super crucial to who is in the room with you. do you have a diverse audience test? what does that mean? if you have a writing staff that is reflective of the world you live in, everybody does a different kind of check. it is important to have a that's why i think it's important to have a diverse writing staff because you look at what this all means. you say, we are willing to take that same place, but what is your check in at that point? a very brave to be in a room full of white people and say, satirical, but a lot of people are marginalized. i think it's important when you talk about the creative process. >> my name is branson. i'm a sophomore at the college.

my question is having each of you work throughout your lives on some pretty small to i ammely large films, curious. how have you been able to preserve your own comedic voice in this plethora of media, and where are you willing to compromise? us, with movies i think there is a temptation to try to acquire as much money for your budget as humanly possible. it's a sign of success on the surface in hollywood, if you that'spensive movies, the upper echelon. if you make cheaper movies, you are the lower echelon. the unspoken implication is you want to be making bigger, more expensive movies. when we were getting more

successful, that's exactly what we did. --were able to make a $150 150 million dollar movie, so we did. we quickly found that budget robbed us of everything that made us creatively valuable, and everything we enjoyed most about the process itself. if we think of a new idea, we can do it. if someone takes of a joke, we can do it. we learned money actually robs very large,ring which is creative control and freedom. large, whichvery is creative control and freedom. we make movies that are half the price of the movies we could be making. we are getting half the amount we could bie paid, but we are getting the ability to do

whatever we want, which is much more valuable than money on a day-to-day basis. >> we will cut our budget on purpose. we will say at 40 you're going to tell us a lot of stuff and 30 you are not? we will do it at 30. >> we will literally ask for the numbers that we don't have to listen much. >> i have been in that situation where when we started the daily show, cable was still really cheap. worked on anything where there was a budget. a small staff also means a lot of ownership. when youat is fun is have six riders and we are working our balls off -- six writers and we are working our balls off and everyone sees they are part of the process, it's really rewarding.

the bottom line in the business is there is no making it. there is only the path that which you make your work. if that isn't full of really cool people you are going to wake up and be a rich person who doesn't have a lot of hanging onto cool experiences. i cannot stress this enough. older wek as we got realize most of our lives were spent actually making movies, and that's the process occupying our day to day existence. that has to be fun. it can't all be, it is miserable, but it is good in the end. thats to be a process makes us feel we can think of new ideas and get excited about moviend put them in the without having to call and check a million people and things. for uss a big revelation creatively.

think there is time for one more. >> i am a physician from canada. my question is for liz. how successful has her comedy been at disarming policy with regards to the lunatics that seem to hate women's sexuality? we just launched in july. what has been the great part of an issueming thing is that is as controversial as abortion rights and reproductive thets, somebody has to be fall guy. i think i have decided i am going to be the fall guy in the sense of when somebody says to me, how dare you laugh at killing babies, i say, i don't buy your premise. medical science doesn't say that's what this is. or i will say, why are they

killing babies? that's terrible. two blank through the language co-opted by radical people who don't listen to science and don't listen to the medicine of this, they don't know what to do with me because i don't back down. i'm relentless. how dare you, advocate for birth control pills, because it is women poisoning themselves with chemicals, and i am like, i cannot wait to join you in trying to get rid of the cigarette industry. when are we starting that? they stare at me. they say, why can't women shut their legs, and i say, why should they? sayingy needs to start those types of things because otherwise we just go with their

narrative when they say things like sometimes people take birth control for other things. mostly it is because they are trying not to get pregnant. i think it gives people a little to say, sigh of relief i have been through this experience. one in three women have had an abortion in their lifetime. that means they are holding onto information that is personal, and they felt relief and feel guilty about that. to have women like sarah silverman, who has been a champion in working on this theyct -- amy schumer, have come together to say nothing should define you, especially a medical choice you made. that is where we are going to make it to the level of you go

on to be the best person you can be because that's what we're striving for. [applause] >> can we take one more question so we don't end on an abortion question? >> i thought that was great. >> there is a joke in knocked up. jonah hill's character says abortion, and i was wondering if you could give us some background on that decision. literally it is unnamed, and liz, what did you think about it? >> i think that was improv that came up. i think the joke itself is commenting on people's and how silly it is. jonas character in the movie is an idiot. he is acting in the way an idiot

would act, which is thinking abortion dare not be named. think a lot of people forget in our movies we are portraying ourselves are not that moronic. we are it's funny how ascribed the personality trait of the people we are marketing -- mocking. the buddy has that worse than danny mcbride. .e hates redneck idiots -- nobody has that worse than danny mcbride. i wonder if people ask anthony hopkins if he thinks it's ok to eat people's faces. making funt joke is of the people liz is also making fun of. >> in somebody's comedy, they do what they need to do.

to me it's more important that the people actually making policy and providing the services and the activism around this issue are saying the word abortion because they are not legislating pro-choice. they are legislating abortion. creatively it is whatever somebody chooses to do, but i think in the practical sense saying it is a thing we need to start saying. we did it again. >> abortion. on abortion.end >> i am excited about the holidays. i have a really good cookie recipe. >> that's all the time we have. i would like to thank evan , liz, andseth rogen all of you for coming out. have a good night. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.

visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> on christmas eve we will bring you a number of national tree lighting ceremonies, including one with president obama and the first family. that's at 8 p.m. eastern.

here's a preview. >> mr. president, mrs. obama, malia and sasha, and mrs. robertson. happy christmas. >> hello, everybody. is everybody ready to count down? going to start from five. we want to say things to tom and rita. we hope they are ready. watching fromody home is getting in the christmas spirit. we are going to start counting down right now. let's do it. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. >> we will have that national christmas tree lighting ceremony

tomorrow night. we will also show you this year's white house decorations in the capital tree lighting ceremony with members of congress. that's at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span. a look at the death penalty and the u.s. criminal justice system. we will hear from sister helen ands john -- helen prejean an author. this event was held at the new york public library in october. [applause] >> good evening. i am the director of public at the new york library. my goal is to make the lions and to make this

institution levitate. -- to open aaid school is to close the prison. i wish to thank the executive director of the american civil liberties union. i cannot be more honored and pleased to be welcoming to this stage to discuss the inhumanity of the criminal justice system, prejean and brian stevenson. attention to the extraordinary book, i have julie today. last time we work together, julie brought to my attention

decoded i jay-z. it is an extraordinary night. thank you. -- decoded by jay-z. let me thank my wife for insisting brian stevenson be live from the new york public library tonight. thank you, barbara. i recall her reading aloud with passion pages from just mercy. permit me to read a few so you understand how brian's work is excellent and essential. he will be signing his book after the event, as will sister helen. copy to sell it --

please get a copy today. , my work withes haspoor and incarcerated persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth. the opposite of poverty is justice. in another passage, bryan writes about his grandmother in the 1880's in virginia. when i visited her, she would hug me so tightly i could barely breathe. after a little while, she would ask me, bryan, do you still feel me hugging you? if i said yes, she would let me go. you cannot understand most of the important things from a distance, bryan.

you have to get close, she told me all the time. when spending a few weeks, he met the director of the s pdc. bryan, capital punishment means them without the capital get the punishment. finally, i would like to read to you the final era groep of the introduction to this extraordinary book. finally, i have come to believe the true measure of our commitment to justice, the character of our society, our commitment to the rule of law, fairness, and equality cannot be measured by how we treat the rich, the powerful, the

privileged, and the respected among us. the true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned. we are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. an absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, state, nation. fear and anger can make us a vintage, abusive, just, unfair. the closer we get to extreme levels of punishment, the more i appreciate that we all need mercy, we all need justice and perhaps we all need some measure of unmerited grace. for the last seven years or so, i have asked my guests to give a biography of themselves in seven

words, a haiku of sorts. the seven words of each of our guests, i want you to listen to them very carefully. before i give you those seven words, i could think of no better pairing than having bryan stevenson in conversation with sister helen prejean. i hope they make us think, perhaps feel uncomfortable or less comfortable, and push us to act. sister helen prejean seven words -- human, jesus follower, activist, sister, storyteller, writer, traveler. bryan stevenson -- broken by poverty, injustice, condemnation, but hopeful. it is an honor to welcome to the new york public library sister helen prejean and bryan stevenson. [applause] [applause]

>> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> well, i guess it's up to us, bryan? we are both southerners and storytellers, so that ought to be good.

y'all can listen if you want to, and then maybe you can get in on it, too? i just want to say at the outset, "dead man walking" has been out there over 20 years and we are still working it. the last word is just a getting to the people, telling the story, waking the people up. bryan's book is just coming out and i'm in the role of dust, jesus, listen to him. i will be telling my stories -- don't worry. you will not be able to escape that. but to bryan's story and what he is standing for is so good. how did you happen to do this book? was it something you automatically wanted to do? >> i'll be honest.

i was resisting writing a book for a long time. as you know, our lives are full spending time with a lot of people who are in great need, people who are condemned, incarcerated, and we cannot meet all the needs of the people who need help and can make you feel like you don't have time for anything other than trying to meet those needs. i've been privileged over the last 15-20 years at the equal injustice initiative to give me space to do things and it's on their shoulders i get to do the things that i can do. the things that we see, i believe if more people saw them they would feel differently about some of these issues. >> absolutely following your witness and the lead, the way you were able to expose to the death penalty that may be writing a book would give space for people to come and join us

on this journey and go with us in these difficult bases but hopefully see the hope and possibility for justice. >> i always felt a book was just a passive thing. you go into a bookstore. in the south, we talk to each other. when you are talking, you know you have the people but you go in the bookstore, it just sits there. until you get the word out about it because you have to choose the book, choose to read it. i resisted, but now that i've seen the power of a book, we are in this library. i just wanted to the periodical room to me, people of the world and in habit experiences we will never have. what's so good about what you are doing -- and i want to go there with you, because i know defense lawyers for poor people

in louisiana are not invited to the big cocktail parties. they are not respected for what they do. representing that scum? it's a terrible culture in which automatically poor people who do crimes are automatically considered guilty. if you represent them, have you ever been thrown into jail for contempt of court? yes the judge not to call his african-american client by only his first name. your honor, i object. he spent the night in jail. >> i've never been held in contempt but it's interesting. i think for poor people and people of color, going to court is always threatening, menacing, intimidating experience. for many defense lawyers, it's the same way. you are going to meet tremendous hostility and anger. i've been practicing law for a long time, and i never felt like it's where i belong because you see so much pain and anguish there.

in a lot of ways, i've benefited from the presumptions people have because they do not expect me to be the lawyer. i was in a courtroom in the midwest not too long ago when we started representing children prosecuted as adults. want to talk about the presumption of guilt that poor people and people of color are born with, that's one of the big challenges, black and brown children born with a presumption of guilt in danger that follows them. we are suffering in new york where we have stop and frisk, ferguson, the states that have your standard ground laws because it becomes an opportunity to victimize people covering this presumption. i was getting ready for a hearing, the first time i've been in this courtroom. i had a suit on.

it might have been this one. i was just sitting there waiting for the hearing the start and the judge walked out and the prosecutor walked up behind the judge. the judge saw me sitting at the defense table he said, you get out of here. i don't want any defendants in my courtroom. you wait until your lawyer gets here. i stood up and said my name is bryan stevenson. i'm actually the lawyer representing a client today. he started laughing. the prosecutor started laughing and i made myself laugh because i did not want to disadvantage my client. my client came in, a young white kid -- [laughter] >> the great reversal. >> we did the hearing but afterward i was thinking how exhausting it is. these are judges, the people who are supposed to be fair and not act on these presumption and bias. it's exhausting to be constantly

dealing with it. for a lot of defense attorneys, court rooms are not friendly places, convenient, comfortable places. a lot of that rage gets directed at you. for our clients, it's even more hostile. when you stand with poor people, you feel that inequality. big-time. >> a culture where you are -- have you found that? i've been to seattle a lot, oregon, people in the northwest, that's a different culture from new orleans, louisiana, opelousas. they run on how many death penalty's they've given. the louisiana prick award. it shows the pelican flying with a hypodermic needle and it's talent and it means i got three death penalty is and my opponent is weak on crime. i'm strong against crime. it plays out in the culture, the language, the judges elections and the way politicians talk and

the way attorneys are treated. to be a defense attorney, i love talking to defense attorneys. >> you are right. it is corrupted. you going to these courtrooms and you see where they have many electric chairs sitting on the desk. we had an attorney general running for governor and his whole campaign was organized around his support for the death penalty and he was basically telling everyone if you vote for me, i will "fry 'em until their eyes pop out."

you can get bumper stickers that said this, this crude, corrosive, abusive worldview became part of that altar. it is so demoralizing to see people celebrating the abuse of those who are disfavored but it's a big challenge for us and it's one reason why i think the seas -- the policies of fear and anger have made our work so difficult. getting past that cultural performance of being tough on crime is one of the great challenges we face. >> let's take it out of the south. look at the central park five. if you see that documentary and what happened to those five kids about the central park jogger? you see how young people, how a

confession is coerced from young people. look. you talk to us and tell us what really happened. they just want to go home. if i tell you, i can go home? and then they play them one after the other and cobble this together. some of these kids are sent to prison and it's very disheartening. i'm not sure the prosecutor's office in new york ever took responsibility for what happened to those kids. i find this -- do you find this? of the 140 six wrongfully accused people, we have to tell that story of how it happened, but of those 146 wrongfully accused people who managed to

get off of death row through the innocence project, college volunteers, 90% were prosecutorial misconduct. i had no idea how this worked. i thought prosecutors -- i thought the whole system worked. i did not know people would get invested in winning no matter what and then hide the original police report, dna evidence, or whatever. >> this is a national problem. we created an institution that really thrives on success. we want our prosecutors to be tough and successful. we want our judges to be tough. we want them to be a reflection of the fear and anger we experience when we watch the nightly news. they take on these roles and that means they sometime have to cut corners. the mcmillan cases is a clear example of that. walls mcmillan was one of the first people i represented when i started this project in alabama in 1989.

his case was one i started working on before. what struck me about it is when i went to death row and met him, the first thing he told me was he had been on death broke for 15 months pretrial. had never met anybody, never represented anybody. he was sent to death row before. so they were saying in the media, death row defendant will be at pretrial hearings and it created this environment. the second thing i could not believe was when i went to see his family they said at the time the crime took place, they were with mr. mcmillan raising money for his sister's church. the crime was 11 miles away and they were there the entire time. they knew he was innocent and it was interesting to see the despair that created. >> can you imagine? >> it would have been so much better if he was out hunting in

the woods by himself is at least then we could entertain the possibility we could be guilty. we were there with him so we feel we've been sent to death, too. the despair was tangible and you could feel it. i got back to my office and this amazing incident where the judge who sentenced him to death, robert e lee key. he said, you don't want nothing to have to do with this guy. he was trying to dissuade me from representing mr. mcmillan. with all of those things going on, it became a case that was too irresistible to walk away from. this case to lace in alabama which is where harper lee grew up and wrote "to kill a mockingbird." everyone's read it. it's a beautiful story. the people in monroeville love the story. there's boo radley street, scout

street, atticus bench, all through the community. watching such an incredibly vicious prosecutors and take lace, one of the challenges is that we had narratives in american literature that we celebrate for the wrong reasons. we give out these awards, the atticus finch award, a very famous model that the legal profession has embraced but the truth of it is that tom robinson died in prison. he did not get justice.

i certainly want more for the clients we represent than what atticus was able to get. changing that has been the real challenge. we spent six years trying to get mr. mcmillan off of death row. we got bomb threats at our office and we had people following us creating all kinds of hazards in this space where people celebrate the story of "to kill a mockingbird." >> what a story. what happened to walter mcmillan, the lies that were told, what you showed and just the fight all the way through -- >> these wrongful convictions, as you know, we now have 147 people proven innocent. we have now proved one person innocent which is a shocking rate of error. prosecutorial misconduct are some of the key components and it was certainly what we had

here are the young white woman murdered in downtown monroeville. mr. mcmillan was not someone you would suspect of committing a crime. he was actually a 45-year-old african-american hard worker. his mistake was he was having an interracial affair with the young white woman related to one of the police officers. in alabama until 2000 two the state constitution still prohibited interracial marriage. it was not enforceable after loving versus virginia but we could not get people to take it out of the constitution so these attitudes were very real. after seven months they were getting pressured and you see this pressure into these spaces where they do really unjust things. gun sales increasing, talking about impeaching the sheriff.

they begin to put this case together and got a man to testify against him, coerced the man to testify. they tape recorded the sessions where they were coercing him to testify falsely and even more bizarre they did not destroy the tape. i had a rental car and a tape player. it had an auto reverse. a lot of people here won't know what we are talking about because they've never seen a tape player. we had gone to the court house to pick up the tapes with these interviews. it did not say anything that was helpful to us for this witness and i was getting discouraged. it was quiet and then i heard it clipped. auto reverse turns it over to the other side of the tape and that's where we have the earlier interviews where it said, you want me to frame an innocent man for murder and i don't feel right about that.

[laughter] the police officer said if you don't give us what you want, we will put you on death row, too, and it went on for an hour. we got the witnesses to recant and it was incredibly exciting to finally see this moving forward. there were police officers who had gone to mr. mcmillan's house, bought a fish sandwich, and made notes in their logs indicating they bought a fish sandwich and nothing was turned over. he was convicted in a trial that lasted a day and a half adding a jury verdict of life overridden by the elect to judge. >> jury overwrite is such a terrible thing. we are the state that has the most use of it now. 100-something people have gotten a death sentence as a result of an override.

what's ironic and chilling is judge robert e lee key probably saved mr. mcmillan's life. if he had allowed the jury verdict to stand, we would have never been able to get to his case. we were only working on death penalty cases. the heartbreaking thing is that for every mcmillan there is 10 serving life without parole. for every 10 there is 100 serving a lesser sentence. because he had a death sentence we picked up the case. >> there's the great irony that chances are you'll get more help if you have a death case. all of the people languishing under these long sentences, half of the 6000 people in prison have practically life without parole sentences. half of them. most of them never get a visit, a postcard, or anything. the languishing, it is massive exile. when you think of it that it is 2.3 million people, we are the biggest incarcerate her in the world, one in every 100 adults. do i have this right?

since we've made drugs a felony, i've heard that one in every three young black men aged 19-29 are in the prison system? prison, parole -- >> that's right. >> that's more than apartheid in south africa. >> the really scary statistic that i'm especially terrified of now is that one of three black male babies are expected to go to jail or prison. that wasn't true in the 20th century, 19th century. it became true. we've got tremendous, tremendous work to do to turn this thing around. getting people to just be honest and responsible in the prosecutor's offices and law

enforcement is part of how we do that. we have some bigger challenges as well. >> just to have a little perspective, a white woman of privilege growing up in baton rouge, louisiana, during the days of jim crow. it gives me compassion and working with people because it took so long for me to wake up. when you are in a culture, it gives you eyes and ears. honey, that's the way we do things. it's better for the races to be separate. they like to go and be with their people and we like being with rp old. i go to sacred heart church in baton rouge -- they like to go and be with their own people in me like being with our people. this is symbolic of the oneness in the body of christ am a black kids had to make their first communion separate or my kids

and i never questioned it. we had an african-american couple that worked at the house. allen worked in the house with mama. jesse worked in the yard. daddy and mama were kind. daddy helped them get property, get a house, helped jesse get a job at the refinery, and then they moved on, but never questioned the system. i did not question the system. it's like my whole approach to the gospel. one of my seven words was jesus-follower. there's a way to follow jesus and there is a way to follow jesus. there are a lot of ways. [laughter] pope francis follows jesus, but it's different than what others may be follow, or the bishops or whatever. the institutional church that happens. for me, bryan, it really was an

awakening around the gospel that i did not even really realized i had grown up in privilege. when i had joined the nuns, we still had african-american people helping the sisters. helping the cooks and the cook family yard. i never questioned it. but it was when we began to discuss the civil rights movement and what was happening in liberation theology in latin america about being on the side of poor people, i had always resisted that justice stuff because i thought we should just be spiritual. if people have god, they have everything. my spiritual life was parallel because after all, all you want to do is one day be in heaven with god, right?

i did not even really know poor people. when i woke up to what the gospel is really about thomas going and being with people, when i moved into the st. thomas house in the project, it was like going to a different country. i found out when i did research there were more complaints to the justice department about police brutality in new orleans, louisiana, van and any other city. if you are living in the suburbs, that could be calcutta. you are so removed from the experience. public school kids coming into the adult learning center. juniors that could not read third grade. nobody had health care. people were dying. young men did not know they had high blood pressure and destroying their kidneys. then they are on dialysis the rest of their life. they are so angry and on dialysis. what happens when you don't have

health care? when i first went there, we had a great sister who had started hope house. helen, you don't have to have this plan in your back pocket about how you will eliminate poverty. just be a neighbor and let them teach you. african-american people then became my teachers. one thing i realized, it's not that i was so virtuous. i had just been so cushioned and protect did and given a good education. you begin to know who you are and what gifts you have and then you can have agency in the world. if you don't even know what gifts you have, you think you are stupid. i can't learn that. i'm not smart. i'm not this, i'm not that.

>> it so interesting. i do think we have done this horrible thing in america by not questioning the wrongs we have done and the consequences of those wrongs. >> big-time. >> this country has never been self-critical or self reflective about its mistakes. we do not like to admit mistakes particularly at the national level. because of that homily have created a world where we can be living in crow proximity to tremendous poverty, racism, bigotry, and still be comfortable. we've been taught we are not responsible for the problems we see around us. one of the great challenges for me right now -- and this is a burden -- is how we correct it how we change this narrative. our new project is about race and poverty. we are now really focused on reeducating this country on our history of racial equality.

it has to start with that history. in so many ways, we are still suffering from the legacy of slavery. i talk about my grandmother a lot because she was the daughter of people who were enslaved. her parents were born in virginia in the 1840's and slavery shaped the way she was raised, the way she raised my mother, the way she talked to me. it's not a distant thing from a. when i think about slavery, i think about the fact that we had an institution that was very different than other societies. america became a country that became a slave society. america became a country that became a slave society. we did more than just in the slave people. we created a mythology about the differences between white people and people of color.

we created a religion that tried to reconcile slavery by saying they are not fully human. their characters aren't evolved and we will help them by enslaving them and we made ourselves feel good about the fact we owned all of the slaves. mess, that ideology that sustained slavery was not addressed by the 13th amendment. it was not addressed by the emancipation proclamation. that's why i'm persuaded slavery did not end. it evolved. it turned into something else. we had racial hierarchy that still had that followed you. then make it two decades of terrorism between reconstruction and world war ii that shaped the withof my grandmother terror and violence, lynching and violence sending her friends to the north, the fear and the threat that was constant and persistent. we never talked about the trauma be created by lynching people.

that was followed by the jim crow era and the civil rights movement. we were so focused dealing with these little issues, where you can eat, where you can sleep, where you can drink. we never took time to talk about the big issues, this historical arc of inequality and injustice. it concerns me. because we've never develop the habits of being truthful about what we did wrong during slavery almond during the era of terrorism, did wrong during decades of segregation -- you theot subject people to humiliation of excluding them from education day in and out. you cannot injure them in the ways that segregation injures people and just move on. those injuries will continue. one of my great fears now is talking about the 50th anniversary of a lot of things. i'm worried about the way we are even celebrating.

this the 50th anniversary the civil rights act. then it was the 50th anniversary of the march on washington. it's almost like it is this three-day experience. rosa parks gave up her seat, a march on washington, and then congress signed all of these laws. that,think about it like we are frustrated people are still talking about racial bias. we never committed ourselves to a process of truth and reconciliation. we will not have justice until we tell the truth about what we did to our society, to this country, by tolerating lynching, tolerating segregation. the reason we don't care about one in three black boy is going

to prison because we have not cared about the distinction. we have work that has to be done and we are trying to put up markers to reflect these spaces in america where the slave trade flourished. if you come to montgomery, we love talking about 19th-century history, confederate monuments. we have 59 monuments and high,als, jefferson davis robert e lee high school. 10 months ago, you would find those markers and not a single word about slavery. we went to mark the spaces where the slave trade flourished and we want to talk about lynching. we want to mark the places where there were these mass public spectacle lynchings where the entire town came out and participated. they were not being lynched because they were accused of a crime. a lot of them were lynched for special transgressions because they went to the front door of somebody's house rather than the

back door. they laughed too loudly at a joke. it is all about terrorizing these communities. it and wealk about will continue to run into these problems. >> you point to something really big. i'm reading a book now, lies my teacher taught me. it's the way we've written history. the people's history of the united states, usually the one who writes the history are the victors and not the people who were subjugated. i was just up in seattle on the day that the city council changed columbus day to indigenous peoples day. did you know how long that has taken? whatost people don't know christopher columbus did the people. he cut off children's hands and hit them when they did i bring him gold.

lcwr, nuns in america? nuns on the bus? francis to on pope rescind three people -- papal bulls. you think.mean what it's just unofficial thing. we won't go there. [laughter] basically, what ere indigenous people were considered pagan. if they did not become christians, it was ok to enslave them. then it gave the green light with religion blessing slavery that some people were meant to be. you have that blessing of religion on people. i happen to know some northern cheyenne people who lived in montana and in the sweat lodge.

they can remember their thedparents remembering how calgary would come right along with the missionaries to tear down the sweat lodges because they were pagan. against have struggled that. we don't know it. people who never suffered about it, when i went to saint thomas and began to be educated, there is a great workshop called undoing racism. i remember ron chaise longue, one of the great teachers and civil rights leaders in new orleans talking about institutional racism. whiteackball somebody but is always pure. white is good, even in the language, we have racism. then he would say to us, you may walk in the room and someone does not like what you stand for and they may argue because of your ideas, but you will never walk into a room where people

will treat you funny simply because of the color of your skin. i never thought about those things. i never had even heard of the term white privilege before. >> when we commit ourselves to telling the truth about the history of racial inequality in this country, you get to hear things that you would not otherwise hear. you create a safe space for people to actually give voice to the things that they really want to talk about, like the humiliation and trauma. we have communities where people are suffering from communal post traumatic stress disorder very much related to the trauma of segregation and racial subordination. i had a sweet mom. she was a church musician. my mom was precious to me. i never saw her be anything other than kind and just. she would give anything to anybody. i remember when it was time to get polio shots, we did not have

a doctor in our county but they told everyone to go to this place. the black kids had to line up in the back of this building in november. we were waiting for the nurses to finish giving the polio shots to the white kids and took them longer. by the time they got to us, the nurses were tired. they did not have any of the sugar cubes. they were grabbing these kids in just being rough with them. my sister was in front of me. the nurse grabbed my sister. she had that needle and she just jabbed my sister in the arm and she started screaming. i saw her coming at me and i look at my mom and i started bleeding and screaming. she was raising that needle and i was terrified. i heard all of this glass breaking and i turned around and my sweet mother, my church organ playing mother had gone over to pick up these trays and was just

throwing them against the wall. she was so angry. she was saying stop it, stop it. call the police. i watched these black masters negotiated for my mom safety. don't worry. ofase give shots to the rest our children. had to beg them to continue giving shots. it was traumatizing, hurtful, humiliating. there are thousands of these experiences and moments that have been inherited and all of this suffering follows you around. then you see these big confederate flags and it's like being a holocaust survivor and having to go back and watch swastikas. don't worry about it. just get over it. that indifference intensifies the grief and suffering. then you are told not to be

truthful about it. you will not succeed if you talk truthfully about the burden of discrimination. you will not be successful if you talk honestly about these issues. we have created a country where we are continuing to struggle and suffer. you cannot say, we will have a truth and reconciliation conference, the truth has to make people uncomfortable enough that they want to reconcile themselves to a new relationship. the truth was in front of you. have that truthful moment, but you're right. the church has a lot to explain. they do. the church has been complicit in this dynamic. they have been complicit in the lies. we have a generation of white people are born and thought they were better than other people because they're a white and we have not helped them recover

from that abuse. angola, it is the road that dead ends at the louisiana state penitentiary, 18,000 acres. it used to be a slave plantation. it is still called angola because they used to have slaves from angola. 75% of the prisoners averaged sixth grade education and you see them walking out to the theirwith hoes over shoulder leading them out and you see that nothing has really changed very much. just changed is it right over into imprisonment. book, luther king, that where do we go from here? from chaos to community. what did it mean to say people

set themcipated to free in an agricultural society and not give them land? we would never think of doing a homestead act and saying get out the chamber ofto commerce or something. you had to have land, a mule, be able to work the land. there is something that wants to be able to work. you you get out of slavery and then you move right into what did the plantation owners do? have you seen any of those black codebooks? have you seen them? >> i've seen them. shocking, really. it basically gives you the punishment and crime based on the race of the offender and the race of the victim. rape of a white woman by a black man is a mandatory death sentence. rape of a black woman by a white

man is a $100 fine. codes werehe formerly eliminated, the code persisted. we had the racialized criminal justice system but that's one of the tragedies as well, i think, because we do not understand this legacy. it is not just a southern phenomenon. it was so terrifying that thousands, millions leaving the south, and to the cities of the north. los angeles, oakland, detroit, chicago, boston, new york, philadelphia were populated by african-americans who fled the south not because they were looking for economic opportunity but because they were fleeing terror. >> and being lynched. if anyone knows about terrorism, african-americans. >> older people say, i get so angry when i hear someone talking about how we are dealing with terrorism for the first time after 9/11. we hate it when people say not because we grew up in terror.

as other challenge, i think we have these communities in the north where these populations came here as refugees and exiles from terror and they brought with them all about trauma and stress and they were never made to feel like they belong to year. we moved them around in our cities. when something becomes economically viable, we moved them away because we've never seen them as belonging. that harms us all over this country so we have much to do to change this narrative. i think what we're talking about is how do you change the narrative? how do you get people to think and talk differently about these issues? part of the reason we are putting up these monuments is we want people to think and talk differently about the legacy of slavery, the civil rights era and not simply celebrate these grand marches but reflect on what we did by segregating and humiliating.

i remember being shocked. i learned a lot through "dead being peopleand who were executed in how the whole criminal justice system worked. it shocked me profoundly. one of the things, when you write a book, you do research. so i learned about police retaliate, more complaints than the justice department but when slavery was abolished and the 13th amendment, it was except for those who were in prison or indentured. it had not been abolished completely in this country. amazed.een just the racism in the supreme court. there was an extensive study done in georgia about how when a

death sentence is given, overwhelmingly it corresponds to the victim is white. when the victim is black, it's barely a blip on the radar screen. i saw that when i was living in saint thomas. if one of the people in saint thomas was killed who were lucky if you can find five lines on page 30 and almost always it was formulaic drug deal went bad. when a white person was killed theon the front pages on paper. the picture of the person. i want you to talk about this because you know about the mccleskey decision of the supreme court. did i get this right? it's clear that race plays a role in the application of the death penalty but it would be too costly in the criminal justice system to remedy it? it really is astonishing.

you're absolutely right in its wired think this narrative is desperately needed to change. it's also connected to the 13th amendment. it does exempt people with criminal convictions from the prohibition against slavery. i have been talking about this with my class and my students. we are so outraged. why would we tolerate enslaving anybody? we would probably have great difficulty removing that exception to the 13th amendment. we think the legacy of racial inequality means we should not the tolerating slavery in any context, we get pushed back. it's because we have allowed this idea to emerge, which has bedded mass incarceration, that when people are accused of crimes, we get to do whatever we want to do. until thele in angola 21st century were not only going out but they were required to pick cotton without trying to

get parole for people who were .uveniles sentenced some of our clients are having a getting parole because they had disciplinary is because they refuse to go out to the fields and pick cotton. get two cents an hour. the most you can there -- the most you can get there after 20 years is $.21 per hour. interesting conversation. the supreme court says in 1972 we will strike down the death penalty because it's arbitrary and the scrum and a tory. 87% were black men convicted of raping white women. the court said no more death penalty. they did not say cruel and unusual punishment. -- he was struck down because it

was cruel and discriminatory. we will not presume that the death penalty will continue to operate in a racially biased manner. look, it's been four years. nothing radical has happened. you'll still have a racially biased system. you're going to have to show us that the modern death penalty operates in this way and that's what gave rise to mccleskey versus camp where we came back with the data that showed your 11 times more likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white, 22 times more likely if the victim is black, no matter what combination of variables. >> and there were 70 variables. youven george's model made 4.3 times as likely and the supreme court said two things. if we deal with racial bias in the administration of the death penalty, it will be just a

matter of time until they talk about racist barriers for other sentences,iminal race disparity for property crimes and other types of crimes. justice renin, i will never forget reading it. he ridicules the court's analysis. the court is reached this decision because it is the fear of too much justice. in many ways, he was right. it was the second thing they said that i remember as a young lawyer reading and almost wanting to stop practicing law. the second thing they put in that decision, a certain quantum of bias and discrimination is in our judgment inevitable. they use that word to characterize that result. i've been to that court and argued a bunch of cases and i have my on little ritual. i stand outside word says equal justice under law and i have to believe it but there is something profoundly

inconsistent with conceding the inevitability of race bias in the death penalty and being committed to equal justice under law. >> it so bad. >> i am a product of brown versus board of education. i grew up where black children could not go to public schools and i remember when the lawyers came in to our community and opened up the public schools. the courts could have said in 1955 that racial segregation in education is inevitable. they don't want their kids going to go with black kids. if we order equal education, the conflict will be big, but a different court with a different narrative, with a different vision said it was not inevitable. they said it was an constitutional. if they had not said that, i would not be sitting here. yet this court in our era is talking about the inevitability. i think mccleskey is the dred scott of our time. will make you very sad

and depressed and angry before it's going to get that her. -- before it will get better. . am astounded in my second book "the death of innocents" i go head-to-head with justice scalia. he goes duck hunting with my brother, [laughter] >> that is what i mean about the jesus thing. [laughter] they just wrote a book on anthony scalia. book, i talk about how he calls himself part of the machinery of death. it without blinking. s well at night. well

he spelled it out. 13 interpretation of romans that god has entrusted the civil authority or government with the right to exercise god's wrath. on evildoers. the more christian a country is, the more we believe in the death penalty because we know we should be punished for our sins. the reason europe has gone for this universal declaration of human rights and does not pass the death penalty is because europe has followed freud more than jesus. here is what i was astounded with. the book brought out his argument with a affirmative action and why affirmative action -- i guess it must've been in the 1960's and early 1970's -- he is reasoning.

he said, my grandfather came as an immigrant to this country and worked very hard and my father worked very hard. the children have worked very hard. i am not responsible for slavery in this country. it is like our people came and made something of ourselves. it is that disconnect, and you arguments allking the time, white of these people go out and get jobs. write when i went back to the suburbs and i hear, don't they know they should keep their children in school? don't they -- why don't they get jobs? why don't they hold their families together? to tell to find a way stories about what happens to you when you are struggling against all this. >> that is right.

the absence of shame is the reason why people feel comfortable elevating a narrative of individuals like that. you don't feel any shame about what your grandfather did or your grandfather did. you just feel pride. the way they were able to succeed -- because we are not telling the truth about how our great-grandfathers were lynching people. how are great great-grandfathers were enslaving people. how they were benefiting from exclusion and the lack of competition by excluding people on the basis of race. they were living at the time when they did not have to deal with the complexities of racially integrated workforce. we don't deal with shame very well. we go to the pride narrative, which is what we're doing with our civil rights stories. that is why we -- it sounds harsh. >> just to acknowledge.

>> you have to shame this country into confronting the idiocy of that kind of story. because we have not force people to do it. we suffer. the united states supreme court two years before the 50th anniversaries that we don't need the voting rights act anymore. i case brought by a state in alabama, where they never said we want black people voting. they've been saying that they do not want black people voting since black people first arrived on this continent. never been a time when alabama says anything other than , we do not want to voting. they were saying it with all these different strategies. we did not say we hate black people for a real long time and we should now get the benefit of not having these restrictions of protections. it is a very twisted narrative. i see the same thing in the criminal justice system. i see the same thing in the

death penalty. we have these innocent people that you and i know who are exonerated and we do not own up to what we did. we try to kill them for 33 years. we don't taking a responsibility for that. we have to create a way of talking to people that i think fosters a more honest awareness of our obligations to be a little more humble. we have to develop a sense of humility in this country. i go to germany and i like what i see. countryhat it is a soberly trying to reflect on the legacy of the holocaust. there is an awareness that we can't go back, we can't repeat. in this country, we don't do that. that allows arrogant people, arrogant judges, to say prideful things that add to the injury. it is hurtful to hear some of these narratives. we have to change that narrative , but still be hopeful. you're right, this conversation will make you discouraged, make

you worry. i think one of the great challenges we have -- and this is why the church should be more vibrant and out there leading -- is we still have to find ways to be helpful. i am persuaded that in justice prevails where hopelessness assist. do tois nothing they can better advance -- in that incarceration. to have a conversation about what it means to helping the poor. when they do that, they allow themselves to get comfortable with these realities. we have to make the we have to be willing to make them hopeful. >> you know -- i have accompanied six people to execution -- here's some hope. people are good. it's not like they've really

thought this through and have come out racist or saying, we have to kill the criminals. they have not thought very much about it. my hope -- i don't know i can still be doing this if i was getting out there and going into all these places, texas, alabama, everywhere and people rigid, closed, and races. they do want to reflect on what we are doing in this library tonight, this community discourse, where we are taking something and reading about it, talking about it, digging deeper into it. growth, inf communal terms of understanding who we are, counters, don't you think, the individualism. when people do something wrong, we say we have to hold that individual accountable. is orot good like europe

other countries. they asked, what did we do wrong? we blame the individual and publish the individual. >> that is right. that is why contextualizing is key. -- and breaking my heart my clients have gotten younger and younger, and we are now doing this whole effort around children and what motivated us to get involved in this is that the age of our countries getting .ounger we have children that are born into violent families. they are born into violent neighborhoods. they go to violent schools. they are chased by running games. violent gangs. we get involved by jumping on this kids pick we call them violent offenders. we beat them up and want to throw them away. the inability to recognize what that violence has done to them, the inability, unwillingness, to talk about what that trauma has

done, what it means to live in a community where you're dealing with violence and poor schools and threats and abuse and violence all the time, that in difference to that is what will to be ashamed of. we've got to find a way to contextual relies all that. children, 13 and 14 without parole, they want change. they are hungry for guidance and nurturing and all those things that all children want. to provided toss them is a reflection of the way in which these narratives have emerged. people in the 1980's talking about how some children are not children, they look like, they talk like kids, but these are not children. these criminologists say they are super predators. we supe use that term to

generalize, then we turned it into law. we lower the age of trying children as adults. we created a world where we now have 250,000 people in adult jails and prisons who are convicted of crimes when they were children. we put 10,000 children in adult jails and prisons. we have some 3000 kids who have been sentenced to die in prison. what is a country like america doing when it sends 13-year-old and 14 your children to die in prison? the united states and somalia are the only two countries in the world that have not signed the covenant on the rights of the child. we will not sign it because of prevents the death penalty. we ought to be ashamed. for us to necessary demand something more hopeful from our government than that they just throw kids away. schoolhouse to

jailhouse pipelines. we've got to demand more. we have to do it with that kind of hope that all of these -- it'sonary leaders not pie in the sky stuff. the kind of folk you need to create just is an orientation of spirit.e we need hopeful people to go to those hopeless places and be a witness. >> yes. >> my favorite story in this book is when we were finally -- had all this -- it was finally time to go to court. so black community is demoralized by what they had seen and what they have experienced -- i was shocked when we got to court the first day. all of these people of color showed up. they all came into the courtroom.

we show the tapes and the witnesses admitted it was false. when i went home that night, i remember seeing hope growing in that community. i came back the next day and i saw this people of color sitting outside the courtroom. i could not understand it. i went over to the community leaders and asked them why they were outside the courtroom. they said they were not allowed inside the courtroom. i walked over to the deputy sheriff and said i want to go into the courtroom. he said you can't commit. i said i think i have to come in. they open the door. they changed everything around and put that metal detector inside the door. behind that metal detector they put a german shepherd that was just sitting there. it was half filled with people that the prosecution brought in.

i was so angry and went to the judge and said, this is not fair that you did not let by people come into the court. >> he said, well your people to set to get here earlier tomorrow. i was angry. i went to the community leaders and said, it's not fair. they said, that's ok, we will be here earlier tomorrow. they started identifying people to the witnesses. they identify this older black williams, we want you to be one of the represent is in court today. -- one of the representatives in court today. she had a compact. she took it out. i watched her. she walked over to the door. i was inside the courtroom. i saw her walk through the door with such pride and dignity. she held her head up high and walked to that metal detector, and then she saw that dog. she saw that dog, you could see the fear paralyze her. she was trembling.

i saw her shoulders sag in tears started running down her face. i stood there watching her. i heard her groan loudly and watched her turn around as she ran up the courtroom, a painful thing. other people made it into the court that day. i had forgotten all about it. when i was going to my car tonight, she was still sitting outside. bad.aid, i feel so i let everybody down today. i said, it's ok. it's not your fault. they should not have done what they did. she said, no, i was meant to be in the courtroom. i couldn't do it. i failed. she started crying. i said, it's ok. you should not worry about this. she said, no, i was meant to be in the courtroom. then she said, when i saw that dog, all i could think about was soma, alabama. i remembered how we march for the right to vote. i wanted to move, i tried to move, but i couldn't do it. she walked away with tears running down her face. the next day, i went to court.

when she got home that night, she did not talk to anybody. they could see her play all night long. she said, lord, i cannot be scared of a dog. she called the community leaders and said she wanted to be a witness again. she wanted to be a representative again on the trip from the house to the courthouse. she kept saying, i ain't scared of no dog. ien she got to the courtroom, was inside. they still have the metal detector and the dog, and i could see her standing there. she was saying, i ain't scared of no dog. i watched this beautiful old dark woman walk through that metal detector, walk up to that dog, and said, i scared and no dog. [laughter] she said don on the front row the courtroom and turn to me. she said, i am here. [laughter] i looked at her. i said, it's so great to see you here. a few minutes went by, she said it loud, you didn't hear me. i am here.

i said, i do see you here. i never will forget it. the judge walked in. everybody stood up. everybody sat back down. remain standing.de standin she said, i am here. it became clear to me to what she was saying. she was not saying i'm physically present. she was saying, i may be old, i may be poor, i may be black, but have a visionse i of justice that compels me to stand up to in justice. that is what we need. you may have to say on that a lawyer. i'm from new york. i don't know this. i don't know that. i'm here. i don't know if there any words more powerful they can make a difference in the lives of condemn people, poor people, marginalized people, then when some of you with a heart full of hope comes and stands next to them and says, i am here.

sometimes that is all we have to do. [applause] story -- i, that think it's great. -- whatthat that story do you think, brian, if we turn it over to people. the story is so iconic and says so much. i just want to say this about hope and the must turn it over to you. you get to get in the conversation. universitieslot of and high schools. young people do want to get in there and they do want to make things different. --hink we have to find ways not just to teach, but we have to find a way to build bridges across classes and neighborhoods so that young people can be with each other to sort these things

out. >> absolutely. >> there is so much separation. >> yes. that is the final part of that. for a lot of the work we do -- you and i have to do things, which it were honest about, really uncomfortable. to go to some of these places. it's not convenient. we are not unique. what we are doing is something that anyone can do, everyone can do, and i guess my hope is that we can find a community of people who will choose to do uncomfortable things, people who celebrate the consequences of what happens when courageous people do courageous things. the truth is that we need everybody. we need them to the courageous. we all have to some times stand when others are sitting. well have to speak when others are quiet. doing something uncomfortable is the legacy that most of us have

inherited if we are concerned about social justice and human rights. we need that from everybody, from people coast-to-coast, and sometimes uncomfortable thing means it will get a little challenging. you pick up some cots, bruises, we scars, but it is in that honor what it means to be fully human. i'm going to tell one more story and then we can open it up. i have been thinking about this all day long. you have this incredible ministry where you have gone into difficult places, you stood next to condemned people who really just needed somebody to hold onto them, people who were abandoned, people who were forgotten. you go all over the country and you do amazing advocacy. it has been an honor for me to have this time. we had a chance to share each other. this is one of my favorite people on the planet earth. i mean that.

i want to say this to you and then we can open it up. >> i want to say one thing. [applause] >> that's right. i remember being in a church, giving a talk, and this older man was in the back of the church. i did not know how he was reacting to the talk when i was giving it. he sat there staring at me. he had the stern look on his face. , remember worrying about him because he was looking real stern. when i finish the talk, all the young kids came up and i said my things to them. this older man in a wheelchair with sitting back there. he got this little boy to will him up towards me. he got behind this wheelchair and push this winter up to me and this older man came up at me. i did not know what he was gone a do. >> issa, do you know what you are doing? i took a step back. he said, do you know what you

are doing? i mumbled something. he said, i'm going to take you what you're doing. he said, you are beating the drum for justice. it moved me. he said, you keep beating the drum for justice. he grabbed me by the jacket and pulled me into the chair. he said, come on him going to show you something. he said, you see this car. i got that scar trying to register people to vote in mississippi in 1964. rightd, you see this cut here. i got that cut in greene county, alabama trying to get people to register to vote. i got that mark during the children's car seat in birmingham, alabama. i will never forget him saying to me, people look at me and they think i'm some old man in a wheelchair covered with cots and bruises and scars. he said, you know what, these are not my cots, bruises, scars. he said these are my medals of honor.

i know you go to difficult places. i know you have exhausted yourself beating the drum for justice. i know you have been cut and bruised and scarred, but i will you that for people like me , all i see is a nun with a heart full of love and a commitment to justice. it is a real privilege. [applause] >> thank you. i am writing a book. it is my spiritual journey. it is like the prequel that led to dead man walking and the experience of being with people who were executed. i think of it in terms of fire. something that happens to us that sets us on fire for justice. the beginning of my book is

going to go like this, they killed a man with fire one night. they strapped him in a wooden chair and pump electricity through his body. until he was dead. his killing was a legal act because he had killed. no religious leaders contested the killing that night, but always there. i saw it. i saw with my own eyes. what i saw set my soul and five, a fire that burns in me still. here is an account of how i came to be in the killing timber that and the spiritual currents that pulled me there. book,ld be when we reader when we meet a person, that part of us that knows we were made for more. to do something

significant in life for justice, and not just agree to be able to bask in what we have been given, but to be able to be able to catch on fire. it is the greatest gift of all. when you catch on fire, brian, you know this, we have to do what we do, not in the sense of being coerced, but it's integrity. i must. i must do this. when we are on fire, we do what we must do and carried through to wherever it will lead. one of the spiritual values is we do what we do, this is gandhi -- mother teresa said something like this to -- we do what we do because it is the right thing, a thing of justice, and we don't seek the fruits of our actions. we do it and turn it over and then let it be picked up. that is the word i would like to

say. , and wea man on fire are part of it, but it is bigger than us. you fill yourself, don't you? you feel yourself on the don't you? the man on death row in louisiana is going on 23 years. he was totally innocent. he was totally railroaded on the eyewitness of one person who put him there. i see the courage of that man. every time i come away from that death row cell, i come away with courage to fight because he is facing every day that sell knowing he is innocent and striving for his justice and for history. incredibly inspiring. there is nothing that may energize you more than find a prison and go to visits somebody. find someone to support.

you will be surprised how it will change you. you will learn about courage. you will learn about that orientation. i remember when i was a little boy growing up and i played in the church, some of the poorest people would come in and they would give these testimonials about all of their struggles and all of their suffering, and they would tell all these heart aching stories of what happened to them just as we. they would end by looking at the congregation and saying, but of course i would not take anything for my journey now. i would not let that turned me around. that is the great power in being proximate to these challenges. yes, they break you, but they also push you to see great things. they make you want to do things that you would not otherwise want to do. that is very exciting. >> we got to turn it over. [laughter] thank you, brian.

>> -- good one. [laughter] [indiscernible] >> we will sign books for you afterwards. if you only have money for one brian's book.'s know you are happy about pope francis's recent statements about abolishing the death penalty. this is officially been the church of a long time. the predecessors were not outspoken about it. i wonder if you see this as a lasting change or a flash in the pan. you see this is something that -- church will be more looking forward? what is your prediction along those lines?

>> it's great that the pope spoke out. we are the church. we learned that in vatican ii. we are the church. we are the democracy. the supreme court is the supreme court. we are the people. the same thing is for being in the church. the bubbles that have been coming up on this have been coming up a long time, and catholics have made great headway because we have been working are you know what off to educate people like mad in the 1998,ecause catholics in 78%, look how high this is, 78% of the country supported the death penalty. with catholics, it was 80% it's bad. . it's bad. they are getting it. we have been educating the you know what out of people. it is the people. , it's not justs

one big bubble that comes up in that pot. it starts with little bitty bubbles down at the bottom and the bubbles keep rising, like we are doing tonight. the same is true for the catholic church. >> one of the challenges with leadership is that our political leaders have been intimidated into not doing honest about a lot of these issues. you can't find politicians from either party -- mass incarceration was not a single party phenomenon. they were competing with each other to be tough on crime. you will not hear politicians use words like rehabilitation, restoration, redemption, correction when it comes to dealing with people in jail. we have to change the political culture and make it safe for our leaders, church leaders, political leaders, community leaders to be honest about the need for more compassion. to be honest about the need to do something that is more just, more muscl merciful.

leaders have become intimidated by what happens. i'm excited about what we saw in california in 2012 -- a public referendum on the death penalty. legislature get the to eliminate these mandatory sentences in california there were treating to over incarceration. it was the people who passed a referendum by a landslide in every county that ended the sentences for violent offenders. it was these people who almost passed a law that would have abolished the death penalty. in 2012, largest different america. it is possible for our leaders to help us, but it is urgent and essential for us to demand more for our leaders. i hope we don't wait for our popes and presidents and our elected officials to lead discharge. we have to stand up and start moving and make them follow us if they will not lead. >> anybody else? paul?

>> how do we do it? >> i think there are some specific things. , andve elections coming up i guarantee you that at the national level most of us do not know whether the people running for office believe there are too many people in prison or this is the right number or we want more. we don't talk about these issues. we can eliminate -- reduce the prison population by the to percent in the next eight years by three civil strategies. if we convert -- in this world drug entity as a health care issue rather than a criminal justice issue and get the people the treatment they need, not only will we help families and communities, but we will bring down the prison population dramatically. prison population spending in 1980 was 6 billion. last year, it was 80 billion. we bring the prison population down by 50%, that is $40 billion we can use for health and human

services, education, and other things. that is one thing we can do. the second thing we can do is to become ansist that we part of the global community. as we stop putting our heads in the hand and think we are above everyone else -- it is shameful we have not done that. what will come behind that are reforms that will make a profound difference. finally, what we have to do is demand from our elected leaders that they not simply be tough on crime, but they be smart, that they care about public safety and what we included public safety. things like the health of our poorest and the quality of education and the opportunity for people to be safe and secure in the neighborhoods and communities. we have to ask the questions. sometimes it does not take more than someone saying, do we have too many people in jail or prison's? let me hear what you have to say about that. about these talk issues.

here's what happened in these executions were people were being tortured, suffering. should we stop? should we stop? do we have a criminal justice system that is unfair to the poor. she we do something different? is it to racist? those are the questions that we have asked on the profound human rights issues that is becoming a dominant issue for our society. all i can say is, i am so happy -- thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] ♪

>> sunday on q and a, "washington post" fact checker his biggest pinocchios of 2014 awards, given politicianings and police department groups he believes made the biggest false claims this past year. >> democrats tend to get a little more upset at them, because i they they bought into liberal mediae and they think that the media is on their side. republicans, they firmly believe in the myth of the liberal media, so they kind of expect that they're going to be, oh, it's a reporter from the "washington post" calling, toy're not going to be fair me. i hope that over the last four done enough back and forth, treated both parties

with equal fervor that people to, you know, grudgingly say, okay, you're someone we can do business with. i know that the senate majority is affiliated with harry reid, they stopped questions midway through the campaign season. felt they were not getting a fair shake from me. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern pacific, on c-span's q and a. a conversation with reporter sharl book, aboutbout her intimidation and harassment in obama's washington. on "washington journal." with sharyl attkisson, author, investigative journalist. new book came out in november, "stonewalled: my fight for truth

against the forces of obstruction, intimidation, and harassment in obama's washington." remind viewers why you left cbs this past year and why you wrote this book. guest: the short version is there's nothing left for me to do. we specialized in investigative reporting and in the last couple years those stores had a difficult if not impossible time off and getting on cbs news, so i felt there was no point. host: you wrote the book why? guest: a lot of people had expressed to me -- fellow journalists as well as people in the public -- that they sensed something was going on culturally in journalism and with the news. we would share reflections on what we thought was happening and a trance and i thought it would be a topic of interest. host: you wrote in the book that what is even more dangerous is today, government and big corporations might as well be one and the same." so it is not just what is going

on at the networks but it is larger than that. explained. guest: it is intertwined, in my view. corporations have co-opted many congressional committees as well as members of congress with campaign contributions and other links and ties. to some degree they have co-opted some in the media with corporate and advertising interests. in my views -- congress is not always doing a good job at oversight. the presidency is not doing a good job in his oversight function. what we have now is politics and corporations in some respects are allowed to put out when i call propaganda largely unchecked because of oversight roles not being fulfilled. host: what about the other side of it, the consumer, the consumer of investigative journalists? --there not an update the an appetite there? guest: i think there is a huge

appetite for it and that is what was somewhat baffling for us at cbs and other places as well. people liked the watchdog reporting we do. they don't like much about the news media these days, polls show, but they do like that role, and people at a hard time figuring out why at the one hand the public has a thirst for this information but on the other hand we are having so much, getting it published and on television. host: what did you hear from network executives about the pieces you would bring forward? our viewers are familiar with your work on fast and furious, benghazi, etc. guest: it depends on the time period. the management changed over the years. furious, thend management at the time were very excited about these stories and encourage them and all the way up the line, even to the time i cbs, including the top executives at cbs news, were very complementarity and encouraging of my work. but that did not always translate to the broadcast,

which had different managers and appetites and interests, especially the last couple years. host: as you pitched a story, brought it up, they would ask for what, more, more, more, and then what? guest: the lights would go off. you would go 100 miles an hour practically overnight to zero and it was hard to tell whether interest would go from full course to nothing -- wider interest would go from full course to nothing. we would wonder and speculate and we were not privy to the decisions but it became a pattern, amongst organize push me that formed to some reason certain managers would decide let's not go there anymore after on the one hand telling me initially that they wanted the stories and they like to the stories and wanted as many as we could do on that topic. host: what are you doing out? guest: since march i've been freelancing for a number of organizations. i have not wanted to work for anybody full-time so when people would offer me jobs i would say

"how about buying a story from time to time? my one requirement was that they couldn't do what i felt that some yes -- certainly not most people at guest, but some managers had done in the past myple years, which is in view skew the story can make it come out the way they want instead of the way the facts tell the story. you don't have to publish a story every few but you can't change the essence of the truth of it. you cannot put your personal interest into it. i have had good luck with a number of outlets that have been happy to take those stories. host: there is a market there. do you think that is where investigative journalism is headed? guest: i can'tguest: figure out what is next. i think there is something new being bo of all of this. rne it is not television news are people watching the evening newscasts, 30 minutes of that everyday. it is probably people hunting

around on the web for different sources that they trust or sources on a particular topic and i don't know what will be the paradigm that is new out of this. host: we're talking to sharyl attkisson, her book "stonewalled ," in your reporting over the years for cbs. currently still in investigative journalist. host: what is it about the obama administration in particular? had soi think they have many controversies that they have worked so hard to controversialize reporting of. they have been more aggressive, most journalists would agree, and tried to -- in trying to manage information and controversialize news outlets

that publish these stores, attacking whistleblowers inside federal agencies that there to tell the truth. like i say, the news outlets that have the audacity to report it. they have worked very hard to control the message and controversialize the stories and people who report them and it is a more aggressive effort than what we have seen from other administrations we have covered. but to be sure, other administrations have tried to manage the message. host: so how does it compare to the bush years and continues before that? -- clinton years before that? guest: journalists who have more experience than i have have come to a consensus, including reporters from "the new york times," "the washington post," "usa today," they have said that this is the worst administration for transparency and press freedom that they have dealt with, and that has been my expense as well, not to say that the others have been a piece of cake, because administrations and the federal bureaucracy want to keep information from the

public and manage the message. each one has gotten worse than the last that i have covered. host: is there, though, a line where the administration, when it comes to top-secret and classified information, like with benghazi fast and furious, where they cannot default certain information? guest: sure. the president on the day he came to office said that he ordered agencies to air on the side of disclosure and all most all information gathered on behalf be publiclic should information with exceptions in cases like national security like you are talking about. but what we have seen from this administration and others as reductionsely invoke and intentions or even ignore freedom of information requests entirely for illegitimate reasons, and then when you go to court to try to fight back, when you find when some of the documents are ordered release, they never should have been withheld, there was no basis for the withholding, these are not

national security secrets. recently some fast and furious document's were released after a couple of years. the president had invoked executive privilege to keep them secret and there's nothing in most of them that i've seen that would justify executive privilege or any kind of privilege to withhold these from subpoena. documentsembarrassing to the administration but they certainly are public documents, as have been acknowledged by their release. that is improper use of executive privilege and improper use of withholdings and reactions of freedom of information law. host: have you seen a story on the networks? guest: i have not. there has been some good print printgood investigative work, on the misuse of the freedom of information act, not just this administration, but past ones as well. they have perverted the law that was intended to facilitate the release of public information into something that helps them obstruct and delay the

information. the federal agencies have done this, the administration has done this. the law is basically useless from the standpoint of a news basis. if you are try to get information out to the public on a timely basis, you can't give that appeared host up. host: milton's first in philadelphia, democratic caller. caller: hello? host: you are on the air. caller: happy holidays. i hope you will make my point. as far as you, sharyl attkisson, i think you are a right-wing person because you appear on fox could where was your administration of the bush and administration, especially when it came to the iraq war and of the monday -- and wmd's? i didn't see you do investigative reports of halliburton and these other things into motion ministers but you are going after the obama administration and i think you are biased. guest: thank you for your comment. i did investigate halliburton

specifically contract fraud under the bush and administration quite heavily so you must've missed that. i want an emmy award for investigating the bush administration's bait and switch on the tarp bailout program and many aspects of the bush administration. a lot of people pick up on my book more often recently -- my work more often recently and didn't bother to look at the history. maybe they read this information and propaganda that has been went out but i am certainly an equal opportunity journalist -- i've been called a liberal so many times in the past now and i tend to be called conservative now. i don't mind, anyway people want to call me. but if you read my research of my work in the past you might change your opinion, you might not. host: your recent stories have prompted people to call you a conservative. conservative outlets picked up your reporting. picked up your reporting on cdc numbers on

ebola. are you concerned when the heritage foundation invites you to talk or you appear with the heritage foundation that that solidifies for people their judgment of the? at all.ot i don't care how people choose to judge me anymore than people who appear on cnn or other outlets apparently care how they are judged. people say "i see you on fox." well, i have been on abc "this ,eek" and al jazeera and c-span but they like to talk about fox because the propaganda has been -- out to fulfilling ou fulfill a narrative. there are liberal or nonpartisan but they wantfox this narrative to be fulfilled that if i am on fox in must mean i am conservative come even though non-conservatives are on fox news. when you talk about recent stories i have done, that is not the whole story. i want in any award last year for investigating republican freshman fundraising and hypocrisy of republicans who

came to office saying they would change business in washington but we tracked them down to key largo where they were hobnobbing like old-time politicians with lobbyists and big donors. perfectly legal, yet a seeming contradiction to the thing that got them into office. i've maintained investigations on both sides of the aisle but when bush was in office, more of the investigations of government people would say that to that president and of course no more investigate -- of course now more investigations into government lead to president obama. host: who is they? say you are want to a conservative because if it's a story line. guest: primarily interests trying to protect the administration and certain democratic interest in making the use of bloggers such as media matters to print talking points, many of them false and incorrect. but they get picked up and put out into the lexicon of the

daily talk and some people, if they don't do their own research , may see those stories and may indeed think about that is true, which i don't blame them. that is part of the game. there is been a really strong and concerted propaganda effort metry to controversialize and paint me as a conservative or someone who has a vested interest so that people who don't listen to the facts on the stories, some of which i think are very important and have really important public implications. host: we will go to our line for republicans. al in rhode island. kudos tos. attkisson, you. i've got to tell you that such a lack of investigative journalism in this country, it is really disgusting. your problem -- cnbc and all these other channels -- is the secular lefties. they couldn't handle the stories you were putting out. they didn't want you to have the truth come out. that is really what the problem is. they controlled obama, obama

does their bidding, that is who put them in office. that is really what the story is about. here is your next book -- you've got a group of people who prosper and after they have that, it is power, and then it is control. they have control obama from start to finish, that is who is keeping him in office but you keep up the good work because you are really exceptional and thank you. host: all right, al. sharyl attkisson. guest: i don't think there was a question there but i hear his opinion. host: what you think about the relationship between the media and the media executives? you wrote about it in your book and the obama administration, the ties there. guest: i didn't really talk about it in the book but i'm aware in washington, d.c., many in the media have ties to government. i don't see that as the primary problem. exist andthose ties can be problematic and should be disclosed wh t