by the values that we share. so i think that for women what we've got to do is to figure out how to stand up for ourselves, talk for ourselves, build a community that is inclusive and say that women's rights also help men. they also help children. they help people of every religion, and that they are, in fact, fundamental standards of human decency. until we understand the problems of housing, of access to food, of access to education, the struggle, if you look for first hire, last hired, first fired, look at the teachers that are being let go. they are disproportionately women, and they are disproportionate people of color. i mean, it's a systemic thing here, but i think we have made significant progress, and -- and i'm proud of that.

but my great frustration to the young people that are in this audience is they are much more likely to know the stories of charlayne and the stories of ernie green and the incomparable courage that roger has displayed throughout his career than they are to what happened to women in the '40s, the '50s, the '60s and the '70s. i fear with contraception we are going to go back into this thing. i'm pretty worried. >> let's switch to a different topic president carter brought up, ray, and that's the question, again, of the civil rights of terror suspects after the 9/11. you were telling me that you reported on the story about that. could you share that? >> i was covering the arrest and detention of jose padea. got very interested in it over time. for those of you who don't

remember, he was arrested at o'hare airport and accused of plotting a so-called dirty bomb attack in the heart of a major american city. that is an explosive would be tied to a portion of radioactive material which would then be scattered, rendering a place poisoned and useless so it would have to be evacuated. jose padilla was born in brooklyn, raised in chicago. lived in florida. was arrested in illinois. and held without charge for two and a half years. most of the time in solitary confinement in rarovarious kind restrains that deprived him of his senses. he couldn't hear things. he couldn't see things. he couldn't speak to anybody without being arraigned. he was later tried and found

guilty on charges totally separate from what he was arrested for and held. now he's convicted to a life in prison and there he is in prison. a bad guy likely found to be guilty of plotting against the united states. but it should arouse your attention. it should arouse your concern if you are an american and your fellow citizen can be picked up in the united states and held without being charged with anything for two and a half years. when i wrote up a book proposal about him, nobody wanted to print it because it was a downer, as one publisher said. now, yes, that's one of the reasons why it would be a good book, frankly. it's a downer. it's a downer that it could happen. it's a downer that it did happen.

it's a downer that jose padilla because he was a puerto rican gang banger and not the head of the local lion's club or rotary can be stuck away in a prison without anybody giving a damn whether he's even there or whether he's ever been tried. it should be something of tremendous concern to us all. i have to say again, i'm not sticking up for the guy. if he's guilty of anything, then, fine, let the legal system work and find him guilty and put him away for as long as the charges he's charged with merit his detention. but americans should not be arrested in america by american law enforcement and held without charge. that's bill of rights stuff. that's magna carta stuff. now i'm not an activist. i'm not a crusader. i'm just a guy that watches to see if people play by the rules.

if those are the rules then king baron made king john sign those were the rules in 1215. so that's been the rules for a long time. 2 1/2 years without charge is an amazing thing. but it could happen to jose padilla because of who he was. what would it take in this country for it to happen to you? or someone you know. or someone who lived in your neighborhood. again, not because he's a good guy, the courts have found he's a bad guy. but what our legal protections, what our civil rights exist for is not to protect the rights of good people. it's to protect the rights of people we suspect may be bad people. and the jose padilla case should be something that we don't forget very soon. i want to switch gears quickly and then get back to the panel. i know this is about

contemporary struggles, but i want to go back to robert kennedy's famous trip to africa. we can have the screen come down. he was invited by a group of students while he was a senator. and after he accepted the invitation, the head of the organization was actually arrested and was not allowed to greet robert kennedy. so a young woman named margaret marshall was a student in south africa at the time and we'll now hear her in this film clip in a film by larry shore called "rfk: ripple of hope." then i have a few questions for the panelists based on this short clip. so robert kennedy in south africa in 1965. >> there were places for whites. there were places for what the government referred to as nonwhites and never the twain mixed. and there we all were gathered in johannesburg awaiting his arrival.

>> they arrived at the airport which had those signs nonwhites only and whites only. he chose to go to the non-white area. that's where they put his podium. >> i don't think anybody anticipated that hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of people made their way to that airport, which was a long way outside johannesburg. there was no public transportation. the black south africans, very few of them had access to automobiles. >> when kennedy came, it was this person almost from out of space really. when something like that happens to a people that are oppressed, it sends through an electric shot through the communities of the coming of freedom. >> the airport was swarming with white, black, brown, indian, every hue of skin.

i don't think i had ever seen anything like that in my life. so that very first night we began to get an inkling of what this visit was going to entail. >> the speech robert kennedy gave on that occasion was certainly the most important speech of his life, and i think it captured the essence of what he stood for and came to be known for when he ran for president, particularly that one paragraph about the ripple of hope, which has been quoted over and over and over again. >> each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

>> at the end of that speech i remember as if he stopped and looked around as if to say, was that enough? >> thank you. charlayne, you live in south africa now and have seen the transformation of that country and you were part of the transformation of this country. and i wonder, how does the u.s. look from an international perspective? do people in africa look to the u.s. as a beacon of civil rights, or are we losing that? >> i think historically south africans took great inspiration from our own struggle here in america. but i think increasingly you have a whole new generation of south africans. we call them they're the born frees. they were born after mandela's release, and so their allegiance

or even reverence for the past has diminished somewhat. just as, you know -- and they look very critically increasingly at america just as america is being looked at increasingly more critically around the world, which is why it's really important to -- for those who have the opportunity to help america continue to stand as a beacon for civil and human rights and justice. and it's so coincidental that you would ask me this because just as ray was talking 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 antiapartheid 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 into their bodies 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 hire him -- 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 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 they were to try him, 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 bason 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. >> allida, 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 struggle 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 crisis 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 helped 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 deck 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 have petfar, we have a conference on aids and we are doing something about it and progress can come, but my god, is it painful. [ applause ] >> so, ray, this 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.

>> charlayne and i 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 one of the 4.5 people who live in mixed status million 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 ]

>> roger? >> 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 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 k country in extraordinary ways. we don't tell the story very well, 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 for 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 lives. 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. th