and allocate some $10 billion a year to research throughout the country and beyond. we're joined this morning by eric kalor. and and on wednesday, james lindher, and joining us on our cspan bus is eric kalor, thank you for joining us this morning here on washington journal. >> very glad to be with you. >> tell us about the university of minnesota system. is it a public system? a land grant university? >> sure. it's minnesota's land grant university. we have five campuses across the state, our twin cities campus, minneapolis and st. paul, duluth, morris, christian and rochester. all together about 59,000 students, so it's a big

operation. >> the university was founded in 1851. how long have you been president, president kalor? >> well, less than that for sure. i'm just starting my fourth year, i'm the 16th president of the university so people tend to serve in this job for a long time. >> what are some of your priorities as president? >> well, it's really pretty simple for me, i'm very interested in accessibilities and affordability. for qualifies minnesotan s and i'm interested in the university providing a truly excellent education for those students. also interested in being sure that we help drive the economy of the state of minnesota, that we're the home of inventions and innovations in medical care, science and engineering and we also have a critically important responsibility to maintain the liberal arts and be a place where creative work of all kinds takes place. so it's a pretty broad span, but at the end of the day we're interested in our undergraduate student, ensuring they get an excellent education.

that they can afford to pay for. >> our bus will be visiting almost all of the big ten college campuses. where does the university rate in terms of size, just size alone? >> well, first off, we're really glad that you started with minnesota. we're appreciative of that. we on the twin cities campus. technically we're the fourth, fifth, sixth largest campus in the country. so the only one that's physically larger than we are is ohio state. but again, an important breadth across our system as well. so the twin cities campus is about 51,000 student this is year. >> and for our cspan viewers, alumni and students, just a quick snapshot in terms of the size, you mentioned this a little bit earlier n terms attendance, 48,000 plus, that's 28,000 undergraduate, 12,000

graduate. 3,800 postgraduate. and 3606 nondegree. let's look at some of the costs too in terms of on campus versus off campus for on campus students, the total is 25,374. off campus, loving off campus, $19,386 in terms of in state versus out of state, the total of tuition and fees in minnesota, if you're an in state student, is $12,060, and $19,310 for out of state students. in preparing for our conversation, the system has frozen the tuition for this year, why was that?

>> well, we had a very productive conversation with our state legislature and with the governor at the beginning of the last -- we decided to put forward tuition free if we were able to get appropriate funding from the state of minnesota to make that happen. and we were able to do that. so at the beginning of this biennium, we see the great -- we have taken a pretty heavy cut during the great recession and as a consequence, we had to raise tuition to maintain the quality of our program. our conversation with the state governor let us reverse that. so the state allowed us to reinvest as we should, and we were able to make the deal to be able to freeze minnesota resident graduate tuition. student debt is something i'm sure we'll falk about this morning, it's important to us to have our students leave with a great education but without a great amount of debt and this tuition freeze is a great step in that direction.

>> we have broken our phones down a little bit differently as you can see on your screen. if you are a parent, the number to call is 202-585-3880. that would be the parent of a student, not necessarily the university of minnesota. for educators, the number is 202-585-3881. for parents, and for minnesota residents, we have set aside a line as well. that is 202-585-3882. back to the subject of university tuition costs. when you talk to your colleagues at big ten and other universities, what is the number one priority in terms of keeping those costs low? what's the number one tool you can use to keep college costs low?

>> well, it's clear that the great land grant institution state supported institutions have a historical relationship with their state. and for years, the state of minnesota and other states in the big ten supported their universities well. when i was a graduate student here 30 years ago, the state of minnesota provided over 30% of the university's budget and this year they provide about 16% of the state budget. so that state disinvestment has meant a shift of costs to students. so as we look at ways to make the burden on students easier, the first conversation with state government. the other side of the coin, so to speak is our ability to control our cost. we're in an industry that requires us in order to be competitive to hire a great faculty and great staff to do the work that we do. and those personnel costs are expensive.

but we also need to drive our administrative costs as far as possible. we need to operate as effectively and efficiently as we can so that those funds we do have are not administration cost s and we're working every day at the university of minnesota to make that happen. so really it's maintaining a -- being in partnership with the state to fund the whole enterprise. >> for the student coming in that's accepted the university of minnesota, where does that conversation begin on affordability and how is it tracked? >> well, first off i should tell you about a third, 37% of our students graduate with no debt at all. so they are able, with their resources and the family's resources to appropriately pay for college. of the students who graduate with that, the average dead is about $27,000. again, that's for students with debt.

that's the price of a nice, new car. and you need to make that balance of your life decisions, about making an investment in yourself as a young person, getting that college education versus doing something else with that money. so i think students and their families have their conversation. we provided last year well over $300 million in financial aid, so we're eager to help qualified student who is don't have the means to come to the u to be here with us and that balance of financial aid, taking some loans at the end of the day, a young person making a decision to invest in college, that yields the outcome that produces the 5,500 first-year student that we welcomed to campus last month. >> president kaler mentioned the number of students getting

financial aid, 75% of students receive some form of financial aid. and 25 varsity sports teams, the system also has campuses in duluth, morris, cookstown and rochester. how many athletic scholarships do you give out per year? >> we have 750 student athletes at the university of minnesota at the twin cities and additional student athletes? duluth. most of them receive some kind of financial aid, ranging from a full scholarship to a partial scholarship across all sports. and again, the revenues that support that athletic program are to a very great extent media revenues, ticket sales, philanthropy and other sponsorship sites, so the impact of the athletic budget on our overall budget is a million or $2 million this year and hopefully it will be a little bit more than that next year.

>> as we kick off our cspan bus college tour this time through the big ten conference starting with the university of minnesota. if you are a parent of a student whether at minnesota or elsewhere. college students or others, 202-585-3882. we would love to hear from some high school students who are planning to go to college next year. let's hear first from capital heights, maryland, a student, john, where do you go to school? >> hello? >> john, you're on the air, yes do you go to school? >> caller: i go to university of maryland. >> go ahead with your question for eric kalor. >> what is the university, what services and what are they doing to help students who may have gone to a high school that didn't really orient or have the

resources to help students that want to go to college help them? >> john, hang on the line for a quick second and we'll hear from president kalor. >> i didn't quite get all of that, but i think the question was what does the university do to provide resources for students that need help to come to the college. we have a broad spectrum of financial aid, both need based and merit based. we work hard to make the university affordable. so for example, if you come from a family who has income of $30,000 a year or less, that means that the expectation is your family will not contribute to the cost of your education.

and we package financial aid grants and scholarships that more than cover the cost of tuition. so we're very affordable for students from very low income families and we grant that up and again give need-based financial aid to families who have adjusted gross income of up to $100,000 a year. unlike many of our competitors, we put financial aid on the table, recognizing that the cost of college is a burden to many families and we're eager to make it possible for their students to come to the university of minnesota. >> what about on the academic side, in terms of help for incoming freshmen who may not have excelled or they need a little bit more help. they have made it into the university but they face a fairly daunting fall schedule or whatever. what sort of resources does the university of minnesota offer? >> just this year, we have begun

a program called the president's emerging scholars program. that's a program that consists of a summer activity before the first year, to get them squared away in a dormitory, we give them a little bit of a head start. we provide an additional $1,000 of financial aid in the first year and $1,000 in their fourth year to be sure they get over the finish line. we offer a variety of programs, really for students who are the first-generation in the families who come to college, who are really not familiar with a college culture, we have a great program around financial literacy, this is a way for students to stub their toe when they get away from home. it's called live like a student now so you don't have to later. it's the idea of affordability in the decisions that you make with your money. we have programs hosted like that and with the president's emerging scholars program, we think we have ways for students from disadvantaged backgrounds to succeed at the university of minnesota. >> the fall tour of the big ten campuses, a tweet from laura who asks you president kalor, what decides a college as a big ten besides their football teams? >> well, that's a great

question, i'm glad it came up because the football teams are actually the least of what we do, the backbone of the big ten is a committee for institutional cooperation, the so-called cic. that's a program run by the university, it's the most comprehensive association in the country where best practices are exchanged, where leaders of various parts of the institution come together to learn from each other. it's a model for how academic institutions should collaborate and work together. and of course we do play football and a variety of other sports, but i think if you ask our new members, maryland and rutgers, what the important attract fors for them to the big ten was the academics that we do. it's really a remarkable group

of institutions when you look at the quality of the academics that is done, together with the competitiveness of their sports teams, they're really a very special group of institutions. >> and the cspan bus will be visiting those big ten universities in new jersey. here's steve who a's parent, steve, where's your child in school? >> caller: my child is not currently in school. she got a wonderful education at the university of wisconsin and many of her friends were from minnesota and the reason for that is, minnesota and wisconsin has this wonderful reciprocity program where they go to each other's colleges and universities, i guess, for in state fees and i wanted to hear what dr. kalor thinks is the advantages and disadvantages of that. because i think this is a fantastic program.

these people that my daughter met have become lifetime friends and have made my daughter a better student. >> reciprocity is a wonderful opportunity for wisconsin students to study in minnesota and vice versa and it also applies to north and south dakota and manitoba in canada. and it does enable students to come to a similar school. and have that experience while being a little bit further from home. it is interesting for those listening who have had college aged students, as was the case in my family, being away from home was an important part of the decision of where to go to school and being able to go to wisconsin if you're a twin cities student, it's far enough away and you're still getting your great education at the price you would pay in minnesota.

it's a wonderful program. about 16% of our students come from wisconsin under that reciprocity program. >> here's a student on the line. this is kevin who's in west sacramento, california. kevin, go ahead and where are you in school? >> caller: where am i in school? actually i'm not in school right now. i was trying to find out more about his college, the location, where it might be located? >> the school's in minnesota. any other question about the university there, kevin? all right, we'll let you go, here's catherine, who's a parent in falls village, connecticut. good morning. >> caller: good morning, i'm fortunate to have two students in college right now. one went to wpi arngd one is at mt. holly oak. i have deviled into the issues of climate change and domestic abuse and now we're hearing about college accountability for sexual assault and i'm

wonderering if we could share the resources such as civic resource institute that has rather expensive but comprehensive research done for educators and people in all professions, if all students could know about that, because there seems to be a lot of confusion about what is, you know, either assault or in a divorce or custody plan, what is a fair, appropriate outcome, particularly for women. because unfortunately, this is highly often the case that the women and children are being victimized, even by some of the system. so we need a major turn around. >> let's find out, president, kalor, in terms of campus sexual assault. there's a lot of talk obviously on capitol hill and elsewhere. what are some of the things the university of minnesota is doing to address the issue? >> well, we have been a long time leader in battling sexual assault on our campuses. women's center is a national center of how to respond to accusations of sexual assault, how to help victims, how to pursue justice in that space and in fact they have been consulted by the white house as this freshman conversation has moved forward.

we take the issue very seriously here. we have, again, a variety of programming, a variety of structure that we think educates ying people, both men and women about making smart decisions about no means no and again as i mentioned, we are a robust support system for victims. we're by no means perfect, there's obviously opportunity for improvement, but we are in that space as a leader by many people in the country. >> question for you on twitter, by the way our 457kdal the cspan wj. how do profits from athletics break down in fund parts of the college in nonathletic scholarships to renovations. >> our athletic program, like all but a small handful of athletic programs does receive a subsidy from the university. as i mentioned earlier, it's an amount that nets out to be about $2 million a year, so that

support for the athletic programs are big revenue sports, football, basketball, and in minnesota, our hockey program, both for men and women, do carry a lot of the budget tear load and provide opportunities for student athletes in the nonrevenue sports and again as i mentioned, we have 750 athletes all together. but as of now, our athletic program does not turn a profit to the university and we continue to move towards that. i would like to see our twin cities campus be self sufficient, but we also need to be competitive. so there's a balance to be made as is the case in most schools like that. >> you can find president kalor on twitter. jim from gadsden, alabama. jim, good morning. >> caller: good morning, i have a general request about educational opportunity because i'm all three of the above in your categories. just recently finished seminary after going to harvard and birmingham southern down here in alabama and my wife recently got her phd at uva and is now a college professor, but we both came from poor families, i mean a generation ago we were dirt

poor. and we received opportunities, but we studied in high school and subsequently. now my question is, i hear so much about the poor people in america and the minority groups in various big cities, they can't get education, they have no opportunity to go to college. but with all i hear, even from your discussion this morning, and all i know from my alumni schools and my wife's, there is so much opportunity, we both worked during our college and graduate school.

but we studied our books in high school, we did fairly well on the s.a.t.s, but here's my question, if a person, no matter what area of america they come from, no matter what their race, no matter what their background, if they can pass minimally an entrance example to the average college in america, is there any reason that person, no matter what their background or what their neighborhood was, should not be able to go to college? >> thanks, jim. president kalor?

>> no, absolutely, qualified students obviously should be able to go to college. that's why we spend so much time and effort on financial aid and a variety of structures to enable students from disadvantaged backgrounds to succeed at the university of minnesota. i don't think there's anything more critical for our country's future than to have an educated population. and that means everybody needs a-degree of education. sometimes a four-year college is the right fit. sometimes it may be a professional or a trade school. but everybody needs a post secondary education in order to thrive in our country. i think the data on that is pretty clear and we're committed to that at the university of

minnesota. >> just looking at some of the statistics in terms of the number of ying people in college, in particular between 18 and 24, a 30-year and 32-year comparison here. there's more going to dlej in 2012, up from 26% in 1980. there are fewer in the -- that's down from 75% in 1986. as you graduate students from the university of minnesota, how do you prep them for the workforce, beyond just their course work? what's the most important thing that you do at the university to do that? >> i think employers will tell you that the single greatest predictor for success for a student coming out is that they have some prabt practical experience, they have an internship in their company or their field to they understand what that's like or they have experience beyond the course work.

we have the third largest study abroad cohort of students in the country, that provides a great opportunity for students to see other people in the world and give them a deeper, richer experience. many of our major capstone courses, they'll spend either a smegser or a senior year pulling together the elements in the discipline, learning to think more critically about what their discipline is about. but at the end of the day, that internship experience, east in the summertime or over a semester is important. and that's something we work on aggressively. we're fortunate in minnesota, that twin cities is the home to 18 fortune 500 countries and a very active economy beyond those companies, so there are lots of opportunities for young people to go out and get experiences relevant to them as they search for that first job. >> i want to get your reaction on that issue to the fiscal times survey of hiring managers

and other employment. the surprising reason college grads can't get a job, they write that nearly 3/4s of -- hiring managers, even millennials that aren't prepared for the job market and lack an adequate work ethic. those hires managers aren't alone in their assessment either, a wide range of business people, according to recruiters, academics and others interviewed for the study agreed that college graduates deserve a grade of c or lower for their preparedness for their first job. how do you counter act something like that? >> well, that is a challenging situation and it reflects of course the input that that young person has had for the first 22 years of their life and we're not responsible for all of that. we do insist on a rigorous education, we do insist on work at the university of minnesota, the quality of our programs, i

think, is at a level that our students are prepared to go to work once they succeed. but at the end of the die, there is a general expectation of students graduating now that's different, than, for example my generation, an expectation for quality of life, expectation for a work-life balance, it can be different from other generations so i think it's a function of society that's a little bit overa university's genera. >> hello in missouri, go ahead. we'll move on to st. joseph, michigan, arlene is a parent there. go ahead. >> caller: yes, i am a parent. and my daughter has been out of school for 22 years now. but i do not understand why people say they can't afford to send their children to school.

i was divorced, making about $23,000 a year at the time, daughter went to western university which ran around $12,000 a year. and she did go full-time and she did live on campus. but when my daughter turned 16, she didn't have a car. i didn't have to make car payments, i didn't have to make car insurance payments. she started working at mcdonald's at 15 and when she got her check on friday, most of it went into the bank. she didn't have it spent the next day, between her -- after her senior year of college, she worked at the company i was working at because they would hire kids of parents that were going to school. and they could work for the summer and so they made better than minimum wage. >> now arlene, did you wind up

paying her bills or did he take her care of her tuition, her student loans? >> caller: it was pretty much half and half. she did get two scholarships which also did help. but when she was working in the summer, there were several other kids working there, they would get paid on thursday, those other kids, their money would be gone by friday. >> eric kalor, is there a magic number of how much debt a student or a student's parents should be carrying? >> first off, i would like to congratulate the caller on a very successful management of resources and a good outcome of her daughter getting an education. that's a degree of responsibility i think that's commendable. and to go to your question, and you look at a college debt, i think there's not one size fits all. i think unfortunately, sometimes what you hear about in the media, are really the horror

stories of somebody that's racked up $100,000 or $150,000 in debt to get an undergraduate degree. i don't think there's any reason in the world to have that happen. that's a series of bad decisions that person has made in my opinion. you can get a very high quality degree. lets just take the numbers again at the university of minnesota. for a resident student, the total cost of attendance per year is $25,000 roughly. so $100,000 for four years and again, you would have the expectation, if your family is of limited means, which would give you financial aid, a new base aid that would cover at least half of that amount. you would expect that a student should work during the summer, you could expect perhaps your parents would help out to some degree. so it feels like to me that even under difficult conditions, a $25,000 total amount of student loan is something that should be

in the upper end of what people are carrying. yet i do know people graduate from our university with more than that debt. which means they've been spending those funds on things beyond the cost of coming to college and that's a personal decision. a person wants to have a particular lifestyle, they need to the make that decision at the end of the day on ways to way for it. >> how much do you think the federal government should play in additional student loan aid? >> that's an interesting question. i think the balance there is really tough to see. on one hand, there is an argument that as we make more lower cost financial aid available, federal financial aid

available, students take that and therefor incur more indebtedness without having the conversation about is that something that really is in their long-term interest. on the other hand, obviously for students who need that financial aid, having it available and having it available at a low interest rate is a huge advantage for them going forward. so there's not really an easy answer to the right level of federal financial aid. i certainly am -- you might want to have some financial counseling involved to make sure that people are making good decisions about their ability to repay those future loans. >> the big ten tour, eric kalor is president of the university of minnesota. just under ten minutes left. let's hear from fred who's in

lexington, kentucky. a student there, fred where do you go to school? >> caller: i go to eastern kentucky university. >> uh-huh. >> caller: my question to the president kind of concerns my question. the president had some proposals, different options and so on, as the president of a university, i was wondering what kind of insight you would kind of include in this process? i know like in other countries, australia, canada, they have advanced systems for some of their graduates from foreign countries, that sort of thing. i was wondering what's your insight into this question? >> thank you, fred. >> my view is that a person who's gained an education in the united states should be able to stay in the united states. ive it was up to me, i would begin to address the shortage of people in science, technology, engineering and mathematics by stapling a green card to a diploma for anybody in that field.

i think america is richer by having a strong immigrant population, and i think america is stronger by having trained individuals part of it. this country grew by innovation and i'm in favor of continuing to do so, particularly with earning a college degree, regardless of the institutions those individuals have gone through, there's been some -- benefitted them and i think you have to allow those people to stay in the united states and reap the economic benefit of their labors. >> call from minnesota next from hopkins, dorothy is there. who's a parent. hi, dorothy. >> caller: good morning. >> good morning. >> caller: i'm calling because i'm interested in the stem

influence that is part of the college curriculum now and i would like to add an a to that, for arts. how important are the arts in minnesota? >> well, i think the university of minnesota has a core value and a core responsibility to maintain the arts, the creative arts of all kinds in minnesota. and actually to the points of real strengths. in the performing arts, we have a wonderful relationship with guthrie theater, and we have students who are part of that trooup. we have terrific facilities for many of our visual arts activities and our performing arts activities with the new york auditorium. so i'm a huge fan of support for the arts. at the same time, we have very tight budget constraints and the challenges of providing enough

for everybody are always there. but i think as an institution of higher education, as the state's only -- we have a core requirement to maintain that degree of activity. and they benefit not just students who happen to major in one of the fine or performing arts. i visited a pottery class recently that was filled with students from all disciplines who were interested in it. to be able to strengthen the arts at the university of minnesota and as aadditional resources to be able to make wise investments. >> to our students line next, this is chris who's in leewood, kansas, chris, where do you go to school? >>. >> caller: i go to student hall university in new jersey. i sort of object to a few of the things that have been discussed on the program so far. i think the major root of the problems in secondary education

involve critical thinking, so many of my professors and even high school teachers said the kids are being taught incorrectly. and the way i have been able to do that is outside of class and i know other students have alternate means for that. i guess my question is what do you think the confines of learning in the classrooms are and how do we educate them? >> thanks, chris, go ahead. >> that is a per accept tiff question and i think escaping the class room is actually one of the most important things that a college student does. and that's actually one of the important reasons that that place education so important, because it's those out of classroom activities, the caller mentioned debate, which is just a wonderful way to build a rigorous way to think and analyze, think about and analyze a problem. and we encourage our students to be involved in those kinds of

activities. it is true that sometimes in a classroom, you're so consumed with taking knowledge that we don't always have the time to think about it in particularly to apply it across different disciplines and an extracurricular activity like debate lets you do that. and again, i mentioned some of the capstone courses that we have in our majors also enables you to have the space and time to think that way. back to the secondary education, the second part of his question, sure, i was just going to comment that we at the university are working to strengthen post secondary education in minnesota from prekindergarten all the way through high school and these are problems that we all need to lean into together. >> headline from the "boston globe" this morning on their front page, as harvard gets 350

million for health efforts, they say it's the biggest gift in the school's history, $350 million. not to make you jealous or anything, president kalor. but how big is the endowment at the university of minnesota and how do you decide where to allocate those funds? >> the university of minnesota foundation endowment is right at $2 million and the university maintains it's own endowment of about a billion dollars, so we have about $3 billion of endowments and resources it's one of the biggest endowments in the country. it's divided into a myriad of activities. professor ship support for faculty members and support for probably hundreds if not thousands of activities that donors have contributed through the years.

so philanthropy is an important part of our budget and will continue to be a part of our public institution going forward as we balance state contributions and our desire to keep tuition revenues as affordable to students as they can be. >> one more call on our students line. good morning. >> caller: good morning, how are you doing. >> fine, thanks. >> caller: i have a comment with regard to universities in general. do you think it's appropriate for the universities to discrimination on campus in regards to veterans being on site there and or things of that nature, in regards to, i just know from my personal experience in evanston, illinois, sometimes the presence of veterans or what

have you is frowned upon by universities in the northwest. i think that's inappropriate. >> robert, we'll get an answer from eric kalor, thank you for your call. >> we have a very robust veteran's program at the university of minnesota, we welcome them with open arms. we have three strong rotc in programming and accessibility for veterans. i myself grew up in a military family so we are open and welcoming to people who have served our country. >> eric kalor is president of the university of minnesota. this is the first stop on our cspan big ten bus tour. thank you for being on the show this morning. >> thank you for having me and good luck at your next stops. cspan's 2015 stichudent cam

campaign is on the way. create a five to seven minute documentary on the three branches and you vl it needs to show varying points of view and must be submitted by january 20th, 2015. grab a camera and get started today. coming up, political activists talk about a variety try of issues including reproductive rights, it's part of the net roots nation convention that was held last summer in detroit. a program note, this program does contain language and content that some viewers may find offense. >> i am happy to be here, i spent most of my writing days on twitter, i use it as a crazy

tool to actually test out jokes, test out content, get the feel of how many people that follow me actually follow the news, which means you get a lot of really super smart people who say hi to you on twitter. and i think what separates us from them is that we're not afraid of reality and science. yeah and one of my favorite twitter experiences ever, was that when bill nye and myself were doing -- somebody tweeted to me, hey, here's your proof that the earth is 6,000 years old. and i'm like, you know, automatic awkward, fire was invented 10,000 years ago. and he tweeted back at me, wh

ore, and i tweeted back, yeah, i might be a whore, but you're still wrong. and so what if i'm a whore, what does that have to do with anything? i know, maybe smart sex workers who are way smarter than me. and who believe in science. yes. that my favorite thing is whenever you talk about -- it's my personal belief that birth control is a human right and they should be free for anybody who wants it. and that anybody who needs an abortion should get one without apology. super popular things to say outside of these walls. super popular. i'm telling you, people love it.

but my favorite thing is when i do, i put it out there in the universe and people come back at me and say, why should i have to pay for your birth control? why should i have to pay for your birth control? and i always think that is so funny, because i would say any amount for yours. so with that, i'm going to reset what we're doing, this is ignite, 13 performers, 20 flights, 50 seconds to fly, five minutes of performers, so without further adieu, jane pittsburgh. >> hi. we are in pittsburgh, the founder of -- how covered world and built a 4,000 person community in less than a year,

because make no mistake u lesbians are taking over the world, right? so what i would love, we are a kmichbt of career women, and the people who love them. if you take nothing else away from today. turn p to your neighbor, give them a high-five, it's atradition. you nailed the high five portion of today, good job. we can go to tech events, but they look like this, 90% men. we can go to lgbt events and zbes what, they also look like this, rifgt? so we decided to do a series of experiments to find out, are there lesbians in tech and if so, how can we provide them some value. we simply decided to host happy hours and see if we could get women to come out. because the truth is, we with respect sure if -- i have zone a lot of gay events, and it's

really hard to get gay women to show up. there aren't lesbians, which are probably not true, two, they're home with their cap or girlfriends, no judgment, you can totally do that. or three, we weren't providing them with right type of value. so my assumption that was hope friday the third, the cat and the girlfriend, we have really got to start figuring out how to provide them value. and something magical happen, for me especially. lesbians twae s actually showed something, it was crazy and they just kept showing up. and people in other cities started e-mailing me. it turns out that finding lesbians isn't totally easy, there's no secret hand shake which i'm totally upset about. we can invent one. there's one lesbian attack happy hour, i will do it.

turns lesbians in tech, so much so that we have happy hours now in 14 different cities, 3 int international citys, london, berlin, toronto. now the other problem we're turning out is that we all love passion projects but it turns out that sleep isn't totally overrated. we had to figure out how to make this sustainable. the other problem we had is we became too broad. lesbians, they all need to connect and we were losing a tech focus and people were starting to call us lesbians with jobs. which is fine. i'll take that. and people weren't really loving the happy hours. it's a lot of uns. you connect talk at night. we hosted google events. what they actually said is they wanted deeper connections, just outside of the happy hours. and so that's how we got to our first ever lesbians who tech

summit in february in san francisco. we brought together -- literally one of the best days of my life. we had people like megan smith and kara swisher. people wanted role models. who is the career woman in tech you would want to hear speak, 95% of the people had no idea. they didn't have one name they could say. the other 5% said megan smith, who is amazing. it turns out people really wanted this, so much so that we had 800 people show up. how did we get that money? >> i'll be honest, i stalk people on twitter a lot. whatever term you love, put it in your twitter handle. that would save me a lot of time. tell your friends. so we found lesbians, we provided value. people kept saying, what's your five-year vision, what's your strategic plan? screw that. they suck. they're a waste of time. right? run experiments. test your assumptions. that's how you're going to build your community. our friends in new york saw that we had a summit in san francisco. they got jealous.

can you do one in new york? >> i'm going to listen to my community. if you can -- if we can raise $20,000 presell tickets i'll do it. they proved me. they had a summit. the white house called us. can you help us plan the first lgbt tech summit. i think i can work something out. we hosted this amazing summit. what's next for us? we're going to host another summit. turns out you really love summits. that's what people want. you're all invited. lot of high fives. we're going to continue to do experiments because that's really what's important. how can you build a community that takes over the world? you have to start with value. don't go too far ahead. don't create that strategic plan yet. experiment, measure, pivot when necessary and when in doubt, give high fives. thank you. [ cheers and applause ].

please welcome, deepak bhargava. [ cheers and applause ]. >> last year i met a smart, courageous young man named robert day. robert works at a potbellies in union station in washington, d.c. he's worked there for several years and he makes less than $10 an hour with no benefits. when i met robert last year, he told me that he barely exists. rent, food, milk, diapers, electricity, heat, it has to be paid, he said. then he asked, how can i get ahead on poverty wages and no benefits? last year, even though potbelly's had a mediocre year, the ceo doubled his pay to $2.3 million a year, a salary wage of $1,000 an hour. now, robert's not fighting for

$1,000 an hour, but he knows he deserves to be paid more. that's why robert has joined with his co-workers in washington and all across the country bringing others with him to the fight for higher wages and the fight for 15. this fight has inspired millions of people who see themselves in robert's story. 106 million people like robert, one third of our country live below 200% of the poverty line, earning less than $47,000 for a family of four. so, how did we get into this mess? between 1959 and 1973 there was a strong relationship between economic growth on the one hand and reductions in the poverty rate on the other. they broke apart in the 1970s. if they had stayed together, the poverty rate in the united states would have fallen to zero in 1986 and stayed there ever

since. if wages had kept pace with productivity, america's lowest paid workers today would be making $17 an hour. so what happened? there's a simple problem and a simple solution, but for 50 years we've been lost in the haze of a tired and stale debate. conservatives blame the victim and promote trickle down and many liberals say that there's not much we can do about the inequality and poverty that's generated in the market through the market except some programs to help at the margins. both are missing the big problem. we need to value people's labor in proportion to their contribution to our nation's bottom line. [ cheers and applause ]. the best anti-poverty program is a job that pays a living wage. we can break out of this stale debate that we've been stuck in for 50 years and reduce poverty

by 80% in this country by taking three simple steps. number one, we can raise wages so that workers earn a living wage. wages catch up with productivity growth. the minimum wage goes up, not a little but a lot like they did in seattle. and we need to make it easier for workers to bargain with their employers through collective bargaining at the workplace. [ cheers and applause ]. number two, we need to eliminate racial and gender inequity in the labor market. poverty is not just an economic issue, it's a racial justice issue, a women's rights issue. we need to tear down the obstacles for employment for the formerly incarcerated. we need to create workplaces that recognize that workers are actually people with families and clearly we need to change things so that your paycheck isn't smaller just because of your skin color or because you're a woman. number three, we need full employment policies in this

country again. we've got to invest in key sectors of the economy from the green economy to early childhood education to infrastructure so that we can create millions of jobs and we need to make those jobs accessible to people who need them. this three-point good job strategy would reduce poverty in the united states of america by 80%. this is the moral crisis of our time and this issue ought to be at the center of progressive politics in our country and the 2016 election. we now know what to do. we need to build the public will to do it. big change in america comes through social movements. social movements help to make the impossible possible. 15 years ago, few in this country would have believed that marriage equality or a path to citizenship for undocumented immigranted would move to debate. now it's a question of when they will be achieved not if. we can do the same on the issue of poverty.

we at the center for community change are launching a ten-year campaign to do just that. join us. this is the richest country in the history of the earth. we can build a society in which everyone has not just enough to survive but enough to thrive. thank you very much. [ cheers and applause ]. >> anat shenker-osorio. >> i am a repeater. i was here last year and it was terrifying. so i'm your token ma soj nis, masochist. i'm a rule follower, so i'm going to talk about innovation which is the theme, but i'm a rule breaker. when you look at how innovation is used in our language, talk

about machines, apps tech. that's actually quite fitting because at this point we've subverted everything that's natural and necessary to this mechanistic view of the world. when you look at how we talk about how we basic human needs food, shelter, water, the stuff that human beings need to keep alive, education, an example i'm going to unpack a little more. we're fully in this mechanistic place. we used to have metaphor for education. the young folks will think i'm crazy, that was a garden. right? we would nurture the intellect. we would cultivate an interest. the intailments of this metaphor, what it implies is that children are organic matter and they're all different and there's some known things they need in the analogy, soil, water, sunlight, but there's this magical al kamy that happens below the soil that the educators are responsible for. we've moved from this garden metaphor to the language of the factory. right? we have inputs and we have outputs and we ratchet up

expectations and the kid is a product of a good school. the entailments of that metaphor is that children are like wij its. they're all uniform. why would they need art? and the teachers are factory workers and they do a thing to the kids and it's all the same and then they're on a conveyer belt and they move to the next one after they've been tested and stamp is put on their ass and none are left behind. this mechanistic language is so wide-spread that we have now monetized children. right? we invest in the future and we invest in our kids and they're too small to fail. and we can kid ourselves all we want, but the prevailing understanding of the investment frame is financial return. that is how it is used in language. and so we are saying, the reason to do a thing, the reason it's right is because it's lucrative. we have fallen so far into this para dime that we've said that

the basis upon which we decide something is right or wrong is whether or not it grows or shrinks gdp. we have wondered so far from the actual reasons that we exist as humans and believe as progressives that we're the adults in the charlie brown cartoon. what the [ bleep ] are we even saying? because i know that when i look in my sweet, sweet baby's eyes, this is diego and chi. i'm getting cheap points by showing pictures of my kids. i definitely think, man, i just love that sweet roi, cha-ching. because that's how parents feel about our children, right? that's what we feel when we have children and think about children, we think, wow. that is some money. because children are not just giant money suckers. and, in fact, even within this monetary frame, if you want to hang out there, you don't believe me, the investment language is [ bleep ].

we are talking about minuscule sums for these social issues that do not constitute the foundation from which to expect returns. what we are talking about in adding to or more appropriately not taken away from food stamps it's not an investments it's a [ bleep ] catsup pact. it's insulting to the people who desperately need this food to call it an investment. we have wondered so far into this innovative paradime of loving the economy best that we are in plato's cave and we think we are looking outside and we are looking at shadows on the [ bleep ] wall. and we don't need to talk this way. i'm going to give you one example because my clock is ticking. look at the place in this slide where the opposition is going away from us and where the persuadables are getting on board, where they love our message. this is a project that many smart people worked on. you know what's being said in this moment, i'll tell you, it's this -- america is a nation of values founded on an idea that

all men and women are created equal. we hold these trues to be self evident. that all people have rights, no matter what they look like or where they come from. the idea that the reason we do things is because it's more or less lucrative, that that's the basis of judgment in our society is not even particularly innovative. we don't need to be saying that. we need to be saying, hey, i believe that all children have rights. do you? that's the conversation we want to be having and that's the conversation that our opposition is thrilled we keep letting them avoid. thank you. [ cheers and applause ]. >> yes! i'm just going to say one thing. i'm going to say one thing that i think is a really good take home for all of us. we'll see a bunch of really interesting people with really interesting ideas here tonight. you've been at a conference full

of people with ideas and projects. commit this year to be a pac mule for one other person's project in this room. commit to that person. contact somebody in this room whose idea you heard who you can literally be a grunt for that project. it's their voice. you love what they're doing. you are going to help them elevate it up. can you make that commitment? [ cheers and applause ]. because that's what we need to do. we need to focus on ourselves but we also need to focus on what we're doing because you can focus on your project can be the face but also be the legs and the body and the hands of somebody else's. so, we're moving on. rinku sen. [ cheers and applause ]. >> when i was a little girl in india, preparing with my family to move to the united states, one of my teachers told me that the next time she saw me i would

be an american. as excited as i was by that prospect, it turned out to be a lot harder to fit myself into my new country than i might have hoped. i watched hours and hours of tv everyday trying to figure out how to be american. i think that i was doing okay but then something would happen like the time that all of white girls who were supposed to come to my 13th birthday party didn't show up. i tried not to see color -- i know, right? i tried not see color but i was always really aware of my own and felt so strange every time my friends told me that they didn't see me as indian, i was just like them. in college i discovered racial justice organizing. i had been taught that changing the rules around race had nothing to do with me. but something miraculous happened at that rally. for the first time in the 12 years since my family immigrated, i actually felt a real sense of belonging. that's when i understood that being an american wasn't about looking like marcia brady, it

was about working with the people around you to build the most inclusive, most compassionate, most effective community possible. as our country's demographics change, lots of people imagine that racism is just going to fade away. we're going to fall in love, marry each other and have millions of babies who all have quote unquote exotic-looking skin and hair and eyes. but you can trust me on this because i have tried, we cannot just date our way to racial justice. [ cheers and applause ]. what we can do is organize our way there. there are three things that i've learned over the last 30 years about how to build multi-racial communities and organizations. thing number one that's most important, it all starts with real and complete self

acceptance. clear-eyed self acceptance. when i was an adult, i learned that the white suburbs in which i had grown up became that way because they had for decades explicitly excluded black families from being able to rent or buy or get mortgages for their homes. by the early '70s, indian middle class families like myself, which had been explicitly chosen by congress as being okay to immigrate because we were privilege back in our home countries were considered okay to move in. i felt really guilt about that for a long time. and i felt so bad about it that what i would do is build community with all kinds of people but my own. but your multi-racial community has to include you with all of your privileges and oppressions and all of your limitations and gifts. lesson number two, we have to be able to talk explicitly about racial higher archiand discrimination.

color blindness is a krups concept that's based on the idea that our brains can do something that they're actually not capable of doing. [ cheers and applause ]. in a context where the universal is white, we have to be really, really clear about who and what we're talking about. lesson number three, equity has to be our goal, not simple diversity. if you think of our project as a party, you can invite me to the party and i could be interested enough to go. but if the music doesn't suit me, i find it undanceable, it gives me a headache, it's boring and i have no way to change it that i'm not going to stay at the party very long. in a political context, this plays out as people of color invited to the meeting and they come but nobody listens to a word they say. that's called tokenism. that's called tokenism. in an equity framework we can acknowledge that all the good things that are at the center of

our society, the great education, the safe housing, excellent health care, all of our communities have contributed to those good things and deserve to have access to those good things. in an equity framework, we don't actually craft a strategy until all the communities we're concerned about have had a chance to help shape it. we don't set the play list for the party without asking the people what they want to listen to. working in multi-racial communities is a really beautiful thing. it has many excellent rewards. you get to laugh at everybody's jokes and eat a much greater variety of excellent food and most of all you get to help unleash the innate power and potential that is present in every single human being. that's not just our job as progressives, it's also the key to a really great life. thank you so much. [ cheers and applause ].

>> s-amhita mukhopadhyay. >> why are you funny but your content sucks? i'm not talking about you or you, all of us, progressive, earnest do-gooders out there fighting the good fight. how is it that we make up such a dynamic hilarious group of people, but when it comes to putting out content about our issues we struggle? we struggle to find humorous ways to talk about the issues that we care about. instead, we often bang people over the head with jargon or difficult realities or sad stories. there's a reason for that. the issues we talk about and work are on pretty serious and the solutions require some serious investigation. and aren't they not going to take us seriously if we're too funny? who has the luxury to laugh? i don't have time to laugh. well, think about this, humor

gives us the opportunity to tackle difficult issues in new ways. francesca ramsey made a video, a viral video, called "[ bleep ] white girls say to black girls" using humor to talk about an issue that is incredibly difficult and pervasive. it was a viral success. humor also motivates us. it helps get people off their asses. sometimes they need a little extra push and they're more likely to do something if you make them laugh about it, rather than yell about it. we all remember the great schlepp. and there's a science to this. they did a study of all their content that performs the best on the internet and you will not believe what they found. [ laughter ]. people love stories they can relate to. they like stories that have a hero and a villain. they like an underdog that

emerges a superhero. they like to be shocked. and they like a goch-ya moment. the next time you're thinking about making content for your cause, think about how you can connect on a human level? what is something that happens every single day that you might be able to connect with somebody on? this is an example of a video that we did with the aclu on reproductive rights. this is a leng slay tor pretending to be a doctor, taking a hotly contested issue and bringing it to its logical conclusion. why can we all relate? because we don't want random medical advice from bozos. think about your timeliness. this is a video we launched at christmas time where santa is pretending to the nsa. this was wide lly popular, turn out most people think santa ask as creepy as the nsa. don't be afraid to say what

everyone is thinking. sometimes it's the most obvious answer that will get the biggest response and resonate the most. meet people where they're at. if they want cat videos, give them cat videos. remember, the internet survives off the systematic humiliation of animals. challenge yourself to talk about your issues in the simplest way possible. the majority of the people we're talking to don't know as much as we know. what's the one thing that they need to know when they walk away from talking to you? try not to be too literal. yes, you're right. it is your reproductive health care decisions. when was the last time someone said, got to make those reproductive health care decisions? people don't talk like that. don't be afraid to use metaphors or laymen's terms to talk about complicated issues. think about what motivates your audience.

why should i care -- what's the treat? why should i care about your issue, your state, and most importantly, your e-mail list? and remember, humorous content is just your non-sexist pickup line at the bar. how you follow through means everything. because we don't want to just make content for the sake of making content, we want to inspire people and we want them to take action. because if we want the numbers of people that we need to make the change we need to make, we're going to need to get new strategies to engage new people. i think making them smile is one of them. but whatever you do, don't try too hard. and don't ever start your joke with -- [ laughter ]. i'm not a blank but -- because we all know where that's going to end up. do what you can to find your most authentic voice and use humor in your day to day life.

i'm not saying it's easy, but neither is the work that we're doing. all the more reason to have some fun with it. [ cheers and applause ]. >> amy lynn smith. [ cheers and applause ]. >> hi, i'm amy. i'm an obama care success story. that's not a confession, it's a cause for celebration. i am one of millions of american's whose stories can help democrats win in november. obama care is a winning issue for democrats. it's been proven time and time again that the attack of obama care opponents don't hold up under scrutiny. they can't poke holes in the success stories because they have the advantage of being true. democrats just need to tell those stories. but a lot of democrats aren't using obama care success stories to their full advantage. the fact that more than 20 million americans and counting are benefitting from obama care is awesome. it's what we have been fighting

for. but that fact alone doesn't change minds. what changes minds, personal stories of how americans benefit from obama care. stories that demonstrate a value statement. what's in it for the voter? health care consumer? what is the value obama care delivers? when the cancer patient says, if it wasn't for obama care id be dead in 12 months, the value is obvious. obama care is saving her life. use stories to show what people get when they get covered. getting insured despite a pre-existing condition, getting routine screening is free. getting coverage that costs less. getting to keep your doctors. getting the peace of mind that even if you're diagnosed with the most aggressive cancer imaginable, the coverage you pay for every month can never be taken away and will never hit a life time limit. let me demonstrate with my own story. i'm a freelance writer. always had to buy my own insurance and the costs kept going up. last year i was paying $1,400 a month. why didn't i shop around?

because i couldn't. i have diabetes. only one insurance company will cover me. i'm also a woman, i can be charged more just because of that. obama care gives me the right to buy the same plan as everybody else. i no longer am discriminated against for being a self employed woman with diabetes, so i got the same coverage i had before for $900 less a month. [ cheers and applause ]. i did not gate tax subsidy so my $530 a month premium might sound expensive. i would pay more than that. i kept all my doctors and i will never pay more than $5,000 a year in out of pocket costs. something my previous plan did not guarantee. i told my story at a collect blog and then i started other people tell their's like leonard and dawn. he lost her job and she has a part-time job so they couldn't afford $1,300 a month for coverage but couldn't afford do without. between them they take 19

medications for 14 different pre-existing conditions including heart disease. they qualified for tax credits so they got covered for $227 a month. dawn told me in tears that without insurance to pay for their medication, she wasn't sure how long they would last. she wasn't sure they would make it to their daughter's wedding this summer, but they did. then there's linda, whose husband charles's cancer treatment will be covered thanks to obama care. cancer treatment that was never interrupted when they changed to a plan that saves them $300 a month. coverage that let charles keep all his doctors. this is what linda told me. quote, i see these adds with people saying they can't keep their doctors and i know that's bull crap. those ads are all about politics, not insurance, end quote. all her words. the truth needs no embellishment. pharmacy technician desiree will tell you the same. it's not a political thing. she said, it's a people thing. this college student knows all about people because she helps them in a pharmacy everyday and

has not seen a single person prescription cost increase. she's seen a lot of costs go down. she helped one woman who hasn't had insurance her entire adult life. the woman gratefully filled a prescription to manage a condition that was diagnosed at her first checkup in years. a condition that was caught before it turned serious. other young people get it too, like ed di, age 3 is has a black mark on his krert record because he was forced to the e.r. for routine care. he pays off his $5,000 debt he got covered for $20 a month. karen knows the high cost of getting injured. he avoided going bankrupt over a broken wrist because she has insurance she could only afford because of obama care. and let's not forget marian, the cancer patient who would have been dead in 12 months if it wasn't for obama care. her doctors gave her one year to live if she didn't get treatment. even with a part-time job she couldn't afford insurance until obama care. her treatment just started and

now her doctors give her an optimistic outlook for recovery. so, as we head into the 2014 elections and beyond, tell stories like these. they can change people's minds. give voters a reason to choose a democrat who supports obama care. because people want to vote for the things that matter most to them. and one day, the life that saved by obama care may be their own. [ cheers and applause ]. >> christopher massicotte. >> you know, there's always been gay people. we were just so deep in the closet we didn't know each other and then world war ii happened, we enlisted and found each other. in fact, san francisco was a major war-time port. now you know why the city by the bay is so fabulous. after the war, we took -- many of us took government jobs, an astronomer by the name of frank was fired from his job in 1958,

simply because he was gay. well, rather than cower, he became an organizer and an activist and 50 years later, president obama would formerly apologize to him. on monday, he is going to sign an executive order banning any company that does business with our government from ever doing that again. well, how did we get here? at an era when lgbt americans were getting fired from their job in 1978 harvey milk became the first openly gay official in california. he was so gifted and so inspiring that a homophobic colleague shot and killed him. shortly after his death, an american was confronted with the aid's crisis. it forced lgbt americans out of the closet to confront and protest a government that seemed to care so little about the rising death toll. imagine, if nearly all of your friends died in just a few short years. for many lgbt americans that's what the '80s were like. aids killed a an entire

generation of gay men and gave rise to a whole new generation of activists who fight for the rights that even we have today. this is barany frank in 1987. that's me in 1987. barany came out that year. and he was re-elected another 12 times. i'm from massachusetts. that was the first time i had ever heard about gay people. and he was an n a place of power. and since then, there are ranks in washington have swelled. we have seven members of the house and one senator from places you wouldn't imagine like riverside, california, wisconsin, and even arizona. but we have a lot of work to do. we only have two women and only one person of color and no republicans. oh, trust me, gay republican makes my skin crawl. but as barany frank would say, if you're not at the table, then you are on the menu. and they don't make it very easy for us either. this is state represent mike fleck, one of only two openly gay republican in the country.

he came out of his re-election in 2012. this year he lost his primary to an anti-gay tea party. after the primary, some of mike's colleagues said, we knew mike was gay but he didn't need to m coout. if he stayed in the closet he wouldn't have these problems. that's the message that republicans send, if you come out, we will turn you out and that prevents any good lgbt republicans from ever getting a seat at the problem. this isn't just a republican problem. this is patricia todd from alabama. you heard me, alabama elected an out lesbian to their state house. but the democratic party actually tried to stop her. the party in the establishment candidate that todd had beaten in the primary, they used a law that hadn't been enforced since 1988 to try to knock her off the general election ballot they felt her lesbian status would be too bad for the party come november. well, the victory fund stepped in and howard dean stepped in helped her mount a challenge, he won the right to be on that ballot and is doing great stuff for alabama ever since. [ cheers and applause ].

well, this is my first time in michigan. what a great state. but you're behind alabama. you don't have any openly lgbt state legislators you're going to change this. these are the four candidates that the victory fund is getting behind that will make history in november in michigan. want to end this talk on a very optimistic note. we have almost 500 openly lgbt americans serving in office today. i think harvey milk would be so proud of what they, of what we, have all accomplished. especially our biggest accomplishment to date, in 2012, we elected the first openly gay united states senator. in her victory speech, senator baldwin said, i didn't run to make history. i ran to make a difference. and i think harvey milk would be proud. nowadays gay candidates campaign just like straight people by using their spouses and their children in their campaign ads. i mean, we just got the right to

get married and now we're using it to get votes. and i think harvey milk would be proud. [ cheers and applause ]. >> i don't think he thought he would end up on a stamp, though. last month the postal service unveiled the harvey milk forever stamp. the first time an openly gay man ever had that honor. my partner drew and i went to a celebration celebrating the release of this stamp. drew works at the secret service. if it wasn't for the work of harvey milk and everybody that has come since he wouldn't have that privilege of working there. i think harvey milk would be proud and i know he's smiling knowing millions of americans are licking his backside. thank you, everybody. [ cheers and applause ]. >> you know, i'm from minnesota and an incredible state legislator guy named scott dible. and if you don't know scott dible, scott dible is the guy who proposed the reason that we

have marriage in minnesota. and scott and his partner have been friends of mine for a really long time. and when they tried to get the constitutional amendment in the minnesota constitution to have marriage be between man and a woman or -- you know, whatever. so exhausting. i flew back to minnesota to do some door knocking on the issue. no, this is turning into a funny story. i'm super fantastic, by the way. and the give back that i do is epic. [ laughter ]. >> so bow to me, really. no. so i was going door to door and i was in a neighborhood that is one of those neighborhoods that is sort of -- it could go either way. sort of conservative white middle class and then there's some hipsteres and so you never know what you're going to get on any door that you knock on.

so i knock on a door and this woman opens the door and she goes, oh, hey, come on in. and i'm like, okay. she goes, so why are you here? maybe you should have asked me before you let me in, but all right. [ laughter ]. and i said, i'm here to talk to you about amendment 1. i just want to know how you feel about it? if you've thought about it. she said, i'm so conflicted. and i said, okay. is there anything that i can tell you about it? about how it would make a better minnesota. and she says, well, here is my deal. i'm not sure i'm okay with two guys getting married, but i don't want to be a jerk about it. [ laughter ]. and that is such a summary of minnesota and i wish a metaphor for the way that it works with people who maybe aren't psyched about this. she's like, okay, maybe you're not for it but just don't be a

jerk about it. [ laughter ]. please welcome, laura windsor. >> thank you. [ cheers and applause ]. >> thanks, everyone. i was raised in the buckle of the bible belt in nashville, tennessee by a single mother who worked as a secretary. when i was 6, she married my stepdaughter a stockbroker and weapon went from working class to middle class. i was an overachiever attending a magnet school, graduating high school with honors and college credits, working two different jobs. by the time i graduated, my parents divorced and it was clear that i would be on my own financially. i eventually moved to new york to get state residency i attended community college downtown and on my way to class on september 11th, i witnessed firsthand the attacks on the world trade center. after watching people jump out of burning buildings and running from their collapse, i spent a

lot of time thinking about what america could have done to provoke such an atrocity. this experience fundamentally changed my understanding of the negative impacts of american capitolism abroad. i had grown up in the '80s, a child of capitalize with an unwavering faith in enter preneuroism. aynrand had been an favorite author. several years later, i had moved to l.a. at the on set of the mortgage crisis. i witnessed it firsthand through my boyfriend, whose business catered largely to the sub prime mortgage industry. in many ways i became a poster child for the recession. my boyfriend's business tanked. i had a full-time job as an office administrator but picked up a second job cocktailing on the weekends. after taking on several new financial obligations, my mother

was laid off and looked for work for three years, moving to four different states. during the holidays, she worked at target, but still didn't earn enough to go off of unemployment. she had a headache and she didn't have health insurance. doctors at a walk-in clinic forced her to go to a private hospital where she quickly ran up a $25,000 bill. she was slowly losing everything and there was nothing that i could do to help her. in 2009, i was laid off and i went back to school full time to compliment my bachelor's in business degree with an associate's in fashion design. i worked two different part-time jobs but like my mother, still didn't make enough money to go off of unemployment. eventually i found a full-time bar gig but business was slow. at one point, i had three different part-time jobs and even then was scraping by. all of this while going to school full time, six days a

week. the american dream seemed like an impossibility now. i grew up with the promise that if you went to college and got a degree, any degree, you would be set. but the 2008 financial crisis exposed that the game is rigged. the hope for justice on wall street evaporated as bankers escaped prosecution. the negative impacts of american capitalism that i had observed happening to people abroad were hitting home. and my anger, my apathy, rather, turned to anger. i started a blog called lady liberty. i joined the occupy movement covering protests around the country. i knee evely thought that everybody would agree that we needed to reform the banks. when it was clear that wall street would avoid substantive reform that politicians were in the pocket of the financiers bank rolling their campaigns, i realized that the root of the problems was money in politics.

i started a web show called the undercurrent with the young turks which led me to american family voices and here with you today. because i think that i have an obligation that we all have an obligation to try to prevent another ground zero. as we gather here in detroit, the heart of american manufacturing and arguably ground zero for the destruction of the middle class, we are at a critical juncture for more possible ground zeros, economic and otherwise. both the keystone xl pipeline and trance pacific partnership have been shelved until after the midterms. you can be sure if republicans retake the senate, that these issues will skew in favor of the corporate agenda with catastrophic consequences for us all. at afe, we are creating video content to change the conversation to one of economic populism. videos like the trade-y bunch. and the ever-expanding powers of

corporations. prioritizing corporate profits over people, deregulating across industries, shredding the social safety net, altering the climate past the point of no return, we know the root of all of these problems. now we must be bold and get money out. thank you. [ cheers and applause ]. >> feminista jones. [ cheers and applause ]. >> good evening, everyone. my name is feministic jones and i'm a story teller. i use social media to tell my stories with the hope that my openness will inspire others in some way. over the last four years, i've received hundreds of letters from fans and readers and supporters all around the globe. they tell me that i helped them in so many ways. i'm going to share a few of those things with you.

dear feminista. i've been following you on twitter for a while now. let me just say that you've taught me so much and will always thank you for that. i have family on twitter, so i haven't been able to openly share with you and other women. dear feminista. thank you for sharing your story of how you discovered feminism through hip hop music. you make feminism so accessible. your younger sisters appreciate you. i never realized that as a black woman i could stand up for being a woman without bestraying my race. you helped me see that. thank you. feminista, thank you for putting a name on what i have experienced for over the last 20 years. i never realized that there were others who felt as bad about being harassed on the street as i do. i have had grown men try to have

sex with me since the age of 10. and i gained almost 100 pounds between 18 and 35 in order to deter their attraction to me. i wish someone would have asked me if i was okay then. thank you. dear feminista, for the first time in my life, i feel strong enough to tell my mother that my stepfather raped me when i was 8 years old. reading your tweets today helped me more than you could ever know. thank you for your courage and sharing your story. feminista, i love reading about your passion for writing. your articles help me realize that i have my own voice and you inspire me so much as a writer. can you help me get started? dear feminista, i'm a 56-year-old white woman from austin, texas. and you and i have next to nothing in common, but i wanted to reach out to you and let you know that listening to you on huff post live really opened my

eyes. i'm not a feminist, but i believe in equal rights. i realize that i still have a lot to learn about you afro-americans. thank you for being you. hey, ms. jones, i just wanted to say that i really appreciate how candid you are when it comes to sex and sexuality. i never heard of pan-sexual before you started talking about it. you probably hear a lot about this, but i wanted to thank you personally for encouraging me to explore my own sexuality and be more honest with my boyfriend about wanting to be choked when he [ bleep ] me. he thinks he'll hurt me, but how do i tell him i want to pass out? dear feminista, over the last year and some change i've lost 80 pounds. i'm well aware of your weight loss journey and the negative experiences you shared, many of which i can identify with. it takes a lot of courage to

talk openly about weight issues, just know you inspire many. feminista, the last three and a half years of my life have been difficult for me. in 2009, my partner of 13 years committed suicide. i found her body one morning at 7:00 a.m. and my life hasn't been the same since. i gained 30 pounds and everything hurt. being part of the sexy shred community, i've learned that it is important to be deliberate about self care and that isn't selfish. thank you so much. you've done so much for so many of us. dear feminista, i'm just e-mailing you one social worker to another, we need more people like you. your blog about suicide not being selfish came at the right time. i was at my end. i'm still there but your story about how you tried to take your own life was so important. you have no idea. i had no one to talk to but you wrote like you knew me. your words saved my life. two years ago, my son went to

live primarily with his father because i have been struggling with depression. i love my son more than life itself. but i felt like a failure. when you talk about your son garvy, you help me realize i made the best choice for my son. thank you so much. feminista, you're always meticulous when explaining things to people on the internet. your level-headedness sets the bar. thank you for sharing your voice. thank you for being a constant inspiration. your tweets help me channel my frustration and sadness. words are powerful. you never know when someone is listening when you share your stories. someone somewhere needs to hear what you have to say. even if you don't feel very strong about it. you have a voice. use it. [ cheers and applause ].

>> sara haghdoosti. >> i was born in iran, grew up in australia and moved to new york two years ago. my accent sounds all over the place, it has a hint of kangaroo, now you know why. i first came to the united states when i was 10 years old. i came here before september 11 and i remember my mom and i got to the front of the immigration cue, the officer took one look at our iranian passports and asked us to follow him. and to put this in context, i had just been lavished with toys and attentions from flight attendants for 12 hours, so i thought this was going to be awesome and we were in for a special treat. instead, what happened was he took us to a small room, he started fingerprints my mother and took a mug shot of her and then he started fingerprinting me and had to find a stool for me to stand on because i was too short for the mug shot. i remember crying the entire

time because i had only ever seen bad people in movies be treated this way. and i had no idea what i had done wrong. and i know that my story isn't unique in this room. i know that there are countless others who experienced racism and racial profiling on a day to day basis and fight back and i wanted to shout outthe people who are fighting against forefront of the immigration debate and say, how proud i was when they held the vice president to account on this stage. but one place where i think we need to do more as a movement is in the realm of foreign policy. and we need to do more in the realm of foreign policy. when i talk about foreign policy and race, i don't mean white savior complex or clon yalism even though they're very important, i'm talking about

foreign policy as a gateway that erodes our civil rights and that seems into your everyday rights here. a lot of us watched after september 11th as entire communities and countries were labeled as extremist, dangerous and hom oj nis. as a result, laws like the patriot act that said if you talk to anyone who we think is suspicious, we're allowed to take away your rights became law. as a result of that law, we saw mosque being infiltrated and saw it being applied to drug raids and disproportionately affecting people of color. thanks to edward snowden, we found the patriot act became the legal basis for the government to listen into every single one of our conversations. and i just wanted to say that these things all come from foreign policy. that's not the only example.

i know that many of us marched against wars in iraq and the wars in afghanistan. and i know many of us grieved when we heard about civilians and soldiers losing their lives in those fights. and it's great that those wars are coming to an end now and are winding down, but what is scary is that the military is donating their equipment to local police forces here in the u.s. and we are seeing tanks go down suburban streets and that's not okay. only a few weeks ago on a supposed drug raid a police officer flew a flash grenade into the crib of a toddler here in the u.s. and it doesn't have to be this way. and this is why it's so important for progressive voices to be a part of the foreign policy debate. foreign policy is just what we allow our government -- how we allow our government to treat people who don't live in this country, who might look

different, who might have different beliefs, and who might speak in different languages. and we can make a huge difference and that's exactly the work berin does. we work with people in iran and progressives outside of the iran and push for foreign policy that makes sense. that means we push for foreign policy that lets people in iran have the space to do the organizing, the really inspiring work that they're doing that safeguards our civil rights and ensures that money doesn't get wasted on useless wars in the middle east where it could be used in our hospitals and in our schools. and that's the peace delegation we took to d.c. a few months ago. we're only a year old, but in a year, we're now up to 55,000 strong and that's incredibly exciting. and we only got there because of the support of so many others in the progressive community. so, i wanted to say thank you.

thank you for this community. thank you for the work that you do. and thank you for being the type of people who stand up. i look forward to marching alongside you in the future. [ cheers and applause ]. >> zerlina maxwell. >> you are drinking. you are drinking. what did you expect? those were the first words someone told me when i confided in them eight years ago that i had been sexually assaulted. it was these questions about my choices as opposed to say, choices of my rapist that were in some ways more painful than the violent act itself. i stumbled into rape culture. a world in which rape is seen as the norm and victims are blamed for their own asults. you see, there's many myths about rape. it's a myth that there are blurred lines of consent. it's a myth that rapes are

committed by strangers jumping out of the bushes. it's also a myth that rape cannot happen to men. what's true is that rape culture is very real. and i know you've all seen this picture before, this picture is supposed to represent love and patriotism and romance. what you might not know is that these two people are strangers, which makes this picture an assault. fast forward to last summer, when robin thicke's blurred lines was the number one song in the country and feminists spoke out and spoke up and said, no, enough is enough. i refuse to accept this and he went from number one on the charts to the number one creep just a year later. because when you see a statistic like this one that only 3% of rapists ever spend a day in jail, i want you to be as horrified as i am because this is not just my issue. this is not just a feminist issue. it's everyone's issue.

last year when i went on fox news and said, i should not have to have an ar-15 in order to not be raped. i was told by the right wing and told that my statement was shocking and bizarre. and i'm here to tell you, no, we need to be teaching people about consent and bystander intervention. i should not need a gun on every first date to be safe from sexual assault. [ cheers and applause ]. the morning after -- the morning after the segment, i was sent this rape threat at 8:00 a.m. in the morning and it was one of hundreds of threats. and i am here to tell you, i can't be out here alone, survivors cannot be the only ones speaking up and speaking out. that's where you come in. allies, okay? because rape snot an inevitable occurrence. it is not something that we should trivialize and it's not boys will be boys.

advertisement like this one, you call it out in public. you don't just turn your say, hey, that's offensive. you sign a petition. you tweet that petition and you stand alongside me and say, no. because this issue is not just an issue for women or for feminists like i said before or for people who have survived it. it's everyone's issue. and boys will not be boys. this is ridiculous. and because rape culture is a spectrum, it also includes street harassment. and i know i'm flawless and i woke up like this, but stop telling me to smile. [ cheers and applause ]. and when you see -- when you see someone cat calling a woman on the street, i want you to speak up and speak out and go up to the woman like feminista jones says and ask them, are you okay? and call out that harasser for

their harassing behavior. don't just ignore it and pretend it's not a problem. because it is. and if someone comes to you and says they been sexually assaulted, do not say a unc administrator said to my friend, rape is like football. you might want to review your plays and see if you would have made different choices. no, you'll be more like john kelly and recognize and stand up and say, that rape can happen in any kind of relationship. he's the first person to testify about rape in same-sex relationships. or you need to be more like who started the #survivorprivilege to talk back to george will who made that idiotic notion that being rape is somehow a privilege. that conveys a coveted status. she stood up and all survivors spoke out using the hashtag to say no. i'm here to say that you need to

make your move now. you need to stand alongside survivors and you need to be allies in public. i know it is easy to be cynical. i know. but i'm optimistic because campaigns like this one from ucla are shifting the conversation away from what women can do to prevent their rapes and on to, hm, maybe we should change the behaviors of the potential rapists. [ cheers and applause ]. >> because i want to get to the point where the answer to the question that i posed in the title of this presentation, i want the answer to that question, how do we end rape culture to be, we already did. thank you. [ cheers and applause ]. >> mansu gidfar. >> hi. all right, let's talk about corruption. so, when i say corruption, i'm not talking about the sleazy guy

with the shoe what i'm talking about is corruption in the year 2014. i could show you all kinds of charts or numbers, but i think with the collective organizing and political experience in this room, everyone here already has an intuitive sense of this problem. if you can afford a lobbyist, if you can put money into campaigns, you get a better version of the government than everyone else, and it's why we keep seeing headlines like this. it's why no matter how commonsense the solution or how much public support there is, unless the money is there too, your issue gets stuck over and over and over again. there's a whole shadowy network of money, and there's a big incestuous -- this is the reaction you get when you talk to people about money in politics. i do not want the face of this

movement to be bender. god love him. so today i'm going to talk about the solution. i'm going to talk about how we win this thing because i am so sick to death of seeing this headline over and over again. of seeing the same great reform ideas show up in washington get some democratic votes, get zero republican votes, and then die the same slow painful death. let's talk about strategy. i really want to hone in on this third point. this absolutely has to be a bipartisan movement. i know what some of you are thinking. who is this asshole telling me we have to work with the party of the koch brothers to get money out of politics? what's funny is when we go and talk about republicans about this issue, they say the exact same thing, but instead of the koch brothers it's george soros or the big scary unions or pick your lefty boogieman, but everybody is angry about the same things and if you look at the numbers more importantly, you see that both sides support the same policies we feed too

fix this problem which is not a left wing issue or a right wing issue. it's an american issue. until we start treating it like one, we're not going to win. so when you are dealing with a problem this huge you can't just nibble around the ijz. conventional wisdom says let's take one at a time and pass some public funding here. if you put them all together in one piece of ledges lashgs it's actually more powerful together than it is alone. this is all stuff, by the way, you can do without amending the constitution to overturn citizens united. it's not to say you shouldn't. that's to say that these two strategies work in tan dem because like the majestic voltron, we are so much more powerful when we unite as one. also that's an awesome picture, and i need an expense skoous to put it in the slide show. so we've got something called the american anti-corruption act. it's an anti-corruption act.org, and i don't have time to get into the policy stuff now, but i would love people to check it

out on-line because the nerd stuff is important. i actually want to talk about the name. more importantly, it's honest because that's what this [ bleep ] is. i know what some of you are thinking now. it's monsiuer, you handsome i had wrot. do you expect this to get anywhere in washington? my answer is, no, absolutely not, i don't. that's why we need to stop throwing ourselves the a brick wall at reforms in washington and start focussing on the 13 states in this country where tomorrow we could put a statewide anti-corruption on the ballot. there are certain states where this is just good policy. there are states where money and

politics is a bigger issue. north carolina, i'm looking at you. number two, it's good politics because every single been at the state level builds momentum for national reform. by the way, we've done the polling for a state act. it has unprecedented report. our pollsters have never seen higher numbers. now, i am from the great state of colorado, so, of course, i'm going to be the guy who brings up marijuana legalization. here is an issue that 20 years ago was the late night punch line, but using this strategy by building a right-left coalition, by going state by state, they have legalized it in two states. it is polling over 50% nationally, sf we are doing the same thing with money in politics, and we're doing it now. represent us. please check us out, and i'm going to do a quick shameless plug. we're running a fake candidate against mcconnell and grimes in kentucky. use your magic computer phone. you will be so happy you did. thank you so much. >> are you having fun? i know.

it's cool. i just have to say one thing because i think when we have progressive victories, they are very important to announce. when my friends are behind the progressive victories, i really like to announce them. shannon moore and jeannie devin have worked for ten years tirelessly to end the pebble mine in alaska. the pebble mine will not be built in alaska. if you are working on issues that are hard for water and climate, these women have made it so compelling and interesting, and they are tireless fighters, and so i just want to give them a shout out because i love them, and alaska is a faraway place, and i have been to bristol bay, and i have seen what this is, and for them to work this hard to preserve fisheries, to preserve salmon and our environment, thank you, shannon and jeannie. thank you. ladies and gentlemen, jessica

morales. >> i just want to take a moment to -- who was killed yesterday by the nypd via choke hold. in 1964 young people from around the country went to the south. in mississippi they registered voters. they got arrested. they lived and worked, and some even died, and they changed this country. they were willing to risk everything because they lived in an america that told them that their lives didn't matter, and those young people, those radical idealistic organizers became today's icons, and their names are jillian bon and bob moses and hollis watkins and mary king. 50 years later two young leaders phyllis agnew, the son of a preacher from florida fighting stand your ground and samp yoes who is fighting for undocumented militants as the daughter of immigrants were invited to speak on the march on washington, and they were not able to speak, and

that's when we knew we had to do our own kind of commemoration, so we came together in boston and north carolina and in a tiny island called st. simon's in georgia we are black and brown and asian and queer and undocumented, and adopted and southern and organizers and artists, and we are all of those things at once. what side are we on? are we on the side of america that -- that rips families apart. what side are we on? are we on the side of an america that continues to allow black and brown youths to struggle for equality in education? what side are we on? are we on the side of an america that fires and believes and even kills people because of who they love? it's okay with them getting married, but isn't okay with them having full federal

equality you should the law. lastly, our freedom fighters went to the national governor's association meeting in nashville, tennessee, to demand a meeting with our elected officials and they were arrested while black. the charges were eventually dropped as having no probable cause. those freedom fighters who arrested the national sides were calling for our demand. want free fully funded public education for all. two, to stop deportation and keep our families together. to end the school to prison pipeline, equal access, opportunity, and protection under the law and free and fair elections and their right to vote. we know -- we know that another america is possible, and these are building it. we dream of an america where we can be advocated without crippling debts. we dream where families stay

together, regardless of their status. we dream of an america where educational institutions build the school to power pipelines. we dream of a democracy that represents us, where we have the safety to pursue our dreams. i'm on the freedom side, and we need to know. which side are you on? it's not enough to celebrate the 50th anniversary of freedom summer. we have to use the precious gift that they gave us at the ballot box to take the power away from those who are still trying to silence us. i'm on the freedom side. which side are you on? we are in a side for our lives and the very survival of our communities for too long. our government has denied people of color the basic freedom of liberty and life that are at the very foundation of this country. i'm on the freedom side. awhat side are you on? ? half a century after the brave men and women risked their bodies and lives in freedom,

america still holds little regard for black and brown youths spshgs if you are ready to be on the freedom side, i need you to take the pledge to be with us this summer and beyond. we need you to join us in claiming that our voices matter, that our votes matter, that our lives matter. if you are ready, stand and repeat after me. this summer i pledge undying hostility to any government restriction on the basic rights and freedoms of marginalized yooult. i will use the power of my vote to remove policymakers from office, to support measures that harm people of color, and replace them with people who care about us. and we're going to ask you to join nuss a chant that our

brothers and sisters at byp 100 started. ♪ what the freedom fighter and she's tired of fight ♪ ♪ and we going to fight all day and night until we get it right ♪ ♪ what side are you on, my people ♪ ♪ what side are you on ♪ we are the freedom fighters ♪ what side are you on, my people ♪ ♪ what side are you on ♪ we're on the freedom side the freedom fighting, and she's tired of fight ♪ ♪ we're going to fight all day and night until we get it right ♪ ♪ what side are you on ♪ my people ♪ what side are you on ♪ we are on the freedom side ♪ what side are you, on my people ♪ ♪ what side are you on ♪ we're on the freedom side >> stand up for yourselves, you guys. thank you so much. thank you, guys. thank you all. i just want to say this

community is one that i'm very proud to be part of. i love that you are here. i love that you care. i love that you oftentimes -- it works way harder than the pay that it means to work for other people, and i love that you consider other voices and other perspectives. please always do that when you are considering how you want to push things forward. i love you. thank you for having me up here, you guys. let's go and drink and have fun. thank you. >> a couple of live events to tell you about. treasury department david cohen will talk about u.s. strategy to undermine the financing of the militant group isis in the middle east. that's live from the carnigy endowment for international peace. at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. and at noon eastern the cato institute hosts a discussion looking into police misconduct

and of new technology like body cameras to make law enforcement more accountable. that's live also on c-span. the american communist party held its 30th national convention in chicago back in june. we will hear from party chairman sam web who talks about the midterm elections and the party's economic agenda. this is almost 90 minutes. >> hello. my name is chauncey robinson. i am from oakland, california. i was born and raised in jersey. i am a member of the communist party and the ycl, and what i

was asked to do was do a speech honoring our elders. i'm going to do that. we are gathered here this weekend for the 30th national convention of the communist party usa. it is a party that has had 95 years of history, of struggle, dedication, defeat and victory. for each of those struggles, we have been able to learn from those experiences in order to go forth and analyze the everchanging political climate. here in the year 2014 we deal with the nation and a world.

>> analyze our political situation and hopefully leave here with a better outlook for tomorrow. sfwroo to have such a well of experience in this struggle is not the elders of our movement. of our party. when i was asked to give a speech honoring our elders, i was fearful of being someone who would come up with some things of the past and give a tone of the passing archaic, unmoving, and gone. basically i was afraid i would get u