people for liquor these things out. they sniff out authenticity. they understand these issues but we have to be aware of them. the very fact i write that you are reading the book is good news. the fact that people want to dive deeper on these issues but i also think it's incumbent that we engage in federalism that we push back on ãbwe push these the federal government does too many things to too many people. so much of this shouldn't be done at all or should be the purview of the states. somehow we got to neuter the power of the federal government and just get them out of so much of this business. i think a lot of those answers will be pushing for states rights and doing those types of things. >> the entire program with jason schaefer's will air tonight, check your program guide for more information. [inaudible background conversations]

>> live in brooklyn it's a discussion on nonfiction books. .... >> before we begin, books by the authors can be purchased in barnes and noble's outside this building and they will be available for signing. christmas is coming so don't just think of yourself. buy a book and maybe one for

someone for christmas too. at the conclusion, we ask everyone to leave quickly so that the next event can be set up. there is a button under my desk that none of you can see where if your cell phone goes off, it will catapult you into a crocodile pit underneath your chair. the event today is organized around nonfiction which is an annual nonfiction book prize. founded in 19 1999, and it has all the best stories that are true. sports, biography, autobiography. eight is my huge privilege to be the prizes director. the award is named for bailey gifford which is an management

firm and i am usually grateful to them and to the organizers of the festival for making this event possible today. i am thrilled to welcome two of the most recent winning books, their brilliant and landmark books and it's a great privilege to have them here today. david fronts to my left. his landmark documentary film, how to survive a plague was nominated for an oscar, a directors guild award and won the peabody and glad awards. his latest book is a new york times bestseller in 2016. made over a dozen books of the year lists. the winner of the bailey gifford prize in 2017. to his immediate left, ãis the author of chernobyl. a history of a nuclear catastrophe which won the bailey gifford prize.

been published in russian, ukrainian, canada, ukraine and united states. these welcome my two guests. [applause] >> i'd like to ask both of my guests to begin by giving us a kind of overview of the subject matter of their books. which is to say, the aids crisis or the chernobyl catastrophe. just kind of what happened and when and to remind us and educate some of us about what the specific events that your book addresses work. david, perhaps you wouldn't mind starting. >> thank you everybody. great to be here how to survive a plague is the story of the plagued years of the hiv epidemic. the years before any medication made any dent in the disease. when an infection with hiv was almost certain death sentence. those years were from

1981-1996. i chronicle the story of the rise of the plague and the rise of activism around the plague. in 1981, it's hard to remember, but the gay community which was the initial and epicenter of the plaguein united states was nearly totally disenfranchised. we didn't have elected officials or representatives . out members of the press or very few in academia.none on television and we have laws in most states that made our lives criminal. so it was no surprise that the government's response and big pharma's response in the scientific establishments response, initially, was i guess passive would be too passive a word to describe it. it gave rise not only to the

massive plague which started with 41 cases and has now claimed 81 million cases. when it might have been contained initially. that gave rise to this new form of patient advocacy. citizen scientists who took on the plague themselves in ways that it turned out were essential and not just prodding the research establishment to getting to work but also in helping to identify compounds to bring to trials. to help design those trials and ultimately, to identify, discover tests and bring to market the pills in 1996 that made survival possible. >> thank you. >> thanks for inviting me.

it's a great pleasure to be here. my story starts exactly in the year 1986. it is the story of 1980s and chernobyl as the title of the book suggests, it's about the nuclear accident which is still today considered to be the worst nuclear accident in world history. by different estimates, anywhere between 50-200 million - - of radiation was released. an estimate would be between 50-100 atomic bombs. it happens in the dying days of the cold war. contributed in many ways to the end of the cold war and contributed as i'm trying to

show in the book to the end of one of the superpowers. the soviet union. i tried to document this story, not just of the accident itself but also the event that led to that. one of them was secrecy. secrecy that was on the level that not only some elements of the soviet nuclear energy, from people living in the soviet union and i found but even things about things that exploded were hidden from the directors of the reactor, contributing to the accident. an accident of a smaller scale but technologically, of the

same kind happened in the soviet union in 1995 which is today, st. petersburg. what went wrong was never communicated to the operators and chernobyl.when the explosion happened, there was a massive cover-up. i ask very often, what i was doing on april 26, 1986 when the reactor exploded and i lived at that time in the ukraine and soviet union. and i don't remember that day because we were not told for another three days that there was anything wrong at all. when we were told, the information was that it was a minor accident and everything was under control. the element of the story about secrecy and cover-up and hiding truths from people who are effective the most is an important part of my story. it turns theoretically, in a happy end in that i concluded with the developments of 2017-2018. when the new shelter over the

damaged reactor was built in chernobyl by international consortium . but that's the happy ending only to a certain degree. it was not enough to deal with the consequences of chernobyl. [indiscernible] >> chernobyl will stay with us for a long period of time and that is also one of the messages that i am trying to send with my book. we discussed today's presentation and thought, what is in common between the stories we tells. beyond the fact, chronologically, there is a huge overlap. there was also one more thing and that was about the threat

posed by radiation and still continues to be posed by aids. it's in many ways, and invisible threat. for people who don't want to face the reality. it allows people to stay in the state of denial despite the fact that the facts are there. and also conspiracy theories. that's probably something that is true not only today, and the two stories we are telling in our books flex your point about the invisible nature of the threat is interesting. how did that contribute to the incredible ignorance and misconceptions about hiv in those early years? the invisible nature of the threat. >> if like chernobyl, it was

made to be invisible. a decision to keep it unreported. it took years before the new york times and hundreds of deaths before the new york times put the story on the front page. new york city being the epicenter, it took work to keep that story from being told. but it wasn't something that was visible to the people in the middle of it. we used to say back then, that if you knew one person with hiv, you knew dozens. but it was possible to live right across the street from where those dozens lived and not see it at all. most people in new york in the 80s and to the states throughout the plague years, were just - - never saw it. our stories were kept from television.

images of our ravaged bodies were not broadcast. nor were the stories of the work we were doing to counter it ourselves. the stories of empowerment and political empowerment and scientific empowerment of the community, those are things that eventually started making the difference in media coverage and getting the story out. >> i don't want to label the similarities between two profoundly different events. but there's the sense of a community, maybe as a national or regional community being at the epicenter of a disaster or crisis is also very true in the chernobyl story as well. >> yes indeed. the immediate community, 50,000 people approximately.

quite a significant delay, took more than 24 hours after the explosion and the radiation was everywhere on the streets of the city for the authorities to tell them that something is wrong. there were weddings going on. as radiation was spreading. and there was no information. those people were then resettled and then they extended the exclusion zone 230 kilometers. the question was the unknown. what is radiation? how is it spreading? if i'm standing next to you, if i'm shaking your whether i'm getting that radiation as well. people were resettled to other areas. children were sent to other schools. the neighbors basically didn't know how to react to that. again, they are rather different stories but there are

parallels. and then what you see is - - not so much in terms of the one that's done by the states to deal with consequences. altogether 600,000 people were mobilized and served mostly through the harmony, into this most dangerous place on earth. ãmostly through the army. they say it was a waste of human capital because so many were exposed and there was no need. they were throwing people at the problem. the other level of mobilization happened maybe three years after chernobyl and that was about the truth about her noble because the government was still hiding the truth. people wanted to know the fallout and what it looked like.

eventually, that leads to the rise of the first mass movement in the soviet union. in places that have nuclear power plants like lithuania. out of those movements, movements for the independence of those that aspects we will come back - - >> let's slow down slightly about the differences in the way the authorities responded. i want to hear more about the first 24 hours and not three-year period. but david, there was a high number of relatively rare and in that moment, obscure cases. give us an idea of how federal authorities helped to respond to this. >> it's measured on several levels. the new york city response was nothing. no response. san francisco was one of the

other epicenters in the early days. it was ultimately decimated by the epidemic. - - to make money available and compassion available to people that were sick. there was nothing else to give anybody been they created caretaking networks funded by taxpayer money and the like. all this while, there was no research going on. it was something that nobody really knew because you assume the public health authorities were doing what public health authorities are typically the ã get excited about doing. it wasn't until 1987, six years into the epidemic that it became really apparent that there was no research initiative. >> were there people within the public health authorities who were advocating that this

disease was extremely serious and should be better understood and they were being closed down for political reasons? or was it indifference? what was going on? >> largely indifference even from the reconciled. it was considered an illness specifically forgay people . something that gay people brought on themselves. sort of a moral punishment that people believed was taking place. in fact, ronald reagan was the president then. he called it back. he said it was - - you know, a divine response a filthy vice. that defined how government dollars were spent. after the actor rock hudson got sick and died, that any money or national attention was freed

up. there was no drug on a research priority list that was being studied. and realizing this, many people in new york who were sick with hiv at the time, gave you a life expectancy of 18 months. came together and formed an organization to try to take this on. what they were doing initially is just expressing anger ultimately ways to express anger in productive ways. in ways that engaged people in ways they needed to engage. >> so we got mobilization on this story. we will come back to mobilization . but i want to ask him also.

both in the first 24-48 hours where presumably, there were anxious conversations going on. but also in the unfolding months and maybe years. how did the response unfold? >> people in industry and government, nuclear reactors don't explode under socialism. >> when you say vague, which government? do you mean in the kremlin? >> it was throughout. gorbachev said when he got the information early in the morning, he was really shocked. the president of the academy of science who was also a scientific advisor to the group that designed the reactor told us they were absolutely safe. you can put it in the red

square and nothing would happen. the most amazing thing that belief was also in the industry itself. they didn't know or think these things could happen. the worst-case scenario, they shut it down and it goes away. that meant that first of all they were not psychologically ready. they were in a state of denial. it's difficult to accept and if you accept it, what are you doing? what are you doing about that? so it took a while and then there was a system where the decisions even about resettling had to to be taken at the highest level. gorbachev was second in command. the other thing, the way how

the response was organized and it shows what was wrong about it. today - - david was speaking about different epicenters. chernobyl has more than one epicenter. when you look at the map for the most contaminated areas .1 would be around chernobyl where it's supposed to be. another would be a distant part of russia because they were - - in the video active clouds and rain wouldn't get to central russia but all of that radiation fell in other centers. if you look at that, they saved millions in the big cities but there were hundreds of thousands of people living in those rural areas.

i don't want to be in the position to make that decision. the problem was they never told the people who lived there. >>. >> you've got the denial and disbelief that something could fail so catastrophically. that- - there was - - on an incredible scale. >> the information was kept secret. i have information on one of the brave journalists who was researching that story people in that chernobyl area that settled in the areas that were more contaminated then around chernobyl. four editor ordered her not to do that. - - she said she needed that

day off because she had to do an abortion. that was considered to be a legitimate reason. she said that in interviews. >> to come back, here we are, these stories are unfolding. mobilization. david, you generously left off a moment go. can we pick that up again. 1987 and nothing is happening. >> i should also say there were some things happen. the federal government was releasing money to study ways to quarantine gay people. they were finding ways to use the new hiv antibody's test to identify people who were either at risk or infected and come up with policies about containing

them. proposals were being discussed on many state levels and city levels. but also by the federal government for ways to round us up in our ability to infect other people out of the equation. we knew that everything was very dangerous, politically and medically for us. i was a journalist at the time. as i was telling you earlier, i had gotten so freaked out by what was happening, i decided to report elsewhere for a while. i was in nicaragua when chernobyl happened. that was the country that identified with the soviet union and began to lie to people about what was happening but when i got back in 1987, it was just as this anger was coming to a head. there have been a lot of activism before that.

- - was created by a group of hiv-positive activists. who theorized ways to keep the rest of the community safe. it was presumed 56 percent of the gay male population were already hiv-positive. when it was discovered that nothing was happening folks started gathering just to protest. just to express some sort of breach. the group called the self act up which stood for aids coalition to unleash power. a title that were presented the 80s, i guess. for the first 3-4 years, they

just closed bridges and tunnels. they protested at wall street and the fda and they started recognizing that the people they were demanding action from didn't know what to do. that they were as lost in all of this for patients given this death sentence. that's when they began this new innovation and grassroots activism which created what they call the inside outside approach. they were armies of people mobilized who could force open any door it turned out. for meetings with the heads of pharmaceutical companies and people in charge of research at the universities. etc. even politicians. once they had those doors open, they needed this elite group to go in and to begin a dialogue.

there were patients now working in partnership with researchers and funders and pharmaceutical companies at just about every stage of the study of new diseases. the study of new drugs and the bringing of those drugs to the market. >> and it just wasn't ronald and nancy reagan touched personally. work from his whipping affected by the epidemic. >> because it was such a dangerous time in america to be known to be gay, the closet was a crowded place. and hiv made the closet door and visible. you could no longer hide. hollywood leading men of

enormous proportions. had been living in the closet very comfortably until he got sick. there was almost no other explanation was that he was gay. that anybody would accept. liberace, who was another great performer and a flamboyant man somehow convinced the man he was straight. and that he was dying of, a watermelon diet that had gone bad. people tried to stay in the closet but it was just not possible to he started seeing the times coverage of the epidemic and all the major newspapers coverage was most profound on the obituary pages. and you would open up the obituaries and find half of the people, sometimes maybe more for young men. relatively young men who died of mysterious ailments.

that's where you started recognizing that this disease was reaching into all aspects of our communities. all states and cities. and i think, ultimately, in just about the majority of the families in the country. we begin to become apparent that this was a disease that impacted everybody. >> before we go, let's talk about the mobilization chernobyl resulted in. tell us what the inside outside approach was point what does that mean? >>. >> the organization of activists created the study groups. there was a crisis and intravenous drug users and they created a study group of people who invented these notions of clean needle exchanges and began to do that work. but they also had to take their arguments of that clean needle

exchange to research organizations who might study to see if it was doing any good. and often to the authorities who criminalized possession of hypothermic needles. the work they wanted to do to stem the thread was illegal. the organization i followed most closely is a group of people, none of whom had any scientific training but who took it upon themselves to learn what needed to be learned about immunology and pharmacology. and biology. virology. all aspects of the epidemic that needed to be understood and so far had not been cracked. they developed for the first time, national priorities for how to study these various aspects. they set an agenda by 1989 that

everyone paid attention to if they didn't adopt it directly. that was the inside group who was working with the rest of the organization that made it impossible to not take a meeting with them and not listen to what it was they were trying to advocate. >> you began to talk about the citizen mobilization entry noble. can you pick up that thread for us. >> i just realized there was another big area where our stories and that is the - - of chernobyl because mobilization was happening out of that fear and the threat posed by radiation. i started by saying chernobyl was the worst nuclear disaster in the world history. but if you count the people who died from that explosion.

a relatively small number of people. two people were killed immediately. between 30-40 died from acute radiation syndrome. within the next few weeks after that. and the rest, the medical consequences of chernobyl are pretty much unknown. for a number of reasons, including on the international level. [indiscernible] there was never a big study of the medical consequences of chernobyl. the resources committed or studied. initiated on the level that happened after hiroshima. the difference is huge in the

sense that hiroshima and nagasaki, that's when mediation is released within a short period of time. chernobyl is even more mediation but released over a long period of time. these long-term consequences of that. people don't die anymore from exposure to the radiation but the immune system, they get cancers. extra cases of cancer among children alone. thyroid cancer and other things.we still don't know. you go to wikipedia and other places and you see the number of people who eventually died from chernobyl. it would be anywhere between 40,000-100,000. what that means is there is such uncertainty that there was no research done. in that sense, radiation, the mobilization happened but it never produced the result in

terms of mobilization of resources and medical communities to deal with that. what produced was really political activism. and it came at the time when gorbachev just started to introduce some elements of democracy in the soviet union. so that created for people an opportunity to manifest and mobilized and so on. eventually, that was the start of the process that led to the collapse of the soviet union in terms of the future of democracy. very mixed results because most of those countries that emerged out of the soviet collapse eventually went authoritarian. >> you talked to earlier about the sort of movement to discover the truth about chernobyl. how did that express itself?

that suddenly people wanted to know the truth about what happened? what were they trying to discover there? >> they started with this demand for truth. the first public rallies were about that. the government officials were trying to control that. the big public valley was approximately 100 miles from the chernobyl. was one the activist were getting to the microphone. they switched off the microphone and the entire crowd was demanding, microphone, microphone! they eventually did a documentary for the search for truth about chernobyl which was called, microphone. they were trying to get to the microphone, literally. a lot of people among those who were mobilized were people who

actually had access to information. a were scientists, scholars. they knew that. but there was the control of the kgb, in particular. not to dive old step. so in 1989, the publication of those. this is also the time when the soviets economy is going into a tailspin so there was no money for anything. so now there was knowledge. maps. how dangerous and how not dangerous it is. but there was no researchers anymore. on the political level. a lot of the countries go into this independence. about this knowledge about chernobyl but do it very

differently about how they approach.the ukraine becomes major mobilizing factor, anti-soviet. in belarus, that's the country that suffered the most. so russia, ukraine and belarus were the most affected but out of those three, it is belarus. roughly half of the population or territory is contaminated. until recently, there way to deal with it was a denial on the state level. partially because, they don't know what to do. >> i'm going to come to the audience for questions so do have a think. want to ask relatively quickly each of our speakers because i'm sure there will be questions from the audience. just about the after effects of

the crisis. not that these ever fully end. butwhere we are now , 20 years on or so. what lessons have been learned do you think? how things have changed. ridiculously huge questions. >> i'll try. certainly, there are solutions to the hiv epidemic. and what happened after 1996 when it became apparent that it really was changing the entire nature of the hiv infection. these new pills. then the struggle became how to get them out to the rest of the world. and that became another challenge for activism and has been very successful, some 20 million people are now alive on these same pills that are available in the west. and that activism continues.

i used to think it was going to be impossible to ever turn the dial back on the kind of cultural integration of the lgbtq community. i thought it was a permanent arrival. that we had obtained. and now i see it's not. and now we see the rolling back of acceptance. legal rights and privileges all across the globe including in this country. it's been quite a shock to see that cultural gains are so impermanent it can be and that vigilance has to continue at all times. >>. >> is it possible to summarize? >>. [indiscernible] i will try to make it short. if you look at the graph that

gives the idea of how many nuclear reactors have been commissioned every year. the peak comes to the year 1985. the industry as a whole never recovered from chernobyl. a lot of improvements were made according to the type of reactors. they are mostly gone by now but there are 5-6 still in russia that is operating. generally, the nuclear industry, especially after fukushima is going through a difficult period. that were involved in building nuclear reactors. filed for bankruptcy. the nuclear industry tries to get a second license for life.

it doesn't work really well for them. the country that was really going all the way nuclear was china. the most dangerous development is the new frontier for nuclear is no middle east. to reactors under construction in egypt, saudi arabia. and it's not just about the absence of the safety culture. in particular tradition. it's also acquiring nuclear reactor, it's a backdoor to acquiring a bomb. the story in iran and why everyone is so concerned about it. about in an iranian nuclear reactor. and on the other hand, in the quote unquote first and second

world for the nuclear industry was developed, it goes through a different type of challenge because it becomes more and more difficult to compete with the new sources of energy. and nobody knows what to do really with the nuclear waste that is left after the reactor is decommissioned. [indiscernible] >> a nuclear power plant that functioned without any accidents, there is a - - left that generations of children and grandchildren and their care and culture and will have to take care of. here in this country, we still can't find a place, a good neighbor that would agree to

bury that stuff in her or his backyard. everybody thinks it's a good idea to store it somewhere but no state to so far agrees to do that. so there are big challenges and again, chernobyl is a reminder how big they are. still on the medical side, there is very little known about long-term. >> do we have any questions? any hands that will go up? yes, in the middle please. there is a microphone coming. >> thank you for the discussion that we've heard a lot about the subject matter you wrote about but i wonder if you both can talk more about your process. how you found your story and went about the process of writing the books. >> i will give it a try.as i said before, i was a journalist on the ground following aids scientist in politics from 1981

forward. i knew that that watershed that happened in - - for the first year or two we didn't know how permanent that change would be. could people tolerate thedrugs . so i was doing a lot of reporting around what the side effects of those drugs would be. ultimately, it occurred to me that - - the stuff we were watching. we knew whatit was changing . in the way that scientists practiced and drugs are researched. we knew so many aspects of public health had been revolutionized as a result of his activism. what i wanted to find out was how much that activism, what role it played directly in the discovery of these inhibitors which was the new compound that made a difference. and how activism worked to develop the idea that if that

were drug were taken in combination with two other drugs, that resistance could be thwarted. i started doing reporting backwards. and then, i found my characters that way. the people who were on the inside of this inside outside, were so deeply inside that they had become. that i didn't know what they were doing there. they had literally become key members of the teams doing this research. so once i was able to see what they were able to accomplish, i started working backwards to find how they put themselves in that position in the first place. that's the story i follow is really a story of triumph. and i started what i said in the research is, a lot of good came out of the aids playing. people thought that made no sense. but that, really so much of

what we take for granted today in the way of science and medicine is a direct result of activism around that. >> my approach was very different. the title of the book or subtitle is, history of the tragedy. so i'm a trained historian. generally, we are more comfortable talking to and writing about dead people and people who are still around. writing on something - - it's always a challenge. chernobyl is very much part of my own story and the story of my family. >> can ask where you were on 26 april? >> i was in the soviet union. i lived approximately 500

kilometers, 350-400 miles from chernobyl. the big thing was the contamination of the waters as well. the so-called - - syndrome where it gets to the underground waters. my classmates were mobilized among those 600,000 people. again, there was a lot of personal connection. to the story. for me, the key factor became really the opening of the archives. particularly opening of the archives in ukraine as the result of the - - revolution that included government and kgb archives and what they were reporting on. that, for me, was really a big boost in terms of my research.

a lot of interview and history was done by others. my task, how i saw it in research and writing was to make the documents and the language ãsometimes scientific. the vocabulary, to make it work with those stories of people. and that is how i tried to write the book. and for me now, the book generally was received quite well. i just flew from ukraine yesterday evening and there i participated in a book festival

for the ukrainian translation of the book. they were trying to be objective, of how that word going to react to that. it's been out for one week or something like that been some key characters still haven't read it. so now i'm a little bit nervous. >> i've run out of time. i'm enormously grateful to our two speakers bit i can't recommend these books highly enough. not only are they landmark books, brilliantly written, but they are bursting with extraordinary humanstories. ultimately, i think very inspiring about what human beings can achieve . as well as alarming. you have an opportunity to go outside to table 1 at barnes and noble and get your book signed. buy one for yourself and one for christmas. - - has a new book coming out called forgotten masters of the eastern front. it's about american airmen

behind soviet lines during the second war and i recommend to you too. [applause] >> please take these downstairs with you to the signing and do please clear the room as probably as you can and take your things with you. [inaudible conversations] >> you are watching booktv on c-span2. live coverage of the brooklyn book festival. while we wait for the next author event which is a conversation about lgbt issues. we want to show you a portion

of tonight's "after words" program. our guest is michelle - - and she is discussing u.s. immigration policy.>> the vatican and conference of u.s. bishops are actively involved in subverting our orders. but i didn't know how deep and how many billions of dollars were at stake. many of them in the form of government contracts for the refugee resettlement. in the case of the u.s. conference of catholic bishops. subcontracts dealing with sheltering and paying for foster care for unaccompanied children, unaccompanied minors from south of the border and central america. what's alarming is you've got many unwitting catholics giving money to catholic relief services or catholic charities or campaign for human development. who don't understand that these organizations have been hijacked in some cases by

social justice warriors. or it's in their dna that they were in alliance with - - in chicago. so we give money every thanksgiving as part of a national campaign. as i said before, people are under the impression that this is going and staying in their neighborhoods. and it's being sent abroad it's like this vicious cycle. this money-laundering machine. and it's not just the catholic church. i talk about the lutheran immigrant and refugee services. this is one of the voluntary agencies in the beltway. that has one of these exclusive refugee resettlement contract and they are responsible for bringing elon omar and her family here and there likely responsible for transforming the twin cities into the biggest breeding ground for

jihadist plots taking place to mystically and many of these men brought here in their toddler years or early elementary school years but now going back to somalia and killing their own people or targeting american soldiers. i find it highly ironic that you have these liberal military leaders who published a piece in the "washington post" recently, arguing against a more radical reduction of refugee resettlement numbers by saying it would make us more unsafe because we need to import more arabic translators from afghanistan and iraq back here. my answer to that is an appendix in open borders incorporated, which profiles 60 of what i call jihadist. including at least two muslim translators that were employed by the u.s. army who were arrested, charged or convicted of complied - - of plotting jihad against america.

>> you mentioned something else that caught my attention in your book about the funding of a lot of these entities particularly on the left. george soros. he spreads money around trying to push an agenda, i would argue a fairly radical agenda. >> i wonder if you would talk more about his wealthy donor forces impacting this debate. >> yes. it's become - - to talk about george soros. he has many of his minions that are employed by groups like media matters. the now defunct big progress. groups like this. the have labeled any criticism of george soros spending as anti-semitism. as you mentioned, i am the wife of a grandson of ukrainian jules and this still doesn't insulate me from these charges. the chapter i wrote is simply filled with facts about how the

large bulk of his $25 billion net worth is now being directed toward the open society foundation. 18 billion he has earmarked to achieve his agenda. again, this is not some fantasy. he says he considers sovereignty, quote, and obstacle to his goals of using the united nations to achieve his own ends. whether for financial or ideological reasons. what's daunting is for your informed, and these leaders on my side of the ideological aisle. we know he's involved in many high profile groups that become active during the electoral season. but there are hundreds and hundreds that proliferate with names you don't even understand what they mean.

the abolish ice movement in new york city has been perpetrated mostly by a group called, make the road new york. i don't even know what that means but they came out of nowhere to organize thousands of people to descend on the airports in new york city when trump tried to introduce the travel ban. which was all centered on making sure we don't have another 9/11. there are numerous of these groups that then turn around and take their grants and grant them to other organizations. i think it's really important for people to see how many layers are involved here and to make sure in their own neighborhoods that they are doing their homework about who's - - sanctuary cities were example or spearheading the drives for driver's licenses for illegal aliens or in-state tuition discounts. we talked about montgomery

county, maryland, and its political action arm endorsed the montgomery county executives. it's a cozy little network. >> i think you articulated that very well. one thing that might help for those of viewing is to truly understand open borders incorporated walking someone through the cycle of this human smuggling effort. that's at the center of it. a family sitting in the northern triangle of guatemala, el salvador, who are struggling. they say i'd like to go to america. they're told, you don't have to come through the normal channels. pay a fee to be taken across the river and you'll be able to do whatever you want to do. they are told that with some degree of honesty. what the cartels are saying, their sing pay a fee.

what is that fee? different people you talk to, it's something like $7000. so a cousin or aunt will pay the fee for somebody. phil principally to the border. they will pay coyotes. it's an actual supply chain. this whole business model built around this will take a video someone coming across the river.then sometimes still take a dad or brother and abuse them. they will take a video of the abuse. send it to them and ask for more money. then they'll get across the river. then sometimes there taken to some sort of stash house and held for ransom. in the meantime, they go straight to border patrol because they know they will get caught and released. if you have a child under our current interpretation of the law. it sure get out of jail free card. your automatic entry card. so i can go on and on but i think it's important to the american people. you alluded to this with open

borders incorporated it's a whole system to accomplish this to the detriment of our sovereignty. >> that's right. the fluency with which all of these players speak about this racket. that premium they pay to get across. knowing that - - is right there.the binational lawyers to hold there, know your rights seminars. we talked about lexis-nexis inside the ice facilities. there is an appendix in open borders incorporated that lays out all of those legal organizations. an entire army when i call the illegal aliens lawyers lobby. every white shoe law firm that provides pro bono legal services. ringing cases all the way to the supreme court, let alone

the judicial tyrants. it's not just the ninth circuit. i understand that's a great shorthand for people signaling that they understand is a problem with the courts. but when you have these individual circuit court judge , unilaterally asserting authority to overrule the president's powers on immigration. we have a systemic problem. ... [inaudible background conversations] live coverage of the brooklyn

book festival continues now, max it's a conversation about lgbt issues. >> thank you all for being here on this lovely sunday afternoon. the last day of summer and you are spending it inside with us. we are really appreciative. my name is brian nines, good afternoon. i will be your monitor today and before we begin our programming, earnest, i would like to you to know books by these authors in this program can be purchased at barnes and noble outside this building where the authors will actually be signing their books immediately following the program. at the conclusion of the program, please go directly to your signing tables. okay. first agreement. i can also let you know that we need to clear the room as soon as we are done, although i'm sure you are going to want to linger, you can meet them downstairs at the signing table. thank you for being here and we are going to start, just to let

you know we are going to reserve about 10 minutes at the end of the session for everyone to dialogue with each other. if you have anyone that sparks, write it down, write a little note, make sure you remember so we don't waste any of your lovely time trying to recall what it is we spark. by way of introduction i will let each of you say who you are and the title of your book. >> i am william dare men, my book is called "the lie", a memoir of two marriages, cat fishing and coming out. >> look at the notes on the side, can you hold that up for the people at home. that's a good book. lots of notes. >> my name is summer ãi'm the author of a memoir "we have all this in here". >> my name is ryan o'callaghan,

my book is called "my life on the line" how the nfl damned near killed me ended up saving my life. >> just to make it explicit, this is the 1:00 p.m. panel at the brooklyn book festival and the title of the panel is "the paths to pride" as it's been described, it's brothers, sisters, moms, dads, seniors, children, friends and strangers who are lgbtqia plus, living secret lives for someone or everyone often a great personal expense to their health, sanity and well-being. each of these people have decided to be brutally honest in their sharing of their stories. i just wanted to start where our title start. "paths to pride" and looking at you ryan, when you personally felt what you use as your working definition of pride in

being out and proud gay man. >> that took quite a while. i didn't come out until my family until i was 29 years old at the end of my nfl career. even then, i wouldn't say i had my sense of pride yet. the first year or year and and a half after i came out my life was a disaster. i had to get things together. you don't go from almost 30 years of self-hatred and everything else i had built up to perfectly fine overnight. it took me quite a while to learn to love myself and deal with it. i think the first time i really felt part of the community and proud was probably like 2 and a half years ago right before the book process started. i had my first longer-term relationship and i was more educated on the struggles of the lgbtq community i finally

felt comfortable in a position to actually speak up that's what took me so long to actually do that. >> summer, what you're working definition of pride and when did you arrive at that place? >> embracing my true authentic self and finding out who that person is. i think for me, how that happened was for a really long time i was looking for people like me. people who sort of embraced all the intersection malady that comes with being a ãbbeing an immigrant. all those identities are really important to me. about five years ago i came across this mosque in toronto and up until that point i wasn't really sure what my relationship with islam was because i'm not sure if you know but a lot of muslims and ã ãwere not embraced.

that was the first time i sort of came into contact with a lot of clear muslims like me who were questioning their own relationships with islam. they were accepted exactly as they were. that was the first time when i started feeling like i had a community and didn't really have to hide who i was anymore. i think that was probably the moment for me when i started embracing pride. >> same question. >> i came out probably later then all of you at 43. but there's a quote that says everybody comes out at the same time when they are ready. i came out when i was ready. there's a lot of stigma and shame for people who are married in a straight marriage because you built your entire life on that lie. you built everything on it.

as the years pass it gets harder and harder to come out. when continuing to lie and telling the truth or both forms of betrayal you can get stuck there for a while. if you love someone, you have to come out to them. you have to give them the truth. they deserve it. so it took a lot of unlearning to embrace myself, to embrace my kids. i think what i think of as pride is best summed up in what my daughters say to me, they say, we want a marriage like yours and paul's. my husband is here in the audience. that to me finally made me proud that i was displaying something so authentic and real for my kids. >> with this notion of authenticity and realness and

the idea of coming out and this whole concept of everyone comes out at the same time "when you are ready". does anyone want to talk about the continual process of coming out? because there is no one time can you come out at work, you come out at every family reunion you coming out at any mosque that you enter or situation. can you talk about your journey with this sort of continual process of coming out and inhabiting space fully as you are. >> my coming out process is very slow. i started with the people i was most concerned about accepting me. my best friends, my family as soon as i have a talk with them and on board that gave me the confidence to keep going. and then i went to the professional world with the general manager of the football team and close friends there. i was just continually shocked about how many people were totally fine, they really didn't see what the big deal was. and it still surprises me today when i meet people in all walks of life from different political affiliations that are

totally on board. it got to the point where i basically told everyone that i wanted to know and that's what i did something publicly to put myself out there to others that could relate. >> and you are just waiting for the hammer to drop, you came out publicly in a big way and it was such a dull moment that nothing really manifested. >> the first time i came out publicly was at a local county sports hall of fame. i thought i was ready. i had my first boyfriend and this was two years before i did it publicly, really publicly. it didn't catch any attention. that was a blessing though because i wasn't ready at all for what ended up coming when i did it in a bigger way through national media. i'm so glad that didn't happen because i had so many people

reach out and i hadn't really lived the life like i should have had anything to stand on where i was giving advice like i was having to. >> so you had a co-author in your book and the day that you came out nationally on a big public platform and your phone is blowing up, can you share that advice that sid shared with you about what you should do with your phone blowing up? >> put it down. it was nonstop. which was great. i was happy so many people were interested in my story. it was a little overwhelming. he tried to prepare me for what was to come. i thought it would be a big deal but it got overwhelming. he just told me to put your phone down, you can get back to them when you are ready. >> with you ms. habib, didn't happen in national way but you had to come out to a bunch of different communities

continually. >> i think i sort of kind of makes me really proud to come out in spaces where i feel like there are not that many people like me. i sort of feel like something sheds on people's mindsets because there are not that many ãbi have the privilege of feeling safe in the spaces they occupy and it's not something that's available to a lot of folks. it sort of makes me happy that maybe by doing so, by just being myself, by coming out and sharing ym, maybe i can make things easier for other people. maybe you can open doors for other people. i know it's not for everyone to feel like they have to come out all the time but i actually really enjoy it. i enjoy challenging people's perceptions every time i do it.

>> speaking of those perceptions, william, you're the only person who came out and head children and you are coming out process was a familial thing that they even had to share even after moving from states. i remember something you imparted about your daughter. >> the person i came out to was my wife in a walmart parking lot. it was a very different. >> things go down at walmart. >> people do anything to not go into a walmart. [laughter] it just happened that way. it's a very american tail obviously. we do talk about having to come out, so many times to so many different people. i did have to come out to my daughters, i had to come out again to my mother, i had tried it when i was 19 and she showed me back into the closet. the good news is that the second time i came out to her, she fully embraced me. so she had evolved and that can

happen. but there's also all the other things that we think are unlovable about ourselves that we put inside a closet and it's not just being gay, it could be that you are not masculine enough. or that you like to dance or all these other things that you are not living when you are in the closet. it's not just the gayness it's all the other things you have to reveal. i abused steroids. that was another closet door had opened. i continue to open those every day. it's a wonderful feeling when you do that and you affect people. they write to you and say, i'm in the same shoes you are in and i get letters every day from people like that. >> speaking of the letters that i'm sure lots of you or that you all received, ryan, i'm thinking of when you did come out and the letters in the way that your email ãbthis guy made a decision to at the end of coming out nationally what is email at the bottom of the

story. so people wrote. >> pete they wrote. but what was also encouraging as i didn't get one hateful email. i thought it might happen. i was ready for it. >> you are the one. >> i did not get one hateful email. i got some very impactful ones and when i talk about in the book there was a father who had disowned his son quite recently and he saw my story and the impact it had on him was to make and reconsider what he did and it made him reconnect with his son. things like that are tremendous for that to happen.i know there's been other instances like that. to have an impact like that is really what the whole purpose was. >> you brought up the father. let's get into the family thing. each of you had a mother who

was a mother. like the space that these women take up psychically and physically in our lives really resonates in all of your books. without turning this into a complete therapy session, if you guys want to dialogue a little bit about the evolution that took place you hinted a little bit about how your mother and her life came around and you also had a very close relationship with your mom that was impacted by choices that were enacted upon her and how you chose to live your life and ryan, choosing to separate yourself from your parents really cocoon yourself as a way of separating them from what it was that you planned to do. there is not a question there but talk about your mother.

>> i did try to come up to my mother when i was 19 i spent a summer in colorado with my aunt sheila and before i left, my mother sat me down the living room and said, i want to tell you something, your aunt is a lesbian. she couldn't even say the word loud enough because it was almost like a curse word. that was the environment i grew up in in the south and north carolina. it was just not an option but i spent a summer with my aunt and realize how wonderful it really was. i came back and i couldn't say i was gay because i couldn't even other that word but i did say, the love that sheila feels for her girlfriend is the same as what we feel, what everybody else feels. she was immediately incense. and asked me if i wanted to be a woman too. and asked me to talk to the priest. a lot of people think that conversion therapy only happens in institutions, but so often it happens at the dining room

table. that's what happened to me. we prayed every day that i would not be gay. so i sort of showed that away. the silver lining is she evolved and when i came out to her again she said, what i said to you was wrong, can you ever forgive me? it was immediate. the acceptance from our parents is the most important thing that they accept us for who we are. >> just to prompt you a little bit, there is a section in your book where you talk about in islam, elders and the way that is interpreted so often is that elders are the word. they know best. one of the most regulatory lines in your book was when you are talking about your mom and said, no, mom, you don't know best. >> totally. you are referring to the moment i find out that i was arranged to marry my cousin, i was around 13 years old. i confronted my mother and i

asked her, why did you do this? i was feeling really bridge ãb betrayed by my mother. that she would make the right decisions for me because i didn't really have anything deserved to prove that. her rationale was that your parents know what's best for you. she was at that moment where i sort of realized that elders don't necessarily know what's best for you and i sort of also, it took me a long time to realize that the context she had for what was best for me was what was passed down to her by her parents. that was kind of how she grew up and at that time she didn't really know what else my life could look like. going back to your point i wanted to connect to what you are saying about acceptance just sort of show you how much my mom has changed. she wears a burqa, she's more

religious than i am, my siblings knew for a really long time that i was queer. they felt that they needed to protect her, that they would hurt her and she wouldn't understand. i was having lunch with my mom a few years ago my brother was with us and my mother looked at me and she said, summer, i feel like there is something you are hiding from me. i just feel like i can't get close to you i feel like there's a secret you are keeping from me. my brother looked at me and was kind of like, don't do it. i said, mom, i'm queer. she was silent for about a minute. then she said, okay. i still love you. the next thing she said after that was, how do you have sex?

[laughter] so that's not obviously i was expecting from her.and for weeks after, she would email me and text me and say, can you send me reading materials i just want to understand more, i love you, i'm so glad you shared this with me. for the first time ever, i felt unconditional love.it totally changed my life and what i expected of other people. that really was important in terms of the healing. not only, i always talk about challenging other people's perception but at this moment sort of prompted me and my siblings to challenge our own perceptions about my mom and women who might look like my mom and the capacity they might have to understand people. >> can i steal another moment for you to reveal something else about the way that your dad reacted when you have this revelation with him? >> yes. i was in the hospital with him i asked him i asked to join him during his medical appointments because ãband when i told

him, he was also super conservative he just said, there's nothing you can do. that's just how you were born. what can you do? also it's not something i would've expected of him and had i known that media would have shared that with him earlier. >> it's exactly that red i'm pulling on, had i known that, because ryan, something that was really central in your book after the coming out and explaining with your uncle and aunt and ultimately your parents. was the feeling i love you no matter what, you are my kid, i love you. you issued a challenge to parents to make it further. >> am from california but the most conservative part of california there is. growing up i never heard anything positive about gay people. typical jokes. as a kid you internalize that. when i came out to my parents, like you mentioned before i

started pushing them out of my life i had this ridiculous plan i was going to kill myself after football because i thought my family would never love me so when i did end up coming out to them on it had been months since we chatted and i said i'm coming home and you need to talk. she thought i was going to tell her that i was terminally ill and something was wrong so when i came out she was relieved. my dad didn't say much. he wasn't hateful but it took him a while to came around. the whole first year after i came out to him, didn't really say anything. he had spent basically 30 years looking at expecting i like to go a certain direction. maybe i was a little unreasonable to expect them to be okay. >> you are a football coach dad.>> what i told parents now is, with me my personal, the way i was raised and how i

took to heart everything i heard, i think anything short of my parents when i was young telling me, having that conversation of, if you are gay, or bisexual or queer, you are fine, just let us know we will love you no matter what. i built this thing in my had to be such a mountain i couldn't climb. >> that's a statement to saying to a young person in your life or somehow in your galaxy, if you are gay, queer, however you choose to express your gender and the way that you're going to live, it's okay. still going to love you and to make it plain and not just blanket statement, i love you no matter what. when your actions and everything around the world is telling you that this is a bad thing. that we can explicitly say, if that's the way that you are,

i'm okay with that. can we talk about this notion of space? there was a great, not like outer space. talking about light faith space and creating community. there was a story to share talking about donald trump being elected president, i should've trigger war some of you. [laughter] you happen to have been on a college campus rehearsing for an address you are going to give the next day watching the election returns come in and then the next day having to present work as a queer muslim woman into a community. can you talk about and i want you guys to think about this as well. the importance of space and having a physical place to share and connect with community. >> it was the day after the election i was doing a keynote at university of north carolina. for those who don't know,

before this book i had a photo project it's called ãbi photographed queer muslims around the world. i complimented the portraits with interviews presenting people an opportunity to hear the nuance and queer muslim stories. that was one of the reasons i was invited to talk about the project on the campus. but right after you watched in there, there are a lot of muslim students on campus, they were in shock. it just sort of seemed like a lot of young people need a place to be to be in community and process what had just happened and how this might impact their lives. that's kind of what it became. i was glad that that was something that i could offer a lot of young people at the time who sort of felt like they really needed that space.

>> i'm reminded william in your book of not an auditorium in a college campus but a basement in suburban boston where you got to come into the first steps of the fullness of your journey. >> after the divorce i moved into the basement of two lesbians with two small non-chatting dogs. it was the advertisement for the hotel, for the apartment, it was we are two lesbians with two non-shedding dogs. i said this sounds perfect this is exactly where i want to be because i had not embraced my crudeness. i had not learned the history of queer people. they had experienced all of it. they actually had a friend, another friend, who was named bill and i call him the other bill. bill was wonderful and out and free and happy and then he died

of aids. when i moved in, linda said her friends told her not to fall in love with another bill and said here i came just out of the closet. of course she did fall in love with me. we fell in love with each other. they taught me really how to be human again. so the two non-shedding dogs were rescue dogs and that's what they did with me, they rescued me. and taught me everything that i needed to know that i had never learned. in a way, they rescued one bill, the one they could rescue and the other one they could rescue. i think it was a completeness for them. it was that small space in a basement apartment that made me human again. >> can we just pause for one second to thank god for lesbians. [laughter] they are the first of the

lgbtqia in they don't get enough love. seeing the threat of the strong out lesbian women that run through these memoirs, i kept pausing as i was reading, thank god for lesbians. on the other side of this need for space and creating communities. i was struck by something in your book about the way that you built this fortress of solitude around your cell. but you did it in the most open and welcoming way creating out of this world man camp to really put yourself on display but key people at bay at the same time. i'm referring to your cabin. boats, cabin, lake, deer run. when i was closeted i was played on every stereotype there was.

i donated money to newt gingrich. i did a lot of ridiculous things. about 42 acres in missouri and bought a tractor and i had a lake and built the cabin. it was a place to clear my mind but i also knew what was going on out there. i'm happy to say, since then i'm doing much better and i no longer owned that property and i don't try to act a certain way. speaking of that cabin, can we talk about the constructs of ourselves and just how much time and energy it takes to put on the mask and do all those things. you crafted each of you these

separate personas to really shield the world from the truth inside of you. a must've been exhausting to because it was exhausting to read and what did you do with all the time you had what she didn't have to concern yourself with all that artifice? >> being closeted is exhausting. everyone deals with it differently. for me it was a constant thing. i chose to hide in the nfl. i didn't think i could do a good enough job convincing a female that i was straight. i knew i was good enough at football as using it as a cover for being gay. >> this is a man who talks

about walking into the patriots head office going past all these trophies and signifiers and feeling like, what did you say? >> it meant nothing to me. >> like walking to pep boys. i respect the game i know it takes to do it and being in super bowls. >> showing the bling. >> that's the losers ring. [laughter] it's really consuming your mind i always thought for whatever reason i was about to get outed. i never dated anyone, i never went online and looked at things so i would get caught but there was times where i would get a girl would come up to me i was in front of buddies and i thought i was being set up. i talk about that in the book. i was rehearse these things in my mind over and over that's basically every single night all i ever thought about. luckily no it doesn't even. >> as much as you are readying

readying yourself to be really were studying for the time he made the realization how you would confront every situation he could've been raised with that threat now x i did a great job of that. in the book i talk about one time one of my friends asked me if i was gay but he lived with me, he was a straight guy, best buddy and it was just a late night on the jersey shore and he asked me out of nowhere is gay. i had her stepmom i passed the test. but for the most part i really did do a good job of staying closeted because when i came out it was a lot of shock really. >> i want to talk about the other side of coming out and something that you mentioned when you are talking about young person who i want to say immigrated i can't remember if he was in canada or america but talking about being surprised

at the discrimination faced by people of color and african americans in particular when he was under the embrace as an immigrant who was not even an immigrant, who was seeking asylum as an lgbtq. >> in istanbul, iran. >> so is there any way you can expound on the different perspective shifts that you shared and have been witness to. i'm thinking about we get into these coming-out journeys and you all write so eloquently about it. talking about the other side of coming out being surrounded by the nfl in the front office trying to make strides to make the league a welcoming place and watching kids from sensory leaving the event that you are at putting food into boxes because they might not be sure where their next meal is coming from. >> i really tried hard to get

the nfl specifically to take steps to show their acceptance toward the community, in america football has such a huge impact on culture. ridiculous. but i know if the nfl an organization like that with the respect they had for a lot of very conservative people, if they can take a stance and show that they are welcoming and accepting, that would go a long way. the last couple years the nfl has had a float in the new york pride parade which is a step for them.>> you been on it. >> this year they actually had me on their network to draw attention to it. before they just tried to do it to make people happy but now they are talking about it. they are hosting groups of kids delicate the super bowl last year they are doing more and more. the commissioners brother is

gay, he's an ally he gets it but he has 32 billionaires tearing him what to do and he's trying to make everybody happy. he also has to be careful. he generally cares he's asked what can i do to help the next guy in your position? what can i help someone to come out. the person hasn't come out yet but there's plenty playing. no names but. >> we are getting ready for an exclusive everybody. take out your smart phones. >> it will happen at some point. it has to. the numbers say they are on every team. >> one intent. so for each of you, and asking you to sort of shared that perspective bursting moment when you step outside of your coming-out journey and realize that although no one's blue is as blue as yours, there are people who are spectrum who come from all different levels of privilege who are fighting this same fight that you were but have other circumstances swirling around them.

>>. >> i am a 40-year-old white man and the reason you say that is the subtitle for my book is cat fishing and coming out, cat fishing if you don't know is when somebody pretends to be somebody they are not. >> who doesn't know? >> some people don't know that. so that they can do people into relationships.that happened to me but in a weird way my profile picture was stolen and it was used on multiple dating sites i got an email from a woman who said your face has meant a lot to me and now i found out it's a lie. she had a four year ongoing relationship with somebody who used all my pictures and catfish her. when i did a google image reverse search my face was 40-year-old white man, if you do a search for that work

40-year-old man selfie you will see my face, it's a younger face. >> and dam good party. >> i always get people open their phones. it allows me to look and see the pain and what happens when people invest emotions into relationships and how hard that is when they learn the truth. it's devastating. that's what i had done for all of my life. i had pretended to be somebody i was not. i was lying to the people i most loved. and i could do that because i was a white man and i could fake it and it was easier for me to come out that it is for other people to come out. i think it's really important that i help those people as well that i use my voice to help them because nobody's equal unless everybody is

equal. discrimination hurts everyone. it's really important for me now to do that. and that's where i found all the energy, you were asking about what was it like when you are in the closet. my masculinity wasn't just toxic, it was almost fatal because of up into this big man and be straight on the outside windows crumbling on the inside. that's what happened. my ex-wife found those and realized something was terribly wrong. . once you get past that and get past toxic masculinity. it's amazing all the energy you have. i channeled my energy into writing this book. i came out 43 in the first book came out at 55 so it's never too late to become your true self. >> never too late to become your true self. i'm going to open it up and see if there is anyone who wants to

step forward with a question. we have some volunteers with purple shirts on who are running microphones up and down each of the aisles. if you have a question, see one of them and we can dialogue a little bit with the folks on the panel. before anyone breaks the seal over there, i'm going to ask each of you about this are cute taken in turning your coming-out story to a larger mission. the project that you talked about with the photographs that you nonchalantly talked about was a groundbreaking thing where they were not images query muslim people, even historically. if you wanted to find them, you'd be hard-pressed to find visual representations and you flipping the script and creating an entirely new lane and narrative and for each of you taking the stance that you have from parades and floats to actually going around to individual teams and explaining what it's like and what your organization can do better. i'm just wondering about the

professionalization were really amplifying the message that your personal stories have had an impact on the larger community. how that's affected each of you personally. >> i hope we get to a point years from now, hopefully it's not like too long from now where we are no longer just sliding for visibility. i hope that's what changes, i hope we can move on to other things. obviously it's not something that a lot of people have to fight for. i hope that happens. i hope that it's not like anomaly to have queer muslim who's open up about their story. i hope my story becomes one of a million. i hope that changes. >> i started with the floats but since then i've started a

charity and all my proceeds from the good book go directly to my foundation and every penny from there goes back to lgbt students particularly athletes. like i said before, and try to help someone who is in a position similar to mine that can relate. because over half of lgbtq athletes stop playing because of their sexuality and there's a void to be filled there with scholarship and trying to encourage people they can still play just because of their sexuality. going forward that's my whole mission. >> william, you are still working in the corporate world and still writing. what is it like having this 9-to-5 world where you go fit into a very structured job in the environment and also sharing and exploring your life with your memoir?

>> am an it director during the day which is ironic because i teach people about cybersecurity and how not to get hacked. i'm also doing the same thing at night, i wanted to write the book that i could find in the world. i could not find a memoir about people who had been in mixed orientation marriages and come out later because there's so much stigma and shame attached to that. i wanted to write the story so people could see it and find the guts to tell the truth and come out. i'm happy to say the new york times this is the first book of that type. i'm very proud of what i'm doing. i will continue to do that and write stories and publish and

answer any readers email that comes to me. >> each of you has written a version or talk at some point in your book about how much representation matters. i'm going to start with you william and asked, knowing that what is it you are representing and putting into the world that you wish you could have seen at some point in your journey before now? >> i think it's just being honest with who you are. matter if it's your sexuality or if you suffer from depression or any other number of things that you think makes you unlovable. i've heard from so many people, not just queer people but from other people who have hidden who they are because they thought that part of them was not lovable. i think it's really important to send that message out that you can be true to yourself and people will love you because when you hide a part of you, it's not just a part of you, it's all of you that's hidden. i'm trying to represent that and the fact that never too

late to embrace yourself. until the truth. >> we've always been here, is the title of the book. a moment ago you told us you just want to be one of millions who continue to come out and represent and show themselves but taking about that little brown girl that you were, what would it have meant to see someone like you? >> it would've been groundbreaking. i would've had someone i could aspire to be like. i hope that what i represent is the possibility. i hope that's how i inspire people. maybe that's changing. you were saying earlier that you hear from folks all the time who feel like you really impacted them. the same happens to me.

i hear from a lot of young kids, which is really validating and when i was writing the book, i had a couple of readers in front of me on my wall who i felt like i was talking to as i was writing the book. there were a lot of young people. when i hear back from young people who feel like i'm really talking to them, that makes me feel like i've been successful at this.>> ryan, we know that you come from very rare air. there still on one hand the number of folks and professional sports to most of us couldn't probably think of who have come out and shared the fullness of their experience. who do you think your audience is? is it the professional folks? is it the jv kids out there sweating right now? who were you building a bridge to as you are writing?

>> i think it's a wide audience. i've heard from all sorts of different people. i think i've been able to have a lot of impact on straight people who work very aware of the issues in the community. as messed up as it is to say i had one person tell me on the most palatable gay man i've ever met. which is not a great thing to say. i'm just myself, i'm not trying to be anything. he was able to look at me and understand that we come in all shapes, sizes, stereotypes. i actually think having impact on people like that who will then go, here's ryan, that's great. i just think reaching those people is the most impactful. for all the palatable queers and those who aspire not to be so, i wonder if there's any advice that you all would like to impart on someone who may

struggling or is already out and still on their journey. something that you wish you could have known from the other side of this thing. >> i'm going to share advice of my ãbit's, you are all you were ever need.i think it's so true. i'm going to share the one from my lesbian moms. [laughter] what they said to me was, i was worrying about it people would know i was gay or would call me gay and what they said was, consider it a compliment. that's exactly what it is.

you don't want to just be accepted or tolerated, that's why pride is so important to us.when you are in the closet you never really celebrate anything.you don't celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, things like that. having somebody say, yes i'm going to accept you whatever you are, no, you really want to be celebrated. that's why pride means so much to us as we want to celebrate. if somebody says you are gay,, say thank you. >> thank you.we are closing in on our last two minutes. brian, did you want to add something? >> i think the one nugget i always tell people especially closet athletes, the youth that reach out, i always tell them unapologetically, be yourself. if it doesn't go over well, have faith the world will catch up. it's very clichc but it does get better. that's been my experience and other guys who i've chatted with that have come out not necessarily publicly but it's never as bad as you think. >> it's never as bad as you

think. thank you all for being here so much just before you get out of here i want you to know the authors will be signing the book at the signing table right outside this building and barnes and noble is also going to be selling copies of the book, i urge you, i employ you to pick up a copy. it's really worth your time and a few ducats you will door down to get it. please bring your name cards downstairs. you all can exit right back there or through the front and enjoy your book festival. thank you for coming.

ãbthis is a huge moment in my life and i would like my parents to meet my future husband. there are moments in our life that we normally share with family. graduations, birth of a child, engagements, weddings, all of them destroyed for people because of the muslim band. immigration enforcement and the time of trump has targeted the unauthorized. those in the united states legally. as well as the most vulnerable. asylum-seekers, refugees, parents, children, none of these changes have been legal requirements under the law but rather, have been choices. unprecedented discretionary choices by this government.

both refugees outside the united states and asylum-seekers inside the united states has to show to the government that they suffered a type of harm known as persecution. either in the past or in the future because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. president trump set the refugee numbers for fiscal year 2019 at 30,000. the lowest number in the history of the refugee act of 1980. meanwhile, in may 2018 attorney general jeff sessions announced a zero tolerance policy for those crossing the border without papers. said sessions "if you cross the border unlawfully then we will prosecute you". it's that simple. this policy also extended to asylum-seekers.

related to the zero-tolerance policy and later found out to be wholly unrelated. was a practice by the trump administration to separate parents from their children at the border. said president trump, i hate the children being taken away. the democrats have to change their law. the statement is misleading, as there is no statute, no regulation, no case law that requires family separation. as described by a former ins official interviewed to define refugees as a national security threat to the country, we have it.that way for decades. crucial to the conversation of discretion is not just who we deport but also how we deport. in june 2018 president trump tweeted "we cannot allow all of

these people to invade our country. when somebody comes in we must immediately with no judges, no court cases, bring them back to where they came from. our system is a mockery to get immigration policy and law and order. ". what president trump may not have known is that we already have programs in our immigration statute that allow for this speed or no court's deportation. in fact, even before this administration, the vast majority more than 75% of all deportations in this country happen before or in lieu of a person seeing a courtroom. what this administration wants to do is maximize these programs. there is two recurring themes if you think about changes in the time of trump. one recurring theme is discretion. the idea that many of the

policy changes that we are seeing are not legal requirements or mandates, they really represent choices and the fact that those choices are informed by cruelty as opposed to oppression is quite unprecedented if you compare it to the history of immigration law in both democratic and republican administrations. the second recurring theme that you see with current immigration policy and in the time of trump is that sometimes you don't need to make a new law but rather, take laws already in the books and use your discretion to maximize them to the fullest extent. as told by one attorney i spoke to about speedy deportation, i don't think the public realizes how often speedy deportation is actually used and how even in a

system that trump inherited, people were just regularly deprived of their basic due process rights. the other thing is a conception that deportation is okay because of people who are subject to it generally have no ties to the u.s. because we think of them as either being at the border or as people who were previously removed. even if that's true in some cases, that's not universally true. so where do we go from here? the courts have played a tremendous role in rolling back some, not all, of immigration policies in the time of trump. but the courts are not going to save us. and the court certainly did not save us with the muslim band. these are short-term solutions, critical checks short-term checks because what it ultimately needed, lies in the executive and legislative branches of government. >> you can watch the folk

program tonight at 10:00 p.m. eastern, check your program guide for more information. >> a look now at some event booktv will be covering this week on monday we will be at the gerald ford presidential museum in michigan for garrett graff's history of september 11, 2001.on tuesday at the loft in portsmouth new hampshire philosophy preceptor, professor michael lynch will examine how the internet has changed people's attitudes toward the truth. thursday look for us in cleveland at the 84th annual nfc wolf book awards that recognize books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and human diversity. some of these events are open to the public, if you are in attendance, take a picture and tag us at booktv on twitter, facebook or