c-span's cities tour from the drop-down at the top of the page or by visiting c-span.org/citiestour. you can follow the c-span cities tour on twitter for behind the scenes images and video from our visit. the handle is @cspancities. >> here's a look at some upcoming programs on booktv on c-span2. >> here's representative jackie speier. >> your gut?

great. i'll set? good. you're good. welcome everyone to kramerbooks. anti-semites for coming. i would like to welcome jackie spiers to kramerbooks. jackie is california's congresswoman underrecognized camping of women's rights, privacy and consumer safety. she is included in the 2018 list of top influencers transforming american politics. "undaunted" as a powerful memoir of surviving the jonestown massacre of becoming a fearless voice against injustice and inequality. so thank you so much for coming to kramerbooks. we are looking forward to a visit. enjoy. [applause] >> thank you all for coming out tonight. this is my very first reading, so we'll get through this together one way or the other. i thought i would start off by

reading probably brought many of you here, which is the jonestown experience. been reading a little bit more from the last chapter which actually discloses something deep in my life history that has formed a great deal of what i've done with my life. and in between there's lots of remarkable and not so remarkable expenses in my life that have shaped who i am today. so we can talk about jonestown in the people of temple and we can talk about the washington experience and how we make laws, and is very much like making sausage, and go from there. so i'm going to start with the prologue. i was dying. it was just a matter of time. line behind the wheel of the airplane leading out of right side side of my devastated body, i waited for the rapid shooting to stop.

then set my act of contrition, praying for forgiveness. i i use will and energy i had lt to finish that prayer before the lights went out. but the lights didn't go out and i slowly begin to take stock of my situation. i was 28 and i was about to die. my life would never be the one i imagined. i would never get married or become the mother of a boy and girl or leave a better place. or we passed when it's my time to go surrounded by loved ones. instead, my story was coming to an end on a dusty runway in the humid jungle thousands of miles from my home. i don't know if it's possible to articulate how gradually aware you become of the fleeting nature of your existence when you are confronted with the end. i have made if what felt like an

eternity. somehow, to the encroaching darkness of my final thoughts, i saw my 87-year-old grandma emma, the top, marvelous matriarch of my family. all i could think of was i am not going to make grandma lived through my funeral. not if i can help it. i couldn't bear the vision of her sitting in front of my casket, suffering. if not for my reference for her, i don't believe i would be alive today. she encouraged me to summon my will to move. breathing heavily, i dragged my shattered body away from that wheel. neither my doctors know i could explain how i physically managed it, given my state, that i pulled myself up by my feet and stumbled around to take shelter in the baggage compartment. i survived. survival against unfathomable odds to make every day that

follows swell with a renewed sense of purpose, though not immediately, and not for everybody. but with the hindsight of 40 years, i see that my baptism by gunfire guided me into the life i was meant to live, one of public service, one that would ignite the courage to make my voice heard, and one that would carry with it a visceral appreciation for each new day. that sentiment was far from my desperate thoughts at the time. truth be told, it would've been far easier to have closed a box on guyana long ago, or to have pushed the memory away into the recesses of my mind. what happened in the jungle was a massacre. a nightmare. though i survived, something within me did die on the airstrip, be my innocence or my belief that natural fairness of life, , but i can't deny have radically that nightmare molded my perspective and my instincts

and how much it has informed the woman i am today. we don't get to choose our formative moments. very often, adversity and failure shape us more permanently than fortune and success. that has certainly been the case in my life. the major setbacks i've endured, and there have been many, have actually propelled onward, each one reminded me how important it is to stand up again, as difficult as it may be, stronger and more steadfast. pain yields action. it can introduce a fervor to speak out for those whose voices are not heard. surviving jonestown crystallized where i need to focus my energy. it convinced me that i had a purpose. all he had to do was figure out how to fulfill it. so fast-forward into my term in

congress, and what happened in between was much. i actually ran for congressman ryan's expired term for office and loss, and spent six years on the board of supervisors and then 18 years in the state legislature, and ran for lieutenant governor of california and lost, and then ran the late congressman announced he was running for reelection, i decided to run for congress. it was 29 years from the first time i ran for congress and the second time i ran for congress and one. that is a record i might add. such applicant is called shattering silence. expecting the unexpected that catapulted to a whole new level in january 2017 when donald trump was sworn in as president

of the united states. the morning after the inauguration i hosted a breakfast reception at the capital, mobilizing hundreds of women, many of whom were from my congressional district, in the fight to ratify the equal rights amendment and to make women's rights of priority in the 115th congress. that proposed amendment, 24 simple words that would make it illegal to discriminate against citizens based on sex had been proposed in congress without adoption since 1923. most people are shocked to learn the sad truth about our constitution. in an interview given by supreme court justice antonin scalia in 2011, he provoked outrage by stating, and i quote, certainly the constitution does not require discrimination based on sex, the only issue is whether it prohibits it. it doesn't. unquote. he was correct if the only issue is whether it prohibits it.

the inauguration seemed the perfect day to send a message to the republicans ruling congress to the incoming administration and to the american people that women were not going to be treated as second-class citizens here we were not going to allow our centuries worth of hard-won rights rolled back even an inch. to me, too many of my colleagues and to much of the nation, we sent a response and hué 17. it was year to come together and aggressively address discrimination and all of its corrosive and violent forms. it was a tipping point when enough outraged women stood up, fed up and determined to take matters into our own hands. there was no more exhilarating affirmation of this and the women's march that took place in cities across the world. it was among the most heartening political uprisings i have ever witnessed. i'd been in politics for most my life and it seems a remarkable change in the conversation. when i was a ryan drill and for

years after feminism was practically a dirty word. i've been fighting for laws to protect women from my entire adult life. sometimes i've had to settle for incremental reforms, rationalizing half a loaf was better than no loaf at all. other times i stuck my high heels in the sand and to online, and often i was forced to wait for a more optimal time to act. in 2014 i tried to pass an amendment demanded sexual harassment prevention training in congress. the chairman of the rules committee did not even allow the measure to be debated. i try to add more funny for the compliance office to do more proper outreach, but that money was removed. i was battling for improvements but it was no willingness to listen. at times as if those sessions dealing so deflated. like giving up was never an option or a consideration. though i fought for causes ranging from environment protection to privacy laws, there are few that i i never

tired of championing your marquee issues that i i priorie since my first pamphlet as a supervisor can do. chief among them is women's empowerment. a campaign consultant once it buys me with the best of intentions to not be so focused on women, that doing so would only alienate men. but i responded and stimulated if women don't do it, who will? if the woman avoids taken on the cost women, who do we expect to affect change what she would leave it to men to fight for equal pay? i know as a woman i met my nor the in-house in the most diverse congress ever elected. we still only make up 20% of the representatives. that is not outdated. it will not be 23% in the next congress. yet we are more than half the population of the united states. in fact, i was only the 217th woman of over 12,000 members to serve in the house of representatives in the history of our country to date, only 289

women have served but that is about to change. it's no surprise i have a cute responsible to fight for laws to protect and equalize women and their daughters and granddaughters. so i've always been at the most, at my most dogged when it comes to issues like domestic violence and sexual so within our military come on college campuses, in the workplace and on the hill. the abuse of power especially towards women has always felt deeply personal. i know that i am far from alone in having experienced sexual abuse. i dealt with that horror as a child, and the memory of feeling so gullible, confused, and disgraced has shaped me irrevocably. as is too often the case, i was abused by a family member. in my case it was my grandfather. it's astonishing how many children are sexually abused in their homes.

often it's the uncle or the stepparent, the cousin. more prevalent than will ever come to the surface i fear. my own recollection is fuzzy because i was quite young and long ago will be out of my memory. but i do remember is that i would stay with my grandparents when i was six or seven and take naps with my grandfather. in the bedroom they had a german today so is nice and cozy under those whose feathered covers. he would follow me and put his hands inside of me. sometimes he would place my leg against his penis. i knew it was happening was not right, but i had no idea what to do about it, so i did nothing. i don't live or how it happened, probably five or six, though i can't say for certain. i also don't know precisely when or how the behavior stopped. it was a human instinct to suppress such horrors and

violations, and that's what i did for years. bearing it where what has been done to me under a layer of shame. but it kept resurfacing, clawing its way back into my young mind. i didn't know where i should turn. i couldn't tell grandma come as much a she loved and protected me, just also a devoted wife. eventually i told my mom. i was about 11 or 12, and i remember feeling terrified. i'm sure if she believed me or blaming our worst that i didn't have the self possession to know whether i had done something wrong but instead of anger i was expecting, moms whole face crumbled into an expression of guilt and anger. she didn't respond. she did need to. i could see in her eyes how crushed she felt for not protecting me. i very much doubt that my grandmother ever found out and don't even know if my mom toldd what kind of man his father was, and what he had done to me. as far as i know she kept that

you were so. at that time families especially were dense of silence and so i learned to compartmentalize. that has been one of several coping mechanisms that have kept the hardships i effaced from overtaking me. but it is not always been the most useful method. some things in life cannot stay filed away. the molestation was one of them for me. even now when i go to the cemetery, my parents are buried in the same area as my grandparents, just 13 13 rows , i take flowers or dad, mom and grandma. i avoid even look at my grandfathers great site. traumas have lasting effect and there made so much worse when victims are accused of making it up, or made if you like their trauma is an unnameable secret and a burden they must carry on. we need to do better. our baseline for dealing with sexual assault needs to be

re-believe you, i believe you, we'll make sure that this doesn't happen again. okay. i'd love to just at this point answer questions you may have about the book. >> i was wondering if you could talk a bit about how you've come to terms with the experience of what happened to you at jonestown? have you gone back to guiana? like what did you go through to kind of overcome that trauma and are you okay now? >> i have never gone back to guyana.

i was offered the opportunity to go back with media from time to time but i've never really wanted to go back. in terms of coping with it, it took a very long time. i mean, the surgeries i endured were many, , over ten. i was hospitalized for two months. but even after getting out of the hospital and recovering it was years. it was years physically and it was probably decades emotionall emotionally. >> thank you for the reading. looking for to reading the book. i saw an interview to did recently -- you did recently. to go through what you did to jonestown and then find out, you said you also survived the

unexpected death of her father, just seems like -- your husband, sorry, just seen overwhelming. i'm not sure if you want to share that story about your husband's loss, and you said that was actually even more difficult than what you experienced at jonestown. >> so 14 years after guyana, i was challenged once again, this time with much more difficult and far worse. after jonestown, i came to terms with the trauma by saying to myself that as one is given their fair share of grief, and mine just came early in my life. 14 years later when my husband was killed in an automobile accident by a young driver who had no breaks, he knew he had no

breaks, and ran a red light, was beyond description. i was pregnant with our second child. it was a high risk pregnancy, and i was driving to sacramento to give a speech to the california bankers association when i got the phone call. i was with my district rep. we turned around and drove back, and that started a just unbelievable journey to try and cope. because at a five and half year old son was in kindergarten that had to take from school that day and bring to the hospital to say goodbye to his dad, and then pulled the plug. it was probably the hardest thing i've ever done in my life. so that is one of a number of stories in the book that i use as a basis on which to talk

about the kinds of coping mechanisms that are used in my life, which i call the three f's, family, friends and faith. it's important for us to reach out and asked for what we need when we are traumatized because people are there for us but they just don't know what to do. >> thank you for your story. i -- is this working? i and fascinated with social movements along the lines of cold thinking mentality. i used to be a campaign tracker so i got all the republican events for the democrats, very dirty. and so a lot -- but, so as i was enhanced at the time and i would go to all the trump rallies. while there i was like this

doesn't feel normal, like this doesn't feel like a normal republican rally. it felt very cult like to me. this doesn't feel like normal partisan politics. and i'm just wondering, a religion scholar did a talk about how he is concerned that trumpism might be a kind of cult in the way. i'm wondering if you experience at jonestown and kind of your life has kind of shape your view of who trump is? aside from everything he is, but you know, adding your experience to that. >> that's not the first on the question has been post me, i might add. i mean, the parallels of individuals who are charismatic

and compel an audience to listen and to follow them, and certainly jim jones did and president trump did in his campaign, and even now, is telling, certainly. now, i don't know that i would go as far to say that trump supporters are a part of a a c, but they are certainly have coalesced into an entity that defies reason from time to time. and ask irrespective of what is fact on their positions on issues. i don't know how much of that is shaped by cable news the people watch now. if you only listen to one cable news station, then you get a particular perspective. but with jim jones, he also

preyed on vulnerable people. it was a whole universe of people that became attracted to the people's temple that were down and out, that were disassociated with family and were forlorn and were looking for a father image, looking for that family. and the people's temple to read that in for the there was another group that got interested in the people's temple because they saw this as a utopia that we could show on earth that blacks and whites could live happily together in a commune setting, and a socialist way we pull all of our resources together and turn over all our earthly belongings and live this utopian life. jim jones was a fraudster.

he was a man who twisted truth. he lied. he conducted sexual violence against people, men and women. he used physical abuse. he beat down the human being that we cherish. the mind control that was at work in jonestown was sinister, was shocking, was unbelievable. and yet he had, through all those forms of abuse, and by isolating them, been able to do all of that. 911 people to lose their lives in the jungle, it wasn't suicide. i hasten to add, it was murder.

those people, many of them, did not want to take their lives. >> thank you for coming and sharing your story with us, and i'm curious, you identified survivor of jonestown. there's not many of those but obviously you're interested it was so different from most people lost their lives there. i'm curious how you situate yourself with, say, maybe some of the people who escaped or family members who mourned their loved ones lost lives there, how do you situate yourself kind of with those people? have you met with families what the other question, i'm curious, in hindsight when you look back, was anything up, where people acting suspicious? do you look back and say they were acting shifty?

>> and answer to your first question, i have over the years engaged with many of the family members. we were successful in bringing some of the defectors out with us, and they were able to survive and move on with our lives. many of them have difficult lives though. there is a trauma associate with having survived when others have not, and i think that many of them also were broken. they become broken by what jones impose what many of them. the second question was -- >> in hindsight when you -- >> right. what was interesting at the time was i was very careful about going on the trip. and i actually was in the process of purchasing a condominium in arlington, virginia, and i literally had written into the contract that

the contract would be null and void if i did not survive the trip to guyana. and he did it because i thought everything would happen i didn't want my parents to be saddled with a piece of property 3000 miles away. people often say why did you go? this is 1978. there were not many women in legislative positions in congress. i fear that if i didn't go there was a staff member from the committee that was going, that it was somehow set women back. so i made the trip. now, i told congressman roy that i was really very concerned about our safety, and he said, come on, we have nothing to worry about. when you think about it from his perspective, there had never been a member of congress assassinated abroad, and a line

of duty. he was the first and hopefully the only one. but it was also a situation where we were, we were duped in part by the state department. the state department gave us the impression that it was everything was great down there, that the people were very happy. even though third been defectors that left and i told their stories to the embassy officials in georgetown guyana. they still have this message that would suggest that there was no reason for us to go down there at all. so i still point the finger at the lack of duty to warn, duty to investigate, duty to protect by the state department as were related to those american citizens living abroad. >> anymore questions?

thank you guys so much for coming, and thank you so much. >> thank you. [applause] >> with copies of the book in the back and she will also more than welcome to stay and chat with you guys for a little bit and sign those for you. thank you, guys. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable-television companies and today you continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court and public policy fence in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span's brought to you by your cable or satellite provider.

>> next on "after words",," economist stephen moore discusses the economic policies of the trump administration turkeys interviewed by veronique de rugy, senior research fellow at george mason universities mercatus center. "after words" is a weekly interview program with relevant guest host interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest work. >> host: it's my pleasure to be here today with steve moore to talk about his new book, "trumponomics" and it's a book that he co-authored arthur laffer. and steve, i don't think you need an introduction, anyone who's worked in washington, d.c. but since the audience that if one is from here, you are a distinguished fellow at the heritage foundation but you can pretty much everywhere. even at the