so i got overs to the office one day and there was an invitation from katherine graham and jacqueline kennedy o nas sis to have dinner. i thought i must be the most important person here. i get over to this lovedy dinner at katherine graham's house, me, the two women on the end and all of these male senators. and here's what happened. jacqueline kennedy had edited a book called "remember the ladies" from abigail adams plea to her husband when he was writing the constitution. obviously he didn't do it but -- and it was about all of the things that we didn't know about her story, you know all of the women in our backgrounds that had just been left out of history.

they take history too seriously and no reason to put hers in. she wanted this as part of the official part of the by centennial. made sense to me. i thought it was about time women learned their history. i passed it out and since no one was paying attention, it got to the senate and they were like, no way. so i'm sitting here at this dinner and thinking these are probably the two most powerful women i can think of in washington and these guys are saying no. and they are saying things like, our vision for what women should do in the by centennial is beautification projects. and we would say, we could probably do both, you know, we could probably plant bulbs and read. they wouldn't have anything to do with it. so at that point i kind of drove home thinking what am i doing here? their big compromise was they would allow the book to go to europe and asia and the u.s. information libraries but that would be it. it would not be an official part of the bicentennial in the united states. i guess they were afraid we

would get too radical. i don't know. that happened and the wonderful story about my coming into arms services with my wonderful african-american colleague, rondell lumzs and there were no african-american women in the armed services and the chairman went ballistic and only gave us one chair to share. because he said we were each worth only half of his regular members and he vetoed our coming on the committee and wanted absolutely no part of it. well, thank you very much and welcome to washington. that was an interesting thing, barney frank, a good friend of mine, he said that was the only half ass thing i did when i was there, but i'm not sure that's true. i figure he didn't know about

the other things i was doing. well then, i had been very interested in women in the military. young women wanted to participate and they were in. at the air force in particular was letting more women in and stuff. i'm home one weekend and these wonderful young women air force officers come to see me and said, it's just terrible at loury. i said what? we're supposed to go to the officers club because we're officers and it's -- but they have these topless go go dancers in there. i said, what? so i go back to washington and i call antonio shaz, the first woman under secretary of the air force. i tell her, that's outrageous, that can't happen. trust me, it's happening. she says, never worry, i'm putting out an order right away to stop all of that. she said she did. i'm back a couple weeks later and women said, can't you do anything about it? i said, what do you mean? i go back and call tony and say, i thought you put out an order?

she said i did. she called in the people they said, we didn't send it out. we thought you were kidding. so we had a lot of ways where we really found women were not making -- they weren't exactly excited about having us there. i also remember too, when i first got to congress, we were supposed to have a separate credit card, you know, for our bills, i couldn't use my husband's credit card because you're turning them in to be reimbursed. so i applied to american express to get a separate card. and they tell me you can't because you're of child bearing age. and actually, i had exactly the same problem i had gone back to close the house, we were going to live in, because jim was busy and it was a crazy time. i got back and said you can't, you're of child bearing age.

so equal credit had no quite come at that time. i got people together and we got the equal credit bill through then i kept hearing from women this was still going on. so i said, what's happening. we called over arthur burns, who was then chairman of the federal reserve, maybe some of you remember, and we said we passed this bill and women all over are telling us they are not getting -- oh, he said, we thought you just meant it for shopping. i could tell these stories all night, they are amazing. one of the things we find everywhere, women don't celebrate women enough. one of the things we passed was to celebrate august the 26th, which is the day the 19th amendment passed. you would think that would be a big day, over half of the population finally gets to vote.

but, we're all too busy. and then we had wonderful helen redding, singing woman, the whole bit. jim was looking for someplace to take her where there was some monument to women. and we found monuments to buffalos and everything but the only one we could find for a woman was this thing over in city park that's just kind of liberty or justice or something. they are always -- no real women. so that was also interesting. and then i see marvelous sally brownback here, the two of us decided there should be some type of memorial in downtown denver where those wonderful sufferage acts met with the supporting males and it was half and half in this church where they got this thing through in 1893 for women to vote. that's very historic, fantastic.

and we discovered that that church had been where the first national bank was on 17th street. going in and explaining to them the wonderful historic place where they work and how we would like to have something, you may as well have told them there was going to be a nuclear attack at 3:00. they were -- i think we finally got to put a little tiny plaque down on the floor. i don't think anybody has seen it and now they moved it somewhere else. i have no idea where it is now. maybe it's been removed to the circular file. i do think those things are history. it's wonderful to know we had forefathers and mothers caring, especially in 1893. the silver panic was on, this place was in like a depression. and yet man came out and said women should be able to vote. that you know, i'm still lobbying for something down there. i don't know, maybe we should march down there this afternoon and put up a monument. i don't know. but colorado tends to go one way and then another. because while we were doing all of this in the '70s, the other side said oh, my goodness, we were asleep at the switch. all of these hope aholices moved

in here, these dreamers. things like the mountain states legal foundation were established with james watt. i never met mr. watt and will never forget he called me during the '70s from the mountain states legal foundation and said, i'm james watt, i'm a constituent and i would like for you to get me some feminists who are against the equal rights amendment. now, i said, okay, which one of my crazy friends is trying to crank me up. he didn't think that was funny at all because it was james watt and not a friend. so nevertheless, we were never too close. but you know what happened, he got promoted to be department of interior and did wonderful things like turn the buffalo around on the seal so it was facing to the right and not the left, important things, refused to take private land donated for conservation purposes. all of these hope aholices moved in here, these dreamers. things like the mountain states legal foundation were established with james watt. i never met mr. watt and will never forget he called me during the '70s from the mountain states legal foundation and said, i'm james watt, i'm a constituent and i would like for you to get me some feminists who are against the equal rights amendment. now, i said, okay, which one of my crazy friends is trying to

crank me up. he didn't think that was funny at all because it was james watt and not a friend. so nevertheless, we were never too close. but you know what happened, he got promoted to be department of interior and did wonderful things like turn the buffalo around on the seal so it was facing to the right and not the left, important things, refused to take private land donated for conservation purposes. and the great thing, he didn't allow the beach boys to appear on the mall in 1983, instead we had wayne newton. which even aggravated nancy

reagan. she liked the beach boys. well, he didn't last long and he went on but i understand not long ago he gave a speech -- i guess it was in the 90s, gave a speech in wyoming and hasn't lost his touch. he was saying, if we can't change all of this horrible federal intervention from outside through the jury box or through the ballot box, we're going to have to have a cartridge box. and we had the epa and tried to undo a lot of clean air and cut the funding and her husband moved into the bblm. to do whatever they wanted with public lands. many saw colorado as the lungs of the nation, where people came to breathe. we wanted to preserve this and to have this put away for future generations. there was real hoop to do as you went back and forth of the there was a era of colorado crazies and all of this. it still continues to go.

you know, some of it i realize i'm running out of time and i could talk all night on this stuff as you can tell, being a recovering politician in the 12-step process is tough. you turn on the lights and jim claims i open the refrigerator door and talk for five minutes and realize i'm talking to celery but -- i've tried to give a lot of thought to what was different in the 70s. what was different? why were we so willing to go out and risk and take on all of these institutions that had been here. most of us were newbies that had come in. and what a lots of hutspa to challenge joe coor's and the powers that be and that have

been here and felt it was their thiefdom. what was it that made us do that? you know, we were disappointed with government. we didn't like the war. we didn't like what happened in watergate. we were willing to do impeachment and let women have a legal chance and african-americans and hispanics needed to be treated differently. why? we hadn't given up on trust i think. we kind of saw those things and rolled up our shirt sleeves and said, we think we can get in there and do a better job. we're going to do it. i must say when i was teaching at princeton how frustrated i got because so many of the kids would say, i'm not going to do that. i'm not going to do those jobs

because that's terrible. politics has gotten awful rather than saying, i'm going to go in and change it. and i'm trying to think of what made that difference. then once i was in a wedding here in denver. and i began to think, maybe some of us are to be held accountable for their attitudes. at this wedding, what would happen is when anybodymy age would hear anybody the bride and groom's age say they were thinking about going into geology, teaching, the law, doctoring, whatever it was, whoever my age was one of those, would move in on that kid and say, you don't really want to be a teacher. you wouldn't believe what's happened. or you don't want to go into the law, or you don't want to be -- and i began to think, what do we want them to be?

baseball players? i mean, what have we got left we would say, that's great. the mentoring and bringing along and making them really feel may not be perfect, but if you get in, maybe you can help change it. maybe we've been too negative in that. and somehow we have gotten to a point where it's like no one trusts anything anymore, they don't trust any institutions, think of an institution, the church, the government, banks, oh, yeah, investment bankers, yeah, they are all wonderful. people just don't trust them and we really -- it bothers me that i'm not seeing that passion we had in the 70s resurge and come back because heaven only knows we need a cleansing of the supreme court's decision, that corporations are people, makes me crazy. the amount of money that you're going to see spent in the state is going to break your heart because it's going to be just

fire hosed in there. and you can think of all of the things you could rather spend that money on. and that would not be what you would want to spend it on. it's going to be negative, like who can slime who the biggest? and so how do we get this turned around again? i'm not really sure i know. when i was teaching at princeton, i was teaching people in getting their masters in this school of public service, the wood row wilson school. you would think these are kids getting their masters in public service. and when you say who's going to run for office and no one raises their hand? i thought i was in the wrong class. i would say then, okay, so what is it you want to be? and they'd say maybe george stef

nop plis or anyone like that. and we're not attracting these bright young wonderful people, if we're not reinstilling them with the faith that they can get in there and truly make a difference, we're in trouble. now to go back again to show how that changed a bit, you know the story about my sharing the chair. the wonderful thing that happened was in 1974, we had the watergate babies come. and we had sole people come into congress that it was kind of like all of the people moving into colorado after the war. you couldn't encircle them all and shape them all up fast enough because there were too many of them. and they got through some huge reforms. like, you didn't get to be chairman for life, you had to be elected by the caucus. great. got rid of my chairman that way. it was wonderful. but, you know, those kind of reforms came that were really

needed. so we really need a whole new influx of young people coming in with new ideas to take over such as we tried to do in the '70s and i think we really led the nation. i think we led the nation in all sorts of things that were just amazing, people blamed it on the attitude and all sorts of things. i really think it was the western tradition and people really believing you could live somewhere and make a huge difference and make an impact on the future. so i think all of us need to go out and think more about how we challenge this next generation. i see them in the occupy movement. i think that's wonderful. but i don't know where it goes. you know, what is their vision? their vision is they don't want anything to do with politics because it stinks.

really? well, what are you going to do i don't understand how it works through. maybe we need to engage more with them and see if we can't do a little steering to see where it does go. i think there's many young people with good hearts. i think many of them really feel that their future has been terribly diminished. and they are very worried. but they don't know what to do and we get to stand around and say don't do this and don't do that because this job isn't nearly what it used to be. that doesn't work. let me say again, that was kind of a heavy thing to end on. but i think we do have to look at how we go through the cycles and i'm really ready for another 70s cycle. i'm 71, let's have a 70s cycle where we could go back and do the wonderful things that we did in the 70s and make the tremendous changes we did. i see us going backwards very far. i started out as pro bono for

rocky mountain planned parent hood here. if anybody would have told me in 2012 it would be under such threat, i would have never believed it. i guess i should have believed it. we really need to get many more people involved in politics that have hearts larger than a swollen pea and aren't just -- you know, aren't in it to be politicians but to make change. i think in the 70s, we sent a different group of people who didn't go to become politicians, they went because they were mad and wanted to change things. i want to see that kind of passion again rather than can i be here for 30 years, you know? you if you keep changing things, fine. somehow people sometimes lose that. so thank you very much and i would love to have questions from all of you. my goodness, it's been wonderful, you've been very patient. [ applause ]

>> we're going open up for questions. pat is going to pick you, pick a person going to ask a question, this is being filmed as you may be aware by c-span, you want to be aware of by c-span and we want to get the mike over closer to the person asking the question. so keep that in mind. >> can i ask jim schroeder stand up and say, "you can't ask questions", okay, jim? yay, jim. we will have been married 50 years this summer. can you believe that? that is one tough male. >> okay. who has a question? yes. here we go and here comes the boom mike. why do you think the republicans have been more successful in

getting an influx of new people as opposed to the democrats? certainly the tea party is an influence. >> the question is why are the republicans in the tea party been better as getting new people excited? well, that's an interesting one. i don't know because i haven't talked to people in the tea party here, but i have in florida, where we live now. that's where you move when you're 70. and i would ask them, what is it you're so mad about? and they would say, don't you really know? i would say, no, i really don't know. and so i still don't know. the conversations about no one ever helped me, i was on food stamps and unemployment and, you know, i don't want to be sarcastic, but food stamps and unemployment obviously helped that person.

so there is some tremendous disinformation out there that's being fed. and, you know, in new york, they had a wonderful thing. maybe we should do it here. they have a ceremony where facts were buried. because they said in the public debate, i mean, facts just mean nothing any more. it's would shouts the loudest and who puts the thing out the most, which is why all these commercials are so aggravating. so it is really troubling to me, too, that you heard the people saying, keep government out of my medicare and we could go on and on. and i really tried -- i mean, i really tried to find out what's going on and i came away thinking, i don't know. it was -- i'll tell you what, i think part of it was a real sense of frustration that

america wasn't continuing to go forward the way they wanted it to. they didn't see the progress they wanted that was applying to them. and the tea party and the republicans were able to capture that and say, it's because, you know, you have a president that was born in kenya or doesn't have a birth certificate or is a socialist or fill in the blank. or the government is too big or whatever. and so people believe that. and we didn't do a good job on the other side. i mean, i'm looking for backbone. i'm looking for backbone. to find people who stood up and -- but i think we've become too nice and i don't know what to say. as a woman, i must say probably sarah palin and michele bachmann are the number one and two speakers in america right now.

and where is the -- new -- where are those voices? it troubles me a lot. anyone else? sure. the front row is active. i like that. >> your children were raised in a political atmosphere and i wondered how that has affected their lives. >> they claim that they were raised by wild wolves. they are both very, very politically involved. my daughter -- we have a wonderful family. my doctor was cleary a hillary person and my son was an obama person and we had wonderful family. but they have not gotten into politics, per se. my daughter has been asked to run a couple of times in montana. i think she's rightly looked at

that and said this whole thing is one delegation? this whole state? are you kidding me? and she has two young kids and she has not done it. but maybe she will. she stays very actively interested, as does my son. he used to always be very frustrated because he said so many of his friends didn't read the newspaper or didn't watch it. but will they ever be candidated? i don't know. i don't know. i wish. they are -- some of their friends would be. but i think a lot of them think it's too much sacrifice, which it really isn't. there's always some bad guys, but there's an awful lot of good people. and i always say, where else could you have this amazing experience of representing the greatest democracy in a world? you know?

it really is incredible. and why our young people don't want to get chills about that. but, again, i think it's something that has happened to their minds. when i was in law school, you know, the most exciting thing you could do would be to work with the united states justice department and be on the front line to fighting civil rights and all of those things. now, no, they want to go to the biggest law firm and make the most money. and money has kind of overtaken some of that passion. there's a friend of mine, and i say it all the time, and i don't mean to offend anyone. they say the trouble is in the 70s, we were very proud of our sports and our parks and our public schools and this was great. and now we live in gated communities where the new thing is get what you can, can what you get and sit on the can behind gates and that we have gated our hearts and our wallets and we're not interested in public schools because we have a private one and we're not interested in parks because we have a private one and why would we want to pay for that stuff? that's concerning to me because

that's tearing at the fabric of society. kids talk about that, but they have lots of friends who are living very happily gated. >> i'm upset about what just happened in our legislature and i'd like an explanation of how one man can derail representative democracy when he didn't allow the civil unions bill to be voted on because he knew the votes were there. >> she's asking an excellent question about what's happened to democracy when one man can derail bills as happened yesterday. he -- and unfortunately, it's not just here. look at the united states senate where one man can hold up any, any, any nomination. there are two nominations to the federal reserve bank and heaven only knows we need people there. can't get them through. we've got ambassadors, all sorts of people that can't get through. they'll aus terrible. and, yet, it's going on.

it's really time we clear that out. common cause today. to do away with the filibuster. once again, you can't bring a bill up unless you have over 60 votes. that's crazy. that's not democracy at all. so that's the same problem here. and it's time to go back to the sunshine stuff, changing the rules so the speaker doesn't have that kind of power. you can be the speaker, but that's supposed to be more like the referee, not like the guy who gets his way and no one else does. yeah, no, those type of things are really ready for a revolt. it's time to have the revolt. let's go get these young people channeled in that way and tell them that they still have the power to do it before we all lose it. >> what went into your decision to leave congress when you did? because i'm very disappointed when i see good people leaving like olympia snow is now. >> what went into my mind when i left was newt gingrich. to be very honest. i had been in the congress for 22 years and been able to do all sorts of things, pass bills and

so forth. and then newt became speaker and the women's caucus, we had the largest bipartisan group on the floor. if we had the floor, newt would send guys over to tell us to get in with our own kind and blah, blah, blah, he basically gutted the women's caucus and all sorts of things like that. and it was clear we weren't going to get anything done, that everything was going to be stopped. so it felt like you were in a junior high food fight. so my whole thing was, okay, we'll get some democrats together and we'll get out there every day and we'll pound away. and i put these breakfasts together with some friends, and