about the gentleman he reported on, i recently wrote a piece for "the new yorker," the blog about a guy in south africa by the name of dr. death. well, they called him dr. death. his name is voltr bason. and he was the -- he's a cardiologist who during apartheid created poisons aimed at killing anti-apartheid activists. cigarettes and chocolates laced with anthrax spores. they were working on a drug to make black women infertile so they wouldn't have -- give birth to more anti-apar night activists. that one never came off. they were also working on a poison that they could inject into mandela when he was released that would ultimately give him a heart attack that ultimately couldn't be traced back to that potion. that didn't come off but others

which includes there are they would take them up into airplanes and have them handcuffed and inject a paralyzing agent so when they dropped them into the sea even if they were strong and swim they wouldn't be able to because they were paralyzed. now, this guy is still practicing medicine in south africa and he got through the truth and reconciliation commission. mandela in his effort to show reconciliation hired him after the end of apartheid. but now the health professionals are trying to strip him of his license because he didn't act in a manner con consistent with the hippocratic oath. his argument is that he was a soldier following orders. we heard that before. so i wrote this piece for the "new yorker," the week that the final verdict is supposed to come down. it's continuing on the 27th of march. and at the end, i quoted -- i talked about how the pain

continues to come back even though people are trying to shed this pain from apartheid, and i said, but some people have a different view of it. and there was a guy who called into the radio station. and he said, i don't know why everybody is being so hard on what he did during apartheid when american doctors are injecting prisoners on death row with lethal injections and they are part of torturing prisoners at places like guantanamo bay whom they are trying to get testimony about terrorism things. so, you know, the things -- what we should realize is that as much as many of our things in america have been beacons to others in the world, our actions

are paid -- they are paying attention to our actions and people, even those that are not formally educated, are very sophisticated. and they know more about what's going on in america that we -- than we know about what's going on in their country. >> absolutely. >> alida, i wanted to use that clip to tell the rest of the story which is that margaret marshall came to the united states, named first to massachusetts supreme judicial court and then supreme justice and wrote the landmark decision that allowed same-sex couples to marry saying that that right was guaranteed in the massachusetts state constitution. tell us about the right for gay rights and how that is seen. is there a parallel with the earlier stories? >> yeah. i do. i mean, i -- i would like to flip it for a little bit because i was pretty down in the first part, what i was talking about. i mean, i live in virginia. and my legislature is -- there

is no other word for it. they are neanderthals. i mean, neanderthals, and my partner and i have been together for 21 years. and we have decided to get married. and it was a big decision not because we are not committed. we are more monogamous and more financially intertwined than any couple i know. but we were going to go to south africa because mandela got it in the constitution. and we thought what an extraordinary way to honor a man and a country that was really grappling with major issues. and then we decided to do it in the united states instead. and if i may be personal for a minute, i was an intern for jimmy carter. i wrote a grant that got $250,000 for grady hospital to

set up the first rape crisis center in the south. that grady would -- outside of miami. grady would not hire any black counselors. so as an only arrogant 21-year-old could do, i gave the money back. you know, and -- i know. how stupid? right? but we set up the multiarea rape counsel and by god sandra flowers and i ran it. most of the people we saw were african-american. when i wrote a grant for the carter administration and when he was governor to start up maternal infant health care, they set up the program but they let me go because they thought that i might be a lesbian. okay. now 20 years later, bill clinton is in the white house and my partner and i get invited to every christmas party as a couple. i cannot tell you what that means. and now a united states senator -- sorry, this is

really -- a united states senator is going to stand up and marry us and i ran the atlanta -- [ applause ] i ran the atlanta gay center. i have set up aid atlanta. i have lost thousands of friends. i have three address books that i cannot throw away. i have seen people lose everything, everything. i have seen kids die in the streets because hospitals would not take them. and to be able to stand in washington, d.c., the capital of my country, who i still believe in, warts and all, and will get anybody that wants to stop it, to be married in washington, d.c., in the war memorial for world war i, which was built by multiracial schoolchildren in washington, the only memorial in

washington that has black and white names carved around it, men and women carved around it, and to have a united states senator stand up and celebrate my human rights and my relationship with my partner of 21 years is revolutionary. and i revel in that. [ applause ] and if i may say one thing, when president obama says that he stands on the shoulders of giants, i guarantee you that the people that will be with me are all the men that i know who died and who did not need to die because our presidents would not respond to it. and now we have a budget, we petfar. we have a

conference on aids and we are doing something about it and progress can come, but my god, is it painful. >> so, ray, this is is a conference on civil rights and the presidency. we have the first african-american president. what's the narrative here and -- you know, certainly one of the stories is the high expectations of the latino community, for instance, on immigration reform and the dream act and a sense that the president isn't meeting those expectations. what's the obama narrative on civil rights? >> the important thing to remember is that the argument is never over and the work is never done. with each succeeding generation comes new arguments about who is fully human and who is fully a citizen, and who has the privilege of being a full member of this great extended family. when the founders drafted the

constitution, believe me, they never had any idea of a leader marrying her partner in the world war i memorial in d.c. and they never had any idea of roger and charlayne sitting up here and they never had any idea about me either, frankly. >> we haven't decided on you yet. >> well, exactly. the jury is totally still out, and i get that. but -- but -- we always take on more because america is constantly widening the idea of what civil and human rights mean and never narrowing it, which is a great genius for a people to have. if you are going to have a sort of habit that you keep coming back to, century after century, there are worse habits to have like biting your nails. but -- so we always widen the argument when people were trying to get on public -- public accommodations and mounting

trailways and greyhound and heading south, they didn't think they were doing it for people who wanted to go to the movies and were in a wheelchair and there was no way to get the wheelchair into the movie but they were. they didn't think that they were doing it for people who could get kicked out of their apartments because they were gay. but they were. and so we are dealing with this constantly widening notion. now today, there are people who are not citizens of this country doing a lot of the work that gets done every day in this country. and the challenge for us now, and there are people on all sides of the issue is whether they are fully invested with a set of claims because they are human beings that they can make on us, not because they are citizens. two different statuses. so if they get picked up by a landscaper in the morning, standing on a corner near a home depot, and a pickup truck comes by and puts five of them in the back and they go work all day,

then at the end, the employer tells them to go get lost and doesn't pay them, to whom do they complain? is this a human rights violation? is this a civil rights violation? is it something that they can turn to the local authorities and say i, too, have a claim on your attention. even though i didn't ask your permission to be here, even though i'm not a citizen, even though i am not in your view a legitimate member of this community, do i have a claim on your attention? and we haven't quite worked that out yet. whether that person does have some claim to the same humanity that i as a citizen and you as a citizen do. that's part of a long argument that goes all the way back to the original arguments since 1789. it is not divorced from it. it is not a separate thing from it. it runs like a thread through our entire history. so whether they are working with produce that is sprayed with

poisons that cause permanent nerve damage, cognitive defects, tremors permanently in your hands after you have worked picking vegetables for 5 or 10 or 15 years or terrible chromosomal damage that you then pass on to the children that you never even really thought about having some day. whether it means that you are a member of 1 of the 4 1/2 million people who live in mixed status families in this country where some of the members of the nuclear family are citizens. and some of them are not. some of them live in constant fear of deportation and some of them don't. this is a challenge to us today and there is a legitimate argument that people want to send them home are not all bad people and they are not all racist and they are not all wrong. every country in the world has the right to control its borders and know who lives inside its country. so there is a legitimacy to that argument.

but if you both use them, use them like human harvesting machines and steal their wages and don't send them home, that just seems to be a little bit too much. [ applause ] >> ray, since i've had the least negative things to say all day, i will say a positive thing or tell you a positive little story. at my -- well, first, i would say when -- when you get to the place in life where i am, which is to say within 30 days i will step through the thing and, by god, i'll be 80 years old.

and say to myself, by god, this is a different country than i was born into. it is so much a better -- there -- god knows that there's terrible stuff still here. the banks, the ponzis and lots of crooks. but look at you and you and you. here we are. we wouldn't have been 100 years ago, i'll tell you that. and we did that. we americans changed the country in extraordinary ways. we tell the whole story, you know. we tell the old story. general washington, abe,

good old abe, fdr, all this stuff is too big for us. and i don't think it is too big for us. and i think probably much of the responsibility of changing things should go after digging into people like me, like ernie, god knows like you. how did folks make this country a better country? and what is it that we now need to continue? we can't just sit around in our fancy cars and fancy houses and say, god, we are a swell country. when there's so much more to do. and doing it is the best stuff.

i mean, i will say to you that to have done the journalism, my dear pal here, to have done a little bit of tv and the shows that he is on, to be motivated by a picture of ernie and his co-activists, they all -- they all give great energy but there's something, something that we need to do, and that is that we need more people building and fewer people reaching in to what can i get today, bigger car than yesterday and so forth.

we have -- teach each other that america is worth taking care of. our schools, our hospitals, our police departments, all of these things need work. and people can find that out. one of the things that makes me almost cry from joy is that i have a daughter who is about to turn 30. she could be working at the white house right now. and most people who -- and because she was a terrific campaigner and most people who get a job in the white house when they are that age think that that's enough. they will stay at the white house the rest of their life.

this young woman gave up the job and went back to school, to yale law school because she has seen the issues of americans coming -- people coming to america and not being treated fairly, decently, honorably. she then took a little stint with the service employees union, found a whole bunch of stuff that she thought needed to be changed and fixed and so she's at yale law school and she's going to be -- the first thing she's going to be is an immigration lawyer.

i just want to say we have to take care of this country. it is not going to be a terrific country forever unless we take it -- take care of it on a regular basis. this is -- you know, i could say i was a journalist and i was -- i was a lawyer. i was this and that. but basically i was a citizen. i was just a citizen who really thought the place was great, particularly when jackie won the world series that year. >> i had a last question for each panelist. you already answered the question that i wanted to ask you. let me just quote briefly from roger wilkin's lovely book in which he writes the greatest legacy of our founding fathers is the opportunity of this nation allows each of us to engage and struggles for decency. evil, he writes, is a basic

element of nature. the seeds are in all of us. good has to be manufactured and pushed energetically into public affairs. it is willed into the world by human effort. roger wilkins. [ applause ] final question for all three of you. allida, what would eleanor roosevelt say to us today as we are leave thing conference? >> she would say the last sentence she ever wrote -- staying aloof is not a solution. it is a cowardly evasion and that we cannot leave our problems in the government. we are the government. >> and from allida's book, she has a lovely quote in her book from eleanor roosevelt. you are going to live in a dangerous world but it's going to be an interesting

and adventurous some. when you know what you really want to be and what you want to fight for, not in a war but in order to gain a peace, then i wish you imagination and understanding. god bless you, may you win. eleanor roosevelt. [ applause ] so sharlayne, there's a lovely moment in your memoir where you are there, a young student at the university of georgia. the phone rings. and it is james meredith. and james meredith is in the process of trying to integrate the university of mississippi. and at first you don't believe it is him. but finally you do. and basically he asks for advice from what he calls a fellow traveler. and i thought, what advice would you have give to the fellow travelers, especially the young people today who are defending their own rights or the rights of others? >> again, to go back in history, my grandfather, who was presiding elder in the african methodist episcopal church, used to tell his son, my father, and his other son, my uncle, get an

education, boy -- boys. that's going to be the key to your liberation. and i think that is what propels so many generations of young black people, but i think that if we bring it forward to today, as a journalist, i tend to ask questions much more than i give statements. so my question would be who is educating our young people this next generation, i guess you call them now the millennials, you all are the millennials to be the giants for the next generation to stand on their -- whose shoulders you will provide to stand on and i think that, you know, edward r. murrow talked about television that could teach and illuminate and inspire. i'm not sure that most televisions are doing that these days with the exception of cali

and ray and the news hour. but we need -- we need people, citizens, no matter what their ages, to be educated to the promise of this country and one of the promises was, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, send these, the homeless, tempests, tossed to me. in just a few years and i forget the exact year, maybe 2020, 20, 25, 2/3 of the american people are going to be people of color. and the people who are now in the majority are going to be in the minority. so we have a lot of work to do in terms of understanding our fellow men and women being receptive as we were to generations of immigrants going back to the days they put those words on the statue of liberty. we have to understand what kind of country we are living in and

where our country is going and how we are going to keep it true to the thing that makes you happy and inspired that -- that makes you happy and inspired. because the -- the issues that you are dealing with now, even though there's controversy, when you get married, that's going to be another step towards acceptance and there are many things. all of the things that all of us hope that we are doing are helping but we need more educated people to understand what this country is now and what it is becoming and what we want it to be when it changes into the permutations that it will go through and what it's going to become in the future. [ applause ] >> so i told ray i was going to quote from his first book, "the old neighborhood, what we lost in the great suburban migration," he writes this. we were among the first americans. why are we still strangers? the people we refer to as

latinos or hispanics drew their first breath when an infant was born nine months after christopher columbus arrived in the new world. 500 years later we bus your tables, watch your kids, pick your strawberries, and lay your sod, and frighten you on darkened streets. we fill up your jails, fight your wars, and populate your dreams of immigrant invasion and fabulous sex. yet we are still strangers. so, ray, comment on how the latino experience fit nothing this national conversation on civil rights and your daughter is here and my two children are here. and i can't quite i believed i talked about fabulous sex in front of them. but -- what's the advice that you give to young people today? >> well, right now i'm writing a book -- sorry, i don't have my book here to hold up. but -- >> you should be ashamed of yourself. >> you can hold up mine.

>> but i'm writing a history of latinos in america since the end of the mexican war. and right now i'm immersed in the chapter about the latino civil rights movement which follows on the heels of the great struggles for black civil rights in this country. and whether it is the brown berets or the young lords or in more establishment circles, henry gonzalez or ruben salazar, these men and women, cesar chavez, went to school on what black americans did, organizing with their bodies, with their lives, with their passion and understood that those struggles are never over, they understood it was going to be different because it manifests itself in a

different way. and our history is different and the reasons we are here are different. but humanity is humanity and playing fair is playing fair. and those people, those men and women were going to do what was necessary to make america pay attention. i don't think they could have imagined in 1965 in school strikes and l.a. unified, in attempts to force integration and school lunches in phoenix and in the rio grande valley in texas. i don't think they could have imagined a country where in 2010 for the first time more children were born in this country who traced their ancestry to africa, latin america, and asia than to europe for the first time ever. that's the front edge of the wedge that charlayne was talking about. but america is still going to be built on that same dna, america is still going to be america once that change happens and once those children reach their

maturity and are running things instead of just being told what to do. and so it means everybody has to stretch a little bit. and we did it before. we have done it before. we have -- we are constantly stretching and expanding that notion of who is worthy of my attention and my care and my inclusion. so we are going to do it again. but there is a lot of bad stuff that happens between now and the time that we finally get it. there always has been. every new people that's come to this country has had to get hazed first. and after they are hazed, then they are in. and once you are in, you eventually get to run things. so just think of all the people who are just part of our common culture today, whose own parents

or grandparents never could have done the wonderful things that they are doing. that's the great genius of america, we are going to get it right, we always do eventually. and so i mean don't flag. roger is right when he says america needs constant care and watering. but also, don't be discouraged because we always do eventually get it right. [ applause ] >> it is fun, you know. i mean, we've talked about struggle. we've talked about violence. we have talked about death. but the friendships that you make in the struggle are friendships that are unbreakable. they will last you if there is reincarnation, they will last you lifetime after lifetime after lifetime. and so for the young people that are here, go do this! if you are not doing it for your country, do it for yourself and do it for the profound