we know it in the casualties that return. we know it in the cost to the american people. given a choice between the invasion of iran or working in a diplomatic fashion toward a negotiation so that we can lessen this threat and the -- in the world, i think president obama made the right choice. i support this administration's decision to go forward with this agreement. i'll be adding my vote to many in the senate in the hopes that we can see a new day dawning. in the hopes, too, that like president nixon, like president reagan, even like other presidents before us who have sat down to negotiate with our enemies, at the end of the day we'll be a safer and stronger nation because of it. mr. president, i y >> more tonight on c-span.

then speeches from the senate floor. joined to kend we're learn more about the history of grand junction, colorado. >> all over the joined to colorado about plateau and especially here in mesa county outside of grand junction we are surrounded by morrison rock. we find a lot of fossils. the other thing pa we also find is a mineral colorado carnatite. called

it contains minerals used to strengthen steel. during the buildup to world war ii and during world war ii tself it was of extreme value. uranium, as we know, is one of the best sources for atomic power and weapons. >> he fought the battle to reserve water for western colorado by making sure that we got our fair share. how did he do that? well beginning in his state going on to his federal career he climbed up the ladder of seniority and was able to exercise i think more

power than you might normally have. certainly in the united states congress where he was able to make sure colorado and western colorado would be treated divisions of water. his first major success was the passage of the colorado river storage project in 956. >> see all of our programs saturday at 7:00 p.m. eastern. and sunday afternoon at 26r7b. >> ahead of labor day the u.s. chamber of commerce will hold a iefing on the top economic workplace issues facing usinesses. live at 10:00 a.m. eastern. later in the day a discussion about iraq's future from the center for strategic and

international live at 10:00 studies live in the afternoon at 2:00 also on c-span. >> each spring leaders of the progressive and left movements gather. among the speakers this year were a hip-hop artist clergy and community organizers. this is about two hours.

>> i think the couple of things

indicate a movement being built. people are answering the calls, i have a couple things, we have the same group of people organizing before. we have people both -- building political platforms and people pushing out amazing things. we also have an entire group of people who are energized and prepared and who want to be part of the organization. i think we see an expansion. if not fully an expansion of base building, the possibility. we have always said we need more people, i think that call is being answered. not only do we have more people, we have more people willing to do more work. it suddenly makes the movement building mechanism possible.

i also think we see a whole generation of thinkers putting out their own theory on the world. proposing radical solutions to address a radical politics -- politics. certainly things happening all over the country where we are at a good time for social movements. >> i see that a lot of times, people's initial reaction, they automatically assume it will be only elderly people. we need that, we need guidance and direction from the elders, but i have seen, within the course of -- this reemergence of the movement. the movement never went away. immortal technique: there are so many young people, what would you attribute that to? is it just because it is in a young person's face? s it a growing pain?

from your experience in working closely with his children in erguson, or wherever you may find them being the victims of systemic brutality and the taking away of civil rights, what has been the catalyst of moving the youth? >> i think a couple of things. black people have always had a tenuous agreement with america. we always know you will impress us -- oh process --oppress us. some black person told you baby, white folks are dangerous. we are told we have to be twice as good and smart just to get the opportunity to be told o. wb to boys had a degree from harvard --dubois had a degree from harvard and could not teach their -- there. it is not better, it is different. this is part of the struggle. part of that tenuous agreement

s that you will not disrespect us. as we look at the slave rebellion's, they have been after children who have died at the hands of masters. that is what we thought ferguson -- saw at ferguson. there has been black leadership with access to material things subjecting themselves in which individual attention replaces ommunity progress. for a younger generation of folk in which have emerged under a black president, black elected officials, black ceos, black police chief, essentially their life has gotten worse. when they broke that agreement, young folks was like -- the

young folks had not read any of the papers we had passed out. they said -- that. we are not going home. at one level, you cannot get the level of youth resistance without the objective material conditions as they black person in charge of the american empire. they look at it and say, oh, the emperor has no clothes. i think also what is unique is that this moment -- i said it earlier -- the day that a system gender --cisgender, black messiah leading us to the promised land is over. what you have witches embodied

n young folk organizing, the new leadership will be clear -- queer, woman led, lots of single mothers, transnational, you have black lives matter chapters in london, paris. it will be anti-imperialist. without the critique of capitalism. what we are seeing is the embodiment among young people -- a generation of leadership that are incarnate. it is embodied. of a radically queer anti-capitalist discourse, and is doing so with limited resources. you remember, one of the things we talked about when we romanticize the civil rights

movement, everyone over 40 said they marched with dr. king. -- you meet everyone in this room and they said they were in selma on the bridge am a it would have collapsed. part of the mythology people are coming up against is nostalgia is a form of morning because the present is unbearable and the future is unforeseeable. a lot of young people are struggling against with limited fiscal resources is a mythology in which everyone participated in the movement of the 60's, which hampers their possibilities because it is untrue. there was plenty of fighting. plenty of folks who don't like it, some of y'all still not talking to each other because of something in 1963. art of the challenge that we

face as a left, is ferguson, medicine, baltimore -- madison, altimore, are actually indictments of the left. because the left as a place of premium on poor black people -- not placed a premium on poor black people. i know i don't have power, i wish i could issue a statement that you could not pass up apers -- out papers, you cannot asked -- ask anyone to come to your meeting until you have broke bread at a black funeral because people -- lack people trust you enough that they want you standing there when they put their parents in the ground. our obsession over lives, papers over people has

disempowered and hindered the possibility of building an effective left in america because we have embodied a level of racism and respect ability in our movement that cannot handle kids with tattoos, sagging pants, saying -- the police. until we resolve that contradiction, i do not think we can build a significant left, i do not think young eople will respect it. immortal technique: the reverend brought up race, gender, class struggles -- you see the interception alley -- interception of these things being a driving force to get the movement together. > that is one of those

questions, how do you see that -- answer that? how does it matter. questions, how do you see that a couple of things -- one, this is not just my belief, there is evidence and bodies of belief, we are dealing with all of this. if we are thinking about my life specifically, i am dealing with sexuality, race -- what we have no is the leadership of people who are talked about as eing intersectional lives. we are not settling. we will not be bought off. we will not be convinced if they give us houses -- we want everything. we want freedom, our freedom includes all of that. >> going to trial.

>> we want everything. that is what we are excited about now. e are not leaving until we get everything. not only freedom, but that includes something queer centered, woman led, one that accounts for folks who have been incarcerated or are stuck in the system. homeless, the whole host of other things. that is the movement. everything. not only freedom, but that this is one of the reason why i love black lives matter. >> is about all black people, all identities, issues related to that. you will see people using the human rights framework to explain the rights of black people, what they deserve.

you hear them say, we are giving this or we are taking this. we are fighting for the ability to walk safely down the street, not be marked, not be assaulted -- not be mugged, not be assaulted. it is the living politics. >> i just wanted to say that before we ask the next question, one of the most interesting moments in my political education is when i came out of prison in 1999. i remember very clearly that a friend of mine talk to me about the privileges i had that i did

not know i had. he was talking about rebuilding my life. i looked at him and got angry. i said, first of all i just got a prison. i'm still on parole. shut up about my perl urges -- my privileges. one day he explained to me, you know what, brother, let me talk to you about the things that you never knew or understood you have. it was a telling moment. he said, you have amle privilege. -- male privilege. i said, what he is saying, man? i'm fresh out of the joint. he said, what have you ever done to protect your self from someone raping you when you walk all midnight. you came here and became a citizen. what happens to you when you

get arrested and go to prison, versus a person undocumented thrown in prison and not charge anything and cap there for an longated period of time. >> i thought about these things. i thought about all the privileges i have it i thought about the way someone is landed to me. tell me about that explaining process on the ground, because if there is a bullet and my arm and i put my hand in there and rip it out, you are going to think i am torturing you. if i tell you that i am going to make a cut, take it out, so you, give you pals -- that is the difference of explaining the truth to someone and throwing the truth at them. why? wouldn't you be angry if you

were sleeping comfortably and somebody shook you at 4:00 in the morning just to tell you the truth? >> real quick, and then you jump in. so i believe and live by the need to lead. when those most impacted when, verybody wins. i think there should be a vested interest just to use gender as an example -- there is a vested interest for all people to be wanting to and gender oppression. the truth is, please murders are not just gender related, hey are patriarchal. when we talk about that, people saying here we go with that

again. those most impacted our women, ueer folks, trans folks. if we begin to look at the movement around please murders and look at the question of gender, and just as present as the racial discourse, number one, we would have included more movement in the -- people in the movement. in terms of victims and police murder, but we would always -- also begin to include other forms of violence committed by police on black communities. the only kind of violence you hear about is violence that is considered masculine, the shot,

the choke, the punch, the billy club. what about sexual violence, forcing people to strip. so not only are we talking about gender impacting queer folks and trans folks, but -- e have a deep and vested nterest in all that. i think people should get behind me because they like me. even if there is a selfish solidarity, there is an interest for black men do participate. >> what they said.

>> i believe we have time for one more. just to get a personal understanding. i told a story about a time i experienced police were taught me when i was 12 years old and talked about people who are activists in a movement, on ongoing theme, people as activists and a movement not read in a lab. most of them were people who were just living their regular lives and they could not turn away from the injustices they saw. the majority of the people in this room are here because when you turn on your television or read your paper or when you find your news however it may be on the internet, you see a world you want to change, that you want to help to become better. what would that be for the two of you? it does not have to be an active in the moment, maybe a collective moment when you

decided this is my calling, his is who i am? >> i think for me i was raised in a beautiful, loving black community. i was raised by my grandmother and her friends. many of them could not write their names. there was a woman named mrs. roberta. she worried as me to calm and read to me, boy. everyone puts her hands together for the guy who is keeping our time together. as i was raised in a beautiful, loving black community that love to jesus and loved justice, a grandmother who

taught me to read at four years old, a community of semiliterate people who placed an emphasis on the life of the ind. the other part in terms of how i arrived -- i grew up in st. louis. i am from there. there was something about seeing nonprofessional organizers in the streets. so those images of kids with tattoos and sagging pants, these young folk, they got a whole thing, but comprehension is not requisite for compassion. you may not understand it. i did not understand what was happening. i still don't. i knew that some young folks from a poor, working-class

community, highly police to, experiencing these major article masculine forms of violence, high levels of surveillance by the police forces, alienated and demonized by the black church, with no resources, no nonprofit industrial complex, al sharpton and their, just some poor kids who said i'm not going ome. as a religious creature, we tend to be reactionary and conservative. i'm a bit of a missionary trying to say christianity from itself. because of the braddock allergy of these clear -- braddock allergy -- radicality of these outh in the streets.

they opened up the streets in a different way. if they is in the street, i got to be in the street. i was born in the streets of ferguson. i have seen the face of

god. and god is queer. god is angry. god is a single mother. god said -- the police. and so what has happened for me is it has opened up a space to find my own radical voice in a different way that it forced me out of the pulpit. i resigned from my congregation. >> i moved back to st. louis. i spend most of my day chasing behind young papal -- people. baby, don't do that. baby, this is how you do civil isobedience. baby, don't do that. even when they're wrong, i never say a word about them in public that they are wrong. i will always defend them. now on going to cost them out when we get in the room. they are only children. for the white folks, particularly for the white left, right ideas don't lead to write behavior. germany did not dominate european philosophy for a hundred years until hitler popped out. e are only going to win when every time they shoot a black baby down in the street, you ring your paper, you bring

your body. the people got everything they need. they don't need your evolutionary consciousness. they already got it. if you show up in a way, a church basement somewhere, with some everyday people and figure out how you can support them and stand with them, i'm telling you you might be born again. the only possibility for you -- for us to win is for you to fundamentally believe that you have as much to risk and in-state -- at stake in our

trouble as black people themselves. that means show up and shut up. >> right on. >> what they said. >> so, i grew up with a moral they already got it. if you show up in a way, a church basement somewhere, with some everyday people and figure out how you can support them stronghold. my grandmother was in church more than she was home. she really and dr. david -- ndoctrinated me. i grew up knowing it was wrong. hen i got older and begin to earn different things, systems analysis, what ever, on top of that. t made it natural.

what really did it is -- in the beginning, we played rock, paper, and scissors. if you are black, clear, poor -- queer, poor -- everything is gainst me. every status against me in terms of incarceration and freedom. sexual violence, domestic violence being acted out. everything around me says if you black and queer, this is what the state has for me. some of us didn't rock, paper, scissors, and said if we do, we going to go fighting.

i don't have a choice what choice do i got? this is the only way i know how to live. i'm telling you that i can feel her. if i don't get out in the streets, i can't sleep at night. isn't it more safe to run from the police that it is to stay here and do something, right? i have been in it ever since. i'm telling you that i can feel >> i just want to say that this is a topic we have touched on before, the idea of faith playing a role in somebody's

revolutionary mentality. if you claim jesus as your personal savior or if you are muslin or jewish or hindu or what ever faith you have, it is not just enough to say that is what you are, right? if i say i am a martial artist and a child comes in here -- or i say i am a doctor and i can't do the heimlich maneuver, then i'm not really a doctor. i'm not really aged just sue master. at the same time, if you're going to talk about jesus or revolution or revolutionary movements, then you have to walk in those steps of jesus to be a christian. you have to feed the poor. you can't tell them that they can't get married to someone because of a line in a book. i will be out in the street with the prostitutes, the people so poor that they can't

afford any other living so they are selling their hotties in the slum. -- their bodies in the lum. it's important that we realize this conversation isn't just limited to the faith we have in a god that is supposed to separate us from our revolutionary politics. hat is our heaven. getting there is our journey. love is our guide. i thank you very much. >> please give it up for the panelists and for ourselves.

>> that was a great panel, right? >> all righty. we will transition into the second portion of our panel. i think we have some pretty cool folks who have been out on he ground. hello. >> if you can grab your microphone. >> i was trying to think about everything that was being said, and i was having a hard time wrap up what was said. the best way to do that is to share the work i am doing in los angeles. working with young people in front of the high schools -- i don't know if you all know -- los angeles is the epicenter of counterinsurgency and police suppression.

young people are faced with the nations largest to school police department and some of which -- they receive some weapons through the 1033 program, which basically -- tanks, grenade launchers, everything we saw in erguson. for a lot of the black young people we were working with, a lot of their questions and questioning is that our demands and seem to be centered around lot of their questions and reforming the system that is trying to harm us. how do we have a broader conversation about a broader black plan. how do we fight against counterinsurgency? understand that every weapon we see inside our schools or in ur community is a signal to us

that the system is going to war with us. it is a system to young people that you are not going to be the next malcolm. we are trying to suppress that before you can even think that. i think that was the best way for me to think about some of the work about getting on the ground and fighting. for this portion of the panel, we will be addressing the state and also talking about national organizational politics situated in the left lateral -- radical process. the first question i wanted to ask is would you share with us movement building and you're left political experience. where is the nature of revolutionary organizations today? and dig deep and talk about

fragmentation, alienation, between revolutionary organizations in your own experience. >> i'll start. the clearest way to start with that question is to actually look to the past. when we are talking about the ragmentation of the left today or even the smallness of the left today, i think we have to look at that in the context of what happens to the left during the last black insurgency and during the last -- when there was a larger significant left at the end of the 1960's and 1970's. i think that there were a

ouple of things at play in terms of a concerted effort to destabilize the left. in this case, i talk specifically about the black left. on the one hand, there was the unquestionable assault by the state to crush and obliterate black revolutionaries, and even the black radicalism, from the destruction of detroit and allowing detroit to end up in the situation that it is today, terms of a concerted effort to to the massacre of black panthers, to the incarceration of black panthers and other black radicals. i think that that was a clear, unquestionable, aspect of that strategy of the state in not just undermining the left, but really to obliterate any notion that you should fight back,

that you should resist, that you should have a different conception of what society and life should be like. i think the other part of that, we have oppression -- the other part is co-optation and the absorption of a layer of african-americans into the system to demonstrate that american capitalism could work, could be successful, and to also shifted the burden of governing black urban spaces at that time from white political achines to black political machines, with the hope that that would be able to help remove at least one of the antagonisms that was driving the black rebellion of the 1960's. in many ways, the left is still recovering from this very conservative -- concerted effort at destabilization in the 1960's and 1970's, but i

think where the hope lies -- it's very difficult to talk about the rebuilding of the left outside of the context of the rebuilding of social movements in general. so, i think we are in a situation now where for the first time in more than a generation, there is actually a living, breathing social movement unfolding right in our midst, right now, and that represents to me the best hope and possibility of the revitalization of the bride left, but also the evolutionary left as well. > thank you. >> yeah, i think that is a great starting place. for me, coming out of organizing around occupy, although that was not the first

organizing that i did. i actually first worked with a group of african-american women as part of the anti-iraq war movement. i later got involved in the occupied actually. i think one of the key aspects of building a left or considering what a left might be or should be right now is something about how we look towards a shared political horizon and what that means, a shared vision for our future. i think of that probably a lot of the fragmentation that we see is because there is not really coherent, and even as we speak about it, we are talking specifically right now about black lives of matter and the audience is mostly a white audience. we have to sort of grapple with what that means and how is it that we do the work of unfolding and creating spaces

in which a process can unfold where we are able to come to gather and develop a shared ision. i think that when we think about organizing, one of the key moments definitely was occupy, because we didn't do this well in spite of the other problems. we were very open and invited everyone in. that was problematic and allowed for opportunities for repression to destroy a burgeoning movement, but we learned a lot about what it means to organize. the work is not about organizing per se. it is about how we come together and understand and elate to one another

fundamentally. i think in terms of a revolutionary movement developing, i think that is one of the starting places we would want to look at, creating spaces where we can come ogether and develop a shared politic, shared social horizon in which we transform and relate to one another fundamentally. >> one more thing about that, because i agree with all that and would also add that we are talking about rebuilding a left that we need what is left of it to be a part of that process. it is worth saying that to me that that is an attempt to synthesize history and politics in such a way as to figure out how to move our struggles forward. sometimes that history and politics doesn't just naturally

arise out of the struggle itself. if it did, we probably would be a lot further along than we actually are today. to that in the, you think about the black panther party at the end of the 1960's. i think it was 1968 or 1969, black panthers were selling heir newspaper, 100,000 copies a week, right? what that newspaper would do is econnect the movement at the time with its history and tradition in a way in this country is so savagely ripped from us. people have no idea of what the history and traditions of our movement is, whether it is the black movement, people don't know the struggles of the 1930's, the struggles of the 1960's, and that knowledge and information doesn't just calm

out of thin air. time with its history and it comes from people in this room, like people who identify as part of a left and who have made it part of their job to reconnect with that history and learn and understand the history, who have the responsibility to not just transmit it in an artificial way, but to invest themselves in the existing movement and become organically connected to them, not in a cheerleading way even, but as an organic expression of the movement that exists. part of the effort is to reconnect our rich history and tradition of struggle in this country aside from struggles that have gone on across the world and to reconnect the new generation of revolutionaries and radicals who are just getting into the struggle now or who are just trying to

figure out what that is, that we all have a role to play in that. that can look like many different things in different ways, but it is important to recognize the importance of the left that exists right now and how do we build on it. >> i think that -- has been at the core of revolution and counterrevolution. jim crow, apartheid. how much do you think in our ociety or the movement, people are cognizant or thinking about that? >> are thinking about history? i'm not sure of the answer. i think they are thinking about history. i guess what i would say to

that is the concern i have come of the way we analyze the history and do not fantasize it. particularly within the african-american committees, we may have fetish in of the civil rights movement. to say the least. it is challenging because that does not allow us to have intergenerational struggles. we have a generation of people who pride themselves on the amazing work they did at a particular time. however, for my generation and younger, we have seen less results from that. on the one hand, we have -- we need to look to that history. but part of that analysis needs to be what has changed.

how have the dynamics of power fundamentally changed. what are we up against and fighting for? imagining and envisioning for ourselves? on the one hand, history and anybody who knows the work i o, it is based on history. it is very important. on the other hand, we need a new analysis and work together think about how our manifest itself -- power manifests itself. whether looking nationally is the most effective strategy. since we have power constructs that are multinational. that morph and grow and are very flexible across borders. that is part of the thinking we need, to create spaces in which we can do that together.

not from the perspective of coming with a belief about how things were in the past or how they should be. more of a kind of collective grappling. some kind of decision-making and action. an unfolding process that we can develop, start to manifest, what that future might look like. one thing we have seen and we were talking about before the panel, we had a great conversation. e said we wished we could be up there right now talking. the ways in which current olitics, particularly having a

black president, what an existential breakthrough that was for people in spite of the results of that. it is not one thing, it is multiple things at the same time. a lot of what has come out with he black lives matter movement is some kind of glimmer beyond this political system. some kind of glimmer beyond apitalism.

ms. taylor: sort of what i was speaking to before, then need for people to understand what our history is. to be reconnected with that history, particularly the history of radicalism and ms. taylor: sort of what i was struggle. so much work it goes into disconnecting us from that history. it is one way too thick about the schools crisis. it is not only robbing our young people of the basic education but we think about what passes for history in this country. it underlines the point even more dramatically. beyond history lessons and all that which i think is important, we have to have a sense for what is different right now. and the new challenges this political moment present to us in a way i think we are all still in the process of trying to figure out. what does it mean to have this

movement emerge in the context of the highest concentration of black political power in merican history? how does that actually break from the tradition of the black freedom struggle where historically african-americans across class lines have been pushed together in a common struggle for ideas about black freedom and black liberation? what does that mean now when you have a black mayor in baltimore mobilizing the military to crush and put down a black rebellion? how does that change what we have historically thought about what the black freedom struggle represented? there is no history book we can look to to solve that question. that is something we have to figure out in the current a

moment. there has to be a balance of both. nowing the traditions of our movement but also we have to understand the contemporary dynamics. the effects of neoliberalism on our political movements. the effects of the enshrinement of black political power on our dynamics. the effects of neoliberalism on our political movements. the effects of the enshrinement of black political power on our movements. we have to deal with those new questions as well. >> in thinking about the left, what are some of the strengths and weaknesses of transformative political movements today. ms. taylor: perhaps one of the argest problems we have is the continued division between economic inequality and just, i will stick with this one, racial inequality. more generally, questions of

oppression. i will be controversial perhaps. i think about that in the context of some of the left's enthusiasm for bernie sanders's run for president. i understand that. i answer that that. there is a candidate who's actually willing to talk about poor people as something more than a prop. but i think that when you think about the quickness with which ections of the left could be willing to jettison justice for palestine, which bernie sanders is committed to the state of israel. or you think about the lack of response around a black lives matter, the one interview he did on this question was to begin by speaking about how difficult it is to be a police

fficer in the united states. in the rush to embrace a candidacy that rightfully talks about the problems of economic inequality in this country, absolutely, but who has very little to say about the questions of racial oppression in nothing to say about the issue of american imperialism, that is a problem for the left. the inability to integrate those two things into a coherent picture of what is happening in the world today. we have to talk about a boat race and class. we can't continue to separate issues of racial inequality from issues of economic inequality. in some ways, if you look at the development of the political movement, the most's significant, occupy, which

failed to integrate issues of racial oppression. even though people were trying and there were efforts to do that, they had difficulty and degrading and analysis of racial oppression into our understanding of economic inequality. you have seen the black lives matter movement begin to address some of that gap. most of the activists and people who have been involved in the organizing have not confine themselves to the narrow issue of police brutality. today have been able to connect issues of policing with issues of poverty and inequality in the neighborhoods where black people are concentrated. n some ways, that is the

product of what king said was the importance of the black movement itself. it crystallizes more than any other struggle in the u.s. the contradictions of american capitalism. the black struggle shows more than anything me problems of racism, militarization, and ommercialism in american society. that is why it has often be the -- been the lack struggle that is the pivot to social movements in general. you can begin to see the makings of that the black lives matter movement which has been able to highlight racial inequality and put it in a context of growing economic nequality in the u.s..

> what is really interesting has been that the economic piece has been left out. we can get rid of, let's put body cameras on them. these crazy ideas that people have not really endorsed. part of this conflict and the difficulty talking about both race and class at the same time is something that may come through in this conversation that african-american people have been vocal about ongoingly which is about liberation. the assimilation techniques that led a black president, it has been about liberation, liberation from race itself. how do you get out of that

situation of being racialized, dehumanized? is it i driving a bmw? all these levels are there to this. it is always somehow articulated through understanding, for iberation. you mentioned palestine. i work on a lot of palestinian issues. i am involved in them and care a lot, very deeply about them. you hear liberation mentioned as part of that struggle. we never really hear liberation articulated as part of the

process for white americans. it makes it very difficult. it may be that the understanding, the self understanding does not feel necessarily like something one would need or desire to be liberated from. but it is possible also until we can articulate that common aspect of liberation itself, may be those are liberations from different forms of racialization, understanding the way the class conversation is racialized, we will not be able to formulate something that is cohesive. i am not sure about the idea of organizations coming together on the ground and doing work on different campaigns and that ever generating something that is cohesive. i have a feeling that is going to come from a human transformation of some sort. transformation in the way we understand our identities.

i'm not sure we can view that without a struggle for liberation. i wonder if that struggle also includes pretty much everyone in this room in various ways. if we can look toward that ogether as a way to move forward. ms. franklin: we have a few minutes left. we are having these conversations about theories and ideologies around the left. let's ground it a little bit. a simple sentence if you can. a simple one sentence -- maybe one with a lot of semicolons.

could you name what do you see as the national presence of the left? the national politics of the left? the national organization form of the left? is there anything you can name as the on the ground of the left? i said in one sentence. now it is going to be three words. ms. taylor: i don't know if you can identify a single grouping, a single idea. i think we are at the beginning of rebuilding the left in this country. it is not to say people haven't been doing this work for many years, but it is in a different context.

we are looking at the development of the most important social movement in this country since the end of the last iteration of the black freedom struggle. that changes everything. whatever people think they were doing over the last several years, which i think has actually been important because it means we are not reinventing the wheel, we are not starting from scratch. we have to raise our horizons and think bigger. really quick in terms of the previous question, one of the big challenges is how do we get bigger. how do we build a much bigger more powerful left. i think that means looking at it not as white people need to look toward these movements in an ultra stick. white people need to do the rest of us the favor of getting involved as if it is some sort of moral crusade. we have to see how our fates

are tied together. some are on the bottom and being tread into the ground. it is within the context of bill gates, billionaires trying to destroy everyone's future. being tread into the if you are not part of the 1%, things are not looking good for you in the u.s. the 99% moniker in some ways symbolize that process. but it is also true. we have to figure out on what basis are we organizing unity. it is not on the basis of basis are we organizing unity. it is not on the basis of telling other people their issues are unimportant and they need to wait until we deal with the meat and potatoes economic issues. it is not that at all. we need to make everyone seedy fight against racism is central. the fight against sexism is central. all of that is central to our struggle and that is how we are

going to build the type of unity and unified movement we need to take on the billionaires literally trying to destroy the planet. that is the future of our movement. hings are not looking good for ms. franklin: if you can do it in one sentence.

ms. brown: i think it is a challenging question. i'm not sure i can answer it in one sentence. there is no real way to define the current left and that might be part of what we need to struggle with right now. it is many things, many different organizations, collectives working, and there is not one sentence or coherent way to define the left right now. ms. franklin: let's give it up for our panelists. ms. franklin: we are going to have another speaker back up on stage. i would like to welcome him as well as mr. ford and another. >> i want to interrupt these proceedings to give a shout out. it is not to any member of my family. i want to shout out to people who have been organizing to eep the center open. which is a beacon of revolutionary organizing open to everyone in the public. we are not trying to monopolize this space.

well we are talking about monopolies, i want to make a quick observation. being a person who travels through asia, africa, and latin america, do you know what i see what american or european committees go there? they are not terrified of socialism. there are horrified of real capitalism. their problem is they go to these places and try to set up a monopoly. they had a company store in the 60's and 70's. in the 80's, they flipped it back and talked about how they would help the people. all the resources would buy -- we are going to have a conversation about establishment, revolutionary politics, and please welcome lenn ford and charles.

>> often, when people say a socialist state fails, the economic system is always the scapegoat. when you find a capitalist state that fails, the regime is lamed. tell me in your opinions. given the process. did capitalism fail in america? es, no, why? >> capitalism is defined by catastrophe followed by better times, certainly for the employers. it is boom and bust. the contradictions of the system do accumulate.

they have been acumen waiting for a long time. the ability of the system to export those contradictions, like by forming colonies around he world, stealing land, instituting slavery in getting free labor, that has allowed the capitalist boom and bust economy to export its contradictions. you can't do that forever. now we are in what i think is a time of fatal decline. with finance capital hegemonic. that means they call all the shots. these are people who make nothing but want to monetize and control everything. the final crisis of capitalism is possibly the hegemony of the

financial class. they certainly don't know how to do anything in terms of organizing the world. they don't have the long-term visions. they go for the maximum rofit. in so make multiple mistakes all of the time. there say dear is that the u.s. military -- their savior is that the u.s. military is as large as all the others in the world. this tends to encourage wild capitalists to more adventures which lead to more contradictions which they think can be papered over by the

military might of the u.s. that is not working. i think it accelerates the decline of the system. >> i worry i am going to give an unsatisfying answer. i think everybody deserves to live here and have their family live decently. we have an economic system that makes that in possible. i think socialism is the name for what will replace this terrible system. i know people call what we have capitalism and which we were more capitalist. i'm not going to your eyes about how the endgame will play out. i am just going to say i'm going to stay close to struggles where somebody's

going to get $15 an hour and leave the deeper analysis to comrades like glen ford. mr. ford: most of the states that are failing are being made to fail by the efforts of the u.s. the most want to fail states that are working for the people. they would like venezuela to fail. they have been trying to make cuba fail for more than 50 years. they are willing to cause chaos in whole regions in order to make regimes fail. disconnect people from one another. the greatest source of chaos and destruction and i am talking about of the social variety is u.s. imperialism. they are doing that largely, the largest impetus is because their hold on the world economy

is slipping. they are not the centers of production, the production of real things in the world. their plan to have the banks in london and in new york and europe and elsewhere somehow control the production that goes on in china, india, and brazil from afar with the help of the u.s. military does not work if you are the place that produces things. there is going to be political power that also accrues. that weighs against the dominance of the u.s.. they become desperate and they ry to overthrow everybody.

immortal technique: this is an interesting question. it says mr. ford represents -- and charles lenchner represents ernie sanders. a lot of people will say the democratic party is the corporate left as they have been called whereas the green party and other grassroots are more grassroots. what is the strategy for dealing with the party in this instance? lenchner: i don't believe the democratic party is a thing. it is a group of interest

groups that cooperate during election time. some of those groups they represent, corporations, are fighting for things like tpp. they fight for imperialism. they do things that we would disagree with. other parts of the party are fighting to have more rights for unions and increase wages for low income workers. rights for working families. those other parts of the democratic party in my opinion should not be conflated with the other parts. i think it is carl davison who talks about a six party system, not a two party system. there are four elements of the emocratic party. i think i am part of one of those elements and a bernie sanders is the champion of that section. i'm going to do what i can to support him because i want that faction to be victorious over the corporations. mr. ford: he may think there

are six parties but he tells us to vote for one of them. we agree with our managing editor, bruce dixon, who described the bernie sanders role as that of a sheepdog who herds the lefty sheet back into he democratic party. back in the day in georgia, we called this phenomenona, we called it fattening frogs for nakes. the plump frogs would be fed to the corporate snake, hillary clinton. i think the democratic party is a snake pit.

i think it is a trap especially or black people. the previous two panels, i want to add something to that wonderful discussion. if we talk about the left, and it's a real constituent parts, black folks are at the core of that. we have to understand that the black polity in the u.s. and the white polity are different qualities. ideologically they are different. i did a study of 10 years ago and found self-selected black conservatives, black people who said they were conservatives, turned out to be on most issues

to the left of self-selected white liberals. self-selected black liberals, black folks who call themselves liberals, were actually white radicals. the black polity is the most progressive left leaning in the u.s. here was a study done by a hink tank out of san francisco. i think it was called where the left lives. the social scientist who was running the study assumed, even though he was not going to let his assumptions affect the study, he assumed the cities that had the strongest left would be to him the usual ones. cambridge, massachusetts. madison wisconsin. san francisco.

but when the data came in from his study, he found the most left-wing cities were detroit and d.c. and new orleans. because that is where the left lives. when this democratic party, the big business duopoly, sits like a grotesque sumo wrestler on top of the black community squeezing the radicalism out of it, that is a serious situation. we have a situation in which virtually all of the civic rganizations, the urban league and an aa cp, our annexes of he democratic party. not to mention al sharpton's national action network. democratic party pervades the black community, and yet it is

far to the right of the black community. democratic operatives represent a right-wing of the black community. the democratic party is actually a clear and present danger in black america to the expression of a left wing worldview. immortal technique: i know that you to bank may disagree with certain characteristics of the democratic party. the chain of events that occur to take power out of the community. one thing you probably both agree on is the appropriation of movements by the democratic party, there are corporate

elements. the actual cost of what that is on the people. how do you stop, the question is how you stop these appropriations of certain issues like for example the way hillary has tried to appropriate immigration by meeting with dreamers and saying i am the representative of immigrants? or the way the democratic party has tried to monopolize the gay rights movement as if they are he only people who support it? similar to the way rand paul has been all of the sudden according to cnn the champion of civil rights. whereas if you look at your candidate, if only more -- carefully more than rand paul. mr. lenchner: the first answer brings me back to the glory days of occupy wall street,

when you had many coming by to experience the assemblies and eel the power of the movement. they would show up. maybe nobody would take their e-mail address or name. there were no opportunities to bring people in and build power -- they were few and far between. when we think about how to evaluate a social movement, it is not addressed to those who remain after those folks have left. we can sit in a small circle and decide, we are the good ones, the best ones, what have we done wrong that those people have left? for me, i want those people who left to be giving that answer. we talked about the co-opting of social movements, people voting with their feet to do

something different than what we want them to read don't ask them, why did you do that? how could we be better? what did we do to make participation in the left less something that they want to do and more something they are willing to consume briefly and then walkway from? one answer, and this would be the answer of politicians who get elected, is find the issues that are generally popular and turn them into legislation and make changes in people's lives. hat is called winning. mr. ford: we are talking about co-opting, how we can prevent the democratic party from co-opting let's say the civil rights movement and other liberation movements of the 60's? we saw with the 50th anniversary of the march on washington all of these civic

organizations i talked about and all of the democrats in congress basically giving the stage to the current administration to have a joint show and reinterpretation of history that basically said the ivil rights movement part of that decade was triumphant. it led to the glories of having the first black president in the white house. the second half of the decade was of course not talked about at all. in the second half of the decade, we had through a combination of police repression and an effort successful among certain elements of black america, to shut down the mass glass roots

movement to allow those people who had been allowed through the triumph of civil rights to enter business and politics. o maximize their new opportunities. this is where we get what we all at black agenda report the black leadership class. people who don't want to transform society, they just want to be part of the existing structures. they want to be mayor but they don't want to have a new kind of city. they don't want to examine how one can build a city that is worthy of having a majority black or latino population.

they just want to be mayor. they just want to be a general in the u.s. military, no matter how many people end up getting killed by the u.s. military. this is where the split occurs. when we see the 1963 commemoration, the commemoration of the 1963 march, we are seeing a kind of political celebration of that group's elevation. the folk who won office. to the exclusion of folks who live lives that in many ways are more insecure than folks ere in the 60's. as sister taylor said, you combat this co-optation by telling the truth about history.

immortal technique: speaking of history and the mythology of america, one of the most important things people do in this country when they get elected in the general election is to distance themselves from the extremists in their own party. bill clinton called this the sister souljah moment. he got into an argument with a woman rapper talking about violence, racism, rape and murder in the ghetto, please not caring. no clinton came after her to say, you are a racist -- bill clinton came after her to say, you are a racist. obama had to distance himself from a man he had gone to church with for 20 years. republicans do this from people with a faith-based community who went too far. who does bernie sanders need to distance himself from?

and if we want a more evolutionary kind of person, who did they have to throw under the bus? or does the premise of throwing someone under the busting to be confronted in general? mr. lenchner: it is a loaded question. i will just ask for a moment mr. sanders has asked my advice for the primary. my advice is to let him know a large part of his base would never have voted who are disillusioned with politics. i would ask him to figure out how to unleash that power. i think that kind of a flip

would be a refreshing change that would advance issues significantly whether or not he is successful in the primary. in terms of who he should throw under the bus after defeating clinton, no one. he will be driving the bus and no one has to be thrown under it. ford: i don't have a degree in throwing folk under the bus, but i think this is germane. we should talk about folks who are trying to distance themselves in the last two bay years of the obama presidency from the president and from the way they behaved to the president over the last six are trying to distance years. with obama on his way out the door, you have people who many folks consider to be of the left until 2008 when the left in floated.

notice -- the left imploded. now describing their behavior as constructive criticism when we know, certainly on the black side, they were part of a mob that wanted to squelch any kind of dissent from the coming of the black messiah, obama. folks are distancing themselves from the administration, anticipating he will be gone nd that folks will have to look at the last eight years and there catastrophic blows hat have been dealt. and someone is going to have to answer for why they were in fact in support of the austerity president. in support of a president who

two weeks before being sworn into office said all the entitlements would be on the table. why they supported -- circled the wagons around him and defended him at any cost well he basically conducted a republican light administration. they are going to have to answer for that. they are hoping to distance themselves but i can tell you we have taken down all of their actions. we took in names. we are not going to let any of hem escape their past. immortal technique: i know that this is a more politically driven panel but i wanted to ask each of you a personal question so we could close with hat.

in light of all the horrible things we have seen in baltimore, ferguson, and this question is obviously to you. what is the sanders campaign, or you yourself, you don't have to answer for them, we are not going to attribute everything he has done to you, but what is the official position about the black lives matter movement and involvement in those types of grassroots race oriented olitics? at what point, how are you affected by that? we talked about the white left, you being obviously a white leftist. what was the position where you felt you had to become involved in those types of things? mr. lenchner: this question

became more pointed last week. there is an article in vox.com talking about the silence of bernie sanders, even though on civil rights legislation he has been on the right side, he hasn't spoken out in a way that resonates in the way we come to demand and expect from folks who are going to be our champion. would like to see a movement push him to change and being more inclusive. not in a way that he hits the right notes to put a checkbox by certain issues. i mean as a candidate, i see him as needing to follow the people that need to change most of all. see the role of people like

me including platforms where instead of us having to rely on what bernie the candidate says, we can fill our own platform with what our hopes and aspirations are and push a bernie sanders campaign forward to foment that. hat is what democracy is. me including platforms where that is a break from the paradigm of being dependent on what your candidate does and with what our hopes and aspirations are and push a bernie sanders campaign forward to foment that. that is what democracy is. pushed him or her. it is to change the relationship of forces on the ground using the power of the people. he movement can expect those forces of the democratic party and the republican party, which represents the capitalists and and the republican party, which represents the capitalists and power, will move against them. says. i am done with that. mr. ford: the role of the movement is not to focus on a democratic politician and then all the energies that are expended in trying to appeal to

the sensibilities and sensitivities of people who work for those parties are wasted. the president has invited families of victims in many of the young organizers of the new movement to the white house in an attempt to co-opt them. he has spoken to them as if he is a sensitive person. by and large, it has not orked. what we need to be focusing on is what the administration actually does. while the president makes all of those noises and says trayvon could have been my son, the justice department has taken every opportunity it had to argue before the supreme

court. every occasion it has argued in favor of police and police departments that have used excessive force. that is the fact that matters, not whether obama is a sensitive guy. obama might possibly be someone who you could talk to over a beer. that is not going to change the way the united states will treat people who defy the authority of the police. the authority of the state itself. immortal technique: ladies and gentlemen, please give a round of applause for our guests. thank you gentlemen. t has been an honor.

immortal technique: we were going to have some last words. i cannot fill his shoes. i just want to say to everybody who came out, thank you very much. i prepared a brief statement, but i see people are leaving so i don't want to prevent you from going to whatever hummus bar you are headed to. i don't want to stop you from getting in your rickshaw and going home. i don't want to disturb your lovely evening. please. i just want to say, it is very important for me to talk about how i learned about the paradigm of these politics and i will get out of here

quickly. and when i was taught the left quickly. and when i was taught the left was this idealistic fantasy world where we dream about the impossible. we fantasize about utopia, an end to racism, free food and health care for everyone. an end to war. i was taught the right wing was the voice of reason. and then i looked at the world. i realized the people who ommit genocide and murder, rape, and kill are not the people who disobey orders. they are mostly the people who obey the orders the way they were written and to do. i learned the right left paradigm in america, the right left paradigm in america was a joke that stopped being funny decades ago. i learned that if a quote unquote mainstream media can be described as a liberal media,

in other words if you are a liberal media and it is your job to reinforce the illegal actions of the government that has practically abandoned democracy and is camped out in front of despotism's door like a child for sneakers or an adult for cell phones, i think it is important to take a hard look at the mythology of america. as long as we believe in the mythology of america without confronting the historical truths -- we talk about socialism and communism like they are the worst thing in the world. yet study history. we turns taxes up to 90% after world war ii. we had to get the economy back on track, so there was free college. cuny used to be free. e give it up for that.

immortal technique: on fox, once in a while, i love to watch them rant. going crazy about socialism, communism. really? the government paying for things? like a post office? a police department, fire department? can you imagine paying a premium for having them come and put out a fire? these were the mythologies i as taught. this sort of relationship was destroyed by the history i read and the living history i experienced through average ordinary people that gave their lives for the movement. the revolutionary movement that bird every revolutionary who has existed on the planet. it didn't come from a planning

book or a brochure. it came from someone's actual life. revolutionaries were people that saw something they could not stand for. even though it is those people, i'm going to stand with them. even though i'm not a palestinian, i will stand with the palestinian's. even the line not gay, i will stand for someone else's equal right to marriage. even though we have seen the country become something else than what it was explained to us as children, that is the definition of confronting the mythology. saying, columbus did not iscover america. that is absurd. we need to take him on the maury show. america, you are not the father.

i want to say one last thing. the only reason i am nervous this time is because my family is here. they have never come to anything of mine. i want to tell you guys i love you and i and everything i am and will be because someone took the time to love me and care about me. immortal technique: i want to say also we are on the right side, ladies and gentlemen. we are anti-illegal war, anti-drone, antiracism, anti-sex discrimination. give ourselves a round of applause for being on the right side of every issue in this country.

immortal technique: and now, she is going to sing for us the national anthem. lease. ms. franklin: he is a little too silly for me. i know we are short on time but there are two things i wanted to share. we talked about black lives matter and a black folks go into the street. it is important for us to know for the past 40 years, we have been in a counterrevolution. within the counterrevolution, often times black folks are seen as the center of oppression. let's make it clear, black folks have been at the center of having revolutionary thoughts and theories and have been at the core of making and breaking what we see is the counterrevolution. they have been the trailblazers.

not only do we have black liberation, we also have a revolution. i want to make that clear when we think about black lives matter. we have always been at the occasion to fight back. the second piece which i think is important, and i do on an everyday basis. when we think about building a national left organization, what is central to me is organized. the conversation didn't really get that deep into who is going and knocking on doors. who is talking to our young folks, exposing them to different ideologies in the truth. xposing them to the years of miseducation they have been exposed to. if there is one thing i want you to leave with, it is not miseducation they have been

simply we have had these debates but that that means nothing if we do not take it to the street and involve our people. if we do not have this room filled in the next year. we are saying, take it to the street. organized. build. if we do not build, we do not grow. simply we have had these if we don't grow, revolution cannot happen. the reality is that they are planning to fight back. and we have to not only be able to respond, but think ahead. and we cannot just react when something happens, we have to respond. we have to be the ones to prevent it. ave a great night. rob: a big round of applause for our host and moderator.

ashley franklin and immortal technique. immortal technique: if we could give a big round of applause to the working class people who have to clean this place up after we leave. and the people who set up all of the microphones and lights and staff sitting up there and the dude with the camera was not moved in an hour and 50 minutes. i see you buddy. rob: big love to our panelists. and madams. pamela brown. immortal technique: if we could give it up. you could do better than that. glen ford. charles lenchner. he reverend. and stanley, we wish you well and good luck. all the best. thank you. get home safe.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national able satellite corp. 2015] >> i think we need different model of legal education. we need that includes one year programs for people doing routine work, two year programs is an option for people who want to do something specialized in the third year and three full years for people who want a full general practice legal education that we now have. but it's crazy to train in the same way somebody who is doing routine divorces in a small town in the midwest and somebody whose doing mergers and acquisitions on wall street. we have this one size fits all model of legal education that is extremely expensive. the average debt level is

$100,000. and that assumes that you can train everybody to do everything in the same way. i'm licensed to practice in two states and i wouldn't trust yself to do a routine divorce. >> on the next "washington journal," former donald trump discusses the 2016 presidential reas and his experience working for the g.o.p. candidate. then the cause of the european mige grant crisis and the role the u.s. is playing with aid and relief. and roll call writer looking at the iran nuclear deal. ive every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span.

senate house and prepare to debate the iran nuclear agreement next week we'll have live coverage later today of liam fox on the consequences of the deal and what it means for regional and global security. >> the headline at political.com the white house is not celebrating the iran deal win yet. walk us through the various scenarios when lawmakers return next week. >> basically, they are going to be facing lobbying on both sides. this is not going to end despute the fact that the president has gotten the votes he needs to make sure the deal survives. then there is going to be a period of debate. we don't know the exact date yet probably september 8, maybe following that. then there has to be a vote taken by september 17. and we don't know if it's going to be in the house or the senate but the other option is

it doesn't come to a vote because the administration gets enough votes and support to for a filibuster that prevents it coming to a vote. >> is that what white house wants? >> yes. they're got going to say this openly but they would prefer it doesn't reach a vote. because if it does it's sernlt to be voted down. republicans oppose ut. there's u enough votes to vote it down. then it has to go through the veto process and override attempt flt opponents can argue they're shoving this down our throat over the opinions of the american people. that's not a good thing for the white house. >> secretary of state john kerry trying to get that 35th senate vote and beyond. so far only democrats have supported this deal. both house and senate republicans are opposed. walk us through. we've seen so many ads here in the washington, d.c. area and around the country.

but what else do you think opponents will try to do? >> they're going to continue with the ads in all likelihood although you would wonder if the money is well spent at this point. they're going to continue to send letters. ave their constituents reach out to lawmakers, especially those very pro israel. and they're going to try to do events and rallies and town halls. this is on both sides. so we're going to see a lot of continuedagetation to get this debate on the floor and to get some sort of a vote. at the end of the day it could be for mothing but at this point it seems the white house has won. >> let me go back to crour earlier point if senate democrats are successful of blocking a resolution of disapproval is there anything senate republicans can do to get this to the floor? >> i don't think there's much that they can do. they can just complain about it and use it as a talking pointed

against the administration. it's going to be hard. if they don't have the procedural votes to get it, i don't know how that's going to happen. but either way it looks different to complain about the administration. it scores points for them. so in a way it's a win-win for either side. us. ank you for being with >> thank you. >> here now is secretary kerry at the national constitution center in philadelphia yesterday he declared that congress deezesigs on the iran nuclear agreement will matter as much as any foreign policy decision in recent history.

>> we thank you for coming today. not too long ago secretary kerry asked me and my partner sam none, who is involved with us in the nun-lugor cooperative threat reduction act to write an op ed about the iran agreement. we were eager to do so and we ere grateful it's been published and at the same time the title of this is there is . perfect nuclear agreement and the gist of the article is what happens next. how the implementation occurs. no perfect agreement. and we say that from the experience of dealing with kazakstan, ine,

belarus over the 20-year period of time. now, there were treaties. start one treaty, start two treaty. even the new start treaty in which secretary kerry was the chairman of the foreign relations committee. i was privileged to be ranking member to work with him for ratification of that treaty. and they're important treaties. but more important really is the follow-through. with regard to the russian situation, for 20 years i went to russia at least once every year, often to kazakstan and to ukraine, really attempting to visit with russians, attempting make sure that the best was happening, namely the nuclear weapons were being destroyed. and over the course of that 20 years, 700 nuclear weapons were

destroyed. now, let me mention, these weapons were on large mifrls. and several could go -- missiles and several could go out in different directions. they were targeted at not only all the military installations of our country but at the major cities. i was appalled to find that indianapolis is on the target list. i served as mayor for eight years oblivious to the fact that we could have been obliterated at any time. and this is why i took seriously and i am very grateful that secretary kerry as a member of the foreign relations committee was so supportive throughout those years of the efforts that same and i put in. but now we're in a new chapter. it's a very important one. that s an agreement

deserves the support of the american people and more immediately the support of the united states congress. it that comes after arduous anythinggations involving the secretary of state almost endless talks and difficult arguments with iranian officials. but like wise sometimes with our partners, the countries that are backing us up, including russia and china and germany, france, great britain. these are very important partners. they've been involved in the sanctions against iran and other pressure that is have been placed against that country. secretary kerry, an arduous negotiations, has helped bring about a remarkable agreement. let me just say it comes after a lifetime of public service. our f the parallels in lives are substantial but a lot i volunteered for the

navy and served really my time as an intelligence briefer for the chief of naval operations. secretary kerry volunteered for out in and he ended up the may cong geta. he was i awarded the silver sta the bronze star award and three purple hearts from that very significant service very early in his career he was willing to give his life for this country. he served the lieutenant governor of massachusetts under governor due cack kiss. and then he came to the united states senate. 28 years 28 years of magnificent service. the last four as chairman of the senate foreign relations committee. t throughout that time one who pursued foreign relations vigorously. and worked, i must say, in a nonpartisan way to bring about

results. senator kerry or secretary kerry succeeded joe biden as the chairman of the committee. i was either ranking member or chairman if republicans were in control or not in control, but we looked together secretary kerry and myself and joe to see if we could get a 16-0 vote from the foreign relations committee, the best, strongest face of america, so the rest of the world, as opposed to a 9-7 situation in which somehow or other a treaty or significant agreement was eeked out. this is still a very, very important principle. this is why it is a genuine pleasure to be with secretary kerry today to note that here is a man who not only has served in the senate but was a canned state for president of

the yilingts in 2004 and -- united states in 2004 and combarely lost. came back and continued that service as chairman of the foreign relations if not introduced to you, my friend, secretary kerry. [applause] secretary kerry: thank you for the introduction. good morning to all of you here.