a lot of times when we talk about the impact of partisan, it seems kind of distant from the lives of the american people. it's like regulations. but one of the things that i think partisanship has done in this country is to keep black and white people separate. we've done a lot of work as independents to create ways for what we call the overtax, which is the white middle class and the underserved which are people of color and poor people in general. to come together and have dialogues. but this is so human. the democrats think they are representing the african-american community and other people of color, but they don't. in fact, they help to create the

antagonisms. there's something so fro foundly disturbing about this system from the vantage point of our not -- not just that they can't sit together, but they keep us from sitting together. i just wanted the two of you to comment. >> interestingly enough that division that you talk about, you may remember a number of years ago when it was a much hotter issue than it has been since about creating a minority majority district. i was teaching at harvard at the time and there was a meeting, a faculty member and it was very interesting because people are looking for what they think will serve their advantage so the -- this was not something that involved republicans too much. so the white liberals on the faculty were very much in favor

of keeping districts the way they had been. not majority minority. they said because if we create a majority district that is a majority voters are minorities, that that will take them out of other districts and increase the number of republicans so don't worry about it, we'll take care of you. we'll watch out for our interest. and the african-american members of the committee said thank you for taking care of our interest, we appreciate it. we'd kind of like a seat at the table, too. so there has been historically there's a great new book out, you're going to be shocked to find out i wrote a very good review of it by eric alterman who's quite a well known liberal writer. he has a new book out called "the cause" of making the case for liberal politics. one of the things says that he brought up is the tension that existed for so long between

white liberals and african-americans about how do you resolve -- one of them wants political advantage and the other says we want to be full players in this democracy. really tough. >> a couple of thoughts about this. and in my mind what you're raising we also connect to the question about sen terrorism that gabrielle brought up. i think about some to have history of what's gone on in the independent political movement. of course, you've been an outspoken and leading figure in that movement and our c-span audience should know that you ran for president in 1988 as an independent and became the first woman and first african-american in u.s. history to access the ballot in all 50 states. which was amazing. [ applause ]

but more than that, your message in that campaign and since then and certainly in all of our work in the independent political movement is constantly trying to find ways to build new bridges between communities and constituencies and groups of americans who are divided and separated from one another. and surely we've been very excited and very gratified over the years when we've seen a particular coalition which we sometimes call the black and independent alliance come together which happened in 2008, which the election of barack obama. and which we've also seen happen in new york city here in some of the mayoral races in the election of michael bloomberg. big stuff, important stuff and very important coalition. one point about the sen terrorism issue -- i agree completely with all of what you said politically and historically about the mooshy

center. it also has an unmooshy side, too, which is a decisive side. we've seen that. sen terrorism is often presented as the thing that brings people together, but actually it's a politic that drives people apart. we saw that manifest in the earliest days of the independent political movement when perot was running for the presidency in a broad coalition came together after that rupp to try to create a new national political party which ultimately became the reform party. there were terrible fights. tremendous fights that went on about whether this party was going to be a centrist party which some of the more presee jous elected official types were advocating for or what we called the populous party. a party that brought ordinary americans together across racial lines, across id logical lines, across geographical lines to

create a new kind of politic. so i think for people who have been involved in the independent movement for many years that fight between sen terrorism and populism between purity and new coalitions and new alliances has been a very defining fight in the movement. and one that is certainly i think going to continue. i think it's very important for people to be educated about that and this is something that i write about as you said in my book i deal a lot with the history of this fight. historically it's very, very important fight. after all some of the people who are advocating for a centrist national political party were basically saying and this kind of connects to your story, we'll bring the more conservative democrats who are white and the more liberal republicans who are white together in a centrist party. oh, and the plaque people, they'll stay behind in the

democratic party, but they'll be happy buzz the party will be smaller and then they'll have more power within this party. and that was -- i'm not making this up. people were writing books articulating this as a thesis or as a blueprint for how to build the independent movement. many of us have been in independent politics for a long time and fought tooth and nail against that. i just think that's so important as a port of that history. >> before we take our next question, i have a commercial interruption. actually i have two invitations for everyone here tonight. on may 5th, the new york city independent party is hosting a neither night at new york city's premier political theater the castillo theater. we'll be seeing a new musical called "sally and tom the american way." the play explores the love affair between thomas jefferson

and sally hemmings his slave and examines the inhuman compromise our founders made at our birth. and jackie plays james madison in the production in her theoretical debut. [ applause ] >> nicky asked me if i was going to sing tonight, but i am not. >> i tried. >> come see the show and i will. >> you understand there's going to be more to come. >> i hope so. the play is wonderful. the music is totally engrossing. it's very thought provoking. jackie is dynamite. we have tickets on sale as we leave this evening you can check in at the registration table. i hope you'll come join us. my next invitation is to join me in taking politics to the people national. i gab politics for the the people over a decade ago to bring these kind of dialogues to

independent minded new yorkers. in january of this year, i took the enterprise national. i launched a blog and an online book club and discussion group so that independents across the country could be part of creating these cutting edge conversations. very important project. i want to invite all of you who are listening in the c-span audience to join our book club and politics for the people online. and all of our audience here in new york to sign up yourself and refer friends and colleagues from around the country. you can find us at www.politics4thepeople.wordpress .com. the floor is open again for more questions. if i could have my two mic handlers. i'll tell you where to go. harry? >> when we're talking about

obama and the 2008 election, i was thinking well, he got some of the cultural aspects right, but he didn't address the structural issues. we've talked a lot tonight and elsewhere about open primaries, redistricting which addressed some of the structural impediments to democracy. nicky referenced party primaries and they were a structural reform that was supposed to cure -- in which bosses pick the nominees, but the parties quickly figured out how to turn that to their own advantage. i'm a 60s person, so i'm a little bit i find it odd to be advocating for structural reform. how do we get it right? the cultural aspect of it, the historical aspect of it, the mobilization aspect of it so it comes together and works and the people who run the show can't take it back?

>> the power in this country rests with the people if they exercise. democracy is not a spectator sport. one of the things as the people in washington state and california found is they went to truly open primaries. there are 24 states that have provisions in their constitution for initiative petitions where the voters can just take control. they come up with changes in the law in this case what they did was redistricting and the primaries. they get the signatures. they run a campaign and they change the laws. the other part of it, i'm not going to ask how many of you have been to a meeting where your member of congress or house and senate member was present, but it's important at the state legislative level a lot of states don't have an initiative

they have ref ren da where the state legislature can be pressured to submit the issue to a voters. in addition when your member of congress, house and senate comes to meet with constituents you ought to be there. one of the things i've said that senator so and so i'm not going to name any name ors a house member, if you vote 95% of the time with your party as a great many do, then you don't belong in congress. you're obviously not representing us. we aren't all in agreement 95% of the time. you say to house members we within the to support a provision that requires a speaker of the house to act in a nonpartisan way. change the rules so you can't be elected speaker unless you get 06% of the vote of the members. whatever. come up with the changes required. this requires confrontation. it requires confrontation either

when your member of congress is back and you can talk to them or to washington or the state or to albany and you talk to them or you get an initiative petition going. we're in the mess we're in because the american people haven't said stop it. and it's time to say stop it. >> just to add a couple things to that. i was thinking about when you asked your question i was thinking about fred newman, a founder of this movement who passed away a year ago. and he wrote a book, a number of years back called the end of knowing. which is a wonderful book. had so many important ideas in it. one of the things he wrote about in that back, not just in the book, which he practiced very much in his organizing was the idea that cultural

transformation doesn't happen in an orderly fashion. that's what we're talking about. it occurs out of chaos and out of all kinds of new things happening many the context of chaos. i feel very close to this. and i was thinking about open primaries and top two and so much of the discussion about this structural political reform which we're very much in favor of and which independents all across the country support, people will often say, well, you know, but if you had independents voting many the primaries then this is what the outcome is going to be or it will help the republicans or it will help the democrats or help this one or that one. and what's going to happen? that's the impact going to be? i've become very fond of saying, i've done so many of these debates or discussion about these issues, i've become very fond of saying, i have no idea.

i really don't know, but here's what i know, 40% of the country are independents today. they need to right the vote. they need to opportunity to vote in the first round of voting and we'll take it from there. i'm willing to say i trust sufficiently in the american people to go with that. we don't know what that's going to produce, but that's a good thing and that's the environment that we're organizing. >> thanks. you've mentioned, i was glad that you said the women's movement, the civil rights movement, all these movements were not -- they were not centrist movements and more over they were not party movements. they were movements of independent people. i'm glad that you just said

jackie, what you said about cultural transformation because that truly is how things change. and so i'm a little kind of per tushed that people all over the country, some black people, all kinds of people, white people who are saying that president bam didn't do this, president obama didn't do that. because i think about what fred newman said about this cultural transformation when ross perot had 20 million votes. he was saying that shook up the establishment because 20 million americans voted in this pop laws fashion. jesse ventura a wrestler got elected governor. it was a defection because he wasn't supposed to be governor. so i think about obama in that way, too.

that really the cultural thing happened was an african-american was elected president of the united states and that was the change. and i'd like to know your comments on this? because you both have eloquently openly addressed the whole bipartisan gridlock, the whole choke hold on the system by the american parties. by the two party system. could you address further what might that cultural impact would do based on what we've seen from perot, ventura and now obama. >> i appreciate your question. a couple things i would say about it. one is i think that one of the effects of that very dramatic event that took place, that cultural turning point or that historic turning point many the

country is that what you then saw subsequently was the extraordinary resistance of the existing institutions to be able to man fest that or to respond to that or to create a new political process off of that. in some ways you have to say, well, the election of barack obama should have set off a huge chain of events in which there was a broad reconsideration of the way institutions in this society function. but that's not what happened. in fact, arguably what happened is that those institutions began to perform more and more as caricatures of themselves. and so as i see it, which is part of which i was referencing before as the uneveness of the

process. the country takes a huge step forward in this way and then you start to see these incredible behemoth institutions which are dead. it's the dead hand of the political parties controlling the process even though the political people have spoken out saying we want to go do something different. that's the fight. that's what we're doing. i think that's also why you were saying we're making the revolution. some people say, oh, you know, open primaries. what happened to storming the barricades and you know, you're a 60s person. the revolution, and all this kind of stuff. i think it's important for people to appreciate how extraordinarily revolutionary it is to restructure the ruling institutions of a society in the way that we're talking about. [ applause ]

>> i can't add to that except i would just underline what you said by saying that changing the system and doing away with party control of the election process, the governing process, the istr storming the barricades. >> gentleman right there? >> in the majority-take-all system, in our majority-take-all system, it seems like that's part of the problem. reminded me of when lanny ginere, i don't know if she still teaches at harvard, but she used to. she wrote the book called "the tyranny of the majority" about digit w different ways to do democracy. weighted voting. things like that. is any of this relevant relevant to this discussion? is it possible to get headway on

different ways of actually representing the plurality, if not the majority? >> there are a lot of reforms that are out there that -- i'll just give my own bias. a lot of reforms that are out there just don't make any sense. let me give you a couple of examples. i've talked with the people at americans elect and they keep onlyi in coming to me and asking me to support them. they'll have a presidential candidate of one party and vice presidential candidate of other party. well, since vice presidents have no more influence than this glass, it doesn't make any difference at all. but there's another one that's gotten -- and a friend of mine is pushing this and other people, and it sounds good at first. instant runoff voting. but here's what's wrong with that.

if any of you -- i don't really know new york laws. but if you're familiar with the state that has runoff primaries, as my state did, you would actually find that in a great many of the cases that whoever finished second in the first round wins the runoff. because when you have an actual runoff, not just dropping down the list, you know, whoever gets your vote, you have an actual runoff between two people so that the voters can look at them, size them up, listen to them head to head, instead of divided up among a lot of other candidates, often it's the one who won the first round, loses the second round. so, you know, i think it has to be much more fundamental. i think it has to be opening it up to democracy. let every candidate who qualifies, whether by filing fee or petition signatures, whatever the state requires, be on the ballot. let the voters choose among all of them. >> uh-huh. [ applause ]

>> dr. field? >> i wanted to ask you if you could comment on the relationship between the extent of social crises in our country and on the economic crisis, but we see in so many areas. and i work as a medical doctor in health care, in education, in housing and transportation and energy. i mean, everything. the country is really in crisis. in all these areas. and people live this every day. and it seems to me that there's a strong relationship between that and what you're talking about. partisanship, people can't talk about real issues. about what's really going on. and so i just wanted to ask you if you could comment on this and how to express that relationship to the american people and to people in a way that is not just sort of playing partisan games, which democrats and republicans do all the time, but to talk about it in a way that has to do

with the fundamental need for political restructuring, and for nonpartisanship, all kinds of barriers. >> well, you know, actually, i can't give an answer that's as good as your question. that's a very, very good question. but i will say that one of the things that happens is that when you have the kinds of crises that we have, you know, whether it's the banking system or the health care system, whatever it is, you have so many problems. in a way it works against fundamental reform because people start becoming so focused on policy outcome that they want it. you know, trying to get them to focus on systemic changes is much more difficult. and they don't realize, so people who are concerned about say, well, if we elect the person who thinks the way i think, we're going to be better off. but then there, just as you saw with obama and see with anybody, you know, then they are part of the same system and nothing gets

changed. i -- also, when you have problems as deep -- they're not just -- deep as the ones you talk about, the only way to deal with them is to get people of goodwill whose focus is not on the next election, but on solving the problem to sit down together. and that's not that crisis makes it harder to do that, but you've got to. you've got to. if you're starting out, i mean, look, one of the things, talking about obama. there were conservatives after obama's election. there were conservatives who thought obama was a kenyan socialist and there were liberals who were mad that he wasn't. so it was all people laid out these extreme positions and nobody starts talking about, how do you just get together and

deal with the problem at hand? you know, and so -- there's no good answer to it. i mean, it's a real problem, but you put your finger on it very, very important problem we have right now. >> i would just add that i think what you're describing here is how do you create environments have where problem solving is t priority and is possible? this comes up in politic situations. i'm sure you dealt with this when you were in congress, mickey. but there's a lot of creative, innovative, new ways of looking at issues. whether it's in science or medicine or youth development, education, economic development. but the vested interests have to protect the constituencies, the special interests that they

represent and to go to the point you made earlier, mickey, about incentives, the incentive for innovation and bringing new ideas and new approaches to bear on social problems is very, very minimal. and that -- in some ways i think that's where -- that's the point of pressure. that's where we have to tackle the problem. we've got to create a new set of incentives so that innovation and development and new approaches to these issues can be brought in and experimented with and tried and examined and tested and, you know, and discussed and all of that. but we just don't have that kind of system right now. that's -- >> that's what's so great about you bringing together law enforcement and inner city youth. bringing people together to talk. that's what great thing about what you were talking about before, because whether your group's on the left or the right, you resist the change

because you have your constituency, you have your office. you have your title. you have -- you know. and so you want to hold on to that and real progress can't happen. >> eileen? >> i wanted to thank you for inviting me to this event. it's very special, but you had mentioned earlier about how, you know, the president really isn't in charge. it's the congress. and we learn those lessons in school. however, with the media, they make so much of the presidential election that really takes the focus away from that congress is really running the country. is there any way that we could bring that back to the, you know, front? for people to be made more aware of this? >> you know, if -- first of all, don't get me started on the media. with the exception of c-span

which is great. but i've had the opportunity to do several things with sandra day o'connor, and if she were sitting here, she would say that the problem is a failure in education, it's a failure in not only teaching critical thinking which is not done very well anymore, but a fail wrur in teaching civics, teaching about our system of government so people don't understand that. they don't know. a lot more people would worry about who they vote for for congress than president if -- you know, if they understood the system and how it is supposed to work. but, you know, that's long term. i don't know you turn around syg work. a big media where being nasty gets rewards you know, i'm sure jackie has