regulation of the oil drilling technique known as fracking. we're covering two capitol hill hearings on wednesday. at 10:00 a.m. eastern time the senate banking committee looks at financial industry regulations including the implementation of the dodd frank act and efforts to reduce systemic risk. later, at 2:00 p.m. eastern, a house foreign affairs subcommittee hearing on corruption in afghanistan. they'll hear from gao officials investigating how federal money is being spent. you can watch both hearings live here on c-span 3 or anytime at c-span.org. over the past four years pulitzer prize-winning author david maraniss has been researching and writing his tenth book, "barack obama: the story." the research included traveling the globe and speaking with the president's relatives in kenya and discovering his african ancestry on the shores of lake victoria.

he also toured the family homes and sites in kansas to find the origins of his mother's family. "barack obama: the story" comes out in bookstores on june 19th, but booktv will give you an early look with exclusive pictures and video including our trip to kenya as we traveled with the author in january of 2010. join us sunday june 17th at 6:00 p.m. eastern time. and later at 7:30 that same night your phone calls, e-mails, and tweets for david maraniss on c-span 2's book tv. last week the congressional black caucus held a summit on voting rights. in the final session, dubbed "a call to action," they discussed new voter i.d. laws and how to get african-americans to the polls in november. this is 90 minutes. >> thank you all so much for being here for our last official session of the day.

i want to thank the chairman and the president of cnbc for allowing the cbc once again to participate. i want to thank my chairman, emmanuel cleaver, who i've always told people could tear it up and he tore it up this morning. so i want to thank my chairman again. [ applause ] to the members of the cbc who are here, my colleagues, i see we've just been joined by congresswoman sheila jackson lee from texas. let's give sheila a hand. and we're going to begin this panel even though congresswoman maxine waters is not here yet. she should be here very shortly. so we're expecting her to join us. and of course you met our doctor and our vice president of the cbc earlier, congresswoman donna christiansen from the virgin islands. so again, thank you all. it is my great pleasure to serve as moderator by today's discussion. i'm representative marcia fudge from ohio representing the 11th congressional district. i --

[ applause ] thank you. and i am honored to be here with you for many reasons. i serve as the cbc's for the people voting rights initiative co-chair with my friend and colleague, representative john lewis. let's just take a walk down memory lane. the date was march 7th, 1965, and the place was selma, alabama. young people led the way. their goal was to achieve the uninhibited right to vote. hundreds of brave men, women, and children marched. black and white, hand in hand. i can hear it now. many of them were probably singing. singing some of those old freedom songs like "oh, freedom," "we shall not be moved," or "we shall overcome." and then all at once the marchers were attacked by police with billy clubs and tear gas. that day will forever be known as bloody sunday, a day when

hundreds of americans bled on selma, alabama's petus bridge. bleeding for the struggle to secure our right to vote. our right to have equal, unrestricted, and unhampered access to the polls. the marchers were beat and knocked down, but they didn't stay down. they got up. one week later they marched again. and a few days after that they marched once more. now clergy and young people led the massive crowd. this time thousands marched along the voting rights trail from selma to montgomery. because of bloody sunday and the thousands of americans who were beaten and killed over the years so that i can vote, so that we can all vote, i'm standing here today and i refuse to let their efforts be in vain. the suppressive tactics being used today are not new. what we call a poll tax now is a new photo voter i.d. law.

instead of the physical threats unnecessary and confusing laws are being used to restrict turnout and hamper the effect of early and absentee voting. it was the church. and young people who led the way in '65. and we need the pulpit of the church and the energy of young people to lead the way today. this panel is going to talk to you about how we make that happen. this is in fact a call to action. you're not going to hear any real speeches. we're going to open this up as i introduce the panel and we're going to ask them some questions. and then when i finish my few questions i'm going to let you ask them some questions. as i said we're going to be joined by my colleague, representative maxine waters. and until she gets here i will just move on and i will start out by introducing reverend tony lee. reverend tony lee is the founder and senior pastor of the community of hope african methodist episcopal church. he formerly served as senior

minister to young adults at ebenezer a.m.e. church in fort washington, maryland. he oversaw the development of a wide range of youth ministries that engaged young people in a style of praise and worship thelma braced their unique styles and interest. he received national media attention on b.e.t.'s "cousin jeff's chronicles," on cnn and c-span. reverend lee serves on the leadership team of "saving ourselves," s.o.s., an organization working in the gulf coast on behalf of those victimized and impacted by the social, economic, and physical devastation of hurricane katrina. next i have ajuwa onsong. did i get it right? >> close. >> close? who is the president and ceo of faith links inc. she served as manager of federal affairs for the new england council, the nation's oldest regional business organization, where she advocated for the interest of over 350 businesses

across the six state new england region in washington, d.c. where she worked. her areas of responsibility were health care. and she also was a special assistant to our very own vice chair of the democratic caucus, john larson of connecticut. she earned a bachelor's degree in political science from southern connecticut state university and a master's degree in religious studies with a concentration in religion, ethics and public policy from howard university school of distanty. she's also an instructor at the cavalry body institute where she tachz a koers on faith and politics. next we have cindy smalls. cindy smalls is the national voter protection manager for the a.f.l.c.i.o. working in the political department overseeing the 2012 my vote my right voter protection campaign. prior to coming to the afl-cio sendy worked for seiu from 2007

to 2012 in various capacities as the mid-atlantic area political director, senior legislative advocate, and coordinating manager overseeing seiu's retiree program. she served as a field director for the south carolina democratic party and provided technical assistance to candidates for city council, mayor, and school board. and has a b.a. in political science from the university of south carolina. marcus mason is a partner at the madison group. he is responsible for managing the firm's transportation, energy, tax, and homeland security portfolio. in addition he focuses on crisis management, complex integrated campaigns and coalition building. he has more than 15 years of political and policy experience. prior to joining tmg he served as amtrak's senior director of government affairs. marc sus a member of the board of directors of national black caucus foundation. he's also on the board of

directors of national black caucus political action committee. marcus is also a published author who writes spy thrillers. which i just found out. next we have my homeboy, jeff johnson. jeff is an award-winning journalist, social activist, and political commentator and author. from his celebrated conversations with marquee world figures in the political, business, and entertainment arenas to his grassroots trench work to inspire the next generation of leaders, investigative journalist, political correspondent, and activist jeff johnson continues to be a trailblazing social entrepreneur and authentic voice for change. currently jeff is an msnbc contributor, an executive editor of political 365, is commentator on the morning show. currently leading a five-year project to recruit and develop

80,000 black male teachers. and he has earned a reputation as the -- a voice of conscience. we are pleased to have all of our panelists. please give them all a round of applause. [ applause ] my first question is as martin luther king jr. talked about the war in vietnam he asked the question and i ask this question because i believe we are at ar today. he said there comes a time when silence is betrayal. oftentimes, members of the faith community hold politics and politicians at arm's length and choose not to engage in the process. how do we remind the especially younger generation of faith leaders about the black church's historical connection to politics and social change and motivate them to act? the floor is open.

to anyone that would like to -- >> i'll start. i think. i think that many in this room are very clear on the fact that there has been a considerable shift as it relates to national faith leadership and their ability to be apolitical versus political. and that shift has happened, one, because of -- in many cases the -- that what you all have been discussing for the last hour, which is the irs attack on those that would attempt to be political and focuses, losing status. but i think that one of the challenges in young leadership being able to model not just what dr. king was about but the legacy that i think comes from the black church in particular, and that's using the prophetic voice to be able to speak to issues beyond that of church, to

that of life, is because in many cases they don't always see it. and i think there's a great deal of discussion about the legacy of the church as it relates to sociopolitical issues and the ability to be able to mobilize around them but not a lot of modeling. and so until that modeling happens it doesn't exist. and we can have a lot of rhetorical discussion about it. i'll close with this. i think when we start -- the whole notion of this discussion here is call to action. and when you say call and action, that implies that there is an ask and a response. but in the middle of that there has to be training. and i think one of the things that we have removed from the african-american institutional tradition is an emphasis on training. and by that i mean not the theological training that comes from seminary from the standpoint of being able to be a pastor within a denomination. but the training of what it means to be a grassroots

organizer utilizing the prophetic voice to be able to mobilize folks with a level of proficiency, not just passion. and one of the things that frustrates me is we put an overemphasis on passion and an underemphasis on direction and focus. i think there's a tremendous opportunity -- and many of your churches are doing this, but i think there are too many that are not. and i think there needs to be an institutionalized process that puts us in a position where we're seeing, not just young faith leaders but congregants trained proficiently on how to do social justice activism so that when they're coming out of our houses of faith it's not just with passion and not just with vision but with proficiency, focus, a strategy that's connected to it, measurable goals that are associated with it, data that's collected as a result of it. and at the end of the day we're able to say here is what was accomplished as a result of our

congregants going out into the local community and addressing these issues to the goal of creating this result. not just speaking, exciting people to a state of euphoric inactivity where they jump up and down and they do the same thing they did before we started talking and note there's no transformative change. >> thank you. >> in church we say amen. >> amen. >> i think another piece to connect to that, and i think one of the things that jeff said that was so significant was about really connecting it to something that makes sense for people in their everyday lives. there's a disconnect for many, especially for our generations, between the impact of policy and what it means in the hood, what it means on our block. and so we're talking about policy issues. we're talking about legislative issues. but they're not seeing how policy impacts where they live. and there's a need if we're going to be able to do it and shape it, is to show the connection between policy and where people live in their everyday life. not just that but even a

historical reflection on -- what we have right now is a lot of -- and i love the boomer generation. i love the generation above it. but what we have is a lot of historical reflection and back patting and that kind of a piece. but this generation needs to see and really grab a hold of what those policy changes did to impact their current lifestyle. and there needs to be a way to shape that in a way. let me give you a good example from a biblgical sense. we've got preachers in here. we tell them what it was like for the generation to cross the red sea but they're in the wilderness wearing hand-me-downs. so they're hearing the victories of the past while in the wilderness wearing hand-me-downs trying to figure out what the heck they're going to do when they face the walls of jericho. so there's a need to be able to show the same god, the same tactics that we used at the red sea would be helpful to, one, get them out of the wilderness but, two, tear down the walls of

jericho and help them to get to the promised land living. but if you don't make the connection then all they see is wilderness and all don't make the connection all they see is wilderness and hand-me-downs and all they see is making not just to make it today but they don't see how to move forward to make it tomorrow and all they hear is giants in the land. >> all right. i will take a brief pause. i indicated to you that we would be joined by my colleague and friend representative maxine waters from california who has now joined us and all of you know congresswoman maxine waters. i also want to recognize terry sewell, representative out of alabama. terry joined us as well. and to draw your attention to the congressional black caucus voter empowerment program which all of you, i don't know if you have, but if you don't, please make sure you take this when you leave. this is all a part of our call to action this afternoon.

the next question, just see if you can help me understand and articulate for the audience the message that we are hearing. what is the message we are hearing today with this resurgence of voter suppression and what message is being communicated to our communities and how can we counteract the message being sent by the passage of these laws? anybody? it is open. it is open to any person on the panel. go ahead, congresswoman. >> i just ask if she would give me a little breathing room. i just came in. let me take this opportunity to thank all of our clergy, our ministers, our pastors here in washington, d.c., at this

conference and the fact that you are taking time out from your schedule to talk about how you can use your power and your influence to impact the politics of this nation on behalf of not only the president of the united states but for all people who should be involved in voting and this democracy. without participation there will be no democracy. i am very pleased that you see this as a part of your responsibility and something that you can have great influence with. now, having said that, i want to point to something, a conversation that i just had with reverend jesse jackson. reverend jesse jackson has played an interesting role in the politics of this country for many years, particularly registering young people to vote and registering large numbers of people to vote for years now,

and he has an interesting way of connecting with young people. i find myself sometimes feeling as if i am talking at young people rather than connecting with them, but in this conversation that i had with him recently, i better understood why he connects. when he talked to young people, he talked about trayvon martin, and he wanted to know what they cared about, what they understood, what they knew. they were all fired up. trayvon had been killed. they knew the circumstances of the killing, and they were mad and they wanted to do something. then reverend asked how many people were registered to vote. so i guess less than half of

them were actually registered to vote. then reverend jackson said, well, if you were asked to serve on the jury to make a decision about whether or not trayvon martin had been murdered, had been killed, and deserved to be punished, if you are not registered to vote, you couldn't serve on the jury. they said what? no. and then he laid it out and he explained it to them, that in order to serve on a jury you have to be registered to vote. they didn't know that. that connected in a way that most of us don't often understand how to make that connection. we preach about the way it used to be. we preach about what they ought to know and what they ought to understand and how it was and my kids saying in the olden days, the civil rights movement and they look at us and they're not always connecting. when you can take something that is going on in their lives and

connect it in a very graphic way, then this he began to get it. so i think as we talk on this panel about what you just asked us to do and how do you connect, how do you get the message across, we do have to understand that we have to pay attention to what it is that young people are listening to or what they care about, and we have to get -- and i am sure someone may have talked already or will be talking about social media and how it works and i bet many of you have not thought about what a role you can play with the social media and we can take a lesson from president obama and what he did with the social media, how you raise money, how you organize, and you will be

surprised with many of our young people they don't read the newspapers. they flip past what's going on on the news. they're on the internet. they get their information from the blogging and the tweeting. guess what? one minister out about his business tweeting to thousands with the message could do more than i dare not say on sunday morning in pulpit because you won't like it if i say that, however, you can connect and talk to people on your own time all during the day and in the evening and guess what? as you build that following, it becomes broader than the church population because it multiplies, and so i hope that we can get into a little bit of that today because i think that perhaps the power and influence of the church still is not being utilized. it is under utilized, perhaps

not understood, and i see jefferson back there just shaking his head because i think he understands something about telecommunications and all of that. with that i will turn it back over. >> thank you very much. we are going to get into that subject. ms. smalls. >> what i wanted to just address on the question that you asked around what is the message with all of these voter suppression bills we're seeing passed in these various states, what's the message, and coming from a labor perspective, this is an attack on working people in this country. we as laborers went through in 2011, starting in 2010, the attack on working people around collective bargaining, and we view this as one more fight that we are trying to combat, and we are in a war and the message is is an attack on working people, how do we combat that?

it is with the people in this room that we have to not voices. we are the ones who have organized. we are the ones who have protested in the streets, and we have to get back to that. we have to create a message that resonates not only to the older folks but the young generation. we have to connect in a way and in a way that they understand. we have to tell the story about how we came over but we have not yet come over because we still have a lot to do. there is a lot of work to be done, and so all of the rights that we have enjoyed as citizens in this country and around collective bargaining and the basic right to vote, it is under attack, and that is the message. we are under attack. so the message is we must rise

up as one like we did in wisconsin and ohio and those fights and we have to come together and tell the story that we will not lay down, that we will be in the streets, we will be on the internet. we will tweet. we will be on msnbc and cnn to tell the story, but it starts here by us raising our voices. >> thank you. mr. mason. >> i am just going to follow up on what my dear friend cindy said but first i want to clarify the record. as the congressman was reading my bio, i noticed the wrong bio was being read. i am a man of many political hats as some of my friends have said, but i would not be here were it not for a black minister who was the son of another black minister who were both elected officials. walter tucker iii empowered me as a 21-year-old to run his campaign for congress, and just a few months after he empowered

me, we won that campaign for congress, so i have been in politics for about oh, lord, i don't want to say it. i have been in politics half my life. i started off running congressional campaigns, and i have never lost a campaign that i have actually managed, but interestingly enough at 21 a black minister empowered me and the black church was key to that election victory. it was critical to that election victory. when that african-american minister empowered me, i went to the ministers and the congressional district and asked them to empower one young person in the church that could be a liaison that i could use to help organize and turn out a number of key votes, but i want to get back to the question, what message is being sent? what message is being sent to our young people by the new voter i.d. laws because it wasn't something i had to deal with during that election. i have a 19-year-old daughter

who is a rising junior at howard university, and as fathers of daughters know, sometimes they will come to you and say very prophetic things. after watching the news, my daughter came in to me and said something i did not expect her to say. she said, dad, it seems to me like we won the battle but someone wants to make sure that we lose the war. and that is the message that is being sent to our young people with these new voter id laws. we won the battle. with the passage of all the civil rights act and voting rights acts. we win the battle every year every time we get the voting rights act funded and reauthorized. however, some one sent back, after 2008, where there were 5 million new voters registered. 4 million of which were african-american. some one said -- it's time for them to lose the war and let's begin, let's put in place a strategy and execute the

stakticstaktic tactics that will cause them to lose the the war, and let's catch them flatfooted while the cheering and celebrating, catch them flatfooted and implement this right now. so we have to fight back. and i was always taught that not on do your choose your battles, but you also choose the fields on which you can fight. and you choose those fields on which you can win. now, i am here as the treasure of the protecting our vote super pac, we did in two months what the other side had two years to do. we stood it up in two months and now we're ready to roll. we are choosing our battle and we are choosing the field on which we fight. now you can't match themle dollar for dollar. you can't match them in an air campaign. but you can match them in a ground pam wasn't. our strength and the strength of

the black church is on the ground. they have been able to put boots on the ground, going block to block, door to door, precinct to precinct until you ultimately have a district or a county swinging in one direction. that's something that we have to remember and even though these -- and even though these laws have been enacted in several states, we have to get back off of our heels, get back on the balls of our feet, lean forward into this fight and engage because if we don't, if we don't, the gains of 2006 and 2008 will have been for naught. and that means that the gains that the gains of everyone who fought before us, long before i was alive, will have been for naught. we may have won the battle, but the message that is being sent is you will -- not you might, but you will lose the war. and that is a very powerful