psychological message to our young people. we have to reverse that. >> thank you. go ahead. >> in response to your question on how do we counteract the message that we're getting, that marcus so eloquently summed up, i think what we have to do is focus on the education piece and i came across an interesting stat earlier today that says 61% of all african-americans say that houses of worship should express their views on social and political issues. now that is compelling to me because i'm not sure how many faith leaders understand that that's the case. so what we need to be doing is, in addition to talking to our congregations about what the issues are, we need to engage the outside on where we stand on certain issues.

so we need to be in the social media outlets, be on the forefront saying this is our stance on this issue. we don't agree with it or we do agree with it depending on what the issue is and we need to make sure that we're heard. we can't shy away from that. so i think in order to counteract, you know, what we're hearing from the opposite end, we need to be as forceful as they are in expressing where we are on an issue. >> thank you very much. i think probably all of us know how low down these people are that we deal with out here. you know, this is -- when we voted four years ago, it was historic. and everybody wanted to be a part of history. but we have to make people understand today is that now it is personal. we have a personal stake in what goes on. so my question really kind of

becomes, how do we get past the point of just complaining about what someone has done to us? we know that in every single congressional district throughout this country that black vote can make or break an election. we know that, and everybody else knows it. that's why all of these laws have been passed. but also, i wonder at some point, are we really still relevant? because you look at 2010 and you see what we did. and i have people now telling me, well, it's not really going to make any difference. my life didn't change. what i don't understand and maybe you can help you figure out how we get to people who probably need more than anybody else, the people who need to vote the most are the people who vote the least. how do we encourage them to take ownership in the political process without having to literally go to their house, put them in a car, take them to the polls, tell them how to vote. how do we get them to understand that it is in their interest, in their best interest to vote? >> i think reverend lee talked about it a little bit earlier and i think congresswoman waters mentioned it. it's about being relevant with

our messaging and making sure we're connecting. what your angry with to someone in office or someone having to responsibility to deal with it. but i think one of the things that is really not necessarily a 2012 proposition but a post-2012 proposition is we keep playing checkers and everybody else is playing chess. and we want to talk about folks being engaged in the process when we haven't been engaged in the process. and so being engaged and exciting people about the electoral process is by making sure people are engaged when there's not an election taking place. and the ways to do that is through institutional infrastructure. and so i think we talk good game about counterbalancing the folks that we're going against, but they invest in their institutions. and so what i mean by that is, all of us have seen a fight in

the community, right? you've seen something go down in the community. and sometimes you can get big brother to help you out. sometimes you have to go home to get daddy because sometimes only daddy is going to fix it. and we keep trying to have big brother organizations do what daddy institutions are supposed to do. and by that, i mean if we're going to be serious about playing politics, then we have to be able to create the kind of institutional infrastructure that has the ability to counteract what their institutions do. and so you can't have local churches counterbalancing what multimillion-dollar national institutions do. that's not our job. that's not the local church's job. the local church has a job to do, and it has the ability to be able to excite and galvanize and organize and even train. but at some point, we need focus institutions whose job it is to

do policy work. to do training work. to do organizing work. and whether that's investing in focus work with the naacp and urban league and existing institutions or whether that's about developing new institutions, until we get to the point where we're utilizing resources to be able to develop the kind of institutions that can counterbalance the heritage foundation and the religious right and show that there is a black religious organized political force where you don't have to risk your 501c3 because you developed a 501c4 that's got sensibilities from a faith perspective to be able to battle those institutions that you are fighting against. until we do that, we continue to try to get to the end and say king me. i'm the chief negro that's

speaking more than anybody and they are like checkmate. you've been playing the wrong game. let's get to the point where we begin to have -- and again, this is not a 2012 conversation. i think the 2012 conversation is about how do we begin to develop the local agendas that says how do we educate folks around voter i.d.? how do we educate people around their rights and voter disenfranchisement? how do people know all the information on the ballot, not just who is running for president? make sure all those folks are registered to vote and that we utilize our infrastructure to get those people to the polls. that's a 2012 conversation. but a 2014, 2016 conversation is about how can the churches in my state begin to organize to help develop institution with people already in the state attempting to develop them to begin to say if i'm in the state of california, how do i begin to make sure that my congresswoman are protected, that we're raising money for congressional races, that we're dealing with ballot initiatives in the state of california to be beating our behinds on ballot initiatives, that we're training young people, not around the issues we want them to address but if we want young people to be engaged, empower them to address their own stuff and at the end of the day it helps you anyway, even though you don't agree with how they do it.

how you begin to develop institution that says we're serious about playing the political game, not just being involved in political rhetoric. >> thank you very much. congresswoman waters? >> this conversation that we're having is a conversation we've been having for a long time. we've been having this conversation for a long time as we have watched our communities get excited in 2008 because we had an african-american on the ballot that could be president of the united states and did become president of the united states. 2010 in the midterm elections, they thought their job was done. they didn't go to the polls and we lost the congress of the united states.

and as i campaign now, there is an enthusiasm gap out there. why? is there an enthusiasm gap? we can sit here and talk all that we want about what they should do and why it is important to talk about the labor issues. but people who don't have no job don't care about the labor issues. you know what i'm saying? and so i want to just take this in a respectful place. and that is this. this joblessness, these home foreclosures, what's happening in our communities got people turned off. they are not jumping up and down about voting this time. and as i go through the communities, all i can think about, even though this does not

sound that sophisticated is, the politics that talked about a ticket in every pot. people are hungering. they don't have jobs. they thought they had invested in the american dream by signing on the dotted line for a mortgage they got tricked on, and their homes have been taken. and in our communities, the push carts and the homelessness is just growing all over the place. and so what do you mean when you talk about institutions doing the work of educating, et cetera? i can tell you we all have a role to play. we all have a role to play. many of our civil rights organizations are depending on the same people for their money to run those organizations that's causing us trouble in the first place. now this is serious business. they can't get the money from our community.

and so i was shocked when i learned that the very superpac that was responsible for supporting the work of getting these legislatures online to require more identification, et cetera, was the same ones we vote for every day in the congress. these are the ones that are considered, you know, at&t. and all of your big organizations who are supporting and giving millions of dollars to a superpac that's undermining your rights. so we have a responsibility to know this stuff. and to be able to leverage and to talk with them about it when they come and ask us for something. the other thing is this. we all belong -- not everybody. we all belong to the democratic party. and the democratic party raises millions of dollars and it decides how it's going to spend them.

we are the base bone of the democratic party. we are the ones that can be counted on. we are the ones that if we vote, they don't have to ask us how we vote. we're voting democratic. but when you develop your strategy or your plan for how you want to get to your community, i don't know if the democratic party is there with the resources that they are extracting from this overall community. now having said that, somebody talked about wisconsin and labor. let me back up to talk about the legislatures that have passed these laws that would interfere with our rights, whether they are i.d. laws or early, you know, voter, they cut down on the early voter days, all of that. where was the democratic party when all of this was going on? where was -- this is what parties are organized for. how is it you can have 25 or 26 legislatures who have gone through the past two years doing

this and the democratic party didn't know anything about it? i mean, we're pulling up the rear. and now we've got to figure out how we are going to get ms. jones, who is 80 years old, to the polls because she doesn't have any i.d. i mean, so we're doing this work. so now institutionally, the church, you are so generous to us. you let us come and you speak in your churches. and we get up and we say all the good things. don't nobody ask us any questions. we don't have to answer anybody. we just tell people all this good stuff we've been doing. all right? and we get away with it. stop letting us do that. stop letting us do that. as a matter of fact, i want you to have your social justice

committee or whatever you have in the church. i want you to know my voting record when i get there. and i want you to go down that list and you say, well, now you voted, you know, this way on this. you voted for payday loans. they take 400% interest from our people in our community. why did you vote for them? and then they going to start stuttering. okay. because they don't know that you know you took money from them. you took the big contributions. but you undermined -- so young people know when you are truthful and when you stand for

something and when you love them or not. they really know this. and so when we come and you allow us to have that platform talking stuff and they sitting in the church, they ain't paying no attention to what we're saying. and so the church has a responsibility to understand why you are letting somebody speak. and i want to tell you. the democratic party says to us, take me to your church, and here we come. >> two weeks before the election. >> yeah, two weeks before the election. here we come. pastor, this is my so and so from -- this guy don't care nothing about the church and nothing else. so we are bringing him to you and because you love us and you're generous you give us the platform and then you allow us to transfer the platform to other people. stop doing it. stop doing it. and so, let's all take responsibility. and for our civil rights organizations who say they have to take the money from certain folks, we're just going to have to say, look. you can't -- there's certain places you can't go. there are just certain places you can't go because if you go there, you just sold us out. okay? now this conversation, this conversation that we are talking about, let it start to be

something real real where you all tell us and we tell you and we tell them and everybody else and we do all the organizing together with labor. but, labor, we want your resources, too. we want the resources of labor for voter registration. we want the resources of labor to help create some jobs for these young people. and i want to tell you, ministers you have all these young people in your church and we spend millions of dollars on everything. but you don't make us go to the printer, the black printer or the minority printer in our districts to help generate economic development and all these kids. we say volunteer in one precinct. i'm past the volunteer thing. let's pay these kids. let's pay them to work in these campaigns so that, number one, they can earn some money. but number two, they can learn

and we can learn to respect them. they can learn to respect the system. so let's start thinking outside the box about how we do our politics. and let's, you know, let's love each other and let's respect each other, but let's call a spade a spade, okay? enough said. >> i'm going to go -- let me just do this. i'm going to go to reverend tony and let him respond. then i'm going to take four or five questions from the audience and then i'm going to give each panelist two minutes to take charge to see what your call to action should be. >> one of the joys of congresswoman waters is she's always straight up with us. she talks real straight up just with a range of folks. if you allow me since we're here as a pastor, i think the church also needs to be straight up. and needs to be straight up about where we are and even analyzing our level of strength in this moment. sometimes when you act like you're stronger than you are, then you don't do what you need

to do to get stronger. and one of the challenges -- i don't think many folks want to deal with is that we're looking at a time period in which most of the major houses that have historically have been utilizing these kind of efforts aren't as strong as they used to be. you all will act like i'm not telling the truth. we're deal with shrinkage of black churches. a recession don't shrink a church. a recession grows a church because people need the lord more. what we're dealing with is a generational transition that we're dealing with the fact that most of the major houses that we are depended on so long have been built by and for baby boomers. they were built by and for baby boomers and now baby boomers are graying. and as baby boomers are graying, still the churches are still built to meet the needs of boomers, communicate to boomers and the apparatus is a shape to mobilize boomers. but they are not shaped to communicate to, to deal with or to mobilize generations, x, y or

z and that's why most of the research shows the millennial generation or generation y, that 20-year-old age range is one of the most unchurched generations we've ever seen. but it does not say they are the least prayerful. they love god but they fail to see the relevance in church because our churches were shaped for a different generation. i'm saying that because there's no way you can really deal with and grab a hold of social media if it's all run by boomers. there's no way that you can talk about mobilizing, speaking to and energizing a base of young people that we keep saying if young people aren't even coming to your church. and so there's a need for us to honestly deal with where we are now and as we're talking about the long-term game plan, not just right now but even down the road, there's a need for us also to be identifying young up and coming pastors, brothers and sisters, maybe even youth ministers who know how to touch

this generation and the generations that follow and help empower them and get them connected. stop staying at the table just for yourself. you are getting old. put somebody else at the table. stop going to all the meetings for yourself. one of the blessings for myself was dr. granger, dr. joanne browning would send me to the meetings. and one of the greatest lessons -- and i was a youth minister. and dr. granger brown on new year's eve said let's go to jesse jackson's house, sit at his dinner table and talk about what we're going to be talking about for black people next year. that's how i grew. but i grew, 10, 15 years ago being put at those tables. you can't wait until -- you all are going to sit there and wait until we're 45 years old and act like we're going to the kids table. let's reach back for the 20-something-year-olds that are coming out and can communicate to these young ones and help mobilize and energize them and that's how we've got to do it. >> i will take five questions. five hands real quick. one, two, three, four, five.

i'm going to take six as my colleague stood up. six. one question each now, mind you all. >> i'm listening to jeff johnson talk like a son and it makes sense because of the make-up of the panel. but are we on the brink, because we have people who don't care and we've got this apathetic attitude and recidivism, low economic indicator. are we at a point of anarchy in this country? do you see it happening if we don't get a handle on it, if we can't get people excited? do you see us at a place where this country really could erupt? >> thank you. anyone want to tackle that? i will just -- i will say this.

i don't think so. primarily because if it takes as much to get our people out to do something like voting for the president or doing some other things, i don't see the kind of uprising that you are imagining may happen. i don't know that there is any kind of leadership strong enough in our communities today to galvanize people across this country to do that. i think things would have to get significantly worse and they are bad now. so i don't know. who knows what tomorrow holds but certainly i don't see that happening any time soon. >> let me just add to that. and i would agree with the congresswoman. but i would say this. we have too much for that to happen. we have too much. if you sit back and you think about the arab spring and think about the people who use social media to change the very head of government in their country, they had nothing, which meant they had nothing to lose. when you got a little something, you think about it.

you start to think about it. you start to march out there. you got your spear in your hand and the next thing you know, you go, hmm. i got a sony playstation. i got a color television. it's 52 inches. i've got a lincoln navigator. >> and i live at home for free. >> and i live at home for free. so when you have too much, when you have too much, it is almost impossible to be incited to riot. to be incited to that fervor. >> thank you. i called on five people. stand up. >> i was the next one. >> go right ahead, sir. >> one question each, remember.

>> i'm about the oldest one in this room who has been involved in the movement. amos brown. jackson, mississippi, got involved when i was 15 years old. let me say quickly to the young people. don't glorify the civil rights movement. only 3% of the black churches, according to a study that was done were involved. it was just a handful of ralph abernathys, so let us stop glorifying the civil rights movement. because many of those churches told us, don't come in here with that civil rights message. we are dealing with the gospel. that's reality check number one. number two, in 1901, the president of arkansas baptist college delivered the commencement address and said there's too much crime in our

community. and you young men must not make the street corner your resting place. 1901. 1820, when j. mercer langston left virginia and went up to your state, madam chair, you know what was said? a black brother said, we came from virginia to ohio thinking this would be the promised land, but the only door that was opened to us was the prison door and the penitentiary door. as long as we got this white privileged mentality in this country, and we got this issue of race, the struggle is on. so i say, don't become discouraged. just use what you've got and energize the crowd that you've got and work like hell because as long as you got people around who don't look like us, they're going to forever be trying to be in control of us. and that's the reason why we cannot deal with this issue right now of same-sex marriage

because many of us have been conned and used by white euro centric theology. we have not thought for ourselves. i don't perform those same-sex marriages. that's not a part of my baptist tradition, but it's the time black people start to thinking for themselves and stop letting those other folk thinking for us and stand up and hang in there and use what you got and stop looking at what you don't have on hand. >> thank you, sir. would the other three people i called on please stand up and we're going to do this quickly. >> hello. i'm pastor out in baltimore, maryland. my question is -- have we caved in to political correctness? i notice how we have been

compromising with all kinds of issues. nobody wants to stand up and say what needs to be done. you know, we won by boycott marches, sit-in, civil disobedience to unjust laws and finally we put people to the ballot box. that's how we won a lot of things we have now. but is political correctness the order of the day that's hindering us from doing what we need to do? >> someone is saying yes. let me just say this before they answer the question and i'm certainly going to let the panel do it. i would say the congressional black caucus does not yield to political correctness. our problem is when we look around, nobody standing behind us. that's our problem. any time we say something somebody doesn't like, then you all want to be upset with us. what we're trying to do is tell the truth. we represent most of the black people in this country. but how many of you all stick with us? now that's the truth is what it is. now this summer we're going to be taking a tour around this country talking about how we get people registered to vote. we're going to be taking buses. i want to see how many of you all are on the bus. i'm going to look for you. if you're not on the bus, i'm going to call you and i'm going to call you out. anybody want to answer that question. >> just really quickly. i think that -- the short answer is, yes.

the medium answer is that we need to employ a little bit of political sophistication because it doesn't mean we have to be such antagonists all the time that we just mad. there are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies. what the congresswoman talked about is where we seem to fall short which is from the church's perspective, what is our political agenda so we know how to engage everybody all the time. which means that you won't always be my friend because there are going to be some issues i got to roll on you on. and i can't be afraid of doing that because i want to come to your house for the private dinners that you have. and i think that what was mentioned earlier was that many of us have gotten too comfortable based on the things that we have. and so i think leadership by and

large, and i don't think that's just faith leadership. i think that's my colleagues in the media. i think those that are elected officials. i think there are all of us that are in many cases have to be a little more politically sophisticated and say what is this comprehensive agenda? and not even some institutional agenda. what's my personal political agenda so that i know how to not be politically correct when it's expedient. and when it's necessary. but also know how to be politically sophisticated enough to know this is not a battle a need to fight right now because i need to win this one later. that's not punking out. that's being strategic. but when all you do is punk out, that's politically correctness. and we got to fight that and challenge that a little bit. but if we don't have a political agenda, then what do we have to drive us? and so i think that that's a necessary piece to be able to come out of that political correctness is to have the agenda be sophisticated around that agenda, be prepared to fight. when necessary so you can negotiate those periods of peace. >> i think something also, jeff said about agenda. we also especially the black church have to deal with kowtowing to the liberal orthodoxy.

there is kind of a progressive -- what it means to be progressive or liberal. and if you don't meet this litmus test, then you are no longer in the club anymore. we have to deal with the fact that we cannot -- that our agenda is not dictated by any party or any kind of faction but it's dictated by god. and so, therefore, we have to be prophetic more than we are progressive. and as we move into prophetic, that's when we find our base of power. as long as we're connecting to some kind of liberal or progressive orthodoxy, then we lose our power because we lose our moral voice. and that's where our power as the church is. it's not about who we're connected to here but it's about who we're connected to there. and that's where we gain our power and we gain our strength. >> okay.