i do computer science class my first quarter. i got into my class and i looked around. i said, i'm going to do this and do this really well. it was the hardest lesson i have ever taken in my entire life. i got a c on my first assignments. i thought, what has the world come to?

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[captions copyright national able satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> and sort of the grind and what would it be like? i didn't think i could survive it. not having any kind of a break. working these long hours. doing it for eight years, i didn't think i had it in me. and then he started describing cable. you could do 13 episodes and have a couple of months off. that sounded like being back in school and having a vacation. right now i'm in hiatus from my show smiling and in a good mood. if you had seen me before, i was

scowling all the team and i had a headache. that was it for me. >> i asked mark how many episodes had you done of "breaking bad" it is close to 60, right? and you guys are shutting down. well, we did 180 of "desperate housewives" and i was much citizener and had much more hair when we -- thinner and had much more hair when we started. you get two weeks off in may and that's it and then you start plotting the next season. it is different if you're doing a soap opera. the intense plotting that goes into doing a soap opera, it is just the workload is overwhelming and usually for people who really watch my show you can kind of feel like at episode 14 where stuff starts to not make sense, i have run out of story at that point. and then usually i try o get it

altogether, like episode 21. that's why i'm so impressed with what people can do on cable because literally you look at some of the shows and when i say soap, i mean continuing drama, storylines change over every single episode. you get to do deeper, for sophisticated complicated work on cable because you have more time. some people can really pull it off opnet works. some -- not every season was created equal. sometimes you go i think this can be compelling and five episodes in you go ok, that was wrong. then maybe next season it will be better. cable, when we started -- this year, i had ever episode plotted out before we started production. i never had that with "desperate." that's why i'm a big fan because

they have the vision from beginning to the end and the potential for the work being better, not that it always is, but the perception is there m. >> the perception about cable is you can say whatever you want. how real is that perception? >> get every episode submitted to the people of the network who tell us what is ok and what isn't. you can literally say [beep] and not [beep]. i don't know what sense that makes. >> you can't really say [beep] here either. [laughter] just so you know. >> wait. it is cable! >> mark, have ground that? >> they are different standards, certainly with "breaking bad" and with "rectify" there are some rules that we have to adhere by. we are constantly in battle over

the -- the rules are a little bit -- they are more lax, but at the same time, there are certain things that we can't do that are stories. there are different version of all of our episodes i think that are slightly better than the ones that are aired. >> i know with broadcasters there is always a certain amount of bartering, if i take out this butt shot, can i put the shower scene? ? does that happen as well in cable? have you found yourself bartering? >> my experience with the shows, they haven't given me a correction yet. i'm pretty well aware of what i'm allowed to do. also you get pretty good after a lifetime on the networks, you can do provocative ideas. we have a scene where a woman is undressing and so you kind of see a touch more cleavage than you would on the network but we didn't go so far that it would be a problem for cable.

you're always finding that line. i tend to be a little conservative in how i approach it. you know, i think that literally, "desperate" was turned down, one of the reasons we handed the pilot to hbo and i heard back from one of the executives there that one of the reasons they turned it down is it wasn't gritty enough. there was no nudity. the language was pretty tame. it was a racy show for abc but not so much for cable. it depends on who you as the creator and what you're doing. would bhadge "breaking bad" dealing with strugs, more dangerous than the such i do. did they stop you from a lot of drug ideas? >> we had been given total liberty. it comes down to language, nudity and to a certain degree violence, although we certainly have done things on "breaking bad" that you would get nowhere

close to being able to do on network. >> the only violence on "desperate housewives" is really behind the scenes. with all of this liberty, there is a certain risk which is you get yourself in dramatic trouble because you can do whatever you want, you start thinking oh, the audience will love it if we have this much sex and this much violence and you start to cross that line into gratuity which is what you don't want to do. >> let's talk about budgets too. i think there is the perception in cable that you don't have quite as much money to play with as you would in broadcast. if you wanted to stage a tornado or crash a plane, could you do it? >> it is funny. i watch television completely differently from how i watched it before i was making television. i don't really enjoy it anymore. i just think how much did that cost? "game of loans to" i'm like wow, who is paying for that?

-- game of thrones" i'm like wow, who is paying for that? "downton abby." i didn't know any of that before. really you can do anything. you just have to find ways to do it that are less expensive. i don't feel that we ever have to not do things but we have to find ways to do them that don't cost as much >> they give you a set amount of money. so if you're going to do that, that costs this, you have to find the cost for it. sometimes you make the decision, ok, i'm going to put my money into this episode and have a tornado or pick your natural disaster. and then well, these stories are going to take place in the same room for a few episodes. you wonder why are they always in the bedroom? that's why. [laughter] there are -- that's part of the

job of the show runner/creator or writer of the show. it is just finding what creative ways to spend the money. the best ways to do it. and it is easier to do again oing back to if you have time. it is all possible to -- like said, it is a little easier on cable. >> you do have the time if you're only doing 13 episodes a season, something like that. it is so much harder when you're doing network television. once the train starts, it doesn't stop. you can't take that time and say how do we overcome this problem? mark is absolutely right. you the time and you know, we do a have money battles but at the end of the day, we have the right amount of money to make our show and we have accepted that. that's what we write to. when we come up with an obstacle, we either do as mark says and do a bottle episode at

some point or just find some imaginative way to do it. >> as a viewer, it is such a giddy time because now there is so much creative, gritty, edgy content on cable. do you have any fear now that there is going to be so much, the market is so oversaturated that the viewer is going to look for mindless fare like another diving competition show? >> i don't think we have to worry about people leaving us for the driving show. [laughter] -- diving show. [laughter] at the end of the day, i was very lucky with "desperate." it was kind of racy but it was always about something. the frustrations of the modern woman who has chosen to be a wife or a mother. the idea was always the strong part of it. whether you saw marcia cross wearing a teddy in one episode, that was slightly provocative,

that was the idea that people came for. the truth is there will always be shows that maybe try to spice it up with language, violence, nudity. at the end of the day, it is what is the show creator, what do the writers have to say that is the major selling point? as long as someone is doing a show, hopefully with provocative ideas, i think there will always be room for people so i say things that they have observed about society. i don't imagine we have run the risk out of running out of those things to say. nudity and swearing and violence are great but now they are so bick with itous, i still think the idea is king. that will still determine who comes to your show. >> i have got to ask you about the walking dead effect. if there is one thing that that show has demonstrate second-degree that a cable show can get -- is that a cable show can get pretty huge ratings. is that putting undue pressure

on your show? >> no, no, not at all. yeah. i think it is. even in relation to your last question about how to get an audience when there are so many good shows out there and so many popular shows, i do worry about that a lot. i watched when "americans" was on, i watched the twitter feed. you see people about to watch it or not about to watch it. they say tonight i'm watching this and this and this and this. how many people can watch television all night long? although there seems to be a fair number who can do that, there are just too many good shows. i don't know how you get high enough ratings for so many good shows. >> mark? >> numbers always are at the back of your mind. the truth of the matter is the beauty of cable is you don't need those huge numbers to be a success. and you know, as i say, i come from the feature world where opening weekend means everything

and the beauty of what we do now, you can do as long as you have interesting characters and put them in good, compromises situations and label it with a it is, you know, you will have an audience that will justify your being. >> thank you so much for joining us. > thank you very much. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, as you head out, i know we're nearing the end of the show. i just wanted to come out and say i hope you agree. i think this has been an extraordinary few days. [applause] you know, on monday, we made a

promise, we told you we would give you a glimpse of the future. i think you. you have seen the future of ultrahigh speed broadband. cable platforms connected to clouds that will provide delightful new experiences for consumers coming to a home near you. you heard a challenge from the secretary of education with whom we hope to work, to meet his needs and we changed, begin to pay a debt by helping our veterans find new career opportunities as they hang up their uniforms and join us in the civilian world and we have impacted the lives of many young people who come to be part of the show. i'm very proud of what we have achieved and on behalf of the staff of the national cable and telecom association, the best in washington, the board of directors of our wonderful association, i want to thank you. it has been an honor and pleasure to put this show on for you. i look forward to seeing you next year. thank you and travel safely. >> on the next "washington

journal" nancy scola looks at the use of big data. then retired lieutenant general discusses military leaders for kids which examines the possible benefits of the obama administration's proposed prekindergarten early education program. fter that, paul kearn of the bureau of economic analysis talks about how much americans and foreign visitors to the united states spend in travel and tourism. plus your emails, phone calls and tweets. washington journal is live every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> next, a discussion on how the definition of citizenship in america has changed over the decades. panelists talk about citizenship and how it relates to political

engagement, community service. from the aspen institute, it's an hour. >> good afternoon, everybody. welcome. thank you so much for joining us for this wonderful conversation. my name is eric. i'm a founder and an author. i'm going to be serving as our moderator today. one of our panelists, mickey edwards, was not able to be with us. we will channel mickey the best we can. wanted to introduce the panelists here and frame up the issue. we will begin a conversation on the theme of imagining or reimagining citizenship and we want to allot a good chunk of time for conversation here throughout the room, and i really emphasize that.

qu -- q andan. if you have questions, conversation is very much in the spirit of what we are talking about. let me introduce, sequentially, to my immediate left is heather smith, dear friend and collaborator who is the president of rock the vote. many of you know rock the vote began over 20 years ago in affiliation with mtv, and works today to mobilize young people of the millennial generation not only to vote, but to engage in ivic activity across the board and become more civically aware and educated. we will talk a lot more about what rock the vote does. only in this context, to heather our friend s left, mark meckler. he is one of the founders of the tea party patriots. he left the tea party patriots as an organization and found it

citizens for self governance, which is working in interesting, cross-partisan ways to really reinvigorate the sense of actual citizen self-governance. we'll talk more about that. next, i am delighted to have cristina jimenez, the founding director of united we dream, and one of the nations leading voices and activists for comprehensive immigration reform and also for the community of undocumented americans. she has been a champion, herself, as an undocumented member of our community, and i believe as we all sat down here the immigration bill went to floor debate in the united states cincinnati. so we are right on the zeitgeist right here. last, but not least, needing no introduction to anyone who has ever been to aspen, listen to the radio or open a newspaper, particular "the washington

post," e.j. dionne of "the washington post," npr and the brookings institution. we're going to begin -- i wanted to post a -- pose a question, and we will enter into more of an organic conversation. the opening question is, simply, giving the moment we are in -- we are in a remarkable moment, not just because the immigration bill is on the floor in the midst of this debate, but for a variety of reasons -- this week's supreme court decision, what has been going on in the debate over the nsa and government and its relationship with citizens, the irs scandal -- all of these things that are forcing us and giving us opportunities and obligations to reflect on what it means to be a citizen. citizenship is a status under the law that some people have and some people do not, but it is also a set of norms and values and a set of privileges and immunities to use the

language of the constitution -- a bundle of rights. we do not talk about how citizenship is a under love responsibility. -- a bundle of responsibility. that is a theme we will ring out. that word, which even five, 10 years ago, and a musty, 1950 eat your vegetables kind of feel to it. now, it is hot. given this moment, this time that we are in, how would you define or redefine citizenship n the united states? >> thank you. it is a good question and we started to get more and more about this recently in light of the immigration fight and in light of what the dreamers were doing around the country. if we said citizenship, most people in the world on legal status, but we thought it is more than that. if you call yourself an

american, regardless of your status, if you call this place home, it is your role and obligation to make this country work for you, and as an organizer of young people 18-to-29 years old, we have an opportunity to define what it means. i try to get young people fired up about all sorts of issues, and get them engaged, but the thing they have been most passionate about over the last handful of years was the arab spring, and it was seeing young people like themselves fighting, losing their lives in many ases, to have a democracy. that really hit home, and we started to see incredible solidarity, people posting things, getting engaged and wanting to do things with our organization as a result. we have young people realizing democracy is something that you

fight for. this concept of self-rule. we have to expand the definition further to also include that it is something you have to keep working at current as one of our partners -- working at. as one of our partners says, it democracy is not a noun, it is a verb. it is not about status, but about making the country work for you. >> that is the same spirit that citizens for self governance are activated by. this idea of self-rule. >> it is. i came out of the tea party movement, and that is what drove the tea party movement, a sense of disconnect from our system of government. the statistics are different than what the media will tell you about the tea party movement. roughly 27% of the tea party movement are democrat or independent. they are not there because they are right wingers were republicans. they felt that whoever they

voted for, however they participated with in voting and they were not getting what they voted for. as somebody on the right, although not a republican, i felt i was not getting who i voted for, and whether i am in front of a progressive, liberal, conservative or tea party udience i asked the same questions and i get the same answer. questions like who in the room voted for continuing a $1 trillion deficit? i have not found that person in america yet. that begs the question, if you are not voting for it, i am not voting for it, why our representatives continuing to do it? it shows a disconnect the between citizens and the government. what we see the -- is the closer the government gets, the greater he connection. congressional approval ratings are at an all-time low right

now. if you look at local government, on average, approval ratings run 60% plus. that shows that when people feel they can engage with their governance system, self-government and participate, they are satisfied with the results. for us, redefining citizenship is not voting for your congressman, but being engaged at the local level. >> we will talk about how the local problem-solving on issues like criminal justice, for instance, allow you to build unlikely rise and left alliances nd coalitions. christina, what does this mean o you? >> thank you for having -- having us here. i'm happy to represent dreamers in this conversation. for us, we have been doing that, in the past decade of organizing and sharing our story -- as someone who grew up on -- undo you meaned in new york

city. we are redefining citizenship and expanding the concept of citizenship because it is beyond the place where you were born. i was born in ecuador, so i am executory and citizen, but all of the value -- ecuadorian citizen, but all of the values i embrace i learned here. i see myself as a citizen. i do not have a paper that says i am an american citizen, and many of the dreamers do not either, but what we have done is asked to keep -- exercising citizenship by holding people accountable even though we do not have the right to vote. it comes down to a responsibility of contributing and a responsibility for the common good of not only immigrant communities but the rest of our community in america. i think it is about understanding citizenship is beyond having the right to vote. it is about engagement, being part of the political process,

and what you have seen with the dreamers is it does not matter if we do not get to elect honest -- our congress members or our senators. we have gone to their offices and said this is my story. for us, we have been redefining citizenship and what it means to us, and we believe we are americans even though we do not have the papers to show that we are and we were not born in this country. as we think about the impact of potential immigration reform, we get into more interesting thinking about how we will continue to redefine citizenship. >> this question right now, e.j. dionne, is front and center as we debate immigration reform -- the idea of a pathway to citizenship. we have spent a lot of time talking about that pathway, how long it should be, what you need to be to get on the pathway, we not talked about the destination, citizenship itself and what it takes to reinvigorate that.

those of you who might have been here earlier this week, e.j. dionne was part of the franklin project, an initiative that grew out of last year's ideas festival, promoting an idea of national service, trying to spark a national movement around national service. for you, this question of citizenship might not be about redefining, but simply returning to an older sense of citizenship. >> right. just for the record, i did vote to add $1 trillion to the deficit because i think if we had not done that, we would not have ended an economic downturn. [laughter] we are not here to argue about that, although i would be happy to. you asked an interesting question and you talked to us about it before -- "what is itizenship?" to me it is to share in the joys and burdens of self government and to understand the obligation

to balance your own legitimate interest with the common good. that is what democratic citizenship or citizenship in a democratic republic is all about. my favorite quote, when politics goes well, we can know a good in common that we cannot know alone. i think that really speaks to the idea of citizenship as a concept of things we do together and not simply things we do on our own, even when they are creative and productive things. and the other quotation i wanted to share is because i want to put on the table the question are we making it harder for people to be good citizens? and in that famous new nationalism speech that president obama likes to quote, that teddy roosevelt gave in kansas, he said the following. no man can be a good citizen and

now he would say men and women, unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare costs of living and hours of labor short enough so that after his day's work is done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the management of the community to help in carrying the general load. and he went on to say, we keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life with which we surround them. and so when we're talking here, we're probably at some point, whenever you talk about citizenship, you sound preachy and say well, people are not as good as they should be. i want to ask, if we want more people to vote, why are we making it harder for them to vote with registration laws. if we want people to serve, why do we make it harder for them to serve? there were more than a half million young people who wanted to go into americore.

that is one of the things we talked about. you can multiply that across service opportunities. if we want citizens to be better informed, why do we do such an inadequate job of teaching our kids citizenship and government in high school. my kids went to a great public high school and they were able to take the a.p. state and local government class. it is a great class. something like that should be available to all of our students. it is useful and it is civic. i have a long list of if we want people to -- if we want people to engage in the public debate, why do we make it so unattractive? you know, imagine tv ads for projects that are like the ones we have in politics. if you buy that guy's burgers, you will be poisoned. if you fly that airline, you will crash. if you invest with this firm, they will embezzle your money.

politics is the only thing that advertises against itself. if we want people to be since the, which is about something we do together, why do we wrap ourselves exclusively in the language of market choice? individual market choice? there is a place for market choice. but the market choice is not all of life, and i think the language that we have surrounded ourselves with sometimes operates against citizenship. >> i am not sure, mark, that you would disagree when it is market above all else that we lose something in the way we govern ourselves, live our lives in community and family. if i were to connect the dots between the impetus for the tea party, self-governance and the teddy roosevelt speech -- part of what teddy roosevelt was talking about was inequality. when you have severe, structural nequality, it becomes as a

simple fact harder for many more people to engage in civic life. the other dimension of inequality that your work speaks to his a sense that too many -- decisions with being made by a small elite and that the elite in politics, in public life, this is a cross parties, across regions, in a sense rigging the game. >> i agree. to answer the market choice question, what is the alternative, and today it is choice by a small, ruling elite that is mostly disconnected from the rest of the population. i have spent very little time in washington, d.c., and a lot of time in places like kalamazoo, michigan and grass valley, california. what i find is that the people in those places look at the people in washington like they are aliens, and vice versa. we watch people on tv talking about the recession has ended

and my friends sit around going how will i find a job and buy groceries for my children? i see more construction crane in washington, d.c., and i have ever seen in any city. lamborghini of north america put their headquarters there. the complaint is too many people want to pay cash. more lobbyists employed than ever before. seven of the 10 wealthiest counties are around the beltway. right now, it is market choice against the choice of people that are enriching themselves at the expense of the rest of us. >> heather, when we were prepping for this conversation, you describe how there were so many in the millennial generation that regardless of party are dubious and skeptical of politics but are still trying to find ways to do essentially politics by other means. what do you see happening with a young people you are working with at rock the vote? >> to build off of e.j. dionne's question, why are we doing all

of these things if we do not want people to be good citizens? i think most young people pretty much believe that those in power do not want us to be better citizens and they are doing a lot of things really well to keep us away from the political system, and they are quite disgusted by the partisan bickering and the distrust of politicians to actually solve the problems that they face every single day. these are real problems. these are students, on average, graduating with $25,000 worth of debt, and yet we have on monday an opportunity to double those interest rates and still no action has been taken on that. what we have seen is them turning to themselves -- not that they do not care, but they are trying to find solutions on their own. i heard this great statistic the other day that more young people fund themselves through

kickstart her and generated more money for the arts last year than the national endowment for the arts giveaway. >> that is free market. >> that is free market, but i i do also fear that keeps them from engaging in the government. which in the long run will only make their situation worse. >> cristina jimenez, you embody a fact of american history, american political history is a story of outsiders coming in to remind insiders what the creed was supposed to meet -- mean. that's from the beginning, whether you're talking about the irish arriving in america or the civil rights movement, the immigrant rights movement, for you, to be coming from the outside into the inside, you know this is about learning the machinery of governing, how policy is made, about markups of bills in committee and senate and so forth. a lot of things that many others in your generation are saying it is a waste of my time, you are

doubling down on to get smart n. how do you spread a message, whether to other dreams ornative-born american young people, that it matters that you understand the rules of the game so they won't be rigged against you or made without regard to you? >> what has worked for us is we have achieved victories by organizing, taking action and getting engaged. for us, the reason you want to get engaged, and why we want to share our stories and be engaged in the political process -- you know, it has been a roller coaster to be part of the markups and the committees, understanding the inside games that happen in the beltway, but also understanding the power we have outside of the beltway in educating others and in powering young people to do that. after organizing over 10 years, the immigrant youth movement

reached the most significant action, the deferred action that protected people from deportation. when that happened, young people felt that i am not a voter, not a citizen, but sharing my story, coming out, getting engaged, writing those letters, knocking on doors to get out latino voters in new mexico, florida, nevada -- all of that worked. >> i just want to say, this is a discerning audience, but let me define what we say -- what we mean when we say dreamer. these are people that were brought here by their parents and are being granted a pathway to citizenship. that was the origin of the idea of dreamers. >> at is something we claim

because otherwise, media and otherwise, when i was 19 i was giving interviews as my story. i was cited as a legal student. i was a legal alien. for us, we need to find a way to create a shared identity with immigrant youth that was not going to make you feel like the other, and the alien. that's why dreamer came about as the term that we use. >> ej, one of the most formative books i read in political life is one of your earliest books, "why americans hate politics." i think it was 1991 and it is still as fresh today. i urge you to get it because it describes the politics of false choice, which today is more amplified, and the most basic false choice you are describing in that book is to be american, to be a citizen, is to

understand there are these tensions all the time between federal and state, between individualism and collective action, between what we do in order to be free for ourselves, and what we do to plan for the future, and that to actually engage in civic life is to recognize that you cannot make a false choice between these things. 20-some years after this book, the you feel that our civic culture, when it comes to thinking about us as citizens, that we are worse off or better off? >> first of all, my next book is going to be called "why i love eric liu." [laughter] >> you have at least one buyer. >> i do not think we have gotten a lot better. i was hoping we were. i cannot resist constantly jumping to mark's provocations. i just want to mention on market

choice, one of my favorite new york jokes is about a corrupt judge who gets $10,000 from one lawyer to fix the case, $5,000 from the other lawyer, and he has a conference, and he says if you give me another $5,000, we could have this trial on the level. there are certain things we do not want bought and sold. for example, i do not think you should i or sell how long someone lives. that is why i think is legitimate to have health insurance for people that cannot afford it. we know there are limits to market. i just wanted to put that in. this false choice concept, the last book i wrote was called "our divided political heart," and it was about the false choice between liberty and community. and i think to understand us as

people going back to the founding, you have to understand that we have always valued individualism and liberty, but we have also believed in and uestioned after community. that includes actions of government, but it is not limited to government. we did not see government as apart from community. if you believe that public action was only something invented by woodrow wilson or the new deal, then you have to leave out henry clay and abraham lincoln and alexander hamilton and a whole lot of other people in our history who believed that a prosperous, inventive, entrepreneurial economy depended on government and other collective forces doing a lot of things to make that possible. clay in particular used to talk about internal improvements, which in we -- in an ugly way we now call infrastructure.

he acknowledged that it would bind us together and allow us to have commerce, and this involves doing things collectively that serve the interest of prosperity, and, i believe, in the long run, liberty. do think and my asht is to dwsh my friends in the tea party is i think they view the founding and view the constitution itself as almost entirely about individualism and liberty and forget, as i always like to say, the very first word of the constitution of the united states is we, as in we the people. so it is a we document. ot just an i document. >> mark, one of the things that strikes me, we have talked about and worked together on this project you got involved in called living room conversations. one of the cofounders of moveon.org, a progressive

organization, has created a set of projects called simply living room conversations in which the format is very simple and, actually, i want to let you describe it because you and joan have participated, not in coming out and magically finding all the ways we have found consensus, but maybe getting to a little bit of what e.j. dionne is talking about, recognizing there is not an either or. there are tensions between liberty and community, tensions between a strong state and free people. and can you tell us about what you and joan have gotten started? >> sure. it is an organization called living room conversations. you can find them on the web easy enough. one of the founders of the tea party movement were working on teaching people how to talk to each other facing the nation. if you turn on television,

whether you watch msnbc or fox, you're going to see how to be divided and learn how to talk it at each other and not with each other. that is the life people model their behavior on. if you are a conservative and sit down with liberal friends, you are probably good at making them angry. pretty quickly. what we are trying to teach is how to have those conversations in a civil way, and it starts with humanity -- what are you passionate about, why are you here, what you hope to accomplish and what do you hope for in your own community? after that first hour, you think i like these people. these are my neighbors. these people could be my friends. you go into the room with a sense of trepidation. i'm going into the room. what will they find?

one of my friends said they're coming to my house. what do you feed liberals? >> arugula. [laughter] >> poison. it is funny, but that is how we are divided. i live in the rurals of california. to give you to picture of the divide, i drive a huge f-50, and when i drove to joan's i asked if i needed to stop at the border and get a prius expert? we find that we are concerned about the same things in our community. we find that we do not believe our schools are operating well, that our prison system is appalling and we believe in justice system reform. we find the vast majority of americans believe the war on drugs is a complete and total failure, doing damage to our country generationally, but the politician and the powers that

be keep doing the same thing. out of that grow projects that we can work on together, and we are working on criminal justice reform. as one of the fundamental things right now. plus, crony capitalism is another great one. none of us like the fact that all of this money in washington is trading hands for favored constituencies and regular citizens are on the house side. everyone is frustrated by that except for the people in d.c. getting greased. >> so much a political media teaches us to be divided, but i want to expand to the larger frame of culture. so much of what rock the vote does is to enlist great voices from popular culture -- elebrities, movie stars, musicians, art makers of all kinds. what have you learned about how culture makers can change citizenship and have this influence?

>> it is interesting. what we try to do is take what you're doing one-on-one and model that behavior through popular culture through a much larger audience. using celebrities, musicians, artists in our work is probably has two different benefits. i speak to rooms of young people. it is refreshing to look out and see a face that i am not twice the age of. when i talk, it is almost like their parents talking. i can tell them to vote, why it matters, and they kind of rule their eyes. if i name dropped, "this morning i was having a conversation with the bass player in nirvana about the voting rights act. suddenly the faces light up.

it is true. they can grab the attention of an audience that is not naturally political, not inclined to think about these issues, and get them not only to pay attention, but to change how they think about the question. that's the bigger thing as well. instead of getting their attention, it changes the norm around what it means to vote and be a citizen. it is like a giant marketing campaign. >> you can do something very powerful with that attention once you have it. >> it is true. i will give you an interesting example. prop 8 yesterday was gay marriage. 10 years ago, this is not something that was favorable. we have been working with artist to talk about the issue, with television shows to write this stuff into their scripts.

musicians writing about this in their lyrics, and 10 years later he number has flipped. in fact, as they were passing the supreme court thing yesterday, i went back to statistics where eight n 10 americans claim they know somebody who is gay, and when you are asking them who that is, the majority listed television character. [laughter] >> that is either a hopeful sign or a very disturbing sign. >> yesterday, with the gay marriage thing, the number one passed around piece of media on the internet was a quote from mclet me ore and ryan and their love song. >> the thing that rock the vote is doing is converting that attention into the actual teaching of the actual skills of being a citizen. you created democracy school.

>> democracy class, yes. we decided we cannot bring artists into every classroom, but we can put them on video. we can tell the story their way. we have the videos about the history of voting, why it matters, power and all the things that are actually exciting about this. it is animated and really cool. teachers can sign up. it arrives in their classroom. it is the coolest day of the school year for the kids because there is this cool box with all these stamps on it. the teacher tells them to put their pencils away, and it is people they see on television talking to them. they get to stand up and interact, and at the end of the election learn how the process works and they walk away, way more engaged and likely to participate.

>> when you talk about the future of democracy, we talk a lot about this millennial generation, a phrase that is sed over and over again. we were at the franklin project summit on national service. the question was how do we make it possible for a million young people in the united states every year to me engage in a meaningful form of service? the thing that strikes me is one of the threads of that conversation, and the project began one year ago with general stanley mcchrystal. some of you may have been present for that. stanley mcchrystal speaks a language that sings for me. it is a language that we have to create a culture of responsibility. citizenship, not just as what i get to do or not just as don't tread on me but citizenship is what i'm supposed to do, my part of things. you alluded a moment ago to how

that can get very preachy, about responsibility, the obligation side of citizenship. what is your instinct about how have a meaningful conversation in a way that doesn't just become oh, gosh, here comes somebody telling me to eat my vegetables or oh, gosh, somebody is scolding me. what is your sense of how we're doing this? >> i think the idea of emphasizing the joys of wielding power -- we did mean the world government, but self-government is a remarkable thing. when you talk about what is happening in the senate today, the fact that the immigration bill is on the floor is the direct result of what latino voters chose to do in large numbers in the last election, and if latinos have not shifted their votes to send a message to the republican party in articular in this case, i do not think we would be in today. when somebody says politics

never works, that is simply not true. the other thing is we almost always say that is really political. it is almost always a negative. what is politics? is the alternative to war. it is how we settle differences. we will have different interests and different sets of values. we can either try work out how we're going to live together and what laws we are going to live under or we start doing serious damage to each other. i salute what you are doing with these sessions. a lot of times people disagree, but we do not have real argument. we have counter-assertions, like that guy does not understand english, so i will say it ouder. christopher, the great historian said in a real argument, you put

your own ideas at risk by entering it into the ideas of your opponent, initially to convert them, but in the process you expressed, if only to yourself, a willingness to change your mind as you are listening. on the millennial's, i am a huge mill length ya'll fan. i am an -- millennial fan. i did find broadly 18-to-35, they be a little older, when you look at this generation, they have done a lot more service. some say they had to because high school had rules or they id it to get into college, but service itself transforms them. i think they get this liberty, community thing better than the rest of us do except for that greatest generation that has largely passed. on one hand, they are incredibly entrepreneurial, this crowd

funding and that sort of thing, but they also understand public institutions. they care about public institutions. they have a strong sense of community. the form social networks. that is not an accident. i have a lot of genuine hope in this generation. i teach in college and i am genuinely impressed by the kids that come in class after class. >> cristina jimenez, i want to give you the last word before we open up the conversation more widely, but one of the things e.j. said was -- that was important, imagining yourself in the shoes on the other side -- we came from another panel about citizen artists and about the role of the art in cultivating a capacity to be self-governing citizens. the key to that conversation boiled down to what e.j. just said, empathy, cultivating a

capacity for empathy, imagining yourself in someone else's shoes. the dreamers, the immigrant rights movement more broadly, has been one of the most successful, emotionally moving exercises in activating empathy that we have seen in politics in a long time. for you, at a personal level, not as an orchestrator of all this political action, but at a personal level how have you gone about trying to create that sense of empathy when you encounter people who come into the conversation saying you are an illegal or come into the conversation saying i have an idea. let's deport you. how do you create a bridge of empathy where they might still want to delay or defer forever the pathway to citizenship, but at least they will be able to imagine what it is like to be you? > i tell my story had it comes

to what you're getting out of this conversation. when you share your story, your passion, what do you do, how you are contributing to your community, you realize we have a lot of things in common and my dreams are your dreams and in so many ways i am you. i am you. when we get to that, it is really hard for someone -- and i had many friends and colleagues in college who were republicans, identified themselves as republican, and they did not know i was undocumented. i was closeted. i was not sharing had i had many friends -- sharing and i had -- many friends and when they found out i was undocumented, i felt i would be rejected and that was my personal struggle, coming out and people >> going to reject me. but that did not happen because

they realized getting to know me and my story that i was like them. i had dreams like them, wanted to pursue different things, go to college and graduate, and that makes all the difference. >> the power of your story is remarkable. one of the things i would like to do now is open up the conversation. f you have questions for our panelists, we have a couple of fwolings microphones, but if you would just like to share a reflection or a thourblingts respect the short amount of time we have left, we want to hear that as well. right here, sir. >> a lot of people are waiting for a mic so everybody with hear you. >> i'll talk louder. >> 25 years ago, i was the chair americorps program in houston and we were able to raise more money than anybody else did, any other community,

nd bill clinton wanted us to have as his thing, one million people -- major thing i'm a one million people -- major thing, one million people in america. senator chuck grassley wanted to have zero. >> let's compromise at half of a million. >> there was a meeting in washington, d.c., with three -- two senators and three representatives and people from two other communities who ran americorps in those cities. we said ok, let's go for the one million, and they said where will you get the money? i am going to shorten this discussion. that was pretty much the end of the process and bill clinton wanted it really badly. he wanted it to be one of the things we remember him for, so how are we going to pay for -- in those days we were only paying about $7,500 to each of

what we called volunteers. chuck grassley did not call them volunteers because they got 7,500. >> i think it is the right question, and if you look back on the session it is something that needs to be worked out -- how much more public money are we willing to put into this and how much private money can be raised to fill in the difference? what would the sources of money be? are there state and local entities that would be willing to kick in? on the other hand, these are people doing good work for little money. i want to reflect on what chuck grassly and dick armey view at the time. they would always say paid olunteerism. they were asked a leading question -- the folks that

served under you in iraq would obably not take kindly to be known as paid volunteers and they were given a stipend so what mcchrystal said that was so kidstant was i won these to come not just from scarsdale but from east l.a. all americans to serve, including americans of these families to serve while they are serving their country, you have to have somebody behind them. i think you need the will to try to create this, and will can create some willingness to pay for it, but it is going to be at a time where budget crunches -- this is a real challenge. i think is worth paying for for for a variety of reasons. he