basically says, you know,

victimized and agency disrespected so because you told me this now i'm going to make this other thing happen, and i think it is important that we provide students resources i want students to have as much listening ears as they can on campus. i think universities need to -- laws are important. i want to emphasize that but universities need to walk back from just using laws to talk about this issue. and think about all of the different contacts and resources that we have for students and for this conversation. i think our job is to be complicated. like that is what we do. and i think -- we need to offer lots of different possibility for students dealing with these issues so -- >> donna i hate to do this to you but in 45 seconds -- can you tie in the rolling stone university of virginia's story and how that plays into this?

[laughter] go. >> i think -- >> i know we can do -- a tragic situation and i would say that tragic in terms of journalism tragic in terms of all of it. but i would just say that false reporting is not existent it is so rare and we love it harp on it when it happens right because we want it to all be, you know, false reporting or some of us do, i think. but you know it's not. it's a rarity so -- that's what i'll say. >> donna most recent book is called consent on campus a manifesto she'll be signing out in the hallway after we finish here. thank you for being on booktv. >> thanks for having me. thanks to all of you. and book festival continues in about 10 minutes rebecca will be out here. her book is called good and mad about women's politics and

movements. we'll be taking calls with her as well after a that, carol anderson will be out here to talk about her book, one person, no vote. so that's all coming up. you can find the schedule on your tv guide. [inaudible conversations]

fall is busy time for book fairs and festivals across country. here's a look at some that are coming up, this weekend it's live coverage of the wisconsin book festival on october 27th and 28th tune in for our live coverage of the texas book festival in austin. featuring author discussions on education, journalism, the middle class, the me too movement and more. the national book awards will be presented november 14th in new york city. and will wrap up our fall book festival season with live author talks and call-in segments from miami book fair, for more information about upcoming book fairs and festivals, and to watch our previous festival coverage click the book fairs tab on our website, booktv.org. >> so i -- my husband and i had both served at the pentagon i left pentagon to go down to paris island and

my husband hired from pentagon. >> so listen your husband -- was a marine. he retired as a lieutenant colonel as well and year that he retired happened to be the year 2015 where i was going through change putting changes into place at paris island, and he started hearing from his contact the because he had just retired that my name was being brought up in staff meetings for that is sort of like equivalent of this ceo fortune 500 companies in charge of a whole marine corps., and so how weird is it that you have this little colonel out of all lieutenant colonels who is being talked about by name in the meeting? and what we recognize very early on was that -- this was as the then general was conducting his own test to see how well men and women could perform with each other in these ground combat roles. and so as he was, we knew he didn't want women to go into

roles he's very traditional and as we were showing that women could shoot and could run and be tough and strong and not break and compete with their male counterparts he was showing the opposite with this task force and those two things started to collide. so in march of 2015 i went to my husband's retirement general was the presiding officer, and we were sitting in his office with my in-laws and general looked at me and he said hey kate how is everything doing at paris island meanwhile i've been brief and i leaned over sorry this is amazing you should see what we're doing on rifle range we're really getting ready for what's going to happen on women in ground combat is lifted. and he leaned forward in his chair and he said oh, no kate we're not ready for that. and that was kind of like -- the alarms started beginning off wow i think we're sort of ahead of the power curve here. >> why you were at a statement clearly that stuck is out of one of the chapters i can read or you can if you like -- i think it's --

chapter two actually this not out you say marine corps. leadership did not want women in the infantry and according to to that leadership women in what i would argue is defense department could not be in marksmanship as a i was showing that thect marine corps. put together a study that they could not this is why i was fired. pretty -- big point. >> i do believe that's true. i believe it is a combination of that events and bad timing but i also think it has to do with the way that women are perceived when they're strong and aggressive leaders it is same double bind that women face in almost every segment of the economy where they come proiz a very small slice of the population. and in the marine corps. with women comprising less than 9% of the population so here i am -- thinking i'm going to do what i've done for the rest of my -- 17 years that i've been on active duty aggressive i'm going make change happen and good we're going to improve everything. and i'm seen as mean and

abusive. and that's how that sort of the justification marine corps. used to too hard on my recruitses in my marine. >> wave this and programs online at booktv.org. here's a look at some authors recently featured on booktv's afterwards our weekly author interview program that this coulds best selling nonfiction books, and guest interviewers. former secretary of state john kerry reflected on his life and career, university african-american studies chair carol anderson provided a history of voters suppression and new york magazine's rebecca looked at how women's anger has been used to create transformative political movements throughout history in coming weeks on afterwards journalist will report on opioid crisis in america. pulitzer prize winning reporter

jose antonio will discuss his life as undocumented immigrant and this weekend trump 2020 campaign media advisor and fox news guest analyst gina offers her thoughtings on the current political climate. >> i say i believe that narcissism is spectrum and that i do believe that most of us i'm not meaning you -- you may be the great exception. but most of us who put ourselfves out there in public eye have unusual sense of confidence and there's a reason if you want to call that narcissism i don't have a problem with that. is that a dangerous sort of narcissism, i don't think so. but are there danger sorts of narcissism absolutely we've seen it in our politics but i don't think our president fits into that category at all. afterwards airs saturdays at 10 p.m. and sundayss 9 p.m. eastern and pacific on booktv on c-span2. all previous afterwards are available to watch online, at booktv.org. ...

>> manager for the public library foundation. i'm also a local angry woman. thanks so much for everybody coming out tonight. she's the author of good and bad. the revolutionary power of women's anger. before we get started, a couple of housekeeping items.

i want reminded liberty to silence yourself on. i think in this room, you don't want to be the one whose phones goes off. turn your phone off now. in just a few minutes, rebecca will come out and talk about her book. afterwards there will be time for questions. tonight author, rebecca is a writer for the magazine, she's also the author of big girls don't cry. all the single ladies which is a book through which i came to know and love her work. especially in the past years, look to her as a sharp, clear feminist who thought helped me navigate. she is inspiring. i'm especially excited about her latest book. among other things, the women's outrage. i'm very familiar with.

i've been an organizer for a while now. after the 26 election, i decided i needed my own megaphone. i couldn't keep borrowing other people's. since then, i was really astounding number of angry men and women who have used my microphone to speak or shout in the background. we've been using my. >> found in marches. i'm talking -- high school students walking out against gun violence using my microphone. an old ton teenagers, all of whom came out of their homes to say no to brett kavanaugh in the last few weeks. i'm extremely grateful. [applause] i'm extremely grateful to rebecca for giving us this book for picking up this not only the

events of the last two years, to these teachers strike but for following the tread back into history. her book not only tells us but that we are right to be angry but anger can be and has been, a transformative force in society that gives us plenty to be angry about. with that, i'm pleased to introduce rebecca. [applause] >> thank you so much. i've been on the tour for a couple of weeks. that's one of the most moving and gratifying introductions that i have yet to receive. you so much. [applause] we have in our here and i'm going to read and talk for what i hope is going to land in between 20 and 30 minutes of the hour. i want all of you in the

audience, everywhere i've gone so far, people who want to talk. i think that's a really important part of the process. i'm hoping that i can land the reading and talking portion in about half an hour. so please get ready. you can ask questions about anything i'm reading or addressing. get ready, when i'm done, i want a few questions. i want to begin by talking about how i came to register. there was a very specific mome moment. i've been a journalist covering politics and entertainment pop-culture and social movements from a feminist professed perspective for over 15 years. i know intellectually, that a lot of my work has been grounded in anger. i don't thank you come to this kind of work unless you're fundamentally angry. about inequality, the ways the world's dead his work. but to the degree that i

understood consciously that my work was under mentally angry in nature. i took great pains especially as a young writer, coming to a feminist beast, doing some early rudimentary them and us writing starting in 2003, 2004. i was part of the generation with in a mainstream media that was trying to revive a feminist conversation that had been muffled or frozen out during the years of intense antifeminist backlash in 1980s and 90s. i was consciously aware when i began writing about feminism of trying to make my anger more palatable. perhaps trying to kind of hide it. of spirit. deliver my arguments with humor. it was an effort in some ways, and i was not alone in this, many of my peers working to revisit the conversation. i think we're making the same move. i think it was for a really good

tactical reason. it was because the second way of women's movement in the 1970s had been so effectively character to during the antifeminist backlash. having been disruptively and unpleasantly angry. in a way that we were meant to understand with an inherently on attractive. that was a series of untruths about the nature of that movement. it was deeply angry and also as anger can be, joyous. connective, very funny, deeply energetic, passionate. but i think that in an effort to make a contemporary conversation about feminism, go over better in later years, we all need an effort to emphasize, we are not like that. we are not the angry, humorless,

furious them and us of the past. perhaps that's why i had never really considered anger as a true line in my work. even though it had entered my work. it had clearly undergirded my work. there was a week, the week between last week probably, 2016. after the election. like so many people, i had a very bad few months. i was struggling. i covered the campaign, i hadn't thought she was going to win, i had been scared that she was going to lose. no amount of fear or could have prepared me for the actual reality setting in. that this was going to be our future. i was really struggling. personally and professionally with what my job was going forward. what is my work? i found a very difficult, depression and horror and all kinds of things bubbling in my

brain to think clearly about what mice must be doing now? what do i do going forward? i was walking with my husband and i was trying to talk about this. when i write about? with my responsibly? i said, the thing is driving me nuts, i can't even think clearly because i am so angry. my husband said i'm a that's your story. that's the thing you have to write about. as soon as he said it was anger that i had to write about, i can't tell you it was instantly that my brain cleared and that a whole series, the structure of what would become this book, even though this was in advance of the women's march and the travel protest, the travel ban protest and women running for office. me too, the teacher strike. this was in early january 2017. a lot of the stuff is actual body of this book. or at least some of the body of

it. but the things i wanted to talk about, it suddenly became a thread that i could see. not only in my own work, this book is not about, i look write a lot about myself but this is not about me. i suddenly began to see how women's anger and the suppression of women's anger and discouragement of women's anger has been addressed earning the history that i have come to learn about, that i was not taught myself as a young person, i have become to learn about as i tried to tell the story. a social progress in the united states. it is a through line in the contemporary politics that i cover. as a journalist and as a reporter and a writer. i think anger is key to the future. as soon as he said it, that's the frame. that is the thing -- that's going to be my work for the next thing. again, it wasn't just about me. the first person i'm going to read, i go back and look at history. and the way in which women's

dissenting voices have been very enthusiastically silent. not just right now, not just when you hear foreign hatch saying for real. when a woman is protesting in the senate hearings before the allegation when a woman is protesting and says, if you repeal health care, i'm going to die. one says that loudmouth out of here. we shouldn't have to do with that. he goes back further. i'm going to read briefly about the history. the furious female is, we are told to this day, in numerous ways, a perversion of both nature and our social norms. she is ugly, emotional i'm a out-of-control, sick, unhappy, unpleasant to be around, unpersuasive, irrational, scary,

crazy and infantile. above all, she must not be heard. the brink, also known as a which is bridal, when the 16th century torture device used to muzzle a defiant or cranky wom woman, her head and john clamped into a middle page. some of the bridles which were made of iron, included tongue depressors that would be inserted into the woman's mouth. some of those had spikes on the bottom to pierce the tongues of the insubordinate. the tower of london teaches that internally spiked metal net collar dating from 1588, labeled a colorful torture. but the scribe in the guidebook as a device to be put around the next of we were wipes. we may not be literally colored anymore but the men who tell us to smile on the street to be prettier, reminding us simultaneously to stifle negative thoughts and that our purpose is to decorate their world. our echoed around us on national

stages. during the 2016 primaries, ms in bc chided hillary clinton after a winning night, smile, you had a big night. in 2018, white house sarah huckabee's said her grim face during donald trump's first of the union address, i think she should smile a lot more often. i think the country would be better for it. she seems to embody bitterness. the aspersion that a woman who is angry is also unstable, is cast everyday and popular political discourse. so often that we probably don't understand how completely we absorb the connection. in 2017, senator kiersten aggressively questioned marine, about a failure of the military to address a pervasive pattern of sexual harassment in its ranks. that night, fox news anchor,

tucker went on national television and announced, senator kiersten of new york came positively unglued, describing her as barking. when maxine waters refused to yield and her questioning, announcing she was reclaiming her time, the website real clear politics described it as a meltdown. at rhyming sites, waters is regularly described as unhinged. trump supporting black pastored, darrell scott has referred to waters as a crazy on, rambling and babbling over every little thing. the idea that women's anger is fundamentally illegitimate, because i have nothing real, no big things to be rationally angry about. it's part about with the claim that furious women are mentally or. it can also cause women to feel crazy. our anger gets dismissed and devalued in gaslight in, lisa

told me. speaking specifically about black women. we are angry because women are telling us what is happening to us right in front of our faces is not in fact happening. that is crazy to me. whether angry women are driven crazy or whether their anger is confused for mental instability, the claim about them in a society that treats mental illness as a deal it aberration. becomes the same. they are received as emotionally precarious, irrational, untrustworthy, marginal and unattractive. do a google image search on any of the powerful women in politics or public life. especially those who threatened white male power. by running to beat powerful men. you'll turn up scores of photos of waters and pelosi and senators elizabeth warner with her mouth open, unrestrained. it yells, a very act of making a loud noise, a sign of their ugly and unnatural personalities.

the best way to discredit these women, to make them look unattractive, is to capture an image of them screaming. the act of a woman opening her mouth with volume and ushered force, often in complaint is coded in our minds as ugly. when senator aggressively questioned attorney general jeff in 2017, they were instructed to stop interrupting sections by his friend. during that exchange, sessions settled loud, senator harris' interrogation was making him nervous. [laughter] a lot of this, a lot of the pieces i'm reading is something we can talk about in the conversation after. a lot of how this is received and described is about making the men uncomfortable. making them powerful uncountable. belated, nervous. after a contentious exchange, former trump advisor, jason described the attorney general as having had vinegar and fire in his belly. i want you to think about how this from 2017, the things you've been reading over the

past couple of weeks. by contrast, harrison displayed hysteria. that word was used. the first week of hearing, when there were protesters yelling about life-and-death and the potential over roe v. wade, the speech over the dish, for 30 years i've been hearing, women yell at me about how women are going to die. if we make abortion illegal. it's a sign of hysteria. this coating doesn't just come from men. an angry woman can make other women very nervous. two. msnbc anchor, want fearless there's an anger there, that was shrill. measured and almost unhinged. even in the new york times, one who gave great is to tell their stories, conveyed the frustrations and resentments of

those who been cheated or left behind. has been labeled a school. a word that seems well paired another descriptor. imperious, what deeds and seem to represent is in disarray. here there is a deep historical reparation. in early 20 century, about wending -- leaving the babies at home with their and capable husbands. major has been thrown awry. the women's fear he at their exclusion, has been promoted disorder. she remains coded as chaotic. men is comprehensible, understood as rational and often admirable. this is probably why as i was reporting for this book, nearly every woman i spoke to especially in the months immediately following the inauguration of donald trump, described her anger as a thing of the past. i was angry.

i'm not angry anymore. i've taken my anger and turned it into action. anger had to have been felt in the past tense in order to be something that many women i spoke to could describe to me with authority or confidence. let alone enthusiasm. about ten minutes into every interview, i find her cursing and raising her voice. [laughter] yelling about how limit she was a donald trump or her father or her friends or more broadly, at the nation and its injustices. these women were angry. of course they were angry. they were conditioned to deny it from the start. from the moment that all of that stuff started falling into place, the other thing at that moment, anger fell into place for me, i needed it to be about anger between women. i knew that as soon as he said it because the other thing in my struggle to figure out what my

job was, there was something that was haunting me. the week before the election, i participated in a discussion. with a bunch of women, some journalist like me who are writing about the election and it's in racial, economical images. others who were activists, banging doors, some of who had been voted bernie supporters. during that conversation, at some., one of the women brought up the population of in her world, the young, white men on the left, many of whom have been bernie sanders supporters, via the out with us? the phrase -- it was a fascinating.back. i think we ask, we don't ask white people to be responsible for the demographics. [laughter] we certainly don't ask eichmann to be responsible for the demographic. it never crossed my mind before. the phrase that she used, she was saying, come on guys, get your boys.

meaning the white men who were going to vote in the largest percentage for donald trump. go out, come on, you've got to come get your voice. well, after the election, when everybody became acquainted with 53% of women who voted for trump. white women voted for republicans, and policies that are in the state side of political power since they been tracking it since 1952. certainly for longer than that. except into elections. ninety-two and 96. i knew i was aware of these political dynamics and the meanings of white men and women. the fact that they were revealed and people were paying attention to them. it made me think over and over again about that line. go get your boys. my job as a white feminist,. [laughter] what my response -- my response

building was, especially doing the work that i did, the part of my response billy was to write about race which also means writing about whiteness. so there are -- you look at time. when i'm writing about anger and women, writing about the particulars about the angry black woman, the way that black women anger is particularly caricatured, fantasized and vilified in our culture. writing for 1940 memoir, described her story as one about

a colored woman living in a white world. it cannot possibly be like a story written by a white woman. i white woman has one handicap to overcome. that is. i have two. both and race. i belong to the only group in the country which this country has two opticals. colored men have one. that is race. one of the earliest articulations of the political stakes of interest internationally. nearly five decades later, describe the interlocking sets of biases, faced by women of color in america. this was more than simply a doubling of bias. for the racism space by nonwhite women altered by sexism and the encounter is perverted and exacerbated by racialized. in practice, these dynamics have meant the black women's expressions of frustrations have been reflected to an american that has been enlarged them. one crucial result of a national around brock women's anger, is

that it is a black woman, she is regularly perceived as the aggressor in every situation. even when you are being polite and respectful during altercation, someone will always make remarks about a black women's attitude or aggression. the problem, it takes many forms. there's a reflexes to against it for white women and men and resistance to reckon the roots of the black e-mail dissatisfaction. whether it is distressed. see, get conveyed the allegations of spoiled gratitude, negativity and instability. we are told we are irrational, crazy, out of touch and not team players. angry black women are looked upon as inconvenient citizens who keep on talking about the right i'll refusing to their do their duty and smile at everyone. white women. as wives, daughters, mothers

employees, colleagues and friends of white men. have been offered a proximal power. greater accents, the relation to powerful white men, to wealth, jobs, education opportunities, housing and healthcare options. for white women, the dependency on whiteman's advises dedication to and protection of white male power. because these women advantages are linked so closely to whiteman having the power to intern go out to them. the particular form of their subjugation also works to divide them. from what nonwhite women. and discourages alliances between white and nonwhite women. who might otherwise rise up together. this is what hillary clinton was trying to describe in a months after the election when she often ham handedly spoke to women, who say tremendous

rushers from male employers not to vote for the girl. many of clinton's critics on the right and left, sees on this analysis. in which clinton was describing to women a lack of intellectual political self direction. an error using the language and choices, which not for nothing, probably did apply in some cases. what she was aiming to describe where the architectural systemic incentives that worked to secure white women's investment in the protection of white male power. she was describing how white patriarchy persist in part by making white women depend on white when men and entering the women enjoy benefits in exchange for the support for the men. at the expense of identification

with, connection to and support for other women. whether those other women are political candidates or simply other marginalized people who would benefit from the diminishment of white male control. the last thing that i am going to get to the thing that became apparent to me as i was writing the book. so i wanted the line of anger, i wanted to have works that began to unpack some of the racial dimensions of the contemporary women's movement. then as i wrote, i intended to write it slowly. over the years of the trump administration, maybe publishing in 2020. then i lived through 2017. the thing that i realized, it's all of it, it's everything from the teacher strikes -- it's not just kavanaugh. the ones for higher wages happening in these weeks, mcdonald's scrapes, it's this

immigration policy debate, earlier in the summer. the way that her party centered her for encouraging peaceful gathering in the disruption of republican lawmakers. it was during me too and the frenzy intensity -- i was scolded for saying me too, it's still going on. goes back to "me too" movement. beyond that to make sexual harassment legible. it goes back beyond anita in the 1970s. these stories extend beyond, i

hope, very far in front of us. last fall, during the flood of the me too stories, it felt to me grown up in the 80s and 90s, born in 1975, i had never known radical feminism. during that period last fall, it felt radical to me. at that. >> , i wanted to capture this. this spike in complexity and difficulty of those moments. i knew i wanted to try my best to catch it while it was still fresh in my own mind. so this last part, i'm going to read, i hope, is about chaos. this is about the feeling of what was happening during the

most intense parts of the period of the "me too" movement that happened from october of last year about the beginning of this year. it seems that a good deal the frenzy of me too was either lying to or perhaps, all too aware of, the fact that the destabilizing disorder of the. , was assigned that it was at least potentially part of actual revolution. chaos. chaos was what barbara had remembered in 1991 with the women of the house who banged on the door and insisted that senate talk to back testifying event against clarence. there was a sense of the whole process, if not spinning out of control, getting chaotic. senator mitchell's approach had been, let's keep things under control. under his control. the women's insistence that they get to talk. and that they got to insist that

hill gets to tell her story was the money -- he lost control. things were out of control. that was the. control was when nobody was able to report the story of him reading women. control was donald trump getting electing president. control was the unchallenged rains of bill o'reilly and roger and bill cosby, control was women being too terrified to defy eric schneiderman by telling of how he had them. control was ensuring that no one cared about the abusive sustained by the factory employees or flight attendants. all-male presidents and two black women senators and know what -- control was marital rate of being legal into the 70s. control was slavery and walking women in factories. control was jordan peterson, the white serpent dusted us against

his will. women, ordinary women, understood this. carefully tracking americans attitudes about gender. told me in 2017 that her polling had shown a huge majority of voters, 86%, who connected the notion of harassment and assault to a desire for power and control over women. she also sought a sudden and striking shift after years of pulling unproductive rights. for the first time, she's began to hear voters use the words, control and controlling women. when discussing efforts to restrict women's access to abortion and contraception conception. they knew they had to create some chaos. yet, it was moving with such velocity that it was terrifying in its unpredictability. it had to be radical to get people to pay attention. and to alter power dynamics. rules had to be changed as they had been in the second wave when

marriage is entered into an unequal times were not longer except. some men felt they had been unfairly victimized by switching expectation. some men were going to lose their jobs and some of them would now doubt feel they have been unfairly victimized. this was what it meant to say that we wanted the world to be different. not in some hazy future after all of the old, not different men had retired from the purchase and died peacefully in their sleep. we wanted it to be different now. that meant dethroning some of them early. things had to get out of control. the law cannot do it for us. we must do it for ourselves. women in this country must become revolutionary. [applause]

so, i landed about half an hour. i hope there are questions. i apologize to the audience watching c-span that i use an expletive early in my presentation. [laughter] >> thanks, rebecca. , to the mice the phone. we're going to do a half hour in the room. then we will invite c-span viewers as well. >> thank you. i've been yelling and angry for most of my life. it is not very well appreciated by many. here's the thing, i'd like you to comment on it. i feel like i have to -- i'm in this for the long haul. anger burned you out. it's barks up and burns you out, if you act from anger. so what i've been trying to get in touch with, instead of my

anger or maybe in addition to my anger, is my love. my love for women, my love and value of justice, my love and value of fairness for all. trying act out of that. i want to hear a comment about using anger and the pros and cons of that. >> that's a great comment. something that i hear a lot. i think that part of what i'm aiming to do in this book, part of what i've learned in the process of writing it, revisiting our view of anger as inherently were only corrosive and bad for us. i'm not denying that anger can, compared to fuel. it is incredibly powerful stuff. it is a propellant. i think it pushes social forward. anger is the infamous to get us

to engage civic leave. to change what we are angry about. it is a necessary repellent to change. it is also compensable. it can divide us from our allies, often for good reasons, often we are angry at our allies for good reason. it is a powerful emotion and impulse. but one of the things that i thought about a lot as i was writing, i was also reading britney cooper's book, which i can't recommend enough. so many of our feelings about how anger is terrible for us, i increasingly believe our tide, to the fact that we wind up keeping so much of it in, or when we let it out, we are punished for it or we are isolated or told to go way, it's not heard, it's not respected, not valued and then it becomes a thing that burns us up, as you say, princess out, exhaust us

because we are feeling this in isolation and nobody is hearing us. we are being written off as crazy or scary or aberrant. and many of us do swallow it. that is what corrodes inside. i had this -- a very unusual experience. i wrote about it in the book but i try to be careful when i talk about it because i don't mean to sell it as a self-help situation. i have this crazy experience writing this book. when i started my introduction, i wrote it, writing it was very quick. i started in february, i wrote a lot about what you just said. i'm trying to.out how it's been crucial to the social movements, i want to reclaim it, politically and socially but of course, none of us want to be angry. it's best for us. i had that mantra reduction. and i wrote this book for four months. it was a stressful. the world is falling apart, i was horrified and scared, and

sad. there are all kinds of sad that were stressors. i went back to my introduction as i was reading through an editing and changing. i was like, i have never had a period of greater health. that i have for these four months. i mean that in a physical way. i slept like a log. every night. i was eating well, without any particular intention. i was exercising more than i ever have in my life. i just felt like it. i was having a good life with my husband. it had been a period of immense good health and willie, even though i was scared and angry and all these things, i had been happy. and i realized that this is not a recommendation, everybody go out and use because you can't. i was in anger i'll don't. i was being early paid to be angry and more than that, more than that, i think for most of

us out there, my anger was being taking seriously. the thing that people wanted to hear when i was angry about, so many women, nobody's asked us why we are so angry. here i guess somebody was like, tell me about anger. i was getting it out. so i want to challenge the notion, without challenging the reality of how terrible it is to be angry in a world that doesn't have room for it. the anger is the thing is that is bad for us. the anger is part of the full range of human expression and valid reasonable reaction to inequality in the world. for men, white men, who are not only permitted space to give the boys to the anger but we can use it to amplify their points. to underscore how serious irrational they are. [laughter] i don't think that their anger

is injuring them up inside. why not? in part because it's being put in the world and people are listening to it. taking it seriously. i can't recommend -- there is no way to recommend to women to go on be more angry. there is so much peril. you are angry, for very good reason network and if you express your anger to your boss, you can get fired. denied a promotion, reputation. she was pulled over for no reason. if you get angry at the officer, your life is in danger. so i can't recommend to go out and rage on and be healthy. and to sleep well at night. the only prescription i can say, not a prescription but a descriptive word, the only disruptive thing i can say, the thing we can do is hear women's anger different. receive it differently. thus -- we have to change the system. value it, treat it as instructive. diagnostic, the way we are trying to teach angers men.

they should.us too things we should fix an address. i believe that anger, the other thing, even with these constraints, i think there's a way we can think of our anger as constructive. connective. when we keep it in and we don't let it out, we isolate ourselves. we think we are the only ones feeling it. we internalize the messages that is bad for us. when sometimes women yell, after the election, where there were women who were democratic voters but it never even put a sign out because they were in communities where it's going to cause problems. so going to go well for me. after the 26 election, they yell. they were angry, they couldn't keep it in. they discovered down the block was another woman who was just a finger. she had been living there the whole time. it was the expression of anger that allowed them to fight each other and then, by joining and

indivisible chapter. start organizing and form bonds. so i want to present anger without denying that it can be divisive and destructive, which can be. suggest that it can also be liberating and joyful and commutative tool that brings people together. we shouldn't give it such a totally bad rap. i think that it brings energy passion, and freedom to those who have been forced to keep it in for so long. [applause] >> i'm abby. in the intersection audi, you're speaking of, age is also key terms of movements of use around the country. i do feel they are taking more seriously than they have in the past. but do you have any insight into how to make sure they use forces in anger are still heard and taken seriously.

>> i'm not sure that i have any solutions to the problem that you pose. i certainly have observations about how some of the generational dynamics are teaching writing from us. for years as i said, i written about politics for 15 years. when i've gone to talk to grou groups, including universities where you have a large student group, i will always have older women were part of veganism in the civil rights movement, gay-rights movement, come to me and say, why are young people so angry? where is their anger? why don't they care? i don't think that anything is wrong? this was a perception for a long time. young people were disaffected and not engaged in ager. i never found that to be true. the young people were organizing all kinds of things.

they were driving abortion funds and all kinds of -- doing all kinds of constructive work. doing all kinds of structural work to change policy around quality. then many of the young women i knew who were feminist, like giving their every breath to this movement. it was a very perplexing to me why this wasn't visible. there was a generational wall that one kind of activism, in fact, because it didn't take the angry street protest or public expression of anger, that it was more about getting into policy and creating new systems, it wasn't audible. to an older generation. i think what we've seen over the past few years, and this is coming from -- occupy, sidewal sidewalks, the black lives matter movement. moving into useful engagement

with the bernie sanders campaign. then into the parkland activism, then me too. in its fall 2017 form. in many ways, some of the oce intensive radical anger in that. , was coming from young women. a lot of the anxiety that i heard, and i don't think it was a generational divide, was about power, women who had been radical and lived revolutionary lives, but had also worked their way up within the power system that was now being furiously challenged by younger women. these women who has spent years being like, why aren't angry -- young women angry? they are kind of angry at us. [laughter] i think it was very destabilizing but also cinematic of how these movements -- exactly how a lot of these movements work and how social change happens. you need different perspectives.

you need the energy of young people who believe the world should be better and different. you also need some of the experience that people who have gone true through the plumbing of trying to make a difference in making a difference but not completely different because we just got these pipes to hold together so let's leave them and hope the water coaster. so i think the generational tension is in some ways is inevitable. you see it with the civil rights movement, and tension around the election of obama between some of the leaders of the civil rights movement who are frustrated with brock obama's 2008 campaign. you see within big gay-rights event. the plague of aids. the young people who have come after them about tensions of language. the good thing our say about the contemporary moments is that i don't see the young movement as being in visible anymore.

maybe they feel that way, but i want to assure you, from 43, your voices are driving so much of this change. i feel so grateful to know a generation that was revolutionary before i got here and so deeply, deeply rightful that those who are coming after me are so driven to make the world better. [applause] >> thank you. my question is going to be about the illusion. over the last few months, i've seen people who supported the movement, talk about the support the idea of these men coming

back. zero how much do you want them to be punished? no one has a hundred million buyout. >> a lot of them are getting a lot of money. >> there hadn't been any actual accountability. so i wanted to hear your vote. >> it's fascinating question. i've a particular set of mixed feelings. about this. i come from, my perspective and i think it's not shared by many people in this room, his eye care far less about, it's not that i don't care. my interest is in the women who are telling the full story of their life's. experiences and what shapes their personal, professional, sexual pads in this world. and being able to, my investment

is in women being able to tell the truth about their lives, even when that truth reflects poorly on or imperils or complicates the power of those more powerful than them. my interest is not -- i am very torn about the repercussions for the men. i think one of the burdens that is put on women is to constantly beat the police and the sensors and -- it works to amplify, the powerful vested depends is to cast interference with its power as the aggression itself. we see this all the time. this is exactly what we are in the middle of right now. the angry left-wing mob. once you start hearing it and this is one of the things i hope to do with this book, get

everybody to have his pattern so what happens, literally every day, i see with that is. i first noticed it around the police killings of black went men. when freddie gray was killed in baltimore, he was taken and died from his injuries. there were protest after his death. all of these reports that i said at the time, it began with the protesters threw rocks. that was my off moment. wait, the actual violence of the man being killed by the police, the powerful doing violence to the less powerful, was actually indiscernible as violence. because that's how power works. but when somebody threw a rock in the opposite direction, that was the chaotic disruption that becomes because in my interview with the way power works. once you start to hear the way that works, i went back and -- getting far from your question but -- i read a story, this is

not assault or sexual -- it was assault but not sexual. he literally put my colleague in a headlock and pushed me, called me, words i will say on c-span. the new york times covered it the next day. they described, i was 27 -- i was 25. the new york times the next day, described us as pushy reporters. there's another example. in response to actually being physically pushed by a powerful man, it was the fact that we caused some trouble that got us labeled as pushy. so this happens all the time and in part, to focus on repercussions of these individual men, lends itself exactly to how the powerful -- power structure how it wants to

defend itself. this dissent or interruption. because it says, look at these men who been deprived. whatever happened to them, they lost their jobs, i listed in the book all of the times that i found, it's not hard to hear these guys who have loft there -- lost their million-dollar jobs. described as dead. how many times nuclear guy? the director said that matt damon who literally like, demeaned him on the internet. had been beaten to death. this is the language that we use when there are repercussions. the other problem, is it gets us out of the real question. it lets us treat this as if it's about a bunch of individuals bad apples. that's an easier battle to fig fight. then saying it's about how our power system is built. it's the institution and the structures -- talk about in the book, these two different types of horror movies.

we started talking of terms during the fall of 2017. we started talking about the second place, i had a friend who said get out, saying, after reporting some horrible thing she learned about, trust no one. i realized that was the thing. people who want to treat this as if it's hollowing. it's just freddie or jason. it's actually get out. the heart is that it's everything around us. this is another reason that i get uncomfortable with -- i think it's all built -- i think the whole thing and the focus on the men or the ability to be their humanity. while the women who tell their stories remain invisible or

described as opportunistic. seeking their 15 minutes of fame. in ways that -- zero relationship to reality. so i am incredibly ambivalent about the repercussions. i want nothing to do with it. that is not my problem to solve. i think about it is being solv solved, just contributes to part of the larger effort to make it stop. so we can stop being uncomfortable all the time. [applause] >> thank you. it hides a lot of pain. i believe that cain -- pain is

what drives us. my god. through the 50s and 60s, while the united states the war was over, u-haul of all of this advanced, everyday experiencing in my life, for years because the policies that would be by people in the country. i love that we can bring the problems here.

i'm not angry because i went through that. i'm sad. i'm sad that we would think that buying a house on the school ground would be the place where human life loves to live because safe. i'm sad because when it came up, there was activity in the street. we went back to iraq with trump charges of mass destruction, people were like, a made up enemy. i'm sad because when i look at

the people around me, they are just so beautiful that we human beings are so unformed. i look like this because i carry a knapsack, the bus drivers, not all of them, just enough, it takes one for you to be miserable and get angry from people because you're in the situation that you are. it's sad that i cannot walk down the street as i am and people have to move away or suspect me. or to leave. and assume and pack on that

assumption. i just wonder, how would you go about bringing the "me too" movement, the women's movement, to not bring an avalanche of back? i get it. i cannot walk down the street, i cannot talk to a lady in say, hey, do you want to drink? without her thinking that i want something. sorry, thank you. >> i think that the situation you describe, first of all, i want to say, i want to acknowledge that joe says anger enjoy, they are compatible. i don't think there is always a

decision between sadness. i think that pain in the book, beverly, the congressman, from california. she talks about how pain combing those with anger. in her own experience and talking about, the campaign how her brought into politics. i think there is pain and injustice under so much. even the version of the united states that you're describing in the 50s and the gross of the levittown, there was brutality here. there was brutality in the towns in which they were not allowed to buy. built by the united states government as part of a process along with building highways and cut them off from economic opportunities, part of a process that was designed to hurt

segments of the population. your final question about the discomfort that you feel, you describe a couple of difference kinds of discomfort. when you go out, a bus driver might worry about you because you carry a knapsack. you are worried that someone -- women will misinterpret your gesture.

learn how to approach people, so -- [applause] that's part of actually what and if you're the way that you approach women on the street is causing them discomfort, listen to that discomfort and don't approach them in that same way anymore and that's also if you're worried about sons teach them to not harass assault or rape. but -- [applause] it is also true and you actually exemplify all kinds of angles

here because often what i say to white mothers is -- this is the experience of mothers of black children every day that their skittles or their nothing, their tans are going to be misinterpreted. and result in their death. this is what mothers of daughters worry about. that they're drinking at a party is going to be misinterpreted as consent. in a way that is going to result in their assault. and that this is why we have to pay close attention to all the angles of harm that we do to each other. coming from our different power positions and many of us inhabit different power positions. simultaneously. and yeah. i think that's my response.

[applause] so we're going to keep this by going by taking questions by those watching across the country so i want to say two quick things one is get to your questions as well. second, after q and a another 20 minutes rebecca will be signing books in lobby and sold by room of ones own and popup bar that's a good space to keep the conversation going as well. you can have a book sign talk to rebecca sessions there as well. right now let's take a few call-ins and hear them in the room and take a couple more in line. thanks. if you're watching on our national audience rebecca is going to be with us for next 20 minutes. hi how are you? nice to meet you. we have not met before so we're just sitting down for first time tv will so pee could let's finish if we jump right in, and in cambridge, massachusetts, george if you've been watching,

rebecca go ahead and ask your question. i have something that might be of use you're referring to men. but the international counsel of grandmothers has a different term. they said after the november election, you have elected not a man, but a oy a boy in old man's body a combination of man and boy but mostly boy. they are large and have loud voices so people mistake them for men but they are not men. a man thinks of the common good while a moy has not learned to think of anyone but himself. he has not fully developed and is still a child that definition of moy is also the democratic

definition of an idiot a person who cares nothing for the commonwealth but only for himself. thank you for your work. [laughter] thank you so much. i love that. i love everything you just read. i do worry that it does a disservice to boys. one other thing i would say and i really do love. i love the association, i love this citation and i'm really grateful you for calling i would say one of the things we do in this country for white men is we actually -- talk about them as if they're children in way to further express their vulnerability sometime there's like -- on the internet there's a meme about this. my large adult son. you know, we -- men to some degree in a way that

powerful men -- to -- to suggest that they are the vulnerable ones and some of those reversal that i was talking about earlier the the calling grown men who we might call on to be responsible, capable, who might face repercussion and consequence because they are, in fact, adult men with power to lead the country. i do worry sometimes that with them we let them get away with things -- that they shouldn't be allowed to get away with. [applause] however i know that is not the in which you read it and i appreciate the way you read are it. >> mary in georgia. >> good day, sir. hi, i'm so blessed to see someone named rebecca who has shades lighter skin than i do. and straight hair who know about my feelings and how i am treated

when i try to express myself to be called an angry black woman. when i am allowed according to the bible to be angry and not sin. but because i'm black, people don't even allow me the right to have anger. and i spoke to a mayor here in athens and you want to know which one we've had three female mayors who said to me that i was angry. angry about injustices and i gave her a cd, that is called my 21 that is about how genocide is being practiced against black people and she told me that she didn't want to look at it because it saddens her. we should get over things like that we can't get over things like this when it is still happen hadding. i had an abortion performed on me when i went for an exam and that was 630 years ago it was 20 years ago, but i'm so glad to

see this young lady named rebecca that's not of my race but looks like she could be greek or italian or whatever. but i'm just thankful that someone ask feeling my heart and has the honesty and integrity to write down the things that have hurt me and things i've gone through. thank you so very much, ma'am. [applause] mary that means so much to me and i want to recommend a book by britney cooper that is called eloquent rage and it specifically is subtitle is discovering black feminist rage are of the superpower i think i made it wrong and she and i had a conversation last week on c-span on booktv that i think you could find online. where we talk she -- she is brilliant and i think given your thoughts on this and your passion about, about these

issues you would find so much in britney's book and i'm really grateful to you for having called thank you so much. >> i was going to mention that interview -- if you go to booktv.org, type in rebecca tracer, you will be able to watch the full interview online. we have a question here from the audience. >> hi, thank you for being here. i think a lot of times when we talk about advancing gender equality in politics we talk about issues that are specifically gendered like -- women access to health care or equal pay and, i mean, a lot of conversations in the wake as brett kavanaugh appointment centered around those and i get it. you know makes a lot of sense. but i'm curious if you think there are other political issues that have similar implications for gender equality that maybe aren't particularly gender issues that dweive our attention but to hear your thoughts on that. >> oh, absolutely. i think that one of the things that -- you know it is funny one of the -- this happens all of the time when a political media tries to

diagnosis culture war versus economic own policy issues and pretty much every economic issue has racial and gendered consequences. so for example, when we talk about fighting for higher wages i think we often think of as a fight that is nongendered and not about identity politics. fighting for higher wages is absolutely part of -- of an east to get something closer to gender equality because two-thirds of minimum workers are women, and tipped workers are predominantly women many of them women of color many of them single mothers. who when we talk about health care reform women are often the most economically vulnerability most likely to not have health care policies. there's a pretty much every -- economic issue that we talk about has specifically gendered implications and by the same

token, the issues that we talk about with regard to say reproductive rights i don't think should be so gendered we shouldn't think of these as just women issues. they're about economic realities for entire families for the children some of whom are -- are girls some of whom are boys and nonidentifying we make mistake, i think when we talk about women's issues as being child care. child care subsidized child care, paid leave, these are issues that get siloed off into this women issue category and, in fact, one of the saddest things is watching how lawmakers in congress it is mostly women who are left to do this kind of advocacy even though those kiengdz of policy changes have profound impact on mens lives. on their families economies on their economic stability. on their ability to make choices about whether or not to when or

what or circumstances to participate in a family life. and so -- i applaud this point with a mistake that ben gets replicated with with only women lawmakers working on abortion policies. or advocating around sexual assault policies. those sexual assault affect men too. men need to be engaged in these issues about and yet we continue to per wech wait this, this belief that somehow -- somehow policy exist in a different realm from, you know, women, women's issues. they are the same. >> next call is simon in burke virginia. hi, simon. >> hello. can you hear me? hello. please go ahead. >> yes thank you for taking my call i wanted to transfer that

call -- and all of the men -- for the movement i'm 71. rebecca is about my daughter's age. and, of course, i come from there 70s movement when as you mentioned, you know, we've been on streets in large numbers and also, the important thing was the coalition of older movement, the anti-law movement against that movement supporting the gay rights movement, importantly the support for the working people speask especially working men we see civil rights movement joins the union movement. and black partners and, of course, the the young people who lead the movement. and martin luther king, jr. who assassinated at the age of 39.

so, of course, it is in the hand of the young people. and it has been tremendous attack not only attack on feminist movement but young people and movements as we see tremendous attacks on young people through the educational system and in enslaving them into the debt system had is really cruel that a medical makes a slave of his young people because they're going to a college. so there are many points that the young people have to really be able to -- and that's why, you know, topic of the movement is on your book's title that's important because it has to be connected to movement of the pool and working class and i think what's missing the working class.

that recently -- >> apologize we're going to have to leave it there. we have a lot of people rebecca -- >> yeah, i agree with you that one of the great challenges to progressive movements throwts american history has been making clear that -- all are interlocked that they must be addressed simultaneously and unfortunately one of the things e i referred to earlier is many of the ways progressive ways have been is by equities that replicate by fighting against so that -- there are these moments of coalition and whether there's some clarity about how we must uproot all of these injustices are are all tied together and built arranged each other they're interwoach with each yet there has been racism and homophobia within women's movement historically there has been sexism within a civil rights movement there's been classes within most progressive

movements. these are -- these are the challenges of coalition and one that it is my hope that every iteration and new birth of a new movement gets what i want to see it for us to get better at addressing the the equities not by tapering them over. but by talking about them by expressing our frustration and resentments about them and i hope moving forward this is something that audrey lord talked about in the 1980s in her essay uses of anger moving forward and i think that's been -- you know we see for example, if you look at me too, the struggle to move it away from just high earning industries where -- high profile women have been harassed or assaulted. you know, that one of the first moves that coalition that was made was a latina farm worker who sent a letter of support to the hollywood actresses who came out with their first, who were ones who told story about harvey weinstein at the very start a year ago and it took while but --

when the time is up movement started out of hollywood one of the first things they defense write and open letter to the latino farm workers. you've seen the media unfortunately so much of the media centers on those wealth with and famous individuals and high earning industries and yet, we see some media coverage, "the new york times" did a full story on harassment on the ford factory floor. the "huffington post" covered harassment of flight attendants and hotel workers. just last week i think i mentioned earlier mcdonald's workers went on strike over the yew ubiquity of sexual harassment within their institution and i think we've also seen as part this have uprising of anger, the labor movement comes into this too. the teachers strike that spread last spring -- states where striking is illegal, of course, those teaching remains of female

dominated profession those were women who were striking for higher wages. and in many cases won. against their state legislature so i think this is the challenges right in front of us every day. is to keep in view the way that we cannot address one strain of inequality without simultaneously addressing the others. >> mikalah in cleveland we only have a few minute left. >> that's great i have a quick question. so mine was how do we navigate -- sorry so how do we navigate how to navigate sexism -- okay sorry -- it is as women climb to positions of paver and we empower each other and we do get to law making positions, how do we critique women in these positions without sexism and how do we also recognize that women

are capable also of carrying sex ideals influence how they hold people accountable? >> mikalah. >> that's such a great question. and i think this goes back to some of the things i touched on or already here about -- mistaking getting confused between individuals and systems. and when we are talking about racism or misogyny sometimes the stories come to us via individual experience. or treatment by an individual, but what we also have to acknowledge is that all of us as individuals are participating in systems that are built arranged these inequalities that misogyny is -- it can express itself through the the way that one person treats another. but it is also the structure in which we operate on which our

power structure is built. and about there are always going to be incentives especially for the people with less power. they're going to be incentive offers by the power structure to get them to participate in and defend that power structure to defend the more powerful and to disavow the the less powerful and group that they are part of. women can absolutely be sexist. it is quite likely if brett kavanaugh had not been confirmed to supreme court, that donald trump would have appointed a woman with named amy coney barrett who might have been the woman turning over roe and may wind up on the court. this is -- there have billish -- philish led an army of angry conservative right wring women who were angry at the interrupted power structure that had been challenged by the second wave feminist movement and she led an army of angry

white women to defeat era in 1982. and we have to understand that those individual women are operating within systems that insent vise their defense of white patriarchy so it is this challenge of simultaneously having individual relationships in the world and understanding that we're all operateing within systems that are built on power and balances. >> final question -- >> so much -- reading your become and all you've been talking about systems that i think -- i've been studying this a lot in, in what i do. the overarching system, i think is white supremacy culture. and the way it exhibits itself and the different characteristics and everything i've been studying that and then the anecdote to white supremacy culture so, i mean, of course, the different characteristics are, the individualism. the hierarchy, the right to

comfort and all of those different things and that if we look at it really, really broad ly and read a book called light fragility we who are white so then characteristics written by tama ocun and that really helps see the big picture. >> i agree. [laughter] >> by the way, white from fragiy covered by booktv watch it there. [laughter] [applause] rebecca tracer, thank you i've never seen before, and maybe it's the first time, and this is for you in the back row. the simon and chewser logo here not the traditional logo it is of a woman. [laughter] have you seen that? >> nope. they were showing to our tv audience if you buy a book make sure to see this logo and look up the original logo i've never

seen this before. rebecca -- [laughter] wow. >> rebecca tracer. is the author of -- the revolutionary power of womens anger thanks for being on booktv. >> thank you so much. thank you, all. booktv live coverage of the wisconsin book festival continues, in about ten minutes carol anderson one person no vote. you're watching live conch coverage on booktv. books published this week charlottes pence profiles her

father vice presidents mike pence in where you go. former white house photographer pete compares and contrast the bum and trump administration's in shade. in them republicans senator ben of nebraska shares his thoughts on how to address country's political divide. former fed chair alan green span and economist have a picture of american economy in capitalism in america and she wants it emmy award-winning writer jill shares her personal experiences with sexuality and jendzer identity in hollywood. our look at this week's new releases continues with eric and tim's humorous take on current political landscape in donald drains the swamp. in the library book, the new yorkers suzanne recounts 1986 new york public library fire.

pulitzer prize winning historian joseph ellis examines the political thinking of four of our founding fathers and applies that to today's political issues in american dialogue. in the hurricanes eye, with best selling author nathaniel providing history of the revolutionary wars battle of the chesapeake. and military historian max hastings rekowngts vietnam war look for titles in bookstores this coming week, and watch for many of the authors in the near future on booktv on c-span2. accordinga look inside trump whe from the washington post bob woodward in second spot on wall street journal's list, is rachel self-help book girl wash your face on the "times" a memoir by actress sally field in third,

according to the "times" is account of navy s.e.a.l.es and time in combat and in third for the journalist reese witherspoon whiskey in tea cup up next for "new york times" pulitzer prize winning look at presidential leadership for "the wall street journal," it is cravings, a cook book by kristy teigen in fifth according to "the new york times" is harvard professor jill one volume history of the u.s. truths on wall street journalist is sally field memoir in pieces. "the wall street journal" best sellers list continues with navy s.e.a.l.es jack and the dichotomy of leadership and for educated tara memoir of her childhood in idaho mountains introduction to formal education at the age of 17. "the new york times" puts historian thoughts on the rise of technology, 21 lessons for the 21st century in 7.

the the hub community kitchen cook book together holds the same spot on wall street journal's list. next on the "times" list is astrophysics for people in a hurry. journal has chris account of his battle with colon cancer chris beat cancer, in 9th on wall street journal best sellers list is former nfl quarterback tim tebow self-help advice this is the day. and on "times" list cy examses of 13 animals in how to be a good creature. wrapping up comparison at "the wall street journal" and "new york times" best sellers list is goode wan, leadership for the journal, and in the 10th spot on "times" list is belichick a biography of bill belichick some authors have or will be appearing on booktv watch their programs online, with on our website, booktv.org.

c-span launched booktv 20 years ago on c-span 2. and since then we've covered thousands of authors and book festivals including over 30 events with a late conservative commentator william f. buckley in 2000 appeared on monthly call-in program indepght. it was a published two years ago said between 75 and 80% of the people engaged in television -- journalism have voted democratic in the last election. now that yale, a professor whom i was very attached disclosed a poll taken of ten professors in the department of political science 23 of them questions do we, with truman 23 truman dewey none. one doesn't have to -- really have to recite da of this

kind because it is not known -- but by and large the academic media and the television radio and journalist are liberal. democrat versus republican. you can watch this and all other booktv programs from past 20 years at booktv.org. type the authors name and wordbook in the search bar at the top of the page. fall is busy time for book fairs across the country here's a look at some that are coming up this weekend it is live coverage of the wisconsin book festival, on october 27th and 28th tune in for our live coverage of the texas book festival in austin. featuring author discussions on education, journalism, middle class, the me too movement, and more. the national book awards will be presented november 14th in new

york city and will wrap up our fall book festival season with live author talks and call-in segments from the miami book fair. for more information about upcoming book fairs and festivals, and to watch our previous festival coverage, click the book fairs tab on our website, booktv.org.

♪ my name is connor. i'm director of the wisconsin book festival thank you all for being here tonight. yeah. been a big day. and if you've been watching at home on c-span or been in this building like i have since -- 10 in the morning i got here

earlier than that but in the morning you have seen some of the most penetrating interesting educational entertaining book events that you can see anywhere and i'm so delighted to be able to share those with you. we've done 33 events today and we have two more. yep. half of those have been in in building and half of those have been throughout madison. and it is because of the support of people like you and authors like carol who come here and share these incredible cultural moments so thank you to all of you and madison public library for giving us this space and making events free all of the time and to madison public library foundation who raises the money that is allows us to bring in world class town like rebecca so thank you to them and all of our responses so i went to law school to be an election lawyer. i then moved to washington, d.c. and i became a book seller now i do this so i never really got there. [laughter] but the interest is always there and so --

when this book came out it was like when i heard about it i said we have to do it. we cannot do it i hadn't read it i didn't know what she had to say and i thought this is one of the most important bocks that we'll see this year. that was corroborated by national book foundation who long listed 1 fern no vote for national book award. yep. please clap for carol. [applause] this book is hard this is wonderful and teachers you so much and so little space i think there are 100 footnotes in the first chapter. seriously, and it is one of those books that you can read and reread and reread and you will find threads and different things that you missed first time through. i encourage everyone to read it to share it. it is one of the most important

books of our time and here's carol anderson to talk to us about it. [applause] hello and thank you so much for being here. what i would like to do so first start off with a story that frames this story about disenfranchisement, then move us into a piece of the history of it and then to a couple of readings out of the book. so i'm going to start with the way that we often think about disenfranchisement of african-americans and i'm going to start with macey -- it was 1946 was a veteran and won. he was a black man from georgia. and he came back home after fighting the the fascist he knew above all else that he was an

american citizen because that's what a veteran is. and in georgia he was determined that he was going to exercise his citizenship rights. he was going to vote. in georgia -- i feel like this was a spoiler alert. but there was an election going on in 1946 and there's a man running for governor with eugene and he is a mean dog. mean -- folks know gene are nodding. folks eugene was running on a platform of you keep the ends where they belong. because black folks came out of

the second world war in a level of insurgency. when you fight the fascist when you fight the nazis when you fight supremacy and you're fighting under beener of the atlantic charter freedom from fear. freedom from want. whew, you want some of that democracy for yourself. and that was macio he goes down to vote and there's a sign in taylor county over voting spot that says first negro that votes that will be the last thing he ever does. he's like -- i survived world war ii what's georgia got? so he went and macio voted. he was the only black person in taylor county that cast a ballot. he went home and it was quiet. this quiet for few days.

and then -- opens the door and man says would you mind stepping outside, he's like sure. and he steps outside and he hears -- and it was a firing squad. an they laid macio out. and they walked away. macio mother ran out and she sees her baby on that baby bleeding and rilgtdzed with bullets she drags him to the hospital. but you know this is 1946 georgia and black people do not have the right to health care. because they have a gym crow health care system and so they looked at macio okay you can put him there and put him in a room that was the size of a closet and nobody saw him for six

hours. he's laying there this veteran bleeding to death. , it took him two days to die. that kind of electoral violence is how we often conceptionallize of black voters. but there's another kind of violence that i want to talk about. one that is widespread, one that is deep, one that is profound. and one that does even more than take out one voter here and one voter there. that's the violence of what started off as a mississippi plan of 1890. where mississippi had to figure out how do you get around the 15th amendment that says, the right to vote shall not be a bridge on account of race color, or previous condition of

servitude. how do you get around the constitution and still wipe out black voters? mississippi figured it out with the mississippi plan of 1890 with a range of -- of different types of devices like the poll tax. like the literacy test. where they're demanding that people who have been in underfunded schools and where there aren't even high schools for black children would be able to read large portions of the constitution and then interpret it to the liking of the registrar. and then there was the poll tax where you have to pay the combination of those two by the time the u.s. is fighting nazis -- only 3% of african-americans were registered to vote in the south. let me put it another way. 97% of african-american adults in the south were not registered

to vote. and the bulk of african-americans lived in the south. it worked -- it worked so well that there's that insurgency coming through. that civil rights movement, and e we have this -- this moment on the bridge in this fight for voting rights -- where you have nonviolent protesters led by williams facing alabama a state trooper -- and sheriff jim clark posse on horses with bull whips wrapped in bash abouted wire so they were symbolically carrying the body of jiminy lee jackson who had defended his mother against the beating during a voting rights protest, and was shot to death by law enforcement, as

they were carrying that body to governor george wallace in montgomery they ran right into alabama state troopers and jim clark and we saw that scene on bridge bloody sunday. it was so her horrific that abc movie of the week was cut in to show footage from bloody sunday. the nation was appalled. because we hold the right to vote to be basic fundamental to democracy. how can that happen when people are just registered to vote. that plus killing of reverend james who come down to selma and he was to death for believing that black people had the right to vote led the united states to pass the voting rights act of 1965. one of the greatest pieces of legislation ever because it

worked. it worked. whereas an early, early 1960s the number of african-americans registered to vote was in the singles in terms of percentage. by 1967, 68 almost 60% of african-americans were register ared to vote. voting rights act worked. i may have worked a little too quell for some folk. [laughter] had had you. this may be a library but that's not a church -- [laughter] so by the time we started seeing elections we start seeing african-americans elected. and then there was that election -- in 2000, remember that election. uh-huh. i knew this was church and in

that election we also think about what happened down in florida. you know hanging -- butter fly ballot voting machines that can't count. but i want to take us to missouri. because there was something that happened there that is affecting us right now. nearly 50,000 voters were purged off roles by st. louis board of elections in st. louis. illegally purged. they weren't notified. so when they came to vote their names aren't on roles. and the poll workers are like -- and they can't get downtown because the lines are busy. so they just start sending people down to board of elections board of elections is packed the board of elections in scholarly term was a hot mess. [laughter]

and hours are drizzling by. polls are getting ready to close and board of elections is still packed with people who were illegally wiped off the roles and unable to vote. so the democrats sued. to keep the polls open for 3 more hours. to let these citizens be able to vote. immediately thereafter after republicans basically countersued in a higher court and that court shut the polls down at the 7:45. and three additional hours, this is an example of massive ram pangt voter fraud. how many of you have heard voter fraud?

massive rampant voter fraud. voter fraud, what we're seeing what we're seeing here in st. louis, we've got dead people on the rolls we've got dogs on the rolls. we've got people using addresses from vacant lots voting over and over and over -- voter fraud, voter fraud, voter fraud. and u.s. senator kid carrying that message of voter fraud into the u.s. congress. so as congress is shaping the help america vote act, which was to deal with the the reality of all of the troubles in florida like machines that can't count -- [laughter] that reality kip put the lie of voter fraud on the same plain and inserted it into federal law. there shall having we must be able to deal with this massive rampant voter fraud by having voter id.

uh-huh now let me pick up the story. indiana stepped into the breach. secretary of state todd a republican recalled, well back in 2001 and 2002, election integrity was a huge issue. the problem was that people were losing confidence in the system. there was a fear of votes being stolen. even he added if the fear didn't pan out to be true. in other words based on perception that have been carefully crafted cultivated and stoked by the gop, state governments believe they had a mandate, a calling even to wrestle this virtually nonexistent voter impersonation fraud to the ground. in indiana republican

legislators therefore set out to add a powerful barrier to the polls. while he said -- making sure we were balanced in honest in our approach. to prove it was not politically motivated. [laughter] although every democrat voted against the bill, senate enrolled act and every republican supported it. but 2006 with law required government issued photo id to vote. defined what types of identification if were acceptable offer to provide at state expense and identification card to those who could not afford it. and secured and offramp of a provisional ballot for those who did not have the id at the time. but could provide the appropriate identification to authorities within a limited number of days. the iclu and naacp and as well as state and democratic party

challenged -- given that there was no evidence that indiana voter id law is justified by any actual voting fraud problem. the real motivation they discerned was partisan. and geared to disenfranchise as many minority voters as possible. the 7th circuit, however, had heard the con straint drum beat since the 2,000 election and believed that stopping and preventing voter fraud was worth the cost. the organization therefore aa peeled a decision to the u.s. supreme court. the aclu and naacp went right after the the core issue there was no voter fraud. theretherefore there was no stae interest at stake. certainly nothing that could warrant this assault on the 15th amendment. it bares reare peteing they asserted. that indiana had not identified

even a single instance of voter impersonation fraud occurring at the polls in the history of indiana. and no one in the state has ever been charged with that crime. ever -- moreover, when the the bill was being drafted, no evidence of in person impersonation fraud was presented to the legislature making 483 at best a solution in search of a problem. and to punctuate that point aclu and emphasized even in this hearing, before the u.s. supreme court, no such evidence was presented in this litigation. there were, of course, the same old tried and true anecdote about dead voting in st. louis, et. but all of those stories have been debunked so they asked,

what state interest could possibly justify the burdens placed on a citizens right to vote? indiana, of course, had pointed to free identification cards and provisional ballots to ensure that there were protections against disenfranchisement. state also assured court that only one percent of indiana's voting age eligible population left necessary identification. the naacf encountered that state number and analysis were inaccurate and full blown misrepresentation. for example, the fact that supposedly only one percent did not have an id was hardly negligent but found that 16% of all voting eligible residents did not have an id.

and 13% of current registered voters did not have a license for an identification card. in fact, a subsequent study found that in indiana, white citizens were 11.5 percentage point more likely than black citizens to have the accepted credentials to vote. the situation was exasperated by state's requirement imposed on persons attempting to obtain identification from bureau of motor vehicles the bmv in a given week, 60% of applicants for licenses are turned away. because they fail to have the appropriate document mandated by the bmv. in other words, the stakes offer of a free id was a brilliant smoke screen. that masked at the actual documents required to obtain an indiana driver's license were

not so easy to get. an often came with cost born solely by the would be voter. the naacp noted for example that a birth certificate necessary to get a driver's license. but in an obvious catch 22 of class puck proportions, marion county more than 200,000 of the state's black population lived, the health department required a drivers license to get a copy of a birth certificate. [laughter] >> the tangle of rules, regulations, and the state voter id law had consequences. real life consequences. the supreme court didn't see it that way major of the justices had the tonic of voter frud frud and saw stealing elections in undermining democracy the court rxzed just john paul stevenses

wrote that only kind of voter fraud that 483 addresses is in fern voter impersonation at polling places and gosh he was forced to admit that the record contained no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in indiana at any time in its history. now that easily should have been the end of it instead he continued fraud and other parts of the country have been documented. he then pulled out the story of new york city williams tweed from 1868 election. [laughter] that was followed by a swan dive into the fictional swamp of st. louis k-9 and dead voters. not only did the court swallow whole myth of rampant voter

fraud but equally justices could not fathom that something as simple as needing an id constituted any type of overwhelming burden especially because indiana offered to provide the drivers license for free. court ruled that they were compelling and there was no evidence that 483 placed any burden on voters to block their access to the polls. voting id law and they are at its worst. on one hand, indiana did not need to provide any proof whatsoever that voter fraud much less rampant voter fraud existed. or for that matter that anyone in the history of the state had ever been charged or convicted of the crime.

instead, each example each of the examples of voter fraud that justices held up would not and could not have been stopped by voter id requirements. especially absentee ballots which because they're overwhelmingly used by whites indiana had exempted from the law. yet, on the basis of nothing, fables and urban legend, the majority of the justices took the state's claims of democracy and a peril seriously. on the other hand, and were not enough. the the stories not enough. the data not enough. seem to be in amount of evidence and no documentation that the justices could accept persuasive. the lawyers laid out information about the limited number of

bureau motor vehicles the scarce isty of public transportation to get to those scattered facilities. and the difficulty and cost of obtaining a birth certificate. they work to explain how this sounding law was a targeted hit especially for those who did not have the financial resources to amass documentation to get the necessary id. the naacp and clu noticed and that which stripped those populations of their basic right to vote. as far as the court was concerned, however, what the naacp and aclu had as a danger sign was no more than smoking mirrors while mythical beast of vote or fraud that was real. >> wow.

[applause] now, in this section out of voter purchases and you know i'm in georgia right now. 53 thousand so bryant is in this chapter but right now for this reading i'm going to focus in on chris coback. oh -- call his name. [laughter] most devastating weapon to date, however, has been had interstate cross-check which he's nurtured promoted as important device to eliminate vote or fraud from the american, political landscape. the program is supposed to root out those registered to vote in two different states as part of a national move to bring more integrity to the the voter role and to provide a solution to

registration systems that cannot keep up with a society of voters who move from state to state. now it works through an alliance of 27 states which send voter information to arkansas to upload. his kansas pool and runs the data for every member of the searching for comparisons of registered voters to weed out duplicates interstate cross-checks which by 2012 had more than 45 million voters records. matches first middle and last names, date of birth last four digits of the social security number, and suffix application to identify those who may be going from state to state to vote. tainting election after election. at least that is the narrative he told when he stumbled upon lincoln l. wilson a 66-year-old

republican who owned homes in both kansas and colorado. wilson felt that he was well within his rights to vote in local elections in both states. [laughter] i would vote for president in one state and local issues in both places. he explained -- especially when he saw his property tax bill skyrocket and resolve that there was no taxation without representation. now what looked logical to wilson, however, and frankly not that much of a big deal to the local prosecutor, was a red flag to coback who pursued charges against man with a vein vengeance he needed to make an example of him. 18 months and nearly 50,000 dollars in legal fee, a 6,000 dollar fine, 150 dollars in court costs, and a guilty plea to 3 misdemeanors later he had his victory.

wilson simmered, chris came after me for an honest mistake. damn right i'm upset i'm a convicted man now. wilson, however, was in many ways a fluke. cross-check is such a fund mentally flawed database that it success rate is actually epic fail for democracy. since databases launch 7.3 million voters have been flagged as suspect. based on the individual list of states received back from coback massive purges have wiped more than 1 million american citizens from the electoral map. ...

>> north carolina secretary of state alerted the legislature at least 35750 voters were stocking the roles. in georgia and washington a total of more than 1 million scrupulous voters in the 2016 election it was even worse.

especially given the slim popular vote margin to determine who won the electoral college arizona purged almost 271,000 voters. michigan removed nearly 450,000 voters. north carolina managed to eliminate close to 600,000 from the system the staggering numbers of voter rolls so unkempt they had ample opportunity to rise from the grave to kill the election. [laughter] that meant the program at least in the view from 30000 feet but up close , neither the list nor the

database could withstand scrutiny. the problem is twofold. despite the hype and marketing it does not actually match at every parameter. they don't all require the same information social security numbers are rarely used. ohio doesn't bother with a person's middle name. suffixes rarely make it in. it believes that james willie brown is the same voter as james arthur brown as james clifford brown as james lynn brown. the possibility for error is exponential and in georgia alone there are nearly 400 james brown's. there are more than 35000 illegal voters simply

evaporated when the state hire the ex- fbi agent to ferret them out to bring them to justice. he found exactly zero double voters from the cross checklist. stanford and hartford harvard and yale discovered that crosscheck has the error rate of more than 99 percent. . >> and with those double fortune 500 companies to dismiss crosscheck it is error-prone. god for bid if your name is garcia there's 850,000 in the us or joseph because you are probably suspended in 27

states. crosscheck's overreliance on the delete - - data points is the second major problem. it is a program infected with ethnic and racial bias. minorities in america tend to have common or shared last names if your last name is washington there is an 89 percent chance it is african-american. hernandez. 94 percent you are hispanic. kim. 95 percent chance you are asian. similarly garcia, lee and jackson all signal a strong probability to be a minority in the united states because they are overrepresented in 85 of 100 of the most common last names.

was cross john - - crosscheck zeros in -ites one - - whites are underrepresented by 8 percent on the purge list. while african-americans are overrepresented by 45 percent. asian americans by 31 percent. and hispanics by 24 percent. with a crosscheck on similar last names blasting a hole through minority voting rights. roughly 14 percent of all black voters were purged from databases under the guise of preventing double voting. and weaning out the vote of american citizens and to conclude that investigative journalism after serving in ohio.

that it wasn't just kansas as secretary of state but the entire g.o.p. apparatus that decided the only way to win the election is to steal the innocence vote is a brand-new jim crow today on election day they will not use white sheets. today they use spreadsheets. [applause] and i know this sounds daunting it is not an uplifting conversation so far. [laughter] the last chapter in this book i call the resistance. and i zero in of that battle of alabama.

and this is some sheer jedi. [laughter] starting off this chapter to lay out alabama and what the black folks have to deal with the education crisis and ranking in the bottom tier consistently of all of the quality of life indicators. and w base that gave rise to judge more. in the 2017 special election. the bible thumping diatribe had god ordained racism already doomed the seat to the bottom tier. and then masquerading in the patriotic symbolism despite

the obvious shortcomings that roy moore was not so far-fetched. every u.s. senate election in alabama over the past 25 years but since the advent of shelby county the supreme court's decisions from the voting rights act they had amassed a powerful array of these techniques targeted on the one constituency that could give dow jones something beyond a snowballs chance in hell and a sliver of hope of winning. each re- drawn boundary but each long line and id requirement all negatively affected voter turnout. the first test was the 2014 midterm election as naacp

defense fund noted alabama turnout was the lowest it had been in decades. with a sizable minority populations it achieves what no other state has, a full 5 percent decline in voter turnout. the most precipitous drop in the nation. secretary of state and other republican makers say they do not see the problem. and had nothing to do with alabama rejecting housing it. and at the courthouse. linking and inconsistent information on the state website. and without even the basic

fiber optic much less computers in those areas. suggesting that they could rise through public transportation with the mobile mode voter id unit that provided only 2 percent of the cards needed. the problem was the people. if you are too sorry or lazy to get up and register to vote or to register electronically then you don't deserve that privilege. as he twisted not only state constructed barriers into personal failings, but also the 15th amendment is a privilege and not a right as long as the secretary of state of alabama they will have to show initiative to become a registered voter in the state. alabama was another words to

treat the right to vote for african-americans creating more hurdles to jump over and walls to climb. roy moore was on the cusp to shape the laws for the united states of america in the 21st century with the vision that was clearly 19th century antebellum. and finding enough discussed it with those voter turnout rates and the record as the us senator and other heart hard core reality about red stay alabama southern baptist control the whole damn state and they will vote for roy it will be a landslide.

yet there has always been more than one kind of christianity churning in alabama. as called upon it from a birmingham jail in 1963 so did the greater ministries in the church of 2017 and those that had the judge roy moore's also created the civil rights warriors who took down and defeated jim and now had roy in their crosshairs. [laughter] [applause] now i will take us to the night of the election. roy moore nonetheless had a

republican stronghold in the northern parts of the states and the lead continued to grow. and it was unsurmountable that the election seems to mirror the mohammed ali with black voters overwhelmed and outmatched in a similar defeat of a much more powerful opponent. a blazing uppercut cut squarely from stepping back and then to deliver the unexpected and stunning blow. the first indication moore was in serious trouble came from a legendary place selma lord selma. [laughter] it is no coincidence she stated the daughter of mlk

that selma pushed jones ahead for good as the results started to come in the black vote out turner surprised almost everyone. and that get out the vote campaign that was so last-minute and that those significant barriers to the voting booth brought about that competence the indignation but if that overall turnout rate that was predicted or perhaps more would have want to. more than 40 percent of voters showed up will be on 50 percent in counties

favorable. the people of the black belt counties wave down by everything alabama threat them were equally impressive. and averages 73.4 percent of the vote in those counties and then to average 35.4 percent of a five percentage point higher than the state average. the black vote simply came through birmingham delivered the knockout blow. jones picked up 83213 more votes than before - - stand more and republican turnout was significantly less. there was not even enough evangelical votes to revive his campaign there would be no recovery or getting up and as a result there would be no

senator in front of roy moore's name and as a result became evident they immediately raise the specter of voter fraud and pointed to overwhelmingly black birmingham and pointing to st. louis or trump to philadelphia as the corporate and saying that the voter turnout rate was simply too high and the republican vote mysteriously to low voter fraud. the charge of course, was as hollow as a man and frankly all of those before him gave voice to that pernicious live. because in alabama as in the united states african-americans know somebody paid a big price they had the hoses turned on them and the dogs turned on them

and unfortunately in the 21st century there were people who had to overcome every barrier alabama put in their way and they did. but let's be clear they should not have had to. voting is an obstacle course nor a privilege. it is a right. thank you. [applause] i am ready for questions.

. >> first of all, thank you so much i hope everyone here has a plan to vote in november. please do. my question comes about the legacy particularly with the idea that they politely asked for the right to vote and said please let us vote and then said here you go. [laughter] that we are not allowed to be so how do we contract that stability? to keep our voices low and calm so the white folks are giving up their privilege? . >> kavanaugh?

[laughter] and this is why one of the classes that i teaches the civil rights movement and i start off because i get the sanitized watered-down version of the civil rights movement so folks don't understand how changes made. sit down. martin stood up. rosa sat down. he had a dream and we were all change. [laughter] basically it was reduced to that but where you see it took to have movement i teach that as strategy and with students understanding it wasn't about

mlk he was important but there could not have been movement just with martin luther king. for the montgomery bus boycott you have to have the women's political committee and joanne robinson you're sitting there late at night cranking out 30000. "this is it" a xerox machine. [laughter] but i'm thinking about the biceps that you have to have two crank out 30000 of those in the den to set up that distribution system to get the word out. so that right to vote was a key element in that. so there is a moment because my students we are going through that battle for the right to vote there are counties in mississippi that are majority black with no

black registered voters. and in other counties there may be one. when they try to register folks to vote with bob moses coming down to mississippi and driving around and getting beaten on the courthouse steps for registering black people to vote. when herbert lee is killed by a state senator and then he saw the senator kill harper lee. people are dying. and then with the right to vote. and is a long ongoing battle.

but the student nonviolent coordinating committee comes in and the sheriff is not moving he is proud of himself. then s and lc comes in we get the churn and the beatings. it took decades of struggle. we need the right to vote. it was not that. in the southern democrats dominated congress because they were reelected over and

over so one of the things teaching my american history survey class and i would say how many seniors? and then to say absolutely positively has to have it. and three or four students raise their hand and say i only have to be responsive to your needs. you want to take the exam to get an a? meanwhile the freshmen elect but these are the only folks that do the course evaluation.

so i'm going to become teacher of the year based on those for a loan. this is how you get into the senior position in congress because you don't have to have real elections. so they are throttling down with this insurgency coming out of the black community. you've got power over my dead body. we have that moral arc of the universe. [laughter] that's one of the things that is really important to remember for where we are. it looks daunting so after the 2016 election teaching my civil rights movement class i walked in and the students are just shellshocked. and i said imagine.

the mayor hates you. the city council can stand you. the school board wants to see your children educated the judges and the cops. the statewide representatives don't represent you. your congressman? your senator? right. and your president? he wants you gone. and those in mississippi figured it out in 1950. you are right. and that is one of the things when you get the sanitized

soundbite version you don't understand how many failures there were how many missteps or the depth of the violence or all of the obstacles or the strategies or you don't understand the alliances they had to make how they had to be very meticulous about different types of institutions. and then to figure out where is congress? instead of just looking at a city council figuring out what are the weak spots that the south is trying to economically develop?

so that kind of strategy to think through and with the civil rights movement of martin luther king serves the purpose to defeat instead of empower. . >> we are a couple months removed from a primary election where they are campaigning and what i considered to be a pretty good insight from america today we have a lot of media attention between the left and the right. that is where most of the focus is so that real disparity is not horizontal but it is vertical between the well to do and the average

person and to what extent does your book cover the economic - - implications? . >> let me back up. in 2008 there was an election and one of the things that we heard after barack obama's victory was that in 2012 how racist can america be? we elected a black man twice. no we did not. what that is that we voted overwhelmingly for blackman for president of the united states but the majority of whites did not vote for barack obama in fact, they have not

voted for a democratic candidate since 1964. with the passage of the civil rights act. with signed legislation by lbj democrat to say that the federal government would enforce african-american citizenship rights. not since 1964 so you have a sizable number of whites voting for obama but that was his ground game organizing and registering folks to vote bringing 15 million new voters to the polls asian and young and poor making less than $15000 a year. republicans looked up and had

asked to be due moment. and they decided they would target the very coalition and when you think about for instance voter id we talk about it in terms of african-american african-americans. but we have to have an intersection so when the naacp and the aclu talk about indiana voting laws or voter id laws and said race and poverty go hand-in-hand in indiana and are taking these voters out, that is what these laws do. so the polling place shutting down polling places. in minority and poor neighborhoods, what that does

for every one tenth of a mile transportation is expensive. for every one tenth of a mile the black voter turnout rate goes down zero.5 percent so in georgia the voter suppression works because it sounds reasonable it doesn't sound like a targeted hit it sounds like they are defending democracy. or that they are doing something you would expect really responsible policymakers to do we have fiscal issues we have to balance the budget we have priorities so we will consolidate the polls to be fiscally responsible. in sparta georgia they moved the black polling station 17 miles away. to be able to get 17 miles to

vote, that isn't just a race issue it is a class issue. it is woven throughout this book the way class plays into this. what we want speaking on the royal we. [laughter] is a democracy that is vibran vibrant, that recognizes all of the citizens. a democracy that isn't afraid of its people. a democracy therefore to have policies coming out of the will of the people. one of the things they do with for instance is extreme partisan gerrymandering. and we know what the extreme

republican groups went into a room to sequester the bill to map the districts to reduce competitive races but also so that regardless of how many votes you got they would have the power but what that also does the gerrymandering of these key states has done, but somewhere between 16 and 26 additional republicans in congress that would not be there except for these partisan maps. and because these are rotten where they have chosen their voters instead of the voters choosing them. that means we have policies coming out of dc that are so against what the people want. think of the affordable care act. remember when republicans were barely through trying to get

the affordable care act? they are applauding paul ryan and they are happy about this? but the polls say 70 percent of americans want affordable care act strengthened. how do you reconcile the hot us house of representatives is seeking to get access to health care? while 70 percent of americans want it strengthened? or how do you reconcile that 80 percent of americans did not approve of the tax bill? that transferred one. $5 trillion to the wealthiest? voter suppression is destructive to american

democracy. and that's why we have to vote to those who believe in democracy because it's not about believing in power but believing in democracy and that's the transformation we are looking for. [applause] . >> so now let's bring in some questions from viewers. >> the newest book is called one person no vote how voter suppression is destroying our democracy a finalist for the national book award in the first book won the national book critics circle award called white rage. carol anderson we have a lot

of calls lined up starting with new york city from richard. >>caller: hello. thank you for taking my call and very much doctor anderson for your wonderful talk. as you were just discussing specifically the issues between race and class and how that affects our democracy. and in many cases it is the money that keeps the incumbent or all parties in power and that has become, it is always in and unto itself but in a democracy it should be the good of the people and we have not seen that come i hate to say this but since tip o'neill for god sake.

and citizens united made it much, much worse if you are not familiar with democracy in chains? i don't know if you are familiar but she addresses how this has been put forward over the past 50 years and i am wondering if you could comment on the mechanisms and realities and lies that have been put forward to push this agenda? . >> to push the agenda of money in politics? the biggest lie is that corporations are people. [laughter] [applause] and therefore have constitutional rights. and somehow limiting corporate donations to politicians is violating their freedom of speech. the kind of legal gymnastics

you have to do to make that plausible, we have to get dark money i love the money are - - i love the book dark money. we have to get dark money out of politics. there is work we have to do to get our democracy back on track with voter suppression techniques and opening the vote to larger shares in reducing the barriers is essential. to the kind of democracy we deserve. >> democracy and sharing's - - democracy in chains in both of carol anderson's books have been covered as well the african-american studies chair at emory university on top of that.

facebook comments. voter id should be required we are a constitutional republic. >> okay. one of the things that has been happening and i call it the play with words we can be a democracy or a republic? it is garbage. i don't know how else to put it it drives us off the point where we need to be. so first we are people that need to vote for our representatives. the fact that that vote is skewed and stamped upon and switched over and divided is a problem for our democracy. second, the reason voter id came into being, had to deal

with the lie of voter fraud. so we hear voter fraud voter fraud voter fraud. that's why i mentioned it and wove it through throughout because it is so dominant in the discourse 50 percent of americans believe that voter fraud is real. and it's not. what is real for instance a law professor out of california did a study that out of 1 billion votes there were 31 cases out of 1 billion votes over the span of 15 years we are looking at two per year that is hardly massive or rampant. when greg abbott at the time the secretary of state in texas and is now governor was

arguing for texas voter id law he was arguing before the judge that we have massive and rampant voter fraud and they said okay. how many is massive? rampant. he said to. [laughter] and when they cannot produce massive rampant fraud to have the laws that he once and he cannot produce the evidence? when you have the voter suppressors to produce that evidence it tells you that voter it is not needed it is another obstacle barrier. >> host: the next call comes from maryland you are on book tv. >>caller: thank you and second to tell the people to look around to see that

birthright citizenship is unconstitutional if they have republican governors and they will make it retroactive if your mother or father's not born in this country than watch out. should voting be penalized for the nonvoters just like it is in brazil? can the professor simply and solely give a distinction right now between a right and a privilege? thank you wisconsin. . >> mandated voted right versus privilege and choose one. [laughter] we want to get a lot of calls. >> i will go with birthright. the thing with birthright citizenship is that the

article came out and there is a brilliant scholar who has written a book on birthright citizenship and it is brilliant and she dissected each one of his arguments and laid it out. what we do know though and what nancy is getting to is that there is a move to have a new constitutional convention and to constricted the electorate and so that constriction means to turn the popular vote the way we popularly vote for our us senators into having them appointed for the state legislature if you have the gerrymandered legislature so that is also why this election

in 2018 is also so very important. >> thank you for coming out. i am from milwaukee and have been following the news about north dakota and the decision there for the native americans. can you speak to different issues what they a particular face? . >> i think the north dakota case is just, it epitomizes the difficulties they are. the issue was trying to pass voter id so you have to have an address. on the reservation they don't have addresses they use po boxes. in the supreme court ruled your po box is not enough if you don't have an address then hey. so what we are doing we had

essentially moved native people into a reserve and then started to stripping away their rights that they have by making it sound logical because again voter it is a fraud. we don't have massive rampant voter fraud. [applause] so by requiring these identification we know there is racially and economically disparate access for a variety of reasons to calm the electorate. so when i saw that coming through, yes. . >> mobile alabama go ahead. >>caller: yes.

think you so much for your talk. you really have inspired me. i am a white 64 -year-old female that has been fighting the fight since i was a young child. in mississippi and alabama as i was brought up in both states i went to alabama and they don't have gender equality either. we got jones elected and we worked very hard on the ground and now we are working on the ground again. the thing that i would like to say to all citizens is you can make a difference. you can make a difference by getting involved and doing your work i call tv stations and radio stations i wrote a 13 page letter today that i

will send off to as many people that i can possibly send it to on monday "the new york times", "washington post", post", citizens must be involved to save our democracy. these are very evil people these were burned in my brain. >> host: thank you very much we have to leave it there. >> yes. the engagement of citizens and the people of our state that people are the democracy and that is what we must continue to understand. it is that engagement to understand not just voting but what we have seen after the 2016 election. people calling representatives demanding to know how they stand on this issue or that issue to say no. this is what we want people

going to town halls. holding our representatives accountable that is that engagement that will make the difference. driving other people to the polls when they are shut down so we can handle with that distance does that engagement is how we save the democracy. >> host: this is a young audience but was anybody here involved in the civil rights movement at all in the sixties? here are some hands coming up. >> host: san diego you are on the air. >>caller: first of all, thank you so much peter you have contributed wonderfully to book tv. and yes i was involved in the civil rights movement in fact, our minister went down to selma.

i didn't go down there but he did. and i think also doing an excellent job she's an excellent speaker a very personable and likable. here is my fantasy somebody like george soros a multibillionaire always looking to do good things it would be wonderful if you could adopt to save our democracy in other words, to be so responsible for providing transportation and everything that is necessary so that voter suppression is denied. >> host: what about private money coming into the effort?

. >> and alabama one of the key elements is millions of dollars poured into alabama because that grassroots organizing is not cheap. but those that sending the money understood you have to take it to the local folks and how them figure out how to deploy the funds to come in from outside of that state to figure out to do this was not going to work so they had to trust in the local people that made a difference in alabama. >> host: one person no vote how voter suppression is destroying our democracy professor anderson is the author thank you for spending time. [applause] . >> the last nine hours we have been live at the wisconsin book festival.

thank you for joining us

. >> how does that play out? in this book is it too small is it just a little pill or something that is much bigger? how do we get beyond small nitpick things with the bioavailability? then there was a way to talk about it to deal with the actual heartland with all of

this food in the industrial way comes down to soy and corn that are fed to chickens and pigs and cows. and what is interesting all of these features they are very high in omega six you didn't realize there is a villain but the omega six fatty acids it turns out all the people like call them omega world they look at the entire world through omega-3 and omega six. they actually compete for space on the same enzyme three say resolution and six is inflammation. that is the idea that we have a diet saturated with omega

six we need to counterbalance with an omega-3 supplement. omega-3 coming from seafood so you has direct competition between the two molecules. people who say this competition question the ratio question some say that the absolute most important but i took away that there is no competition going on if you have the omega-3 america this is omega six america i know it's a little bit of a joke but there is an actual competition going on between these two systems that i believe is inherently healthier and one does have negative health outcomes so basically a question versus seafood and land food so this is a map of my home state of

connecticut anybody here? every dot on this map is a damn literally 3000 dams in the state of connecticut and wish there was another connecticut person here that's why they are so uptight because their c is blocked they have too many dams. what were they for? grinding corn and wheat what did they prevent and what did it destroy? crab and sturgeon and salmon all the fish that ran up into these rivers heavy omega-3 replaced by heavy omega six so with this seafood competition we see in so many different venues for example, working on a story from the mississippi from that giant pile is nitrate fertilizer and those

are people at the bottom interestingly walnut grove minnesota from little house on the prairie if paul could see that. [laughter] so all the nitrate fertilizer is washing down the mississippi which causes as a pollutant and a dead zone so last year we had the largest dead zone in the history recording the size of the state of new jersey and also right here in florida directly competing with seafood we have sugar that is refusing actively lobbying against controls for pollution runoff and i took this picture just now flying into miami just the amount of water is repurposed and used that should be running into the everglades instead of these fish nurseries but directed to land food agriculture i'm sure you

are all aware of what is going on in florida the huge fish kill caused by red tide that it is complicated by talk to enough scientists to reach the conclusion that excessive amounts of fertilizer changes composition of algae to the red tide direction to favor the high nitrate situations so if we try to address the red tide issue we have to think the way land food is affecting seafood. so then there is another issue there seafood versus energy so 40 percent of all corn that we grow in this country is used for ethanol and making oil if we go down that road we realize there is another way land food competes against seafood in a carbon area. when it comes down to it

energy production it is the largest contributor to carbon on the planet with corn fed livestock and methane is much more potent as a greenhouse gas causing the melting of the ice caps and there's a whole chapter and then certification but when we were talking about the way the ocean works we can go into the cold microbial loop with bacteria consuming phytoplankton and then it just goes around and around that is a serious doomsday scenario i'm not saying definitely that's where we are headed

we've had this in the atmosphere in earlier periods but the current system the current ocean that we love depends on certain concentration in the environment we are headed toward serious disruption in the food system.