listening to radio or looking like this. we talked. and they challenged us in a nice way and asked us questions and needled us and joked with us. and the bottom line was, freedom requires civic responsibility. you can't just say that doesn't mean they are free. and that is it. you have to engage in democracy. if you don't use your rights you will lose your rights. discusses immelman his recent travels where public spaces have become the site of mass protests and activists movements. his is an hour and 20 minutes.

[applause] >> thank you guys. that was incredible. thank you all for coming today. so i read last week that the mayor of madrid wants to ban all protests in the center of the spanish capitol. anyone that has traveled to spain has come across rotesters in public places -- last month tens of thousands of demonstrators took madrid ne square in with continuing unemployment

measures. during the night some protesters clashed with police. so the mayor who earlier in the buskers. ed down on petitioned the national government to prevent all gatherings in central madrid at a time they need to attract tourism and investment it undermines the city's image. i would say that the reverse is true. they prove the vitality and resilience of the spanish. in kiev demonstrators took over independence square and the reverberations now include the death sentences handed down by a judge in march on 52 egyptians associated with the deposed muslim brotherhood accused of attacking a police station where an officer was illed last august.

-- and mer's occupation the crackdown by government forces emboldened the opponents of the prime minister to pursue corruption charges against him. in response he blocked twitter and youtube to prevent the sharing of what he calls are false allegations. local elections a couple of day ago provided a vote of confidence for everyone that use victories to threaten mass arrests of detractors and encouraged his enemies to flee the country. like other public spaces for

protests it became a cruse bell for diverse opponents, urban intellectuals, all of whom discovered each other and their shared grievances on the common ground of the park. i want to unpack notions about public space today in a topic of widespread discussions. i will first state the obvious about the politics. when we talk about the politics of public space we are talking both about space and body. about the physical presence of bodies occupying space which is inseparateable from and constantly reformed by the interactions of those bodies. spaces are not fixed. they constantly change. i want to look at specific public spaces occupied by the pro testers and then to broaden the discussion to include public space more generally. because when we talk about politics and public space we

miss the point if we limit to your attention sites of protest. about 832 indian workers have been killed so far working on world cup construction sites. a well known architect was quoted recently as saying "i have nothing to do with the workers. it is not my duty as an architect to look at it." her partner denounced moralizing political correctness, saying it is trying to paralyze us with bad conscious and arrest our explorations if we can't demonstrate a manifest tangible benefit to the poor.

so the spaces we design are not shaped by the bodies and the minds but the spaces that use them. i am grateful because the remarks help to accelerate a timely conversation. design and adaptation, intention and improvisation, control and formlessness, engagement and isolation. architects don't act alone but neither must they be passive. i see here a rich and promising vein for architects to reclaim a place at the decision making table and return to the discussion busy how we live and who we wish to be as a society and formally and materially pioneering buildings. it is we can't say

nothing new. awareness of urban public space has grown. awareness on a governmental and populous level of its meaning and use in a democratic society as the relationship of design to issues like public health, safety, social equity and civil ipt. we should begin with the given that politics already exists in the home or on the street or in the neighborhood and in those virtual spaces that are equally unbound by the architecture of he house and the square. officials, architects and planners design public space to serve certain functions or prevent others. but then what happens when

people use the spaces other politics are enacted. it is this enactment by changing bodies and interest in the space that makes architecture inseparateable from politics. space is a container and also a stage for action. political action requires a space of appearance and the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together. that is expresses itself through the interaction of people in a place. it is at once the place and the people. she added its true space liings between people living together for this purpose. so politics you might say happen more specifically in the

spaces between us that concentrate in public space. public space is made visible to the world people that might remain indivisible to each other. disrupting spaces designed and maintained for other purposes. this is a picture. you can see in it the various areas that were set aside. it looks chaotic. there is a tent area. there is a media area and a library. none of which are authorized by the people that designed the park. this challenges authority. public space functioning as the object of that challenge and instrument of protest. the challenge may be as benign territory is not ground or is it a given. it is a complex capability with

embedded power and recwell imation. protests like the one cast in to doubt what she called the larger binary of national vs. global. to occupy the spaces she writes thereby the ke and embedded logic of power by introducing logic with sharing and soldarity. bodies and space together, crucialally this implies physical sacrifice and risk. today the media, social media, broadcast protests in real time around the world. the 24-hour news cycle, facebook and twitter feed the global public's appetite for drama and the expectation of bearing witness to everything instantly from a safe distance.

facebook and twitter like televisions and smartphones keep an eye on what is happening so the authorities may think twice about cracking down violent leon protesters, it is not a coincidence that turkish police who fired teargas were crastened by broadcasts critical of their actions and in turkish cities off the media's radar the police felt no such constraints. protesters count on their being witnessed remotely in virtual space but only real bodies and real space that occupy a real site to provide the necessary drama of that occupation. the media requires these bodies on the street to have an event. even as it requires. if this street and media

constitutes a very contemporary version of the public's fear then bodies on the line have to be thought of as both there and here now and then transported and stationary but very different political consequences. following these modalities of space and time. it matters not just that the space be physically occupied but which spaces are occupied and how. the protests share certain tel tail traits. all of these space were in the urban modernization program. all of them are spaces surrounded by buildings. all are contained and pourus spaces. this is really a traffic

circle. the plaza has a park in the enter. the center, a scruffy little park. it is self enclosed by streets and mostly modern hotels and other buildings. this is the square itself. we will get back to this. this is what -- this is the original. here is the plan that he had . r tearing down and replacing it is a theater in a mostly

concrete rectangular plaza by office workers to eat lunch. tall buildings. here you see broadway. on this side trinity street. i will show you a map in a moment. maybe many of you know it. it means a few hundred people can make it look crowded and more people can watch it or watch what is happening from the sidelines and above. it was not until 2011 a site for protesters. there are hundreds of rallies and protests every year. the parks department issued 250 permits for rallies and vigils last year. st of them for the applausea near the u.n. federal the federal courts as well.

protesters wanted to occupy wall street but the police prevented them. they set up camp in a park next door to the world trade center site. let me go back to this and point this out. this is a type of map of the yout of how the protesters rearranged the park. just ask how many people saw the site or were there. so, a fair number. there are all of these areas of food, liberty. library. much of the observing crowd was here. i will get back to that issue in a moment. just to show you again, here, if i can find it, here is wall street. so they went two blocks north. this is the world trade site

right here. so it is around the corner from those two. this was not a public park but one of the city's so called privately owned spaces. u.s. field, original owner the right to in build additional sides. created semi quasi-public spaces by granting private developers zoning restrictions. most traded barren applauseas. in return for these bonuses, purposely undesirable and poorly maintained because they did not want anybody to gather in front of their buildings. a step up design wise was called liberty applausea park and became a popular spot in warm weather after an $8 million renovation following

9/11 when it was renamed by its new owner brookfield properties. precisely because of the park, and here you see it on a normal day, because the park was not public, it wasn't subject to the rules that govern public parks by the prohibition from sleeping overnight. i kept a photograph of this. this was the original sign that told you what you could not do in zucotti park. you couldn't roller skate. skateboard. bicycle. that is a short list. this is now a list of the things you can no longer do in zucotti park. you can't put up a tent. you can't lie down. you can't sit for a long period of time. ou can't put your bags down.

in other words you can't sit in zucotti park and stage a protest. but it was of course a place that people could occupy unlike a public park that closes at night. it became in a sense occupied by default. the irony that it could only occupy a public space because took over a private one own by a big commercial real estate company this was lost on nobody. just as important was how the space was occupied. it added trees and seeding which provides a cover and divided the spation up in ways the protesters capitalized on. imagine zucotti parkas the point on a diagram of characters representing political and economic disenchantments. i don't think it is coincidental that these

strangers that came together all formed pop uptowns producing a bite sized form of what they imagined to be the outlines of a larger city with separate spaces for free food, l services and so forth. extends the distance of a cry. the space in which people communicated face-to-face. couldn't resist. sorry. here the shifting space between bodies and it was meaningful that zucotti, using microphones to address the crowd, being contained space allowed protesters who were prevented by the police from using microphones to address the crowd. repeated phrases, phrase by phrase. that the speakers at the park uttered so that speeches could

be heard farther away. so as it were a one spoken, one voice in the game of telephone. the same crowd would have looked puny in central park and there would be nobody around to notice it. a modestly used green space popular for yoga classes and sleeping off a hard night beforehand. but it turned out to be like zucotti, a meaningful site. it is a fluid, irregular, unpredictable place reflecting new york's historic identity as the heart of modern multiculture. this is where poor immigrants settled in the 19th century. a honky tonk quarter in the the university nearby.

where young people and tourists congregate at night. as it did the jumble of high rise hotels and the now shuttered opera house that surround the park. all of this is precisely what the prime minister did not like and he triggered the protest by threatening to demolish and remake it as a theme park. that is a slightly clearer version of what i was saying before. undoing what several sources describe to me as their unruly commons in the middle of the stay. never mind that there is precious little public green space in the certain of instan bull. he fact that it was an

informal space and a natural center of gravity for protesters. zucotti's compact design with shabby alleys providing modest lawns and disused fountains turned out to be ready made for the encampments, gardening efforts. some creative use made of cheap material to provide picnic tables, exhibition spaces and the revolutionary museum, a pop-up gallery that chronicled the history of turkish protests. one turk told me turkish people have taken over the park in protest feel it is truly theirs, not something awarded to them by their leaderings. this is critical i think. the notion of top down versus bottom up public space. spaces people are given and passively use versus spaces

that they remake for themselves. i want to turn from occupation because we need to define public space more broadly. it is not just an area of protest. it encompasses the entire public realm that we build. politics are no less present in the sidewalk, transit station, streets, highways, bike paths and playgrounds where daily life happens in public. our very definition of public of democracy is tested by the distribution, design and use of these spaces and who controls the spaces and shapes them and what their physical properties say about us. this is a view of the applausea at madison square park. in new york. i will interrupt myself to tell you briefly it is an interesting place. 5th avenue and broadway across. there is madison square park.

then there are these triangles. this triangle created by the crossing. one of the early things the transportation department administration proposed is to turn that triangle and part of the crossing to the applausea. an extraordinary designer has his office right there. even he said this is completely insane. you have one of the most beautiful parks in the city. who in the world will want to sit in the middle of the street? taking over the middle of the street. why wouldn't they just go sit in the park. this is one of the great urban rule projects in manhattan. why do people want to sit in the street? because being in a park is a different thing than being in a applausea, right. a park is an enclosed space. you go in to it.

plaza is with the rest of the city. people want to be in the plaza because they want to be in the middle of the things. views of the empire state building where there are a lot of things happening. it turns out we can reclaim these spaces where people used to move more freely before they were given over to cars if we look at the street as another type of public space and not just a space taken up by cars. anyways, this is one of the plazas there at madison square that has been converted. our very definition of public, of democracy i think is tested by the distribution, design and use of these spaces and who controls these spaces and shapes them and what do their physical properties say about us? such questions have been at the heart of this larger critique of liberal values whose bankruptcy provoked the market collapse that inspired the occupy move. the 1% is epitomized by the $ 0

million apartments and skyscrapers around now rising around new york's most cherished public sites. central park. leveraging views of that park while casting shadows on to it and to the people that use it. there is a picture of 157. it is the first of what will be ny extremely tall luxury towers rising around 57th street. this will be the pecuniaryiest of them. it is 1,000 feet tall. it is as tall as the one world trade center. and somehow some crazy people paid $90 million to get the penthouses in this spectacularly ugly building, which is a mystery to everybody. but there you are. these are some of the buildings that will rise around central

ark just to give you an idea of what has happened to development in the city. we are go to create very ender buildings with elevators and stairs that take up little space and get people quickly up to the top of these buildings. the zoning rules, i don't want to get too bogged down. but it is interesting the relationship of public health and zoning. basically these buildings have happened. without getting city approval because developers bought a lot of plolts. created a tall building. nobody imagined you could create a building 1,500 feet high with an apartment on each floor. that would have made no economic sense unless you have what has happened now, people that are perfectly happy to pay

$100 million for an apartment. so the economy has made that possible and then the technology and engineering of the building made that possible. that is what happened. i think it leverages a public space, central park, which is what they are selling. the view of the park. 57th street is not in itself fantasticly wonderful place to live. d i think the privileging of private property puts the spotlight on public space. a generation or two ago it was noted that it was not widely made streets were public space. it was space you moved through and only poor people dwelled in the streets. i don't think that is quite true. but we overestimate the sayings of jane jacobs who had theories

from living in the west village. that is jane jacobs, riding on a bicycle, where i happened to grow up. the village wasn't like most urban neighborhoods. i was reminded the other day the famous german restaurant on union square. an open erica faye. but the mayor shut it down as affront to public morals. it encouraged men and women to loiter in the streets and only the dest tude and depraved loitered in the street. it closed in 1980 because nobody went to the square any longer that it had become so blighted. the romance of new yorkers playing stick ball and running through the showers the fact that while there were great hubs of street life on the lower east side and times square and elsewhere, streets were corridor, s and not where

the middle class dwelled. public spaces were parks handed down by authorities like robert moses that created 800 of them in new york. today we would regard his park sociologist like william white to show how able might like to use parks and streets, to index what makes them friendly places. this is not william white, but this is bryant park. this is bryant park now. it took decades to institute the necessary improvements, some of them financed by public-private partnership. in a sense these city and public caught up with jacob's white with the concept of the public realm just in time to realize help public space was -- how public space was being

occupied by powerful agencies focused on security and powerfulnce and agencies exploiting the public advertisement. i would just say about the coke theater, thish $100he gift of 100 -- million from david koch. it was called the new york state theater from the beginning. was also financing, page $65 million to create the front of the metropolitan museum, which will open soon, pretty much outside his window. to the heart of agency and authority. some of the most intriguing examples of -- there he is seen with his wife.

so, the construction site. some of the most intriguing examples of lyrical action in public space are not protests the reconfiguration of public spaces by people, urban designers and architects included, who take matters into their own hands. the addition of the ring road in cairo, and made by artisans in a neighborhood bordering that highway. here you see the ring road as it winds through cairo's sprawl. the highway is a project of thei mubarak and is part of urbanization that has insulated many of egypt's wealthy. the proliferation of gated communities is a global phenomenon. perhaps the most disturbing urban trend today. these are exploding around the world, as we all know. many of them are modeling

themselves not after places like boston or new york or berlin. any are mimicking american-style gated communities, the antithesis of help the urban growth. it has become the housing complex of choice in much of the developing world. space, it ispen akin to the enclosures of agricultural land during the 17th century that did away with the commons. the trend is accelerating, and you see it in fact in cairo. this is a place called continental heights, which i went to see. these gated residence with golf courses. that is smack in the middle of the desert. pandering,ndling -- focused on the sprawl to encourage these velvets, ignoring public transit and

public space and he also created the october bridge and causeway, ahrirng to rear square -- t square with affluent centers in a country with only 14% of the population owns cars and more than 20 million people have almost no green space. versionmiddle eastern essentially of postwar america automobiles and exodus from a festering city center. it is only natural that the bridge became the site of violent protests during the revolution. something even more important fall andfter mubarak's the purgatory of morsi's role. constructed their own public spaces. -- anmes one neighborhood

area larger than manhattan -- residents formed popular committees, neighborhood coalitions, and they pooled resources to fix roads to enhance public squares and police the streets. this was actually a neighborhood committee taking over an area. an egyptian architect with whom inpoke about the urbanism cairo -- this was before the military takeover -- told me what has definitely changed is before in cairo, someone always used to dictate where you are allowed to sit or walk, what you're allowed to do or say. this new rights to express yourself in the street is not minor or a luxury. the street was not really public space. now it is. clearlyis nowhere more illustrated than on the ring road which was built specifically to bypass and

isolate an immense formal settlement. for years workers, including government workers living there, and had to wait hours every day because they could not take the roads. so, in the absence of interference by the government, residents constructed their own to the highway. they built these ramps out of dirt and trash and then they invited the police to open a kiosk at the interchange, with the police did. it was full on, do it yourself infrastructure. a massive assertion of genuine public authority over public space. and of course, an implicit rejection of exclusionary politics. nagata c, also in egyptian architect and planner put it to me before the takeover, this is always a revolution about unjust urban

restrictions on space. the bull realized they had to determine their own space. conflicterrupted a new about what space it is and who determines what the spaces. ancaracas, there is unfinished and abandon 45-story office building from the early 1990's and the former central business district of the city which has famously become the improvised home for more than 750 families. those of you who are architects in the room might know this. they have created in effect vertical squats. team, which calls itself urban think tank, have studied the tower for years and sees him nor most potential for extermination and creative reuse. i would say this is true.

residents of the david tower have created essentially a mixed-use development. we electricity. water of group goldberg system -- rube goldberg water system. stores, office-supply stores, hairdressers, taylor's -- tailors, basketball courts with teams that play in local leagues. a gym. church aroundical which the building's system of evolved.t has it has become regulated redesign. the squatters use brick and found materials to demarcate apartments and rooms really in a vernacular style of arched doorways, interior windows, all

sorts of things that they have seen elsewhere, often in the barrios. modern officee, tower. reclaimingve reuse, public space, is a microscopic accor cousin of the mega city itself, as pointed out by think tank. the residents unencumbered by ,esign, a series of aesthetics builds what make sense to them. they go on to say if this is the future, a formal city writ small, urban architects face a major challenge. who and what are we to those we serve? what exactly are we designing and to what end? tank.s all urban think the group partly tries to answer that question by proposing to

put a wind turbine on top of the tower and create a pulley system that would cheaply transport goods and people up and down the tall shaft in the absence of elevators. there are no working elevators in the building. i think there is an answer in of the refugee camp in southern west bank, and i will end with this example, and i'm very anxious and happy to take any questions or comments. two architects worked with residents of the camp totwo arch residents of the camp to create a public plaza, virtually unheard of in such places, and a specially problematic among palestinian refugees for whom the creation of any permanent amenity by establishing normalcy undermines their fundamental self-image as temporary occupants with the right of return to homes in israel. we see this as a notion of eating in public is behavioral,

not just a spatial condition, which nonetheless depends on certain spatial aspects. in refugee camps, public and private do not exist conceptually as they do elsewhere. property is neither public nor private in the camps. refugees do not own their homes. nor are streets municipal properties as they are in the cities, because refugees are not cities and the camp is not a city. the legal notion of the refugee cap according to the united nations is in effect a temporary individuals,placed not a civic body. there is no municipality to care .or lights and garbage things like inside and outside are blurred. a mother may not wear the veil atthe camp, whether she is home were out on the street, but she will wear it when she leaves the camp, which is outside. so, there is a powerful sense of

community. six years ago the two architects create a conversation with residents about creating a public plaza or square. residents were suspicious. not just about normalizing the camp, but creating a space for men and women might come together in public. they consulted groups of women and one described the discussion as to way, not just architects passively listening to what the women said, but they themselves trying to envision what the women might want and what everyone could use. the question was, how to make a space that could be open so that men and women would gather together, while allowing women summing closure. -- some enclosure. they did not want to feel exposed or criticized or made uncomfortable. -- it was decided the space the size of 50 by 100 meters -- with three this used shoulders

from the 1950's that needed beeral roof -- needed to removed anyway. they decided it should not be completely open. awol was devised. a wall was devised -- was devised. the surrounding wall is here. but where it meets some of the houses, each resident can say how open or closed they wanted the world to be to face them. at a cost about $300,000 for thelition and construction, architects created this limestone plaza with stones, stone and brick walls. the cost was high and the material of stone was used because residents became very committed to doing something that really looked permanent and was unlike the rest of the camp. something that

ofke to their aspirations and to their ambitions for the community. money was found and spent to create something that looks better. but in effect what was created was a house without a roof, and this was to address the women's problems. the idea of a house without a roof redefines public space as a space for collective privacy and ownership. camp ina is akin to the making ambiguous the distinction between inside and outside. women use it without being criticized for not being home. the site has fostered meetings, activities. children play there. it is a refuge from the overcrowded streets. underestimate what it means to get off the streets

of the refugee cap and find a place to gather that is not in one's on home. an older resident recalling a former life and cities were palestinian culture happened outside said, we did not have any adequate area where we could sit without feeling we were basically sitting in the streets and blocking traffic. i think the plaza is giving us the possibility of re-creating our culture by using outside spaces. thatn design public spaces represents us in our diversity. can we design spaces specifically for protests? i don't think so. what does protest yield? i think it is too early to say tahrir did not have impact since democratic revolutions are messy, require generations to play out. it instantly contributed to the histion and victory with tale of two cities.

i suspect most politicians and developers took away from the occupy movement that in future they need to work harder to design spaces that can't be occupied. i think another lesson is millions of people dream of opportunity and equality and those dreams will continue to be compacted and expressed in the public spaces we build for each other and for ourselves. thanks very much. [applause] so, mostly, i would love to hear if you have any comments or questions. you have to come up to the microphones. >> [indiscernible] i have stunned you all into silence. we can talk about other things as well. some of you getting up.

so, thank you very much. it was a pleasure. yeah question mark yeah, really? usually somebody says something about "the times." you're welcome to take a pot shot. >> it sometimes take a minute. you started out with an architect saying very gloomy things about the responsibility of architects. you ended with the missouri group saying the opposite. i'm wondering, what is the play of the architects that stand behind the developments, particularly in new york city, being this extraordinary kind of neoliberal spectacle, these huge towers? is there any sense of these responsibilities coming home to roost in the united states? should say very clearly at the beginning, obviously architects are not responsible for everything. -- architects also, you know

i didn't mean to suggest we don't need luxury apartment buildings or places for people , places of beauty or stadiums or whatever. it is a complicated problem. i think a lot of it has to do with a question that has now , particularly more acutely within the architectural community -- what is the responsibility of architects and how is their role legislated? it is my impression that an architect in a certain sense sacrifices some of the responsibility that they had years ago, partly because there was a public reaction against certain kinds of urban plans in the 1950's, the whole reimagining of cities and that essentially limited the architect's role. they had their fee and they do

their thing and for litigation reasons as well, it does not go beyond that. i think there are a lot of things going on. i think there is a conversation taking place within the world of architecture that has a lot to do with, as it should, about formal and internal responsibilities. it is incumbent upon architects to discuss the question of how they function within the society they are helping to create. you see these buildings, these buildings, the spaces as not simply objects, but places that are affected by and effect the people who use them. i think this needs to evolve. my impression is that there is oppositiond of created, and false opposition created, between those people who want to become -- and get to

design fancy big buildings like this, and those people who sort of say they want to do good works. the people who do the one kind of think the other one is not really doing architecture. and the people doing this, i think, also feel somehow they by the peopleted doing architecture. i think that is an evolving conversation. i think that will change. some of it i see as my own small role, and that is where the spotlight turns tends to be where mighty power and interests congregate. if you only focus on one kind of architectural project, and if that happens to be the sort of towers you art describing, then those will continue to be things people think are reported. let me say one other thing about the 57th street development.

questiont is a good whether architects involved in these projects -- i think the architects need to be able to answer questions like , "what is the payoff for the public at large for that building?" the building demanding of the city around it? what is it taking in return? there are different ways they can be answered. in some ways they can be answered by the beauty of the building. but the architect can have -- should have answers to those questions. otherwise i cannot imagine taking on such a project. one of the issues that comes up in relation to that is, if you're demanding space that is very conspicuous on the skyline, then in a certain sense you're not just taking up the space that you occupy. you are even casting a shadow. but a larger space in the city itself.

and there are cities like london which do consider view core doors and the ways which we protect the view. when i wrote about the us, i mentioned it is sort of like a chessboard in which the original buildings around central park south are the ponds, but now the ns, but now the giant buildings are around it. there is a public responsibility which leaves architecture to try to answer. some architects do have answers. actuallyarchitect, i would love to continue that conversation. it is complicated. that is not my question. i do think architects tend to think they are getting the scraps, that they are not players at the table to make those choices, which is trying to make those choices.

jobs.just trying to get i think we feel disempowered and have not been at the table for that kind of escutcheon. >> sure. true,rify this, this is but the projects i mentioned in west bank, and we can think of others. there are ways in which architects can pick and get to the table by taking on an issue and taking on a project. you can't just create a project that is a 1500 story tower on 57th street. lookingally does mean for the work you want to do. >> yeah. >> the question i wanted to ask us to do with your emphasis on public spaces being our right and not a gift handed to us. and

i think that lingered in the conversation about streets, such as in cairo, in some way when they took back the streets, it was not that they were taking something that had not been theirs. originally it had been theirs and it was the right to reclaim it. i'm interested in all of the beautiful places you have been, whether you feel confident to say that is a condition of streets and other spaces, or whether the particular economic, historic, cultural conditions vary or does very -- help to modify that claim? >> i do think it varies from place to place. i guess what i was trying to suggest was even the notion of the street as public space in a place like new york is a relatively recent concept. --ean, i am not -- i was not i thought somebody might mention

this. i was not quite sure of this, but i think it was true that not so long ago people did not think of the street as public space. if you look back at a photograph , what york city in 1908 you will see are very wide sidewalks and a continuum between the street and the sidewalk because the streets did not have many automobiles yet. there was a feeling that the whole space was pedestrian friendly. do people consider the street public space as we do now? i don't know about that. i think that is a slightly different thing. i think what we are developing is this sense -- and this is what i was trying to get at -- this relationship between the space and the democracy, the formation of physical space and the declaration, the demand of democratic space. that i do not think has been the discourse for a very long time.

but of course, you know, i can't is the case everywhere. what i can say though is it is probably not coincidental that when protests have happened, they continue to happen in public spaces. there is an instinctive feeling that people need to find this common ground, and whether they find it as public space or demands for public space or related to their own ambitions or not, they somehow understand that the only place where these issues really are clarified, are somehow made physical, are in these things go public spaces. does that make sense? >> yes. thank you. >> but certainly not the way people think about it in bahrain is different than the way people think about in copenhagen. >> [indiscernible] >> right. see, i do not think there was a notion of the commons in by

rain, but there were protests closest theyht the had to commons in stages there. it was not the same sort of enclosed space. it was much too easily taken back from them. there really aren't in many of the golf spaces places where women can congregate, and that is on purpose. great talk.ks for a i was really interested in your idea about how the spaces were misused. none of these were designed for protest. i do not know that architects will ever be hired by the protesters, by the people, right? it seems like it will always be this sense of misinterpretation or misuse that is really essential. anyway, i just wanted to mention something. i was part of occupy oakland, the most militant of the occupy

movements, but also the most innovative. people only heard about our riots. there were three branches going on. there were the mainstream liberals who thought we just need to tweak our democracy. the second were the writers who were the most extreme and they were very much there for another version of the claret of politics. and then there was the third group of people who are -- it seems like the city is deployed as a way of .reating capital it was not that people were interested in writing, but coming together and sharing and creating a second economy, -- butested in rioting, coming together and sharing a creating a second economy. can you speak to that? >> thank you. that was what i was trying to get at. people instantly set up these --

they become propositional democracies. know, it became a problem because they were giving away free food and free clothing and the space essentially got taken over. but i think that is exactly what happens when people and acted these spaces as they imagined a better society to be, without really being programmed to do that. that just seems like the thing one needed to do. we needed to occupy the space. ok, how are we going to go about that? and suddenly you begin to of all this space -- to evolve the space. much of occupy was unclear to people. i remember people constantly saying, what is it actually about? it wasn't against the poor? what was the thing? when you went to it, you realize the thing was that thing you saw

there. the creation of the space. that is what occupy illustrated. i agree with that. -- creating ats space for protest, like i said, i don't think it's possible. i do not think that you can create a useful space of protest. everyone is trying to do it, by the way. they were creating a place in the south where you could put a huge parade. it would be out of view. that is crucial as well to these places that are in the middle. >> a follow-up on the last comment and first, a couple of observations. first of all, for those of us in the room, not me, who are not architects, i want to say that what you say so modestly about shining a light in a slightly different direction really

cannot be underestimated. i think we have seen result of decades of media attention to a certain way of making space and buildings that is far from a monolithic culture, but it has been presented as if it was the only culture that is valuable. i think a lot of us have been very grateful for again what you stay relatively modestly. it assumes enormous importance and encouraging maybe not meant generation but the next generation --maybe not my generation but the next generation. on a historical note, i think there is evidence that the kind theublic space, or at least signifiers of public space that you presented today, going way, way back, at least in western history, when protesters tear up in earlyts 19th-century paris to make barricades, that is a

conspicuous form of occupation and of stating the public availability of that alternate ways of compressing power. there are countless examples of that from parades to feast of fools in the middle ages, you name it. point, i think that what you have introduced or suggested to me is that space as architecture and urbanism needs to be balanced by time. i wonder how you feel about that, having looked at these examples because most of them appear in the way that you present only after a certain period of time. of course, and architectural contracts not only has limits of liability and responsibility in space that are bounded by a legally constituted site, it

starts and stops at a certain point. some of the most interesting things that happened to what we design happened well after our formal relationship with them is end.o an -- brought to an the idea that an architect it can be something like an intellectual and belong to a community and not just serve our community and that an architect can be around to look at the uses for which there are spaces are put is important. the most obvious example is the occupation of the lower level of norman foster's bank of hong kong by domestics on their off never hong kong, which he anticipated, but which brings that building to life in a way that he is happy to take credit for. >> exactly. >> i wonder what you think about that and also about the implicit message in the last remarks that if you can in a way learn from

what happened in this case and there is a feedback loop built-in so that, for example, the explosion of co-working spaces in american cities after the occupied movement which model that sort of cooperative hater is -- cooperative behavior is another example. interesting many points and you answered your own questions. this issue is very important. and it is totally outside the general working model but it came up in, and i will get back to call working spaces. it came up when i was looking at health-care design. till have not gotten around to writing about but i want to and the reason was because i thought in what sense can you pin down in some specific way the effectiveness of design? can you quantify on some level design? is there, is that a meaningful

question to ask? is there any area in which such a thing can be done by someone? i wrote about the housing logic in the south of france i wanted to change the equation of what we consider to be of value because i thought, instead of putting some aesthetic value in terms of investment in the community, which is what architectural excellence was supposed to contribute. so in the case of hospital design, i was struck that there are people who work on such the f who look at design, effect of different kinds of designs on patient care. in princeton, there is a hospital which designing a new inility and had a model room which they tested out different designs on different patients

and refined the design so that when they moved to the new building they would have what they had found to be the most effective design. what they found over the course of more than a year is that patients in the model room asked for 45 less pain medication and said that nursing care and food was 60% better than in the normal rooms. so this was an interesting question. i asked the guy who, what does this mean about the effectiveness of design? he said, when we build hospitals i would like to have architect more involved, but i would like them to work on a contingency fee like everybody else of a follow-up -- they do certain things and they are responsible for the results. so if they built something and say it is going to be, i want to know the things that are built reduce infections, create happier hospital stays for patients and so forth. fewer mistakes by nurses and doctors. if they prove -- spreading of

infections. if they can produce results that are tangible, i will pay them more money. i mentioned this to a couple of architects in the room, some of them had worked on these things, and i thought to a person architects would say, that is the most ridiculous thing i have ever heard. that actually, to a person they said to me, ok. that sounds interesting. if we really have responsibility, it is a slightly off answer, but it is a question of the extent to which architects can find ways to become more engaged. i think they should be responsible. if you put up a building that does not work, you should be responsible. it may look beautiful but if it doesn't work -- i can give you a million using examples. then you should fix it or somebody else should fix it. wasor the coworker thing, i in san francisco. i spent a lot of time going to setups for people like

twitter and yellp anp and squar. it is pretty funny. aesthetic, the things that arise out of occupied that has this kind of like, we are here to make the world better and we share stuff. so there is a barista everywhere and food and common tables. this, too, is becoming really interestingly standardized. so everybody has edison bulbs. everybody uses reclaimed railroad ties. they all look exactly alike. yoga balls. this has become the kind of version of -- i think that is something that also is an interesting question. to really create spaces that are truly open and likable -- by the way, they are. grim -- very grim places.

they have this cheery stuff with sayings on the walls about how there is community and the company is great. it is really 1984-ish. in fact it is very scary. it is an interesting option you describe that it has already been through design. regularized. yeah? >> speaking of reclaimed railroad ties, the notion that a park might be designed for protests. i am curious what your opinions are. in my opinion is one of the great public parks created unently, the highline, how occupy a bowl or occupy a bowl is that? -- how unoccupiable or occupiable is that? one might view that as a design not to be occupied. >> so you're saying it is a space that cannot be occupied. >> perhaps in the way for

protests. >> i cannot see why you would occupied it. first of all, no one would know you were there. i mean, everyone is on the ground that you are up there. new yorkers do not go to the high line. life would go on and there would be people among these plantings with great views into the hotel rooms of people and these people paid millions of dollars of they could be seen walking around in their underpants in their apartments, but otherwise no one would know you were there. the high line is not an effective site. it's the opposite of the body -- of zuchati. it was a stage and around. but the highline is an interesting space, of course. it's a remarkable achievement. at at the same time, it really is not integrated into the city and that gets to this point.

perhaps i'm saying what you're saying. >> yes. the idea that perhaps there is conscious idea there to preserve for protests.able >> i do not know if that occurred to them. i think mostly they were trying to save it from being destroyed and that was an interesting gamble. i do not know if they imagined it would be occupied. now it is so crowded you cannot get up there. who would know you are occupying if you were up there? but it's an interesting point, yeah. yeah? >> i had a question about public spaceing which is the public space of the andnald's or starbucks people hanging out there for hours and hours upon end. awas curious is there possibility in the future for that to be sort of, i don't know encouraged or something similar --kind of like the percent

percent for art. or even with plazas. >> you mean to create coffee shop or places like that which are subsidized? >> i guess. it is a difficult thing for me to wrap my head around. >> i do not think anybody is going to take it. subsidy for mcdonald's. but i do think there are public libraries in new york -- have been think he about bringing in coffee shops. partly it is about retail, but not entirely. it is about the fact that the way people like to be now is in that kind of the space. there are studies that show people are more effective in their work if they come to work in a coffee shop then if they work at an office. these basis -- i am describing san francisco -- are trying to replicate starbucks.

there is a possibility of having some public spaces incorporate cafes and maybe run him themselves. i know you are not only talking about cafes. and about a place like mcdonald's which i wrote about in queens. it was a default public space for a community of elderly people who were not given many other alternatives. and that is something i think we do not think about a lot. think about neighborhoods, who occupies them, what are the alternatives of the people, what kind of spaces are afforded them? and what happened there was, really, for many of these people walking to the park a mile away was inconceivable. so the coffee shop is the default workspace. questioneven more the is in regards to -- you describe the difference between percent of public space.

sented public space and adapted public space. i am very much interested in places where blinds bots exist. whether was that -- blind spots exist. or home made off ramps. that kind of lined sp -- blind spot. >> in the case of that macdonald, maybe some of you read about this, too. in flushing, queens, where there is a large chinese immunity but an older korean community. there was a mcdonald's where many elderly koreans would congregate and spend all day over a cup of coffee. and the new manager of that mcdonald's told him they would have to leave. there is a sign and all the shops that you can stay for 20 minutes. but it had not really been enforced. he kicked them out. they would come back. the police were called in. they were hauling out these

elderly koreans with walkers. so this became news. then there was a detente worked out, ,whereby these guys who were very sweet -- they knew what they were doing. i think what works out in a lot of these spaces happens in privately owned public spaces as ibm, like these -- at the building on 56th street and madison. this is a privately owned public space. an indoor, an atrium where you can sit and a café. these places are, they are more or less accessible depending on the quality of the manager and their ability to keep them license where people can seek refuge, homeless people, but also places that do not become homeless squatter communities. a very delicate thing. it is done on the human level.

not legislative will. islatable. the best places tend to be run with a sense of just understanding. that is ultimately what the result is for mcdonald's. it is not quite a direct answer, but it can come down to this. it does come down to this very compensated space. is is publit -- is it public? who negotiates the space? i think mcdonald's has benefited a lot by allowing these koreans to come back in. yeah? >> i lived like to start off with a quick historical thud. the thud is that -- it's not on union square. it was east end next to t he academy of music. >> what was the name of the restaurant? anere was another germ restaurant on union square. >> i do not recall.

>> thank you for that. though, is that architects to learn and architects are paid and are often the agents of people who build buildings. if architects learn and they are the ages of people who pay for them, don't you think the knowledge that has been gathered about the use of public spaces gatherings ofr the sort we have been talking about, which i think are great, don't you think they would commission architects if they do have public spaces to design of to prevent these kinds of gatherings in the new spaces? is that an understandable question? >> i think that in the beginning of publicly owned, these plazas that were created. by the way, i think we need to check on lu chao's. it moved around. >> my dad propose to my mother

there. it?could i forget >> 20 fe4et off union square. >> we will argue later, ok, come on. >> i tmoved -- it moved a bit. >> quickly if i can, if that -- is that future public spaces designed by architects for private interest, will they use the knowledge of what is happened in the past to design public spaces that prevent or make it more difficult -- >> yeah, but why do those public spaces exist? they exist because the people who are developing these properties were given bonuses by the public. this is a public gift. we are saying we are allowing you to get an exception from a zoning rule and to add square footage to your building from which you will accrue millions of extra dollars, in return for this, give something back to the public. fine.

we give you a plaza. the public needs to have some say over the quality, maintenance, use of that space. t,t no matter what the clien no matter what the developer says. so yes, i mean, this about public oversight. i guess i wanted to say in general that one of the reasons i focus on public spaces i think for architects it's such a ripe in a lot ofagement different kinds of projects which are quite different than taking commissions for single buildings. i think it is an area that is ripe for really interesting design and for new models essentially of engagement with the public and with client. yeah? >> i was wondering very locally if you had any thoughts about

the new haven green and occupying new haven? technicallyknow, the green is not owned by the city but by the ancient proprietors. we had an occupied new haven. i do not know if they benefited. on some level they might have benefited. >> sorry, i do not know the answer. i think there was an occupation and harvard yard. i think very few people knew about it because they yard was close off. the green has the advantage of being open. how busy was the occupation of new haven? >> it was intensely busy. but it was could find to the north and the west corner of the green. so -- >> i think that is a problem, too. as i said, you need those concentrations. >> it was free but it was not free. >> i am sorry i did not see it.

i am reluctant to say. >> join me and thanking -- [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> next, a look at the aftermath of the arab spring. obama atident and mrs. the dedication ceremony for the 9/11 memorial museum in new york city. after that, another chance to see a discussion on politics and public spaces. >> on "newsmakers" mel watt, director of the federal housing finance agency. he will talk about his plans for the agency that oversees fannie mae and freddie mac. at 10:00rs" sunday

a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. newest book sundays at 8:00, a collection of interviews with the best storytellers. including david mccullough. >> we're sitting here today in the city designed by a french man. lanfonte, the french engineer and architect. the great symbolic work of sculpture, the gateway to the country in new york the statue of liberty, a gift from france b y bartoli. countless rivers and universities and colleges all over the country with french names. we don't pronounce them the way they do, but the influence of france on this country is far greater than most americans appreciate. >> read the interview with david mccullough along with other noted storytellers in

c-span's "sundays at eight." now available at your favorite bookseller. >> veteran foreign correspondent charles senate reflects on the political movement known as the arab spring. he reported on the rise of al qaeda in the 1990's and the arab-israel conflict. he was one of the first reporters on the ground in afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. he is now the editor at large of an online international news publication called "the global post." this event took place at new york university and was hosted by the foreign policy association. it is just over an hour. [applause] you.ank hank new york university and the foreign policy association for having me. and thank you all for coming.

i think one of the hardest things in talking about the egyptian revolution is where to begin. frame you being to something that i believe is 100 years old? i think the significance of the ofb awakening has that level historical importance. i was trying to think very hard about where do you begin do un -- to unpack history in motion? how do you begin to take that apart? so i thought i would begin where i want to end this conversation, and that is to say it is very easy to feel cynical about what is happening, particularly in egypt right now. i hear verysy and often for my friends in egypt that they are disheartened, that they feel that all of the thetement of tahrir square,

incredible emotion of seeing young people organized to facebook, come together in the streets and take down a dictatorship, a police state was an amazing event but where are t hey now? you can feel as if we have gone all the way back to where this whole thing began, where we have a military junta in charge. again, a country that is yearning for democracy and struggling to get there. and it can seem like not much has happened, but i want to end with a sense of optimism. and a since of hope -- sense of hope, because that is what i hear from the streets of egypt when i am there. i was there for most of the summer. i was just speaking downstairs to the security guards, the guy at the front desk who let you all in. he's egyptian. he feels that sense of hope. young journalist to i

have gotten to know in the last few years stay in very close touch with me and they definitely have their moments of despair, but they also are holding onto this promise of what egypt can be. and i think it is exciting. so i'm going to let you know that is where i want to end up. start could be anywhere in the last 100 years. you could go back at least two october 6, 1981. the assassination of sadat. you've seen the video clip. a military parade, sadat is viewing the parade. islamists break from the military, comport, and kill the president. and there is his vice president, mubarak ducking under the stands

. survives. sadat is killed. mubrarak becomes president. that is not a bad starting point because this event entire or square early was about mubarak. mubarak ands about a police state and it was about a corrupt government that ruled for 30 years with united states support with very significant financial aid. . draw all those years. i do not think that is a bad starting point. for me as a journalist my starting point really is february 1993. it was in february 1993 that i was a police reporter in new york city working for the new york daily news. i covered the streets of new york. i loved that job. i i love the city. -- i love the city. there was a very loud bang in lower manhattan. it was 1993.

outthere was smoke pouring of the world trade center parking garage. and i was one of the very first reporters there. in did what you do, you are y nodding andy you walk past the police line. we saw that this was a six-story crater. in.cars cavaed in.-- waved water spraying everywhere, smoke, fire. no one on the outside was thinking that was a bomb, that the police or firemen. they were thinking it was a subway crash or a generator that exploded. there were all kinds of explanations but no one said it is terrorism, which says a lot about that time, 1993. medellin,ered muddyin colombia, and northern ireland

and i knew what a bombing looks like. when i saw the parking garage i knew this was a bombing. and i was shocked. it took about 12 hours to get confirmed, but there was no question this was a bombing. that led me reporting out who where the suspects? who wanted to take down the world trade center in 1993? are we began to do reporting it led us to brooklyn and it led us to jersey city and that led us to the spiritual head of this group of new yorkers, many of the taxi drivers and working people, immigrants from different parts of the muslim world who wanted to blow up the world trade center. this isack an egyptian, the blind egyptian cleric who was based in brooklyn and jersey city mosques. he was a militant. he was a militant who was in al-zawari.

andhad broken away splintered from egyptian factions and henan teamed up with this guy in 1993 no one had heard of. he was known as the amir. him, thatring about he may have been the guy who financed this world trade center bombing, 1993. my editor said, you should go, man. you should do the story. so i did. i went to egypt and sudan. it was a police story. as we follow that trail, we came to sudan and there was this emir. beard described as the scion of a construction family in saudi arabia and his name was osama bin laden. bid laden in 1993 was in the sudan and we were looking at nascent al qaeda. myself as a reporter just like all the fbi and the cia did not

see it. you could not see the photograph developing. but it was definitely a developing. it think about these connections keep coming back to egypt. there was in the sudan around osama bin laden egyptian doctors. -- protectors. and one of them was almost certainly also are he -- al-z awari. they were together then. i have this image of bin laden, seeing him in person and reading a clip by walter pincus a great journalist. the only thing i could find on but you used to have to go down to what we call the morgue where they had the clips. and these guys that would wear those visors and roll up their sleeves, and ripped the clips

from the newspapers. i open up a packet. and there was a packet that said that walter pincus reported that indeed, they think he may have financed the guys that may have blown up the world trade center. the cia said it was impossible because he was our ally in the war against the soviets in afghanistan. he was part of the freedom fighters, and as president reagan saw them, who hcame from to fight arab world against the soviet union. if he was on the cia payroll and he was with the saudi's, how could he bought the world trade center? 1993. you could then go forward to a time where my reporting there as a police reporter, it really led to me being very interested in the middle east. i became a foreign correspondent. i went to "the boston globe.' i became much more

interested in the middle east and eventually they decide me to become the bureau chief. kind of an exaggerated title only had oneglobe" correspondent and the entire middle east. as my wife reminded me, i was the bureau chief and the entire bureau. in this perch, i began to look around the region. this was the mid-1990's. i would freak go to egypt and you would see the incredible crackdown on the islamists. muslim brotherhood pushed underground. and militants are going peeling away, going to the sudan and going to afghanistan. coalescing around what would become known as al qaeda by 1998. ize"et the first "laden epistle where they proclaim themselves at war with the u.s. remember the african embassy bombings? when we first began to see what their intent was was to attack the u.s. swirling andis is

taking shape, and i keep going back to egypt. i had an office there. i kept thinking, what does the united states support in egypt? are we supporting stability over democracy or are we just foreverng like mubarak and we will never let him hold elections and the elections are a sham? and any opposition would be jailed. muslim brotherhood is an illegal party but they have huge popular support because they are doing something the egyptian government is not doing -- they are actually going out and helping people with health clinics and schools. i think of them less as islamists, although they certainly are in their beliefs, but i think of them as our equivalent to the ethnic pals of big cities, the irish and italians who ruled the big citi es. they also have that ward boss

element to them that you cannot forget in egypt. the whole time they began to reject violence and really say they believed in democracy and secretly run party candidates, -azari, who would say, those muslim brotherhood are. they say they believe in democracy but if they ever get a chance to really run and they win, the west will never allow them to roll. i heard this all to the 1990's. 2000. it is just a constant theme. then of course the expression of al qaeda reaches its most dark a most unexpected on september 11, two

thousand one, attacks on the united states. and set of that all of that picture comes into focus. i remember calling my desk and thinking they did it. i could not believe they did it. they try to take down the world trade center in 1993. and eight years later they succeeded. in that eight years of intervening time, i cap going through egypt and seeing how far down the islamists were pushed, how the expressions were popping out on the sides with people awarhi.-z these things are connected. i think maybe a jumping off point could also be fast forward. we know about the wars of september 11, afghanistan and the ill-fated war in iraq. after president bush, after mission accomplished, after the many mistakes that were made in the aftermath of september 11, it was in 2009 we launched

global post as a new online international organization. in the same month that president obama took office. and had his famous inaugural speech. then go go forward to june, 2009. his first major foreign-policy speech. airooes to ci university and he speaks asquently of democracy universal ideal. worlds to the muslim after these many years post-9/11, of violence, of us confronting the threat to our country, experiencing war, he goes forward and says we reach out to you with open hands. and that was a very famous phrase. the open hands. the united states reaches with open hands to the muslim world. we want to have a new start. we believe in democracy. now, i think the arab world

heard that. and i think they began to organize right around that time. and that is when a lot of the facebook pages and the opposition against mubarak, against the autocrats of the middle east, really began. i do not think they are disconnected. you do not hear the white house claim very often that it was responsible for the arab spring. they do not take credit for that. it is political dynamite to take credit for that. but if you go back and we look as historians back at this time, you would have to say that is an important turning point. if you fast-forward now to the events of tunisia in the end of 2010 when a fruit peddler stands up and says he is tired of the corruption and tunisia suddenly demonstration and calls for democracy. before you know it, the autocrat there is toppled. and eyes turn toward egypt.

ahriruddenly tell -- t square begins to fill up with demonstrators. i was in afghanistan when this was happening and had this big interview with general petraeus, pre-scandal. i had followed him greatly and that huge respect and still have so much respect for so many of the ways he has thought about post-9/11 world. and there is nothing like being on a big assignment like that and knowing you are in exactly the wrong place. i'm arriving in afghanistan smallng tunisia and demonstrations beginning in egypt and i was thinking, this could go. .this could be exciting i go to see jennifer trias and he looks at me and says, what are you doing here? to see general petraeus and he looks at me and says come a what are you doing here? the next day, we got a call from "frontline." they wanted us to go there.

so we did. i got their day three of the street demonstrations and never left tahrir square. how many of you follow that? ok. that was an amazing thing to wa tch. it was more amazing to be there on the streets inside the tents, with all the mud in the garbage and the smells on the plastic sheeting and the rain in the demonstrations and the incredible sense of hope. what an expression that was. i have been a journalist for 30 years. that is the single most surprising and hopeful thing i had ever covered in my career. , and a lot of war -- covered a war, a lot of big stories, but that one was the most unpredictable. tom friedman feels that way. of the journalists who have got a lot of experience covering the middle east would say that moment was extraordinary in a way that no weather was before it. it.o other was before

maybe egypt will have a democracy. but we know what happened. it began to unfold. suddenly mubarak steps down. the protesters rejoiced. very soon after that, the military sort of begins to take hold and it says, ok will would be an interim government for now. an interimbe government for now. the committee of generals said we're going to have a decent transition to democracy. they were seen as heroes because they came to the side of the protesters and they said, we embrace this call for change. so they were seen as heroic, and they are still to this day considered the most trusted institution in egypt, which can be very surprising if you're watching on the streets the way in which they are acting so brutally amd putting down the demonstrations.

how the egyptians cling to this. if you talk to the egyptians, they hold out a lot of hope for their military to be part of the transition. on the streets, that was very hard to see. i wanted to go to the real starting point for this conversation which is a clip from a documentary that we did last summer. this is the second documentary we did with "frontline. the first one chronicled the fall of mubarak, the way in which tahrir square was performed. part two, the second hour documentary, was broadcast in september. it really was about the fall of morsi, and how that happened. i am going to show you a clip from that film as a way to get us going right into the conversation here. if i do thi properlys. which i did not. so i got to close that then.

and then do this. i think i got it. [video clip] >> later that night, my boss and i were caught up in a pro-morsi protest. the march was blocked by police. throwing, tear gas, and shots followed. >> tear gas landing. [sirens] >> by the end of the evening, another seven protesters were dead. these confrontations were quickly becoming almost daily affairs. >> both sides appeared to be allowing this violence to go on. way this allows the military to say the brotherhood are criminals and they all need to be locked up.

at the same time, i do not understand why the brotherhood leaders are ordering march is putting the lives of their own at risk. >> the next day, at the mosque, the muslim brotherhood held a press conference. they had wheeled out the wounded and praised their martyrs to a roomful of reporters. [speaking arabic] leader about the criticism they were intentionally putting their supporters at risk. >> there are people on the military side who say that this is a strategy by the muslim brotherhood to create martyrs, to create martyrs for the movement. you are strange that saying that a peaceful protester benefits from being killed, but you do not address who is doing the killing. who else in the world can attack peaceful protesters?

home andnt me to go surrender and tell myself that our reality is a military coup? i have a right to protest peacefully and reject this military coup. [speaking arabic] >> the united states did not call it a military coup, they could not because the second they call it that, they have to cut off aid to the egyptian military. if you were there, that summer and you saw the events transpire, it is very difficult to call it anything but that. if you look at the dictionary coup it would fit. we sat on the streets of egypt watching all of this unfold. the demonstrations of june 30 were extraordinaire in the way

that they were huge outpouring just as powerful if not more powerful in terms of numbers on the street against president morsi who had been democratically elected. he came out of the muslim brotherhood. he win the election. parliaments in elections before the presidential election, the muslim brotherhood party, the freedom and justice party had done well. they had won 40% of the seats in parliament and other islamist groups had 120%. -- had won 20%. morsi who is elected. he stays in office for less than a year. in late june 2013, the decide they are fed up with the government of morsi. they feel that it has failed. and had done a very poor job. it may be good at organizing people, good at organizing different pockets of party in ro but the people of egypt

felt they were doing a terrible job. people i know called it peach mint from the street. they say it is no different than what we took down mubarak. him fromoing to impeach the street because he has rammed for the constitution that does not respect the rights of minorities, christians here it does not respect women. and it does not have any of the secular ideals that so many egyptians want that country to have, particularly those who made tahrir square happen. so we ended up with massive demonstrations. july 3, that fourth of july weekend, while the president is on vacation, and the secretary of state is on vacation, there is a very quiet move to give mor a clear ultimatumsi. ither you step down willingly and call for new elections or we're going to take you into custody. i do not think arrest is a fair word.

he will not step down. the military steps in and arrest the president and puts them at an undisclosed location. he is not able to talk to his family and they began a crackdown on the muslim brotherhood. that is that scene that you just watched. arrive on thewe scene and begin to see what is really happening with the muslim brotherhood. there was incredible force shown by the military to the muslim brotherhood protesters. there were hundreds of muslim brotherhood protesters who were gunned down. these were civilians. they were shot in the street. there was a lot of indiscriminate fire. it isis one day where estimated hundreds were killed, over 400. these are big numbers that have never really been accounted for. maybe you can help me with this next clip.

the thing that is hard to re is this now is whe going to head? prison andw in facing charges. he is going on trial for the charges against him. most of the people we interviewed in the film, including one of the muslim brotherhood leaders, are all in prison. there have been hundreds and hundreds of opposition locked up your 25 journalist. three al jazeera journalists. most of the people i interviewed who were part of the opposition, both secular and islamists from the muslim brotherhood, are locking up. they are locking up the opposition and they are pushing forward with the may 25: 26 elections and proclaiming it a democracy. the united states really did not say anything on to lie third when morsijuly 3

was locked up. there was a stunning silence. i had a chance to talk to a senior-level state department official who was involved in the process who said to me, these are fair observations but there was a lot going on behind the scenes you do not know about. but behind the scenes does not work. united states had called out this president of the united cario,had said in democracy is a universal right. it did very little when the military moved in and took over. now the muslim brotherhood failed governance. muslim brotherhood, not with the united states would want. muslim brotherhood has a lot to answer for. themuslim brotherhood in end of the day may not embrace democracy. that has its own peril. biceps all of that. but i think we lost an opportunity to try to hold up institutions of democracy -- i accept all of that.

you elected this guy, and now you need to find a way to legally remove him. instead of became the street rules and i think we have undercut that message that president obama eloquently 2009, which iune, think that a lot of this in motion. so we end up now with the e do not knowre w where it is going to go. appointed asmorsi secretary defense of very popular general, young general for egyptians. he's 59. sisi.al seal he step down and said he is going to run for president. that is no surprise. he will almost inevitably be elected in these elections. there was no one predicting anyone else. alsisi does take office, one of the things that will

inevitably happen is the deep state will get deeper. the deep state is a phrase you hear all the time in egypt. i want to share one more clip so you can get a sense of what is the deep state, and then i am going to conclude and we will go right to questions. [video clip] arabic]king >> revolutionaries and liberals who voted for morsi hope the new president and a new constitution would restrain egypt's deep state. one of the big demands of the revolution was to say we did not want torture or security services or civilians being tried in military court. >> we wanted to have something in the constitution against torture. we wanted to have something in the constitution against police brutality. we wanted to have something in the constitution that would limit the power of the military.

the power than curb of the military, the constitution gave the military everything they want. >> what the constitution guarantee for the military was safe passage so none of them are held accountable for their violations of our rights during the scuffle. left the budget untouched and left any civilian oversight of that budget and allowed civilians to put civilians before military tribunals. which are all things we wanted to fix. >> the fatal mistake is that the muslim brotherhood could have turned to us. the revolutionaries. hrir.ould have turned to tar and tell them we need you to write a constitution that would limit the power of the military. we need you to curb and cleanse the very corrupt judiciary. we would have come to his

rescue. and instead, he tried to flirt with the police and the military against us. for any leader, curbing the military would have been hard. in egypt, the military is more than an army. it is big business thomas controlling as much as 40% of controlling as much as 40% of the economy. they make cars, chemicals, and bread. the full extent of their empire is unknown. >> the military is one of the top landowners in the country. you cannot even really get a proper list of military associated industries. in the military wants to preserve its perks, and privileges, its significance, private sector economic empire. and they want to escape civilian oversight. momente are left in this with the military back in

charge, a general ascendant back into power, and it is easy to say egypt is right back where we started. mubarak was a general. we have a new general. there is no possibility for civilian democracy in egypt. maybe egypt is not ready for democracy. that is one of my favorite phrases. or maybe we are not ready for egypt's democracy. the elected a leadery. we did not support any of the democratic institutions that could have been upheld when that leader was imprisoned, locked up, put on trial on trumped up charges. so if we are going to lay a role in the world where we are going to encourage democracy, you have to live up to it and believe in it and you have to support it home a whether you like it or not cared whether you like who has been in power or not. maybe this is to editorial, but i do not like the muslim brotherhood. i would not want to live under

the leadership. but i think egypt deserves better than a choice between a military junta and a theocracy. square sound of tahrir is the sound of people saying, we want democracy. that sound that toppled embark was the same sound -- toppledt mubarak was the same sound that echoed when they shouted down morsi. and they said, we do no want a theocracy. the general is does that we saw arriving next to morsi. it was his secretary of defense. he is the general on the right-hand shoulder. isi hear thatls sounds? did he hear how much hope there was in the voice of egypt in the

streets? did he hear the sound of democracy? because if he did not, history is going to roll over him as well. i think there is an inevitable. now in the middle east which is exciting, but it is going to greatly challenge american foreign-policy, that balance between stability and democracy is right on the line. which to we believe in? because if you really believe in democracy, you might have instability. as we have learned, going for stability, if it leads to tyranny, and separate instability and volatility. so that is a false sense of stability. so i do not envy those in the world, both the egyptian leadership and ou own state departmentr and all of the other leaders in the world who have to figure this out or help egypt figure it out, because these are really hard questions.

it is a very difficult equation, but i think there is a lot at stake and you need to watch this one. you have to watch what happens right now in egypt. and the operative question i would like you to keep in mind hear theeneral alsisi sound of democracy and does the united states hear the sound of democracy right now in the middle east? thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. we open the floor for questions. i will take three questions at a time, and then give the floor to our speaker to respond. so and please limit your

question to a question and not long comments, because we would like to have everyone participate. yes? >> thank you for an excellent -- >> may i ask you also to introduce yourself. i would love to know who you are. >> i am originally from egypt. i run an investment firm in manhattan. thank you very much for an excellent talk, an excellent speech. the one puzzle to me is really outside egypt. it resides i washington, d.c.n how can the united states not declare this a military coup? when you talk to senior officials in the administration, they say we have geopolitical interest in egypt. we want to maintain our relationship. where they have lost egypt in my opinion 100%. the muslim brotherhood feels

they did not support them. the military feels they did not send a strong signal supporting their movement to remove morsi. and egypt is in the russian camp for all practical purposes. how can the united states justify this sense, 80% of the aid they give egypt goes to the military. >> it is a fantastic question. supported by a great deal of fact. >> upping, it is a fantastic question supported by a great deal of fact, and i think gives accurate insight into what we are talking about right now. remember for years i said now the head of al-qaeda said the muslim brotherhood are suckers. they believe believe in democracy. as soon as they get elected, the west will never allow them to rule. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captions performed by nna