to avoid politicization of the human rights matter, especially when we know these of the some massivens where violations violations have been committed. and continue to be committed. the international committee has not even had reasons to explain this very much. there have been errors committed in the past other counsel in taking hasty decisions based on certain reports. the report indicates that the situation of human rights in the dpr k has existed throughout the entire country off history. -- entire history of the country. if this is the case, we would

ask why it has not garnered international attention since then. to conclude, we call for the countries within influence over thedpr k to clarify allegations of massive human rights violations against the stargate --e deep in the dpr k, and encouraging members to have free access to and to leave the country. along these lines, we call upon dprk to make a direct and with thealogue countries of the region. i now return to my role as president of the security council. the security council has .oncluded

of this agendan item and the meaning is now adjourned. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> all this week, we have been showing you selections from 10 years of our queue and a program. join us later today at 7:00 eastern as we bring you a conversation with the late syndicated column -- columnist robert novak. he talked about 50 years of reporting in washington. that is at 7 p.m. here on c-span. and right after that at 8:00, president obama and the first family. performancesusical

and a reading by the first lady of "a night before christmas." here is a brief look. obama,president, mrs. melia and sasha, and the robinsons. >> happy christmas. is everybody ready to calm down? we're going -- to count down? we are going to start from five. i want to say thanks, first of all, to tom and rita. we hope they are ready. we hope everyone watching it home is getting in the christmas spirit. we will start commenting down -- counting down right now. let's do it. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. [cheers] ♪ ["joy to the world"] ♪

best and we will show you the christmas tree lighting ceremony with congress beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern. and joining us later for a look at how religion impacts decision-making in this report, by theists are hosted museum here in washington. here in washington. collects -- >> holiday festivities start at 10:00 a.m. ofc-span with the leading the national christmas tree followed by the white house christmas decorations with first lady michelle obama and the lighting of the capitol christmas tree. and just after 12:30 p.m., celebrity activists talk about their causes. and at 8:00, supreme court justice samuel alito and former florida governor jeb bush on the bill of rights and founding fathers. on c-span2 at 10:00 a.m.

eastern, venture into the art of good writing with steven pinker. and at 12:30 p.m., jill lepore searches the secret history of wonder woman. at 7 p.m., author pamela paul and others talk about their .eading habits and then on c-span three at 8:00 a.m. eastern, the fall of the berlin wall with c-span footage of president bush and bob dole john kennedy from and ronald reagan. and the first ladies fashion choices and how they represented the styles of the time in which they lived. tom brokaw on more than 50 years of reporting on world events. that is christmas day on the c-span networks. for a complete schedule, go to www.c-span.org. >> a look now at the death penalty and the u.s. criminal justice system. public interest lawyer brian stephenson is the author of a new book out this past october

called "just mercy, a story of justice and redemption. the director of equal initiatives that down with a sisteration with him and ellen gray sean, who is the author of "dead man walking. this took place at the library. -- the new york public library. it is about 90 minutes. [applause] >> good evening. my name is paul and i'm the director of public rogue ramsey here at the new york a look library known as live from the new york public library. my goal is to make the lions roar and if i'm successful to make this institution levitate. [speaking french] " to open a school is to close a prison." " to open a school is to close a prison." for helping to secure sister wish toejean tonight, i

thank anthony romero, executive director of the american civil liberties union. thank you, anthony, very much. anduld not be more honored pleased to be welcoming to the stage at the criminal justice system, bryan stevenson and "just mercy: a story of justice and sisterion -- helen prejean. [applause] attention,g to my the extraordinary new book, julie grell, the publisher to thank. last time we worked together, she brought to my attention "decoded" by jay-z. it was an extraordinary night as i feel this one will be. julie, thank you. thank you also london king. might i also thank my wife, barbara, for rightfully insisting that bryan stevenson be live from the new york public

library tonight. thank you, barbara. i recorded a reading aloud and with passion past passages to meet from "just mercy. somit me to quote if you that you understand and hear before the conversation how his work is both excellent and essential. incidentally, he will be signing his book after the event as will sister helen prejean. please do get a copy of "just mercy." and "dead man walking" which benefit the ministry against the death penalty. in just mercy, stevenson writes, "my work with the poor and incarcerated has persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth.

the opposite of poverty is justice. in another passage, bryan writes in theis grandmother 1880's in virginia. when i visited her, she would hug me so tightly i could barely breathe. after a little while, she would 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. --ds bending a few weeks weeks, heing a few met the director of the s pdc.

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. 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. 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 the more iunishment, appreciate that we all need mercy, we all need justice and perhaps we all need some measure .f unmerited grace for the last seven years or so, give aasked my guests to 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. 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 , jesus follower, activist, sister, storyteller, writer, traveler. bryan stevenson -- broken by injustice, condemnation, but hopeful. it is an honor to welcome to the new york public library sister and bryanean stevenson. [laughter] --[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, welcoming the people of -- waking the people up. 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 good.nding for is so 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

give mee initiative to space to do things and it's on it's onrollers -- and their shoulders i get to do the things that i can do. see, ings that we believe if more people saw them they would feel differently about some of these issues. yoursolutely following 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. 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.

out aboutget the word 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 -- 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 invited toa are not the big cocktail parties. they are not respected for what they do. scum?enting that 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. 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. 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 follows in danger that 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. attorneys,f defense 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 hostels -- 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, , people in the northwest, that's a different culture from new orleans, louisiana, up -- 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 manyou see where they have electric chairs sitting on the desk. we had an attorney general and hisfor governor 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 fear andhe policies of 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 end kabul -- 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. -- iught prosecutors 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. 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. , scout boo radley street 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. ourot bomb threats at 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 -- convictions,gful as you know, we now have 147 people proven innocent. person now proved one 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. 2000 two thetil 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 conch -- 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.

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 turnedh and nothing was 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. a visit,hem never get 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. scary statistic that i'm especially terrified of 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. a littleo have 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. be withe to go and their people and we like being with rp old. i go to sacred heart church in -- 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. kind.and mama were

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. wasof my seven words jesus-follower. there's a way to follow jesus and there is a way to follow jesus. there are a lot of ways. [laughter] , butfrancis follows jesus othersfferent than what may be follow, or the bishops or whatever. the institutional church that happens. bryan, it really was an thatning around the gospel i did not even really realized i had grown up in privilege. when i had joined the nuns, we still had african-american

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 the sidebout being on of poor people, i had always resisted that justice stuff because i thought we should just be spiritual. 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 same top 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. and one so angry 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. neighbor and let them teach you. african-american people then became my teachers. , it's noti realized 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 we haveing the wrongs done and the consequences of those wrongs. >> big-time. beenis country has never

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 racism,us poverty, 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. 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] ♪ >> this week we have been showing you selections of 10 program.our "q&a" we have a conversation with obert novak this evening when

he spoke about "the prince of p.m. ss" and that is 7:00 eastern today. at 8:00 we will show you president obama and the first light this year's national christmas tree, an national nized by the park service includes musical erformances and reading by the first lady of "the night before christmas." lighting with members of congress. that is 8:00 p.m. eastern. a discussion on how religion impacts decision supreme court. they discuss it at a recent eve event. supreme court is made up of -- catholics and three screw jews. here is a brief look. say in the hobby lobby case which is the case having to do with the right of a private business under the religious freedom restoration provide fuse to

contraceptive health coverage employees i ale opinion justice alito affected by his religious preserv preferences because to septa a can have some religious belief system owners.red to it by its aside from being pretty close to ludicrous and highly debatable social philosophy, i justice alito probably went into that case believing that corporations, in some sense e people -- even george romney -- because they

are in some sense people, they capable of absorbing the religious of erences and value system their owners. >> that is a brief portion of on supreme court and religion. you can see it starting at 9:00 eastern on c-span. a look at some programs you will find christmas day on the c-span networks. holiday festivities at 10:00 with the lighting of the national christmas tree followed the white house christmas decorations with first lady of elle obama and lighting the capitol christmas tree. activists talk about their causes then the supreme and general bush on the bill of rights and founding fathers. c-span 2 go into the art of good and then the feminist

side of the super hero as we history of ecret wonder woman. 7:00 p.m. people talk about habits.ading on american history tv on c-span 8:00 eastern the fall of he berlin wall with speeches from presidents john kennedy and ronald reagan. firstn fashion experts on ladies' fashion choices and they styles of the advertisements. then tom brokaw on his more than reporting on world events. that is this christmas day on the c-span networks. for a complete schedule go to c-span.org. >> a look at the state of cancer francis with dr. collins director of the n.i.h. the m.d. anderson cancer

center. they discuss breakthroughs. i is co-hosted by the aspen institute and trends of cancer -- friends and cancer research. it is moderated by susan page. >> we have c-span. let me introduce dr. francis collins director of national the largestf health upporter of biomedical research. he is renown for the leadership f human genome project and received the national medal of science and presidential medal of freedom. welcome. the president of the university

m.d. anderson cancer center in houston where he leads research into the underpinnings of cancer. the s founding director of institute for applied cancer and received many honors and awards fonded several biopharmaceutical cancers. for being here today. i will pose some questions and to you.n it to we are going to answer the question how close are we to cancer? i thought we would start by looking back. received your u medical degree in 1977. after s six years president nixon declared a war on cancer. ell us what the assumptions were then about curing cancer, addressing cancer, treating cancer. did you assume that cancer would be cured by 2014?

what was your expectation? >> i remember when i was a medical student at university of north carolina there was not a started there i in cancer. it happened during my four years where a special unit focused on oncology was developed and run it. hired to as a medical student and intern nd resident it was a scary place because it seemed as if what we had to offer for most of into tients who came particular part of the hospital , poisonous xic ubstances and many people with solid tumors responded quite poorly. it didn't seem to me as somebody ho was interested in bringing together science and medicine that they had gotten together very clearly in this space. hard to imagine but at that point the underlying model

we now take for granted that is a disease of the genome had not really been going ated and we had back to the early part of the about thery something chromosomes involved. an ng that emerge as actionable unifying approach to this disease that would lead us what we now ion of embrace as this remarkable -- se hraourgs in target revolution in targeted therapies imagine e been hard to in our lifetime. so it has been a breathtaking ride. i think when the war on cancer was initially declared in didn't have 0's we the tools or insight or understand the mechanisms to be move at the pace we can. but it was still a good thing to o that, to draw attention to this as a problem and it needed a solution and affected so many answers were going to have to come out of research.

s it was said if you think research is expensive, try disease. and in this case cancer was too many loves and we needed an approach. many en though it took years to struggle to figure out what should the approach be, it the ball rolling in a significant way. now as i'm sure we will talk course of this afternoon, we see the potential many different types of cancers with a rational great hope foras curing this disease. now, you said are we going to cancer? right up front let's say cancer is not one disease. of different diseases. we have cured some of them. by in is a lot more we haven't they are not all going to fall by the wayside at one thursday 1:00 on a afternoon where somebody says we have the answer. it will be a hard fought battle by step and every cancer will have a different series of

steps before we go there. weep r we want to talk about those but you received your 1981.l degree in i wonder if you would talk about attitudes have changed by patients and families, the cancer.is of how different is it now from what you saw when ungetting your medical training then? >> back then cancer strikes fear of patients and families. atients that were subjected to treatments back then underwent little ing surgery with reconstructive capability at that point. was pretty rapy harsh. even back then as a result of really vances which occurred in the 1930's, 1940's 1950's we had a significant reduction in cancer mortality patients half of losing their lives to cancer.

two-thirds bout patients survive their encounter with cancer. driven by not s just the treatment advances that we will be talking about but the preventive strategies that we understand a lot more instigators of cancer so they have more power to prevent place. in the first they are being enlisted increasingly into more screening strategies where the chances for cure is greatest. profound ed to reductions in breast, pancrea c cancer and prostate ther diseases, colon cancer in particular. those are attitudinal changes you can do something about it and prevent it and the ast half dozen years in particular because of the insights that have been of minated by a great deal research the last several decades we have a clear line of

for many cancers as to how we can bending the arc of those diseases. so, patients feel more hopeful s a result of the enhanced diagnostics, enhanced capabilities that we have on the treatment fronts and so on. as a result, we have increasing quality with improved of hraoeuf. but we are nowhere near where we be.d to >> my first newspaper job was 1970's with the wichita eagle did an obituary on every person that died in kansas city. would ask you not to say or refuse to acknowledge if somebody died of cancer and we practice that we would say a long illness because it was seen as so terrible to have cancer at that point. the turning point. you talk about a breathtaking decade or two.t what has been the turning point

and pivot that made so much difference? is there one? >> i think the big turning point of getting an understanding the fundamental reasons why good cells go bad and why a cell that normally behaves the way it is supposed to, grows when it is starts just growing despite the signals that should have shut it down. out of the recognition that there are genes instruction book which if mutated certain ways cause this to happen. which when genes you activate them make the cell shouldn't, a stuck accelerator metaphor. are supposed to apply the brakes and if you lose both losing the like brakes and it keeps growing when it should have stopped. variations on top of that. d.n.a. mismatch repair. epigenome.t the

but to have that kind of nderstanding about the mechanics of what controls cell was the essential step to move us into a more directed, instead onal approach of an empirical let's try this and see what happens. strategies of our until we had that kind of understanding were to come up that were substances harmful to cells that were dividing rapidly and try to dial this in at the point where you killed the more than s a little the normal cells knowing you were not going to get by without side effect with toxicity. >> from a historical perspective important and you touched on one critical event -- which was the genetic paradigm. there was a vigorous debate as to whether or genes had ns in anything to do with cancer. some of the most significant

century honestly thought that mutations of genes, cells, are not relevant for the development of cancer. rouse. it was his discovery of a virus hich contained a gene that caused cancer that led varmis bishop to their breakthrough in 1976 that there are genes ithin us that look like the genes that cause cancer in viruses and the year i was 1981 we began to identify mutations in those tpeufirst were ranslocated or mutated and chang changed in cancer cells versus normal cells. to begin to a while develop those collection of were real drivers of the disease and a breakthrough 1990's thanks to dr. collins and human genome

the ct which gave us blueprint for the human genome. 2007 we had the human cancer genome initiated again collins's leadership. that has given us the periodic where we know a lot perhaps not all but most of that are c elements commondere the cell. ost of the advance was from 2010 there 2009, was a critical mass of knowledge hat was prosecutable where we understood what caused certain cancers and could do something about it if we reduced that to practice, but game advances echnological across a broad front.

genomes ty to sequence not in a decade that took billions of dollars but for of dollars in a time period where you can make clinical decisions. game changing for parents care. also advances in imaging. ago theouple of decades most common procedure in surgery you hadp rot my because to look inside to see what is going on. imaging.ave noninvasive that is profound. cognitive computing, our ability and aggregate large volumes of data and use powerful us not onlyat allow to understand a disease but to actually inform clinical making on that disease is before us. to me is exciting within a very narrow window we we are in a ry -- good position to make more deliberate assault on the cancer problem. this is something that just didn't exist because it took the

research, fundamental research, for us to be able to knowledge to a position where we can now act on patients.vely to help >> those are the breakthroughs that brought us to today. the breakthrough ahead that will make a great difference? looking for? >> as ron very articulately we have now the tools for any individual who has developed cancer to read exactly what is going on inside that tumor. making the cells grow. that allows you to move what has size fits all operation into a personalized approach. a good thing we can do that because every tumor, if you look closely, is a little the others.an you take 10 people who have lung actually ask what is driving the cancer in those 10 people and it will be a

collection of genes and tumor suppressors and other players. means that if you are trying to design a truly rational therapy you want to that so you can choose your intervention accordingly. is some complexity here of course because that means that maybe the old way of doing a trial where you just say anybody who has this particular cancer and this organ becomes an appropriate candidate, not so much. targeted therapy that you know goes specifically after a particular genetic people that will have the best chance of responding where you most want to run the those with the genetic change. an example. patients with lung cancer is a very scary disease we had not so great on over the course of many years. there are individuals who have had a ncer who rearrangement of a particular

it drivesd a.l.k. and their cells to grow when they to. not supposed there is a recently developed thanksidly approved drug to trials which basically works stop ery specific way to the growth of those cells that have that a.l.k. rearrangement. but it doesn't do a thing for the rest of the lung cancer that ts who don't have rearrangement. it is only about 5% or 6%, i think, that are in that category. so that is different. n the past lung cancer was radiation and strong chemotherapy and everybody got the same thing. not any more. the lung map effort which was mentioned in the friends for that cancer research have played such great example of where we need to go. initially it is a clinical trial be soon this ought to standard of care where you have a caps, if you have that cancer,

diagnosed down to the base pair and figure out what 3 billion letter instruction book looks like in the cancer of look at the men knew target -- menu of targeted drugs hat are being developed at a phenomenal pace and pick out the be a match with what is in your tumor and that ought to be the place you want to go. thing which we should alk about, at the present time we are in a circumstance where drug dea of rational treatment for cancer based on understanding what is in that drug, a a single monotherapy. that can give you dramatic esponses but unfortunately the responses usually don't last. they are dramatic remissions but not cures. we should not be surprised by that when you consider that by a cancer has been

diagnosed the number of cancer is in the erson has billions. it only takes one or two cells a different d mutation that makes them esistant to the drug to grow back and the drug is given and looks like everything is fine of that small number resistant cells is still there and it comes back. how should we deal with that? h.i.v.f it is a similar situation. people were diagnosed with h.i.v. and we treated them with a.z.t., they got a response but it came back developed a irus resistance. human cells have the same ability. treat h. eufpi.v. and reduce virus nce of a resistant essentially to zero. we need to reduce the champions cancer cell to zero and that is combination therapies of rational drugs. is a hard problem to figure out how to put forward but from

big rspective that is our current calendar -- challenge respond responses and remissions to cures. >> when we think about reducing mortality which is the bottom line, and francis spoke medicine and the promise of that and in fact i hink we have seen proof that that is in fact a way to go. when we think about cancer emerging ly in countries, the challenges of resources really means that we also have to approach the cancer problem on other be very aggressive. 50% of cancers can be prevented. thing today is we understand a lot of the canigators of cancer and we do things policy-wise, education-wise, so we can reduce the incidence up front of cancer. that is a great opportunity. think of h.p.d. vaccination for

children over 400,000 stkets averted. tobacco public health problem extract e expected to 500 million premature deaths the challenges of hepatitis and excessive exposure. that is during childhood. these are all opportunities where we can then bend the arc and in the screening, the chances for hearing is much better especially solid tumors. we have proof that is the case. if we can enhance our ability to detect these cancers earlier stand on a path to doing it thanks to the nih, that will be one of the lowest of the low hanging fruit to really reduce cancer mortality. lastly on the treatment for it targeted therapy going after the genes that are at variance and a cancer cell. what is exciting now as this new dimension of immunotherapy which does not really speak to