age remember. >> to view the rest of losses talk visit the rest of our website. type his name were in the title of his book presidential leadership in crisis into the search box at the top of the page . >> hello everyone, thank you for tuning in. my name is audrey's stewart and i am so pleased to welcome you to this virtual event with michael signer presenting his book "cry havoc". he is joined tonight in conversation by mickeyedwards and amanda edwards . harvard bookstore continues to bring authors and their work to our community and our new digital community during these challenging times. every week we are hosting events on our podcast page and as always our event schedule is here on our website at harvard.com/events where you can sign up for our newsletter and browse from home.

this evening's discussion will conclude in time for a few questions. if you have questions for our speakers at a time though to the q and a button at the top of your screen. we have limited time for questions but we will get through as many as time allows. if you'd like to buy a copy of "cry havoc" there will be a link in thechat . all links support harvard bookstore so thank you for your support, especially during this difficult time or community spaces such as your local bookstore.there will also be a link for donation in the chat if you would like to give additional support to harvard bookstore. your purchases make this virtual author series possible and now more than ever for the future of a landmark independent bookstore. thank you for tuning in and support of our authors and incredible staff for booksellers. we support your support now and always. and finally as you may have experience in virtual gatherings these last few months technical issues may arise and if they do we will

do our best to resolve them as quickly as we can so thank you for your patience and understanding and now i'm pleased to introduce tonight speakers. michael signer has worked as a voting rights attorney and hisfounder of the communities overcoming extremism project . he is the author of two books , the fight to save democracy from its worst enemies and becoming madison , the extraordinary origins of the least likely foundingfathers . he will be joined in conversation by houston city council or amanda edwards and former member of the united states house of representatives mickey edwards. they will be discussing michael's new book "cry havoc" which recounts the story of the white supremacist actions in charlottesville during 2017 that left one antiracist processor dead and the entire country wondering what the trump era had brought to the forefront . kirkus reviews calls the book deeply introspective and it's

a complex, disturbing and valuable tale of racial disharmony, government failure and one man's frantic attempt to save the day and now i'm so happy to turn things over to my speakers. michael, amanda and nicky the digital podium is yours. >> thanks audrey. i'm going to start first and i want to say that it's really a pleasure to be able to do this, to be with amanda and mike both as friends especially because this book is so timely. it is actually mike, it would have been i thought it's time right after charlottesville and i right after that happened if this book had come out it would be great but it's more important because of what's developed since. there's a point in your book in which we will get you and you will get to where you talk about what happened in charlottesville.

about a storm that could in fact serve as a crucible for change. as a result of that and then more so what happened afterwards. so i think it's really a timely and important book now . one of the things that moved me when i read this and also as i reflect myself i spent a lot of time as you all do on worrying about how it is that we can protectour liberal democracy . which is not only a democracy in terms of the fact that we go to the polls and we choose who our leaders are and ultimately we're in charge, it's self-government butalso it has all these various pieces of it . deliberation, compromise. rule of law. until proven guilty, the free press, all these pieces that

are really in danger at this moment. we have a significant number of people in this country who, and i don't think they're all on one side who know what outcome they want and the process just gets in the way. but process is what liberal democracy is about . oh i love the book. one of the things that i hope you'll talk aboutbecause it resonated with me . we are seeing or everybody knows who knows me that i hatepolitical parties . i think there appears. and we can to think of things in a bifurcated way which is two sides. and in charlottesville, two sides. there were the right wing protesters, the white nationalists, whatever you want to call them. there were also then the people who came to protest against the protesters to block them from doing damage

but what i was struck by in your book that is so important to where we are in america today, there was a third group and that was the people of charlottesville. and you talked about how when you think back about that time and your memories of it , you're so much drawn to the people there that you knew, that you lead as mayor. and the effect on them and there are people on the right and there are people on the left and a good large part of america is not on the right or the left, just hoping to be able to make it to be able to have enough money in the back to take care of themselves. to be able to be treated fairly and equitably. there's a lot of people are not part of the warring camps . and that was a big part of what happened in charlottesville which mike and cheryl i read what you wrote and i hadn't thought about that much.

one of the points that i want to put on the table and see where you're going to go with this. as we move forward, we have a tendency wherever we are in the spectrum to look for a reason. some of these, somebody is going to step up, be in charge. the current president says only i can fix it, he's done a pretty good job of only he can mess it up but we look for the great leaders that are going to come in and save us and that's dangerous because that's what you get is victor corbin, that's where you get tyrants all over the world but one of the things that you did. i'm going to stop here and give it to you is that the mayor of charlottesville is not like the mayor of new york city. you don't have all the powers

that the mayor has or the governor of the state . it's a fairly weak mayor position as you pointed out so you had to, you were to quote a leader, you had to step up from the position you were in with limited authority and exercise leadership. and i think that's reallya lesson for people all over the country . amanda did it in houston and you did it in charlottesville so i'm going to stop thereand just tell us about the book . tell us more than that the argument you're making about what needs to be done thank you mickey and thanks to the harvard bookstore for having me and i was looking forward to this. this was supposed to be live in person but this will be just as goodand i want to add a couple of bio notes . mickey and i know each other because the heat ahead of the

adl fellows program which is a bipartisan leadership training organization. his alumni are extraordinary people and he teaches alumni and people who are in the program to about leadership and taking risks but also the humility that you talk about and amanda one other thing that didn't make it into her bio, she just ran for the u.s. senate and that's one reason we thought this conversation not only in your local experience but also could draw from that experience of getting out there on that kind of platform with those kinds of issues. okay, so thank you mickey. you keep this upperfectly . though, so it's charlottesville to begin with was a very unusual and wild first times frightening, often enraging it. to find myself in this as these events unfolded you had three white nationalists

events in the year 2017, not just one the way they built on each other was important for what it said about how charlottesville comes to the ny joe biden is running for president by his own statement, why charlottesville figures into spike lee's movie black klansman and wife become this touchstone in american history is also high for local story and the truth of it, the lessons, the insights , how did it get this hyper local story colored by individual experience and actors and the history. how did it get to become a national international story and to me the answer is very intimate. it has to do with slowing things down and telling the actual storyabout what happened there . so i wrote the book about this modern historical event that i happened to be there for . for two reasons, there was one in which was to tell as best i could the truth about what it is like to hold any

position of leadership in the eye of the storm with the particular powers that you have whether you're a city counselor or a mayor or chair of the county board or school board member, whatever those positions are. to me the real learning is going to come from what was it like being there and what did you try to do, what could you not do and what was the emotionalexperience like ? how did the events impact you and how do they build on one another so that's what history is like and that's how we learn. that was the first goal is to tellthe story and the second one is different and they both know to some of your questions . the second was i had this intuition through even some of the most painful violent episodes of this. that as awful as these events were and as chaotic and as ad hoc film that they still

conserve some purpose in america growing through this trauma. and the city growing through this trauma and your right to call attention back to the people and the experience of the city so there's this kind of concept that the book that over arches the book, learning from disaster basically and trauma producing wisdom and there's this ancient greek tragedy idea of the agon which is agony can still produce growth and that's how a lot of greek tragedies were structured so i was mindful of that and it's one of the things that i tried to just in my narrow way as the person who happened to hold a seat during this but think about what does the nation learn from this experience of such over horrific racist and anti-semitic and violent conduct by a dozen ultra

white nationalists paramilitary organizations invade the city and killed a woman after the rally was disbanded. what do we learn from that and what do we learn from how appropriate it ? what cascade support and i think there was a lot of specific growth that happened afterwards that are crucial to understanding the scope of what the meeting was. the first one, i just want to talk a little bit about the first, the personal under firestory . there are way to many books out there that are sanitized about politics, about government that are sort of constructed around the hollywood narrative where there's a hero and there's a villain and there's a clear structure and there's a clear take away.

and the fact of it is when you're in a crisis, especially now where social media and where the extremes on both sides created such intensity and such conflict and the cadence of it is so rapid and so intense, it's unlikely that the hollywood or fantasized version is going to mirror anything of what the actual leaders went through and the reason this is so important is if we're going to handle right now today everybody's minds are on the crisis of the last two weeks which is horrific racist police brutality putting on top of a few hundred years of organized oppression and brutality towards black and brown people in this country and where there's been some progress but clearly not nearly enough and in a lot of ways we've backpedaled so this is the reality of the experience that people have

and people witnessed police brutality and they have witnessed 16 times, average family has 15 times less wealth and an average white family and the average blocks are four times as likely to be sentenced or to be charged with marijuana crimes as whites so these disparities are present, they are real and they begin in history. these are all true facts but the question is if we're going to deal with them it's going to require government. government is a means to the end of solving problems and the kind of government as you said, it's not the government of dictatorships. it's not form on getting in order, if humans read a lot of it from strong different people positions and passions getting together in a deliberative process and a lot of times in city council chambers and trying to come up with answers using government to get them done so before going to deal in

minneapolis, there's an article in the new york times that says in order to dismantle successfully the police force and deal with long-standing problems they had, that's going to take at least a year for them to deal with the budget and the police union and the contracts and the way the funds are obligated and that's going to require government. that's going to require that this book is about just people who have enough skins and big enough hearts and who care about the ins and outs of what leadership is which is really just ordinary people taking on a position of trying to get something done in the system and the book, it's hard . local government is hard. it's the most proximate, the intense kind of government i would say because when you are failing somebody that is right in your face at the

grocery store and the parking lot or the bagel shop as i tell in the book and when people are frustrated, it's going to be right in the city council chambers and a lot of the battles about how to get answers are also going to be incredibly intimate and in the book, the book is a pretty intense, was very intense to write, pretty intense to read because you had a lot of open conflict and a lot of commands and anger but to me the devil is in the details. if were going to deal with injustice we have to understand thedetails . >> i'm going to read only in my talk before we get to amanda only a handful of paragraphs but they are better than me just summarizing . the first one is i will suggest in this book there are five underlying urges to greatness by resort in charlottesville and in each area conflict between ideals and constraints created friction, and combustion.

first the conflict between freedom of speech and public safety, first our collective your to come up with constructive ways to address the history of racism in public spaces because a lot of what happened in charlottesville was prompted by call to remove a confederate monument put in place during the jim crow era and third clash between order and the passions of today's politics and the fight to define civility itself or the challenge of providing accountability in a crisis to a public clamoring for real answers and finally how the newfound drive for equity and up and generations of policy and governance and in each area we were exampled not just by the difficulty of an answer but people demanding one should be easy to find and we were flawed and even evil if we couldn't. supposedly easy answers dangle like sweets. repeated business by white nationalists denied the permit and stop them from coming here.

on the lee statute, tearing down. on accountability, just tell the truth and on equity just do theright thing . so charged with energy these demands could be distracting and even dangerous parking blazes that could spread in an age of into slogans at that social media and oppressed the struggles to cover complexity and substance as little appetite for leaders doing what leaders needed to do, grapple in the gray area that lies between the seductive balls of black and white this remind you is notmild or equivocal , it was the gray smoke and ashes. so telling the story of what it's like to be a mayor in a week mayor form of government which 60 percent of american cities have painful for me and i hope for the way the book is set up its rewarding because i had taught about democratic growth and democratic resilience for a long time and prior, the

prior two books that i wrote were on different angles of this project, the problem about how this democracy last and survive and grow and strengthen and i wanted to share the experience in that position and clear eyed i wanted people to understand the stakes of committing to this kind of government and there's a lot of hope in this book. there are a lot of specific advances that were sparked charlottesville. one example was we sued along with georgetown university a student for constitutional advocacy protection nonetheless groups using a provision in virginia's constitution was 200 years old that nobody ever used before that made militia groups illegal. unless they were operating with authority and permission on the civilian authority we've never needed to go back to those laws before as we've never seen armed groups taking over the streets of towns like charlottesville before . so it's an innovation parked by necessity that existential

and that is about reclaiming space for democracy itself and there are a lot of other examples like that in thebook . to me the greatest states we see right now with what tropism at its core is about is threatens self-governance. it threatens our commitment to invest in deliberative self-governance through democracy and you also see threatened on the very far left there there's anarchism dominating some parts of that discussion. the sentiment is right to deal with these injustices and to achieve extremely progressive and but it's going to have to come through government and this is a book about what government is really like. so i think that's what i want to, that's all i want to say for right now. there is a whole kind of ending part of the book which is about lessons learned and specific people out there. leaders, nonprofits who are doing the work of overcoming

extremism. there was a project we started called communities overcoming extremism with a bipartisan group including the anti-defamationleague , new america and folks interested in looking at that you can go to overcoming extremism.org and there's a final report there at 80 pages long and it has tremendous insights and paste and best practices for both how do you deal with extremism using the hard tools of law enforcement and the soft tools of engaging with marginalized people so they're not victimized or radicalized and at the end of the day i'mhopeful but i want people to understand what it really is to fight for democracy . >> that's great mike and in fact make a transition here, going from somebody very much involved in local government at a relatively small city, to mandating houston as the

third-largest city in america . you have been a leader there in the city council but not only that , you have in common with charlottesville houston has become a center now of these big battles. you're right in front of it. so why don't you jump in here , give us your thoughts and then after that we will just have a conversation together. and i can remind you here people in the audience to use the q and a box on the screen if you want to send some questions that we can give to mike or the panel when we get to the end there.so amanda. >> thank you mickey or as i like to call you cousinmickey . they're not related but i will try to say that. and mike, thank you for inviting me to be a part of thisdiscussion .

it's unfortunate circumstances of course that made it even more so in terms of its timeliness . i have to say is a native houstonian and houston is also home to george floyd. it has been a very difficult to multiple, emotional time for so many people but it also has been a time i believe that there is optimism and for many of us who have felt as though this course has not been taking place and not been made available and widespread on the issue of racial injustice so to have people pick up the phone and call me and say what can i do work i'm sorry i did not know. what are other ways i can educate myself. those kinds of conversations are not conversations we were having three months ago.

those conversations were not conversations i remember when charlottesville happened because i was a city council member at a time and i remember when we had people start coming to city council meetings and we wanted this statue gone, that statute gone etc. and harvey struck and i say that to say we are on the brink of an opportunity obviously born out of tremendous tragedy and an opportunity to cease extremity change take place. what's imperative as leaders or people who are in leadership is a couple fold. one that we are able, willing and completelycommitted to listening . i think that's one of the spaces and places where things can appear to break down so going out of your way to listen here, i think when people don't feel heard i think that aggravates those

circumstances and i think i can in addition to that transparency is monumental. and so sometimes the democratic process in order for that to bear out and have different viewpoints, collaborations, compromise, all those things that the center you have to have an ability to have that convening but there isn't anything to my view that stops us from having longer-term efforts, medium-term efforts and shorter-term efforts that i think can balance some of that human emotion people are feeling. right now we saw 60,000 people gathered in light of george floyd's murder. and that happened in downtown houston and it happened peacefully becauseof you brought folks together . they felt like they wereable to be heard . who was coming to the table, it was in honor of george floyd as opposed to some type

of antagonistic relationship and i think that's important is to make sure that people understand that their voices are important. especially in these dialogues now. i think also when we think about leadership and change of this sort and in particular, one of the things that are going to be critical is to be clear about what is being asked for for those on the side of protest. being very clear about the deliverables. one of the things that was striking that ambassador andrew young said to me was that people mistake the movement meeting the civil rights movement as justbeing emotional . and what we do know is that there's certainly emotion attached to those moments but there's a very keen focus on strategy. objectives, goals and strategy and i think when we

think about that we think about it from how do you get what you want but then as leaders we can also think about how do we facilitate that? how do we provide an openness that doesn't make us and antagonize her in that paradigm? so i think if there's a large level of transparency because when you see all the protests and you see the heightened emotion, this is natural because these are human beings. these are people. these are people who are seeing the raw injustice take place right before their eyes whether they are on the side that we believe in or not. what we have to do is balance that. so we know that there's a sense of urgency because often times it is viewed government and processes of government are there to stifle progress so how do we get out of the wind of being the entity or the stifle or of progress and then simply

demonstrate that progress can take place in varying ways so one being the longer term, having a task force. deliberating over some of the longer term changes, those that are more difficult to make happen, things that require budgetary changes in the things of that nature but some of which , other things that we have our hyatt paying so i think in our book you talked about the lawsuit and things of that nature. what were some of the low hanging fruits that can be of a victory, we're listening, we're trying to do what is just but at the same time we also have to balance a process that exists and i think having those categories of short-term, medium-term and longer-term to balance that in a time where emotions are running high and especially if it's laid out in that way in terms of i'm

going to have some things that will take a little longer to do. going to have data that is medium of the road and we will have things we can do right here and right now and how those things have laid out so that people know where you're coming from because i think most of the time because especially when you're the only one with, you're dealing with issues of brutality law enforcement or the governor have to be in the perpetrator and in many respects so there's a mistrust or distrust there that i think you have to overcome by being super transparent. i think also thinking about just in this moment and not necessarily in the charlottesville example but in this moment when we think about it, all the varying partnerships that might be emerging or our strange bedfellows that might arrive from the circumstance like this so for instance, the corporations are making their statements, we don't stand

for racism etc. but the question i would have in terms of strategy is will you stand for the following policyrecommendations ? can you help us cross the finish line? we have challenges when we bring this measure to the state legislature. will you sign this letter and pick up the phone and make a call. those are things that ultimately we can transfer this energy into some of the longer-term actions that again i think mike as you picked up there's no perfect science to any of this and always keeping in mind at the forefront is that we have to have a process that is fair. that is democratic but then also that we don't lose sight of the human nature of public service and that there are people who are in the balance and i'll close with this. when i think about what's happening right now with the

situation with racial injustice and police brutality, i recall holding the hands of one of the original race riot survivors from 1921 and we went to washington dc to meet with various elected officials. they sought justice and the fact that he was dripping on my responsibility, it was just to watch and to help and to assist. and i just remember people have been holding on for justice. they've been seeking justice for such a long time and we cannot lose sight of those stories and for someone to know and appreciate the compassion that you have i think those along way in these really difficult issues of racial injustice or intolerance and all of the things that have now i think just come in bold and in a trump era. and i think now for those, even if we don't have immediate relief, being able

to say i see you, i fear you and here are the ways i think we can solve this together. i think it's really important regardless if it's 100 percent of the outcome of what that person or individual or community would want to see. i think that communication and presence is needed we had one question that we received so far and part of that goes a lot to what we were talking about amanda but i'm going to say a word and see what you all want to ask. that question was was the feeling so intense, how do we bridge the divide? you talked about this a lot and in this program just talking not to you to the audience, this program that we run through the institute thatboth of you are part of . it's completely bipartisan. the only other two people i'll mention who are in it

are the former republican national chairman michael steele and current credit chairman paul (and every group is half democrat and half republican but what we do in our meeting is to sit down together and talk to each other as human beings and get together and say mike, what was your life like ? amanda, what problems did you face ? what led you to where you are and part of this it seems to me but only part of it about bridging the divide is getting to know people who think differently thanyou do and listen to them . not for the purpose of forming a rebuttal but to listen and learn something. i would say in the spirit protests since george floyd was murdered but since then, i think what's happened is a lot of the country has started to listen to the story about injustice and that's moving the needle.

i don't know what more you want to add on this. i don't know if you wanted to deal with what happened in charlottesville but what are the ways that we kind of, i don't know if e pluribus unum is the right name but how do we make a solid one country again? how do we do that? >> i think mickey you hit the nail on the head. it's about having discourse. we've gotten away from discourse in our country which means a willingness to absorb and listen and process so if you know your talking points and it doesn't matter the next person says because you know your talking points are not really listening. you might your words out of their mouth but you're not really willing to listen and absorb and i think what we're seeing play out. look at the nfl kneeling discussion that's taking place with a member of the

athletes themselves have come down one way and having changes of heart, etc. people are finally listening to each other and understanding that some of the things you might have thought to be mutually exclusive actually are not. if you take a moment to understand why understand the various perspective that may not be your life experiences so like you said one is getting to know you, to is that wehave to come from a place of honesty . i think that's the second part is i got to know that you're willing to listen and absorb what i have to say and i have to be able to do the same if i expect that of you and i think being reciprocal in that willingness to listen i think is so important. >> mike, you had to deal with this. >> i wanted amanda's answers and i love the question. and part of writing, and as

self reflective as i could and a lot of this drewon a journal i was keeping at the time . some of, this is a small crowd and some of my greatest regrets come from and i go through this in the book and i talk about meeting with a therapist and really trying to address these experiences. of this pounding repeatedly and not being able to stop them from coming and there's lots of others butnot being able to make people feel better about it . and how that made me feel passed by and whether i could have done a better job listening and in some ways amanda i totally agree. listening is an act in and of itself. if you're to take your truth and making people feel anguished, these statues made

people anguished. their opinion was very divided across class, across the white community but we set up a whole process to deal with the question of what to do with these statutes under state lawwhich is a whole section of the book . in and out and surprises that happen and opinions changed over the course of the six months on these statutes back in 2016 2017. the whole story in and of itself but there were people who are agonized by towering nature of these statutes put in place in the jim crow era and there were people who agonized. one of the things that happened was the police in charlottesville did not take a certain number of very discrete steps that wouldhave made the jewish community feel more protected . in the synagogue when there

were neo-nazis playing nearby and the police said we can't share a vehicle. there'ssharpshooters nearby , they will be patrolling the block but they didn't have psychological safety. the black residents didn't have psychological safety that they felt like the city was taking steps to protect them when you have these white nationalist armed with ar 15's and my kind of paramilitary guard going up to their doorstep so what government can do deal with peoples, address people's psychological needs setting aside what government is going to do about these things which is a whole other set of questions what do we do on the first amendment, how is the first amendment changing and ithink it's going to change . there's one set of regrets that are in the book which is just one case study. one leaders experience in this kind of proxy which i think is universal to many kinds of hockey but there's a second answer i want to give

to the folks for listening and both of you because you've been in government and politics. it's a demand that goes directly to what you're saying which is there's this anecdote right in the beginning of the book when as a brand-new mayor i go to the white house to the east wing and barack obama addresses us and i'm one of 200 mayors there, i don't talk to him personally but he did this remarkable thing where first of all he saidthis joke where he says any of you all feeling underappreciated ? being a mayor is a tough job and then he told us the stories, he got reflective about how a lot of the things he had fought for and achieved through government were out of sync with the media cycle. and he told two stories. dealing with the evil that crisis which is pertinent today and the gulf oil spill and how both of them required months of experts work that did not sync up with what fox

news was doing or what was in the twitter verse and he was really calling our attention to the work of governments sometimes is going to be out of sync with the cadence and the demand and the craziness of a lot of what is put, she mitigates and goes viral and social media and the challenge is how do you make folks be heard and listen and be empathetic while also paying attention to what the president was talking about which is that getting the really hard stuff right. i talk in the book about this metaphor of this intermission gears and how the smallest ones are the least powerful but they are the ones that move the fastest and the most powerful ones the slowest and a lot of times it took over a year to get successful prosecutions by a different constitutional office because

of process of the neo-nazis who murdered heather higher and the other white supremacists who beat up a young black man in a parking garage right near the police station and everybody saw these videos and they're going out of their minds with why can't you investigate arrests, but the prosecutor was saying we have to do this carefullywe have to assemble the evidence the right way and work with the intelligence authorities . and they did and they succeeded in most of these folks have been marked up and that was one instance where a successful investigation prosecutiontook longer but with that said , you can not excuse democracy for not having right in the first place, we have a problem with domestic terrorists not being aggressively disrupted at the federal level starting and going all the way down and in charlottesville it was a microcosm , a casualty of why isn't the federal government

surveilling and disrupting potential domestic terrorists who are white nationalist and there's an answer to that which is white nationalist were part of this ministrations domestic political coalition and there's a lot of evidence that. it's a shocking claim that is made more shocking by the fact that it's true and there's evidence of it . there's a front-page article by janet reitman which went into this, what are the fbi and doj successfully focused on white nationalist potential domestic terrorists and you see the cost in committees like charlottesville and in the tree of life shooting in el paso and a lot of other instances . so late and bureaucracy and difficulty should never be an excuse to not have urgency or solving our problems. we do need to focus on the low hanging fruit especially in this time of rage and anguish about so much injustice but we also need to spend the other plate of solving hard problems through government and not true just

protesting about it. the protest is a beginning, not an end one of the things i think about with both of you, mike and amanda is that when we talk about leadership and we did this in our seminars and i teach leadership, princeton and we talk about the values-based leadership which is what i teach. but there are these two different branches of leadership and one that people tend to look for is transformationalleadership . the great leader with the great vision for the future is going to take us to a great new place and there is certainly a need for that, but the part that gets overlooked is the need for transactional leadership which is what you two are both talking about which is yes, you have a grand vision. you know what you want the country to be like for your

city to be like but how do you make it happen? how do you actually figure out that this is all those years i was in congress, you have all the big ideas and how you navigate through the committee system, how do you get your bill cosponsored? how do you create a pressure come back home to try to make it happen so you two are great leadersi've watched you both . say something about this, you've already talked somewhat about what the american people should be looking for, people who are not just going to give great speeches and fire you up but who havea plan . one of the candidates just went through this. i have a plan for that. but how you have a plan to actually make things happen. i want to hear amanda answer i think one of my favorite

authors is simon signet and he talks about why and i think here we've already spelled out the wine in terms of racial justice and injustice as a whole in our society. we've got that so you've got a powerful why around which people cangalvanize . follow behind, really grapple on to and hold onto as part of a movement but you also have to identify precisely what you're what is often also your house. in our case i think we have to identify what are the specific, what are the specificchanges that you want to see.not general, we want a just society . those are general wide level motivations but we've got to get specific. what kind of forms do we want

to see on a policy basis whether it's use of force policies or how do we diversify our law enforcement community? all those things and there are many things you can list but what are our what things and listed them. those need to be clear. you have a checklist and you have what have you, or what and then each of those strategies we should have a how mapped out. and they may be different depending on what what is. so you whiteboard it out and you figure out okay, this requires state federal and local intervention. this is just a police policy change internal area you identify your roadmap for achieving each of those things and then all of those people who are energized and wanting to help you plug them in. so you say this is where i think i can get corporate america involved so is not just a statement about what

they stand for years how they can actually decipher making contributions. this is something i can ask them pacifically to do and be able to hold accountable. this is a state legislator's role. going to put so-and-so in charge of this one i will go as far because i'm such a planner and say we need timetables. accountabilities is what often gets lost. it's kind of like when policy is implemented, the evaluation of was that an effective policy gets left off . same thing happens with movement for change, people forget the whole leadership accountable. part of that is timetable. and he wants to see this done? when is the point of you've missed the boat or thewindow is closed ? we then identified that and who's accountable because: election season or this might be a function of bureaucracy.

we've got to be able to parse through where are our points of accountability so that people are really empowered to effectuate the change. if we just leave it at this is what we want to see happen and it doesn't happen we aren't optimizing the moment to really be empowered, to really pinpoint where this thing goes wrong. we don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater . am times you do but you don't have to. where did this go wrong or where can we write the ship and i think if we empower the public to see this architecture if you will or engineering of a planin this type of way , i think you will really begin to see a real different approach with regard to government. i think you will see a different approach with regard to the public cause instead of just making a broad call say okay, i want to see x or y or z by the next session.

and see how that goes's this is a professor of leadership we are listening to. so mike, i know if anything else you want to bring into this we've got about 10 minutes left or so i want to remind people who are watching this that if you have questions that you want to ask for any of us, especially amanda and mike, just to go to the q and a thing and we will see if we can get a couple of questions there that mike , did you want to add to this ? >> yes. so at the end of the book when i tried tied together what the lessons of this will experience could be forother people , and really slowing down and getting into the anatomy of a crisis and aftermath of a crisis. and i focus on just what you said. the black-and-white distinction between transactional dealmaking,

pragmatic government and the government that the leadership tries to remake whole society and then there's this whole kind of deeper art of going into the big dime words are the ontological which is the old fancy word that just means that you look to moral duty. your argument for why you are leading and what your cause your choosing is moral and that utopians who say it's not about the moral cause, it's about what will happen, what change will happen in the world and i'm not a big one for grand theories.i'm just not read i tend to think the truth lies in picking and choosing and borrowing a little here and there and putting together a gumbo or a stool from it all and that's how i just generally think that if you have a unified theory of anything, leadership morals, whatever

your likely not to get to that full truth. so i think each side could respect each other more . so there was a real role and there's on racial injustice and intolerance and fighting domestic terrorism. there is a powerful role for people who are going to plunge into the debate and the questions with where it is just moral and i tell an example of a guy when i had to explain supreme court case law like versus skokie which mandates that governments unless there is evidence of a clear eminent incitement to an unlawful act you have to post intolerable speech. if it's properly applied for because it's freedom of speech. now i think those things could change and i think they should time that's the law that i was required to explain and vote on as a

lawyer and as a sworn officer of the body. and i talk about how painful it was because we had people coming up who said as a matter of moral principle you should vote against the ku klux klan coming to this town . you should take losses. and then i was coming back with this sort of i don't know whether it's moral or pragmatic. it probably was both. i more aid about giving court victories to neo-nazis because theylove defeating governments in court . there's nothing they raise money more from or legitimacy from and defeating a mayor or a college president in court over there terrible hate speech event. so the answer, i don't claim to have a whole lot of perfect answers coming at us, certainly no silver bullet to tell what this one set of attempts at resolving and wrestling with these issues was like and where it's kind of, i hope others can take

lessons from. but i think that each side, the transformational people who think that you can reach change in the world through basically reimaginingsociety , can learn a lot from the pragmatic dealmakers and the pragmatic dealmakers can learn a lot from the ones who see like i thought there was a lot. i was very moved when thisguy came up and said that to us . he said i think you have a moral duty to ask and to try to deny this. and i wish that i could have somehow bridged all points but mickey, is it true leadership themoment when you know you're losing your friends ? >> you want to push the leadership boundaries as far as you can without committing suicide but one of the things that i said before mike, how

timely your book is. all of this is playing out right in front of us. one of the examples that we don't want to get into because it's a different direction here but in the new york times area of furor over the tom parsons op-ed that caused james bennett to lose his job as the editor of the op-ed page and the big debate about do you give this other point of view no matter how much you hated a chance to be heard in the public debate or do you have a moral obligation not to let that be out there? so without going to that point there's a lot of this. this is happening all the time. we are being confronted with people on both sides. there's a moral obligation here to believe this. so that's why the book and the lessons that you took from it as a leadership lesson are really important.

>> and i'd be curious amanda you have any anecdotes. i don't know what houston city council is like the reason i wanted to tell the story of some of these unrelated battles about just procedure or being able to speak or not being heckled or have, can you have people removed? i was a guy came in shouting that muslims were monstrous maniacs and wanted all muslims removed from the city area that would have been free speech is not in the context he was saying it where i felt there was a danger you were going to have violence in the chamber and i told the story and we were sued and we lost in federal court . the rule that i was using to have this guy removed from chambers this was another first amendment issue and the reason that these things are relevant is they go to does our government give place for deliberation and for hearing

and working through tough issues, not with safety, not with psychological safety but with the ability to get it done? that to me is the stakes and i think so much of our policy because it's gotten soextreme that the middle has collapsed . it basically has default into intimidation and there's a lot of activism now across the spectrum that is basically intimidating anybody in a position of power of authority and it's not getting them space to have some process where they can actually make some sausage and get a policy outcome like president obama was talking about and consequently we see less and less interest in actual policymaking where what you need ironically to decrease the extremes, i was talking about the occupy movement. how much of the occupy movement, i appreciate the

passion but income inequality hasonly gotten worse in the time since that movement happened . and that kind of energy and passion needs to be translated into action. and government doing things so that's why i focused so much in the book on those paradoxes of how do you create, how do you allow government to do its job doing well doing what amanda is talking about witches listening and making people feel heard. that is incredibly important right now audrey, we've got about a minute left if i'm right about that. so you jump in here whenever you're supposed to jump in and shut us up. that's probably not a very official way to do it . >> i could do this for days i would add that. >> i'd say there are also i think mike one of the things that i think is a frame of reference that isn't always

shared is what is the role of officeholders? in your view you presuppose people automatically would have understood or appreciated that you believe you needed to understand what the law is and operate within the confines of the law but there is such a thing as civil disobedience and just a variety of things that are intended to go against what is currently the status quo because harkening this moral authority, this just shouldn't be so i don't care what's on thebooks . this should not be so. if that means that i will get arrested or i will go to jail or all of the things that can place, it's my responsibility because of where i stand so i think there has to be a conversation in terms of when people understanding their best, that wasn't the route

you chose to take. there are many people who would say i care who's offended, we will getthrough . to me, people will take two very different views of so it's not just one side or way of seeing that and i think that's something that doesn't often get discussed but often gets lost in translation is that you're coming from the space of it's my duty as an officer of this or this officeholder and someone who has taken this both to follow the law, adhere to the laws as theycurrently stand . what else may say i'm a leader and it's my responsibility to ship the paradigm where i think it ought to be and i think that's a conversation that can be had. >> how do you exercise values-based leadership which you are both so good at?

i don't, audrey . >> you have any closing remarks? >> mike, it's your book . >> i'm just glad that amanda ended on that note. i've grappled with that at every turn. like when and in which case you make a values driven decision and try to change the paradigm? and when and in which case you make a more pragmatic decision on the facts that you know them and it's a very worst story, it's a story of "cry havoc" for christ sakes but i agree with that that that is the question when you're dealing with an unfolding crisis especially with these issues today and i think the main thing is that when you're in it the answers are likely to be or the

process is likely to force you to wade through the gray area . but i think that's exactly right. there's the story in the book about in response to the muslim band i called a massive press conference or rally that declared charlottesville to be a capital of the resistance. and had everybody from the university and the lieutenant governor's wife was running for governor at the time. we had the head of the churches and all 800 people there i think. and it felt just right read it was a week in the trumpet ministration and this was a city with the office of the interior committee so we had muslim refugees coming to our city every year . and it was very much, it was in the frame that you're talking about. and it became as time went on

it became something totally different and it became a reference point for people who wanted to see it as the beginning of all this and we actually did some real things that related to protecting religious toleration in the city. the material changes and we allocated some money to the legal aid defense, political refugees and as part of this but i wanted to tell their stories because the book, it's a cornucopia of leadership from a number of different angles i think. and i hope that folks can learn from it that it's much more importantly about a city that kind of gutted it out and the change at all this, there's a whole new focus on equity that came. the first amendment has changed and case law has changed as aresult . i think courts are going to

be much like we imposed these roles in the future and were more likely to look at evidence that local officials are bringing to be more sympathetic . there's a wrenching story in the book about trying to relocate this rally to a safer ground where the groups could have been separated and the mayor of houston sylvester turner is the one who recommended to me that we do that and we lost in federal court after the aclu sued but i think cities will be more likely to prevail on suits like that in the future because i think that the rules are going to allow you to bring more evidence to be less abstract basically and less moral and i think it will allow more facts to come in about danger and expense as were looking at a society that more and more complex that we have to address. there is so there's a lot of hard-bitten wisdom and a lot of hope in the book i think about where all this brings us but is not without great cost. >> it's a great book mike. >> thank you so much becky. >> great to see you.

>> it's so good to be with you. >> thank you again so much. thank you michael and mickey, amanda for taking the time to come here and have this wonderfulconversation . you to all of you at home who are spending your evening engaging in this conversation with us. if you would like to buy a copy of "cry havoc" there's going to be a link in the chat so on behalf of harvard bookstore have a great night. the reading, stay well and thank you very much for coming. >> book td continues on c-span2, television for serious readers. >> joining us now is senator jody kurtz, a republican from iowa. she's written a new memoir called daughter of the heartland . senator, what prompted you