we're transitioning to a new approach as promulgated by the president's national security action plan. we're focusing on the highest validate to sets, system, assets within government if degraded the opm databases, of course, being one example, if degraded would lead to especially severe consequences. we're doing this because as scott noted kpre ed correctly, any given organization is inherently finite so we have to focus on the most significant consequences first. in so doing, we'll reduce the likelihood of those most significant or catastrophic events from happening. >> scott, and kiersten, i'll pull you in in a second. scott, this gets to many conversations we've had in the past in terms of actor consequence impact. let's use this also as an opportunity to enlighten some folks on some of the lesslesson

learned in the ukraine. they're using proxies to engage in this sort of confident. how should we be thinking about this? >> let me -- a couple of things. i want to -- eric and general hoover hit very good points. it's rare you get government and industry sitting on the same stage. >> go figure. i'm concerned, then. >> you need to be more provocative. general hoover talked about this elephant, what does it look like? sure. i care about business side attacks. my company doesn't like what happens to their customers if credit card data is breached. we fight to prevent that from happening like every other business in the united states is doing. what i'm focusing on both on the sector coordinating council and just with my jday job on behalf of the industry is looking at the operational side attacks. the elephant to me looks like

those things that are sign r incide cyber incidents that have physical implications and one of the conclusions we becacame to although i'm glad cyber has gotten everybody's attention, critical infrastructure is important and can be done from a keyboard across the ocean. really what we are looking at is you're never going it have a cyber attack that doesn't have a physical implication. you're never going to have a physical attack that doesn't have a cyber implication. so i look at it a lot more holistically and in those 24, hours following an incident like in ukraine, you may not know. so much of what we have to do during fog of war is understand the implication, power is out. response, how do we respond to that? now to bring it into what happened in ukraine, look, people wanted to make the ukraine incident -- this was an eye opening experience for the north american -- it was not an

eye opening experience. we knew that this is the kind of sne incident that could and had been preparing many years. that's not to say we're not going to take the incident and learn some lessons from it but it was not so moment where, oh, i didn't know that could happen. we absolutely did and we'd been preparing accordingly. i think the biggest thing that we have learned out of that is ukraine had some benefits that we may want to start to apply here in the united states but they've also got some drawbacks. they have a much different grid than we do in the united states. we do have mandatory and enfo e enforceable standards. point er the y the nuisance attacks -- what they had in ukraine was the

ability to operate manually. we had the rush to automation over the course of the last 15 years or so on some level almost blind to the security risks we were creating. now, there's a paradox here. it's good we have automation but it also increases the attack service. are there things we can be doing today to go back to my original point, are there things we can be doing today to be able to operate manually in the event of an incident, go to a degraded state simply to keep the power running understanding it's going to be in a less efficient way. those are the kinds of big decision we're taking in the sector and with the government to begin to do planning for those incidents that could have an impact for a longer term on the grid. the second thing that we're doing, again, this is an experience coming out of ukraine, we have a culture of mutual assistance. you've seen it all over the country. when there is a weather event, you've got bucket trucks and crews from all over the country

descending on the area. can we learn lessons from our mutual assistance culture in the cyber space, and in fact, we're building out a cyber assistance regime as a sector but as we realize we can't do this alone, this goes to the staffing issues. there so bringing the whole of community together for response to cyber sneincidents is a grea lesson out of ukraine. >> scott, who things i want to put a fine point on. one, the cyber convergence, attacks growing exponentially. we start talks about the internet of everything, baking security into the design of architects becomes that much more important. secure coding and the like. i might note one of the greatest deterre deterrents, and i've been an

outspoken critic that weticulat essence we blame the victim, we blame entities rather than penalize and put pain and cost on the perpetrator, but that's a longer conversation. but maybe one of the best deterrents is the ability to not only be resilient and that's become a bit of a buzzword, but to bounce back quickly. so i think that's an area, your sector in particular, has some lessons we can all glean from and emphasis in planning. >> if the adversary realizes that the impact is not going to be as catastrophic as they want it to be -- >> they'll go someplace else. >> that's exactly right. >> kiersten, you wanted to pull on that later. >> i wanted to -- >> try to disagree a little bit. i love you all -- >> i think this idea of education and awareness, we have -- i think there's -- it still exists which is a little bit of a false notion that the

right technology is going to prevent something and we're not looking at it as effectively from a pyramid. at the base of that pyramid are the people. the people are then given policies that educate them on what to do then the technology is then brought in to help assist the policies and assist the people. at the core, it's the people. if you look at what happened to google, we were talking to somebody related to the commission, the reason why facebook says they didn't get breached, they went and pulled out all the operating systems literally out of the wall when they found out where the vulnerability was. here's the question, how many of the operating systems exist in major corporations still today? i can tell you there's still a lot more both in the public and the private sector that still carry that operating system that's known to have that vul vulnerability. the government has proposed -- it's an opportunity for the government to play a model in the private and public sector. what tony scott proposed with

his i.t. modernization fund, this approach theoretically makes a lot of sense which is take the functions that are shared across all the agencies that are not agency specific. hr, payroll, e-mail provision, those, and create a shared platform that is resilient and that to frank's point, what you're trying to do is you're not going to be able to prevent everything and this idea that actors are more sophisticated, that's really not an effective -- they're just more opportunistic. they look to where the vulnerabilities are and they create -- it's the capabilities versus intent argument. but if you create an infrastructure that prevents what should be prevented, blocks the low-hanging fruit. there are very basic things we can do. understanding you're not going to get ahead of every attack, we are going to be attacked, how do we create the infrastructure that is strong to manage what happens and get our systems up and running as quickly as possible. that is an approach both when we're looking at the public and private sector that works effectively. at our core, what are we doing

with the people? to the point that was head eama earlier, there's a very simple vul nurkt we have that we're not doing enough to address. i know one of the elements that we're looking at in innovation that's happening in the government, nist to's innovating around this as well as the private sector, how to you ensure it's a lot easier to do the right thing? it's very difficult to do the wrong thing. if you do do the wrong thing, it's contained and doesn't spread to a system in a way that take it down for a long period of time. we have to be looking at all these elements, the people, policies, then the technologies and how they're integrating together. >> scott, this is scott kaine. a good segue. i think kie are rsten hit it spot on. a three-legged stool technology policy people. workforce. you mentioned this earlier. and the need to empower the workforce. how do we translate what is now

arguably the weakest link in a strength? what are you advising and what should we be thinking about? because at the end of the day the talent doesn't grow on trees but there are some general cyber security awareness capabilities that can be brought to bear. >> so for us what we look at is there's kind of two tiers. there's people with resources and people who don't have the resources so you tackle both a little bit differently with the people process technology support. for the big folks, you know, to try to take a stance here, i'm not a big fan of the let's throw our hands up in the air. i'm a coach in girl's soccer. i don't sit there and plan when the other team scores, let's figure out how we're going to come back. that's a necessary part of the game. there's a preventative element -- >> cyber is kind of like kid's soccer now. young ckid's soccer, 5 to 7. >> we're playing the football rules while they're playing

soccer. for the larger enterprises that have the resource, the way we tackle it typically from client side is be preventative. it's not a bad word. it doesn't mean you have to plug up every gap. there's a couple things. the classic don't be the slowest person that the bear's chasing, right? do enough to get beyond that. every client says, yes, i don't want to be the last person but i want to make sure i'm not the last person. okay. got it. but the bigger piece is that on the preventative side, you talked about the threat actors. look, at the end of the day it's not that difficult to see what's going on. you see what's going on. it doesn't have to be monitoring a dark web. there's social circles out there where you can take a look at threat actors and they have their patterns of attack. you know what they're going to do. such and such companies start showing up in bad places and certain places, blogs and so on. not blogs but some of the message boards and so on. a-ha, now i know. such and such companies or this

industry is about to be attacked. well, instead of waiting until they hit, let's take a look at how they typically attack folks then make sure the companies in that particular industry, or the fed groups in that particular industry, are prepared, right? so, hey, we know john and the bad guys typically operate this way, and your name has showed up. i say within the next three weeweek s you're going to be on the target list so get ready. that's not a very difficult concept. i was going to add to on the people side, what we typically do on the large enterprises are our enterprises. using the soccer analogy, you don't show up at game time and figure out what to do. most of the folks when you run them through scenario, the boards, the ops folks, the i.t. folks, the development folks that the do the code and you bring them together, run them through scenarios relevant to the threats in their particular industry, most don't do very well. and so what ends up happening is you find the gaps and fix it so that's the way you get prepared

is that if you're talking about people, they're going to do what they have to do but if you practice, you obviously are going to do a lot better at game time. we add vivocate that. on the small side, let the experts do it. do the minimum things you need to do, do the hygiene piece but you might want to consider having someone else come in as the prose. >> i would highly recommend entities that don't have the capability to spend a whole lot of time in the deep web darkness, that's a pretty tough neighborhood. that's -- you've got to have some real capabilities to be able to engage in that. i think you're spot on. you make the big mistakes in the practice field, not main street usa, not game day. >> right. >> i do think you're starting to see a pretty big trend to even the financial services sector where you have small/medium sized banks looks to their providers to provide security in the cloud, for example. aws, you name it, microsoft,

asia. you name the various means. i think you're going to see a big trend in that direction where entities that don't have the devoted capabilities, resources andest esest efforts at this problem. >> absolutely. the industry will tell you where things going. mid-market is looks to leverage the cloud more and more, easier, faster, better, stronger, the threat comes with how do i keep tabs on folks i'm having my kids live with? what's happening in the industry is this cloud security piece is becoming enormous. keeping tabs on the big companies that are providing these services. now, you're not going to get the big companies to allow you to start rummaging through and making sure the security protocols in place, but there definitely are ways that the mid-sized companies can use certain not that expensive technologies to work with their partners to keep tabs on their cloud providers. it's a big thrust in the commercial world without question. >> awesome. i want to make sure we have a little bit of time for audience

q&a, so we have seven, ten minutes. when you raise your hand, identify yourself and wait for a mike. andy over here. >> general, you mentioned the active defense word. i'm wondering if you could describe for us your sort of vision of active defense and get other panel comments about where that's headed. >> yeah. thanks. so i think, first of all, you know, back in the early '80s when we were carrying about brick cell phones and thought we were the coolest cats on the block, right, who thought back then we would be watching tv on our cell phones? who thought back in the early '80s you actually wanted to watch tv on your cell phone? today aeeverybody's doing it, right? the speed of technology is changing so fast and outpacing the roll call of victims to cyber attacks. i know you'll find this hard to believe, the government moves rather slow, so all of our policies and our processes and the things that we're trying to

do can't keep up with that. and i think that's where then the active defen of defense com you need to have a layered approach to cyber defense. it has to be risk management based so you have to accept some risk because as i said at the outset, you can't build the firewall anymore because it really takes just one person on your side of the wall to do something really stupid and it will take down your system and if you're in the private sector, you can't afford that. and so we have to all be in this together and so when i think of active defense, i think of the risk management combined with a layered approach combined with this notion of the public/private partnership and we in the guard bureau partner with dhs, we partner with doj. we're looki ining forward to th president's commission. nobody has a crystal ball of looking out to the future of what is the threat in the future, but this cyber thing is the long game. and i think the president's commission has an opportunity to really lay a foundation and a

pathway forward for us that we can go collectively together to be in this kind of active defense arena. >> one thing i want to underscore, you're not suggesting to people to turn after their firewalls, you're suggesting the perimeter defense is insufficient. >> that's correct. >> yeah, please don't turn off your firewall. at the end of the day in itself, it's insufficient. i don't know what's inside and outside the network anymore since it's all kind of blurring. >> that's right. >> and traditional ways of thinking of just building higher walls, wider motes, ain't going to cut it. and the question is, there's a lot of policy space between hack back and build higher walls and that's the emphasis of the study we have ongoing as well in acting defense. we have time for one more question, so please in the back there, please identify yourself. maybe we'll get two in. let me see. how are we? yeah -- quick questions.

>> all right. i'm john. i'm a student at the university of pittsburgh. i have a question for eric on the left. the previous speaker was also from the dhs. he was talking about how important it is to share information with the private sector and public center -- seconder. but you hear about these vulnerabilities like target got hacked by i think it was their point of sale technology and there's a bunch of old vulnerabilities on windows xp that isn't even pactched anymor. how do you know when enough is enough? are you afraid of sharing too much information and creating more vectors of attack? >> if i could build on that, signal to noise issue, what impediments are there legally, if any, to be able to share some of this information. >> absolutely. this really comes down to the sophistication and capacity of the recipients. so buildsinging on the point sc made, for a large enterprise, a major corporation, large federal agency, our current approach is we should share as much as possible as fast as possible

because the recipient should have the sophistication and the automated tools to be able to use that shared information to better their own security. i would differentiate as a first point between sharing information about vulnerabilities, about incidents and about threat indicators. and our current focus right now in the automation space is on sharing threat indicators as quickly as possible. we believe that cyber threat indicators should be a commodity. companies should compete on their portfolio of threat indicators but indicators should be published and shared across the cyber security enterprise in realtime. our goal would be when an adversary uses a single tpp, single spearfishing e-mail, the first organization that detects that in their perimeter, in firewall, they capture that, put it in a shareable format, send it to us and we share it with the world. the adversary can only use that tpp a single time and it's

blocked everywhere else. >> a little polly annish, but i like the idea. >> optimistic. it's only the case some organizations will have a hard time differentiating the signal from the noise or will need additional help to figure out what is most important, what indicators do they use first. so we're building into our system the kpafs to put in reputation or confidence scoring that will actually tell the recipient when they receive a cyber threat indicator how important is this? is this tied back to a nation-state adversary, is it something we've seen used elsewhere with significant consequences? that will help organizations who don't want to take the typeline pipeline of dhs and use it all, differentiate based on our confidence that it's actually significant and importance thereof. >> eric, can i ask one point, and we'll get one more question in. looking at some of the bug

bounty initiatives a number of company are initiating, which is a great marketplace, it allows for the white hat hackers and maybe even some of the gray hat hackers to be able to share information of zero day exploits and unknown exploits before they occur. do you see a day where the government can help drive that marketplace with the private sector or no? >> so certainly the d.o.d. is already obviously leading this -- >> you can offer -- in essence it would be providing incentives or no disincentives. >> right. certainly the d.o.d. already launched their pentagon effort where they're paying bounties for hackers who hack public facing d.o.d. websites. certainly there is a model here. the traditional model has been we, dhs, other agencies coordinate with white hat researchers to provide vulnerabilities and we then work with the venders, work with the developers to bring that vulnerability to resolution. obviously there is a csignificat market now for this service and if the government wants to receive these vulnerabilities

along with the vendors and developers, certainly there is a model where the government both sets up the legal framework where this is easier, simpler and lower risk, and there's a model as shown by d.o.d. where the government is actually a participant in a financial market for vulnerabilities particularly on government-owned and operated networks and software which is where i think we'll see it first. >> all right. we have time for one last quick question and quick answer. so -- >> hi. mark peters. general, i had a question for you. the national guard has experienced -- many years of experience with physical instance response, supporting states in disasters, for example. you're gaining experience in assisting with cyber response. have you given any thought into what your -- how you might have to think or act differently in preparation or response when you have -- >> part of our capability

whether supporting a domestic response as you said or cyber event is the value we bring is we're right there and we're able to set conditions for the governor in advance of other federal services or other capabilities that fema might bring to the table so i think our response as we think about a cyber response is really to set conditions for other responders than to come in, but it is great area of exploration in terms of how we continue to support the state governors. >> scott? >> and i'll second that. i think -- we just met 20 minutes ago, i think that's the wave of the future, and i speak from our company we've got about 45 to 50 employees that are all in the national guard or air force and all of them are cyber folks and they're distributed all over the country. so the limitation with dhs is because of certain locations, physical locations. dhs is everywhere. plus they're private soldiers. our team plays out, they work

with us during the course of the week. on the weekend, they're cyber warriors so they're totally prepared to support the mission out in the field all over the place. you have a bank in muskogee, a national guard, folks working day jobs in the private sector fully kaip blt of supporting that public mission. the national guard seems to be the right organization certainly because of the organization coupled with the talent pool they already have simply because a lot of these focuses are already in the cyber community in the private sector doing their day jobs. the weekend job just becomes having more fun just helping someone else out. >> thank you, scott. on that note, please join me in thanking our panel. this could have gone on so much longer. thank you. [ applause ] and i think we have a short break and christian will kick us off to the next panel in a little bit. thank you. >> thank you.

today on "the communicators" michael o'reilly on several key issues facing the fcc like net neutrality which is currently in the courts, spectrum auctions and settop boxes and comments on the political divide within the fcc. he's joined by "communications daily" executive senior actor. >> fcc leadership including the chairman to take the most aggressive, leftist approach to policymaking, little ground when that becomes the first primary goal -- the direction they want to go is the first goal than any collegiality or tempt to bring or develop consensus. you wind up with scenario we have today. when there's little interest in bringing my opinions on board then you're going to find that i'm less likely to be supportive and i'm going to express my views. >> watch "the communicators" tonight at 8:00 eastern on

c-spa c-span2. georgia congressman john lewis receives the 2016 elie wiesel award. during a speech at the museum's dinner last week, he mentioned the 2016 presidential ration and its campaign rhetoric. >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome museum vice chair allan holt. >> good evening, everyone. it's an honor to be here and i want to express my thanks to all of you for being here. i want to especially thank this evening's chairs, beth, and the

washington community, my home community for this fantastic show of support for the museum and its campaign. i am the son of holocaust survivors and i am also blessed. i just celebrated with my parents their 70th wedding anniversary. [ applause ] i grew up during the 1950s and 1960 s. two events that i most remember from my early life were the legacy of the holocaust and ongoing struggle for civil rights. in fact, one of the unforgettable moments of my new jersey childhood was witnessing firsthand the horrible race riots in newark in 1967. so tonight, these two strands of

my life come together as we honor congressman john lewis, a very special american. [ applause ] a very special human being. as my parents would say, a true mench. my parents had been in this country less than 20 years when the civil rights movement began. they were probably unaware that the nazis often justified their anti-semitism as not much different from american racism, nor did they realize that american soldiers who liberated europe and liberated them were part of a segregated u.s. army. but for many in the 1960s, the holocaust taught us the urgency of speaking out.

so it was not surprising that several of the jews most active in the civil rights movement had links to the holocaust. one such activist, rabbi prince of berlin, fled to the united states in 1937. he would go on to become one of the planners of the 1963 march on washington and spoke immediately before martin luther king gave his "i have a dream" speech. in his remarks that day, rabbi prince said, "when i was a rabbi of the jewish community of berlin under the hitler regime, i learned many things. the most important was that bigotry and hatred are not the

most urgent problem. the most urgent, the most shameful, and the most tragic problem is silence." later, rabbi prince would recall the march on washington as the greatest religious experience of his life. what made that march possible? what animated the civil rights movement that so powerfully challenged our country to live up to its ideals and reshaped our nation? it was the singular leadership of a very few brave, very dedicated men. hero is widely overused, but tonight we honor a true hero. the son as sharecroppers, as john lewis pursued his education, he studied religion as well as the philosophy and

techniques of nonviolence. with his fellow students, he participated in lunch counter sit-ins, freedom rides, and demonstrati demonstrations. by the age of 23, remember, that's 23, he was recognized as one of the big six leaders of the civil rights movement. he endured endless harassment and humiliation and repeated beatings culminating on bloody sunday when his skull was broken as a marcher stopped to pray. imagine knowing that your peaceful demonstrations would lead to brutal attacks by angry mobs and yet demonstrating over and over again. let's take a look at this remarkable man.

♪ ♪ that we all be free >> when you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, we have a moral obligation to do something. >> in 1961, college senior john lewis wrote the letter which would catapult him to the center of the civil rights movement. he volunteered to join the freedom rides challenging segregation across the deep south. >> i know that an education is important, and i hope to get one. but at this time, human dignity is the most important thing in my life that just as a freedom might come to the deep south.

boarding that greyhound bus to trac thafl throuravel through the he of the deep south, i felt good, i felt happy, i felt liberated. i was like a soldier in a nonviolent army. i was ready. we arrive in little town in south carolina and tried to enter a so-called white waiting room. we were beaten. by members of the klan. >> the first freedom riders met violent resistance. 4 the second wave of riders knew they were stepping into a firestorm. >> i was hit in the head with a wooden crane, left a line there, a pool of blood. >> the horror that was occurring, the unbelievability of what was occurring. these were americans who were doing this to other americans. >> beaten, arrested, jailed.

but i never had any sense of hate toward the people that beat me. i was inspired to never become bitter or hostile. i was inspired to be hopeful, to be optimistic, to never give up. >> at only 23, john lewis was the youngest organizer and speaker at the historic 1963 march on washington. >> we'll march through the south, the streets of jackson, through the streets of danville, through the streets of cambridge, through the streets of birmingham. but we will march with the spirit of love and with the spirit of dignity that we have shown here today. >> on march 7th, 1965, lewis helped lead a group of 600 orderly protesters across the

edmund pettus bridge in selma, alabama. it would become known as bloody sunday. ♪ s these images awakened the conscience of the nation. an entire generation would rally for justice and equal rights. on august 6th, 1965, the voting rights act was signed into law. >> when ilewis, i'm reminded th courage isn't just a one-time thing. his bravery in selma and during the civil rights movement is obviously what stands out, but that's part of o broader or deeper vein of courage that runs throughout his life. >> what each of us does matters is probably the singlemost

important lesson out of the holocaust. you can see it in real life through john lewis. >> called the conscience of the congress, he's devoted himself to the advancement of human dignity and human rights. >> we all are human and we all must be involved in the problems and issues that confront our fellow human being. we cannot afford to sit on the sideline. we cannot afford to be silent. [ applause ] . >> another activist of the civil rights movement was rabbi abraham joshua herschel who fled the nazis and lost much of his

family in the holocaust. he became a prominent member of the civil rights movement marching on the front lines with martin luther king with whom he shared a deep devotion of religious faith. herschel once wrote, "it was easier for the children of israel to cross the red sea than for a negro to cross certain university campuses." and he boldly challenged the jewish community to do more saying, "we must act. human interest, human self-interest, is often our nemesis. it is the audacity of faith that redeems us." it is with great pleasure that i get to invite up to the podium rabbi herschel's daughter,

susannah, who chairs the jewish studies program at dartmouth college and serves on committee of ethics, religion, and holocaust, to deliver a tribute to her father's great friend, john lewis. ♪ >> we are gathered together this evening during the national days of holocaust remembrance and we want to pay tribute to you, congressman john lewis. we honor you with an award in the name of our extraordinary friend and witness, elie wiesel. we honor you during these days that commemorate the horrors of the holocaust, but also our survival and regeneration as a jewish people. and we present this award to you

in tribute to your courage, your moral leadership, for your work in congress, for your devotion to the ongoing struggle for justice in this country. you represent one of the central lessons of the united states holocaust memorial museum. never to forget, never to be indifferent to other people's suffering. we honor you, congressman lewis, and we also thank you and the other leaders of the civil rights movement for the inspiration you brought to america and for the gift that movement brought to american jews. you and your fellow civil rights leaders inspired so many jews, young and old, to take part with you in sit-ins, as freedom riders in the mississippi freedom summer, and at the march in washington. in selma, cicero, memphis, and

the poor people's march. you welcomed our participation in the movement and many young jews rediscovered with pride the jewish prophetic tradition. the civil rights movement arose just a few years after the end of the war and we jews were just barely starting to recover from the horrors of hitler. my father, rabbi abraham joshua heschel, take to this country as a refugee from nazi europe. his mother and three of his sisters and his extended family were all murdered. my father had been a student in berlin in the 1930s when some german protestant theologians were proclaiming that the old testament was a jewish book that should be thrown out of the christian bible. and that jesus was not a jew but an aryan. caught up in their racist frenzy, they did not even

recognize their own defamation of christianity. imagine then what my father felt when he came to this country and met nebor, martin luther king, father slessburg, christian theologians who revered the god of abraham. moses, exodist from egypt, the hebrew bible was at the heart of the civil rights movement and that was a bomb of gilead that helped restore our wounded souls after the war. our hebrew prophets, what were their concerns? not praise for kings, flattery of the powerful. no. they taught that god's greatest concern is with widows and orphans. with honesty in the marketplace.

with the impoverished and neglected of society. the one verse that appears more often in the bible than any other is god's command, "for remember you were slaves in egypt. do not mistreat the stranger in your midst. love your neighbor as yourself." racism is satanism, my father proclaimed. racism is idolatry. unmitigated evil. our yiddish newspapers at the turn of the century had headlines. how can there be pagroms in the united states, they asked. how can there be racism in

america, the land of liberty? it is unthinkable. they declared that our histories as blacks and jews are bound up together. let us know one another's histories. and be each other's allies. we draw inspiration from you, congressman lewis, for speaking out forcefully on behalf of jewish concerns and we thank you. during the selma campaign that you organized, dr. king lived for many months at the home of dr. and mrs. sullivan jackson and their daughter, joanna, and on the morning of that third march, mrs. jackson told me she woke up in the morning and went into her living room and there was dr. king standing in one corner saying his morning prayers, and another corner of the living room was my father.

then in the dining room, there was a catholic praying. that glorious moment is also with the civil rights movement accomplished. bringing us together in prayer. congressman lewis, you write in your memoir, "walking can t ini wind" that there's an old african proverb, "when you pray, move your feet." and indeed, my father embodied that african proveproverb. when he returned from selma, he said, "i felt my legs were praying." from the days of jim crow until today, this day that michelle alexander has rightly called the era of the new jim crow, an era of mass incarceration that is

destroying the families of far too many african-americans, you, congressman lewis, have maintained your resilience with your hard work in congress to transform the dream of justice into the reality of a better america. you write in your memoir, we pray because we believe that praying can make what we believe our dreams and our visions come true. we know that redemption will not come to one group of people alone but only to all of us at once. and we must work together for each other's hopes and dreams and keep alive the extraordinary alliance we forged as jews and

blacks in the 1960s. let that day be this day. let us share insights and learning. let us give one another courage to persist despite the terrible predicaments we face. let us speak prophetically to one another. let us speak with a moral gra grandeur and spiritual audacity to believe that the spirit of god endures forever. amen. [ applause ] >> thank you, susannah. what a wonderful tribute to congressman lewis. it is one thing to speak about

congressman lewis' impact on the past, but most importantly, his legacy continues to shape the future. and that future depends on young people. so now it is my pleasure to introduce evan jones, a graduate of the museum's youth leadership program. today, evan is executive director of the mid peninsula boys and girls club in san francisco. evan? [ applause ] >> good evening. i have the honor tonight of representing over 750 museums across the country from every race, religion and culture, yet bound through the lessons that the holocaust teaches and the

man we honor tonight exemplif s exemplifies. the power to make a difference. i was lucky enough to be the last generation of students in d.c. public schools whose teachers were african-american women. who had grown up in segregation. civil rights leaders like john lewis were their heroes and became ours as well. by high school, i had personally experienced racism. after that, what inspired me most about the civil rights movement was their nonviolence. so far, this part of my story is expected. what's totally unexpected was how the holocaust impacted my life. i was 17 when i first walked into the museum and it felt like i was walking into a holy place. but it was the survives who transformed how i viewed the world. they had experienced such horror and had every right to be bitter, but they weren't. i was overwhelmed by their

spirit, their courage, their determination, no matter how painful, to share their stories again and again in the hope that sharing could make the future different from their past. education is more than what happens in school. this program allowed us to learn not only about holocaust history but to learn about ourselves. who we were as people. and who we could become. that we could become people like john lewis. i've brought these lessons to 2,000 underprivileged children we serve every year at the mid peninsula boys and girls club. they need inspiration and the tools and resilience to deal with the challenges they face every day. and what is a holocaust survivor or a john lewis if not resilient? if not a model for the type of

responsible, caring, productive citizens that we are trying to create. what my heroes here tonight teach is the part of citizenship we tend to forget. it's not just it is not just about your rights. it's about your responsibility. for that, i am forever grateful. congressman, lewis, will you please join us. [ applause ]

[ applause ] ♪ congressman lewis, this elie weisel is enscribed from words from his nobel acceptance speech which could have been written precisely with you in mind. and i quote, one man of integrity can make a difference. the inscription on your medal reads, to representative john lewis, for your extraordinary moral and physical courage and enduring commitment to promoting

human dignity. congressman lewis. [ applause ] good evening. i want to thank you board of trustees and the united states holocaust memorial council for this award, as well as the museum director sarah bloom enfield. it is a great honor to be receiving this precious medal

named for a man that i have admired and loved for many years. someone that i have met on more than one occasion. i will cherish it for years to come. elie weisel. as i said earlier on the film, when you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to speak up. to speak out. and to find a way to get in the way. when i was growing up in rural alabama, 50 miles from montgome montgomery, outside of a place called troy, would you see signs that said white men, white

women, color men color waiting. and would come home and ask my mother, my father, my great grandparents, why? they said, that is the way it is. don't get in the way. don't get in trouble. but i read the bible. i read the story about the children of israel. i heard the songs like go down moses, way down in egypt land and tell the pharaoh to let my people go. the muse inspired me. the words inspired me. and then in 1955, 15 years old, in the 10th grade, i heard of rosa parks. i heard of martin luther king jr. met rosa parks in 1957 at the age of 17. the next year, at the age of 18,

i met martin luther king, jr. and i never looked back. i asked my mother, asked my father, and they said, boy, that is the way. don't get in the way. don't get in trouble. but i got in trouble. it was good trouble. it was a necessary trouble. so we all must continue to get in trouble. i visited a holocaust museum on more than one occasion. and for me it is hard -- it is almost unbelievable, it is unbelievable, it is unreal what happened to a group of people. a group of human beings. and it must never, ever happen again. never! never again! [ applause ] in the civil rights movement, yes, i met and walked with rabbi heschel.

yes, i met and walked with rabbi prince. but there was 100,000 young jewish students and those who marched on washington. many rabbis came to selma. many young people worked in the state of mississippi during 1964 and 1965 and the others worked all across the south. and i will never, ever forget, three young men i got to know and goodman, shearner, jewish and from new york and james jany, a young african-american man from mississippi. went out on a sunday summer night, june 21st, 1964, to investigate the burning of an african-american church to be used for voter registration

workshop. these three young men riding in a car, detained by the sheriff, arrested, taken to jail and later that evening they were taken from jail and turned over to the klan where they were beaten, shot, and killed and their bodies were discovered six weeks later buried under a mine of dirt. it was a hard and difficult time for the civil rights movement. in the south, in our country, in america, temples and synogogues were bombed in the south. churches bombed and burning. we didn't give up. we didn't give in. we kept the faith. and we kept our eyes on the

prize. and that forces an america today -- forces of hate. and we must never hate. for hate is too heavy a burden to bear. as the late a. philip randolph said as we were planning the march on washington, for august 28, 1963, he said it over and over again, maybe our foremothers and our forefathers all came to this great land in different ships, but we all are in the same boat now. and we must look out for each other and care for each other. and during the season, this political season, we must not allow anything or anybody or any force to turn us around. for we are one people, we are one family, we live in the same house, not just american house,

but the world house. thank you tonight for this great honor. thank you. [ applause ] thank you, congressman lewis, for those very stirring remarks. this is a very proud night for the holocaust museum. you inspire us all and you remind us that what we do matters. thank you all for coming. [ applause ]

here is our 3 lineup tonight. first a house hearing on whether the government should get involved in regulating the pet meditation history. and then we hear how the federal government and the private sector are using information sharing to deal with cyber security threats. later v.a. secretary robert mcdonald outlines his goals for improving veterans' access to health care. madam secretary, we proudly give 72 of our delegate votes to the next president of the united states --