that will do it for us. thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you. i enjoyed our conversation so much. >> you are watching tv. book tv, television for serious readers. >> the author of this book, the hispanic pessimist. stories of hope, mostly. i will ask you a question i've never asked for an author before. what was i reading? what was i reading? >> you are reading a collection of my essays and short stories over time. the work i did when i did new york. those were award-winning short

stories. a lot of political and essays and opinion pieces i've written over the years. mostly in my role with the free state project. >> what is the free state project? >> a libertarian move. we are trying to track libertarians in the state of new hampshire. a mass migration movement. we have been around since 2003. what we did was in 2001, this gentleman, a gale student at the time, wrote an essay. he said what would happen if we would all libertarians in one geographic area? a lot of people who lead in freedom and the principles of freedom. they are scattered over america or frankly all over the world. this notion concentrated together that we would be able

to make actual differences and actually achieve liberty in our lifetime. i read about it back in 2003. i started going to new hampshire. in 2005 i actually decided, my husband and i were like let's move to new hampshire and see what this is about. we moved out in the rest was history. >> what was it like living in new hampshire? >> i am in emigrant. into something that i do cover in the book. several creative nonfiction books. going to boarding school. being abandoned. moving to the states, i had one a green card back in the mid- 90s. i was in law school at the time

so i finished my law degree. i had a notion i wanted to come to america. we went to san francisco and then we went to new york city. because of my experience having rode up and down, it was a nationalist police state. after 9/11, i feel like america started going on a really dark path. i was like, what is out there that forms a solution. new hampshire offered it. new hampshire is not for everyone. people are like, oh, it is so cold. >> what was it like to grow up in south africa being part of a minority, being part of this system? was it normal for you at the

time? >> no. i have a very unique background. my dad worked with the apartheid regime. you know, we were not raised in a racist environment or anything . i actually traveled a lot as a child. having this comparison, i guess, of what life was like in south africa. the nationalist government, i was sort of growing up towards detail and. the nationalist government was sort of clinging to their power. seeing a lot of what we are seeing now in america in terms of mass censorship. telling people there's only one story or one answer. now i was an activist.

i did go to marches. i worked with fcs when i was doing my law degree. i was one of the few lawyers who would actually go into the township and represent, you know, defendants. they talk about that and how i could do that. and then people are like it is not safe. don't do that. a lot of those -- which i think is an interesting parallel to life in america. one of the essays in the book talk about how, i think, black people in america are worse off than they even were under apartheid. and i do not say that lightly. we have the largest operation in

the world. it is really disproportionately affected our black community. in some ways, it is ironic to see this extension of the work that i did in south africa, actually coming to america being white, no. we have to do it all over again. that is the reality. it was a closed society. it was strange. i also knew that there was a better future out there. really something that was worth striving for. released and 94. i actually voted for him in the first open election. my husband in a couple of my friends were some of the people that went to nelson mandela. i remember being out there with the full crew. i would love to track down that footage one day. i think south africa actually

informs the person i became. how did you become a libertarian. i think we are all pretty much born libertarian and then we get influenced. really, or me, individualism and then trying to help the community, but from then individual way and not a top-down way. we saw some censorship. they were not allowed to talk about certain words or the illegal wars going on. a lot of my friends were forced into the military. they did not want to be there. they were traumatized by that experience. it is sad to say, but i think that that experience, sort of knowing, the regime saying these are people would label as

terrorist or i have been called all of those things. frankly, i may be the only african-american who was now frequently called the white supremacist. that is where we are in america. trying to silence voices that are actually genuine. >> ecstatic pessimistic couple of times. the fourth amendment appears. >> yes. illegal search and seizure. [laughter] >> why do you write about that? why is that important to you? >> a sense of privacy. it is important. who we are. one of the things i always look at is where are they kind of

coming from? are you kumbaya and you are part of the community or how is it? i look at it as a personal thing the sense of privacy or the sense of yourself is the sense of privacy is actually the opportunity for us to figure out who we are. we have this notion suddenly with that cancel culture and all of this, you know, craziness that we are seeing. you have to be a fully formed human and you have to be perfect from the start. what privacy gives you is the opportunity of who you are and to be wrong. some people start one way and they end somewhere else. the government is trying to prevail us, we all know in the past week the government

shockingly, and i'm shocked that the media is not talking about this more, came out and said we will monitor, not only your post , but for no other reason then i think it is a threat to the regime or the establishment that people are saying we do not want to live in some sort of totalitarian health regime. it is not what i expected. it is a huge issue, i think. they are talking about not just looking at your public stuff, but the american government has said they are going to monitor your private messages and they are going to censor them. to me, that is so shocking. someone like me, as you can see

in the book, i have been writing about these issues since 2008. you know, you do not want to be the cassandra who was like i told you so. frankly, i am here to say told you so. no one will give us the credit, everyone is like blm. it is interesting that libertarians and blm have the same issue. libertarians were the ones that said same-sex marriage should happen. we are the ones that said there is an issue with racism and police brutality within the black community. now suddenly people are talking about it. this has been coming for a long time. one of the essays in the book is

about protests that we did in new hampshire in a small town in new hampshire. they ran and opened to work. basically what it does is it allows to surf the internet. it is used in an and precious regime. now being used by activists and america because we need a channel in order to delete things. at this protest, it was a site to be held. we had 80-year-old librarians, retired librarians that had driven down. we had people from all over the state saying, no. does not have the right to come influence in a town of new hampshire higher and shut down the tools that they have created that people use in order to anonymously search for things.

it is none of the governments business what we read, what we are interested in and what we are doing. problematic that we are moving in this direction. not enough people that are in the mainstream speaking out. a giant, giant issue. we are moving it tiredly in the wrong direction. i hope that people will read the book and understand there are a lot of points out here. a lot of smarter people. we have been saying, hey, guys, we see these things coming. i think anyone that went through 2020, it is undeniable that we are right. we also have the solutions. partly project offers. sort of this safe haven where we can get people together we can

build a community of people that are like-minded who have values who say we believe in individualism. we are excited when we go to agree on things. this whole notion where we are moving forward in the country. it is crazy. it is not how the world should work. we should celebrate our uniqueness. >> on facebook and various media platforms, they will basically put you on some kind of list. depending on the kinds of things you post, people seeing your stuff in the newsfeed. some people need platforms. i am not one of them. at the freedom festival last

month. he was the platform from twitter simply from raising questions about this law down situation. the reach gets smaller and smaller. very insidious and very smart way to do things. the only way you can really see if it is happening as if you know, getting 500 likes. now i'm getting 40. another example would be a critic of the lockdowns and the outspoken critics of the mask mandate. i think we could have simply done it. asia. someone is sick, they wear a mask. if they are not, they are not. basically anything that i post now has a covid warning on it. i think i posted a photo of an interviewer or something. a covid warning on it. i think that they just poke fun

on everything i post now. it is an insidious way to silence speaking out. >> i want to ask about some of the people that pop up in the sentiment. lewis. >> my husband? [laughter] we met in south africa. we were actually dating when i won the green card it we moved out to california together. he has a tech nerd. that is how i like them. he had a startup. i worked as in-house counsel at a fortune 500 company. apple computer. steve jobs came back to apple. we were sort of in that tech bubble. he is my husband. i love him dearly. i wish she was here with me. he is at home holding down the

fort with the dog. >> according to her bio card, care model, waitress, playwright , college lecturer, magazine editor and high-tech lawyer. has a masters degree and a law degree. an essay in the pessimist era. >> that was one of those situations where you say never say never. some poor kid covering the project. this rally after liberty which is a signature event. could i come with. he was like i am kind of nervous. i don't know. will there be trouble? i was like, no, there won't be trouble. it will be fine. a 420 rally.

a pro- cannabis rally. a beautiful spring day in nashua, new hampshire. we had probably about 100 people there. people were just having a good time. people smoking weed. people playing guitar. beautiful and happy. everyone is hanging out. the next second, these two pop out and they go and arrest literally one of two black kids at the rally. we were all like what is happening. this is crazy. their 60, 70, 80 people smoking weed and you will arrest that one kid. they claimed they were watching him for a while and there was an outstanding warrant and all of that. basically, because that happened , the situation escalated really fast.

i have talked to a lot of protest rallies and things in my life and things can turn on a dime. we sell that situation immediately when it was happening. some people are very angry. unfavorable police logo. we will leave it at that. immediately i was like, no, i think we need to shift this to no victim, no crime. as the arrest was happening, several activists in front of the police car. everyone sort of circled the situation. i found something that made it dramatic and slightly interesting. culturally, in new hampshire, people carry firearms. we do have constitutional carry. a lot of folks carry gun. they may open carry or conceal carry. when the police realize they were being surrounded, they, of

course, called for backup. now people are angry. i remember, it is actually on a video on youtube, there is an officer goes, he's got a gun. somebody else yelled we've all got guns. what now. it was very interesting. the police stood down in terms of the level of violence. they were willing to embrace the situation. when we talk about gun rights, second amendment rights, that is part of it. part of the leveling of the playing field. the progressive left. i have a lot of friends who don't know about half the things i think about. at levels the playing field. it changed the energy at the protest that day. the police kind of stood down.

they were there. they were being firm. there was not the arresting had that not been the case. they took the 17-year-old boy to the police station. several of our community activists went to the police station. we raised money to pay his bail. we called parents. they came to get him. they did a follow-up protest for a while. so, you know, that is kind of the fun stuff that we get to in the state of new hampshire. the drug war is not a joke. we are taking peaceful people and incarcerating them. not only that, we are creating an entire society that has this downstream problem.

a single-parent family. we know they typically do not do as well. they have a hard time finding a job afterward. personal choices and personal nonviolent behavior. i would just love to see america . all of the states have started to liberalize their laws in this direction. i think that that is great. that is why we are in new hampshire. i hope that we will see more of that. that was a great rally. that was a very dramatic day. to that poor college student who came to write the essay, i sincerely apologize. >> with regard to the free state project, do you all live in the same neighborhood? is it spread out?

how does that work? >> people live all over the state. one of the beautiful things about new hampshire, a perfect tiny little country. we have a seacoast, we have mountains, a fairly big city of 120,000 people. there these little towns everywhere. university towns. rural. so, it runs the gamut. people live where it is there flavor. the seacoast area is a little more expensive. that tends to attract more high-end families. it is very central. right next to the airport. one hour from boston. people live in different areas. i personally bought a house on the west side of manchester.

we probably have hundreds that happened to live there. 5000 across the state and they really live where they want. there was a big i.c.e. storm in 2008-2009 and the power was out for up to 13 days. mine was 11. i remember stopping at my friend's farm in the upper valley. oh, the power is out. they live off the grid. it has a little bit of something for everyone. depending on what people like, you can really find something that will appeal to you. we have a huge homeschooling community. a lot of those people like to be more in the country. montréal is not far away. getting over the canadian border

. we are not in one geographic area. >> where did you come up with the name for your boat? >> you know, it is from the opening story the ecstatic pessimist. it is about an alcoholic that turns his life around. i think it felt a little bit like a shedding, the last essay called how to change the color of your aura. i don't know if they are real, i just really like the idea of someone coming up to me and i had quit drinking. i change my diet. i change my lifestyle. i went from things being very solution driven, really trying to be a good steward of the message. also just aspirational for other

people. i started this ecstatic pessimist. it is a male narrator. it is not me per se, but they're definitely parts of me in that short story. the essays and short stories, collections, all of that, but then at the end of the book, it had this whole, i had this change. i was thinking, oh, i should do testing and i should change the cover. that is really more where i am now. just a letting go of that. the title story. i went with that. i am working on my next book. we will see. maybe have a chance to redeem myself then. >> what is the next book about? >> it is about my court case.

back in 2010 i actually got arrested for filming officers during a late night traffic stop . you know, people are always surprised. we all have cameras with us all the time. this was 2010 it i literally had a video camera. it was my birthday present. i had only had it for like a month. we got pulled over the police officer was acting weird. i thought, you know, i'm just going to film this. why not. things escalated. i got arrested. they took me to the police station. they chained me to opal for several hours. it was dark and mysterious in general. including being dragged to the police station at the o'clock in the morning by three cops that held me up and said you will never see that camera again he

had what happened was they confiscated the camera, but they would not give me a receipt of proof that they had taken it. i said i was not leaving the police station without that camera. they charge me with the wholesale as they do. you really have not committed a crime, you just angered the authority. you know. because i insisted on getting that receipt, they ended up charging me with wiretapping. which is a seven year felony. they picked the wrong lady. i was just like, no, i will not let you guys get away with it. talking about the court case, sort of in detail. it is narrative. a character and you are going through it with her. i am incredibly proud of that

lawsuit. they dropped their charges against me and then i ended up suing them with an original 37 counts for violations of my civil rights. it took four years and progressing over the times. my lawyers were asking, what do you really care about? the first amendment right to film in the execution of their public community. there is no reason why a police officer could claim that while he is in public, citizens of this country do not have the right to film them. you know, there was one case, i fought it all the way to the first circuit. out of boston. covers about 13 million people. 13 million people now definitely have the first amendment rights. filming police officers in the execution of their duty. the other thing that was really

important was they did end up staying in this person panel of judges. police officers do not have qualified immunity to stop. here is the thing. qualified immunity is an exception in american law. you and i, when we are told ignorance of the law, we have all heard that. ignorance of the law's no excuse. ignorance of the law's no excuse unless you are an influencer of the law and then it is absolute defense. now, that is crazy. we cannot hold our public officials to a lower standard than we are being held to. there literally arguing you have a constitutional right in public during the day at the boston commons, that was the preceding

case, we don't think you necessarily have the rights to do it on a dark road at night in march on a winter night in new hampshire. i actually said to the opposing counsel, let me get this straight, you guys are trying to make an argument that the constitution does not apply after dark? they laughed and they were like -- what the court found was they cannot claim qualified immunity. if a police officer in america confiscates your camera, takes your footage, tries to stop you from filming something, don't get in the middle of whatever's happening, you don't want to make a bad situation worse. but you do want to bear witness to what is going on. because of that tape, part of the reason we are having discussions today about police

brutality, about police accountability, about all of the things everyone is up in arms about, you know, cities have burned about. all of that is because for the first time in the history of mankind, we have the truth. we have footage to show the world that they are lying. i was horrified, i guess is may be the right word. my own experience. blatant lies and just unnecessary training and misconduct by the police among other things. they claimed in the police report, when i received it, you know, i started reading it and i actually laughed out loud. i have to call my lawyer. did you send me a report just to

tease me? no. they claimed amongst other things that i parked my car in the middle of the road, jumped out down the middle of the street at 11:00 o'clock at night yelling. first of all, i have never uttered those words. [laughter] they said that the camera i was using, they instructed me, i was following another card. i said i will go park over there. and then film you from there. i got out of the car and i was filming. they were on notice. i was doing everything right. i am a lawyer. i know what i'm supposed to be doing. they claimed, the video camera that i had in the police report, they said that there was a red laser light that they think was a laser scope on a firearm. so, it turns out that brand of

camera which they confiscated and held for over a year did not have any lights on it because it is a camera that people use. those kinds of levels of why, in a police report, it was a wild wake-up call because, you know, i am an individual lists and i'm not someone who believes every police officer is evil. because i believe in individualism, i have to believe that their good police officers just like there are bad ones. i have to tell you, i read that police were court and it really, really opened my eyes. there is this system and they could just wholesale make things up and really devastate people.

you picked on the wrong person and they did not know it at the time. having to think about all of the other people that they picked on who are not like me. who do not have the resources to say oh hello. there are a lot of people that are being harmed where we are now. >> running for the new hampshire senate be times. 44% of the vote in 2020. she is the author of this book. thank you for joining us on book tv. >> thank you so much for having me. it was a pleasure. >> a look at some publishing industry news. elizabeth warren of massachusetts and congressman adam schiff of california contend that amazon is promoting misinformation about the covid-19 vaccine through the company's book search algorithm. senator warren and congressman schiff wrote letters to chief

executive relaying their concern and ask for review of the algorithm. in her letter, she described how searches for the pandemic titles consistently included highly ranked and favorably ranked books on covid-19 vaccines and cures. representative shifts has said in his letter that amazon is directly profiting from anti-vaccine misinformation while these continued to directly contribute to covid-19 death. an amazon spokesperson responded saying "we are constantly evaluating the books we list to ensure they comply with our guidelines. an additional service to customers at the top of relevant search result pages we link to advice on covid and protection measures. also in the news, stephanie grisham, former trump

administration press secretary and aid to first lady has written a book about her time in the white house. the book titled i will take your questions now will be released october 5. according to reports, critical of the former first lady. grisham resigned from her position at the white house. following a capital right on january 6. in other news, the national book foundation has announced that former librarian will be the recipient on this year's literary and award. the former executive director of the washington center for the book at the seattle public library where she introduced the idea of having the city's residents all read the same book and inspired the one book one city program established across the country. she will be honored at the 72nd book award in new york city on november 17. according to mpd bookscan, print

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