$6 trillion comes down to an average of $75,000 per american household for wars that have not made us safer. they have only increased the terrorist threat. they are created failed states and have created mass refugee migrations that are tearing apart the middle east and europe. we say no to those wars. we call for a new -- it is unthinkable that they want to do more of this same catastrophic policies. that's why we need to be on the debate stage, so we can tell the truth about this. [cheers]

so we have a new kind of offensive for the middle east. it is called a peace offensive for the middle east and it starts with a weapons embargo. since we are providing the majority of weapons to all combatants and to all sides. we can shutdown the flow of weapons to the middle east. we can shut down the flow of funding, which is coming largely from our allies who of it partners with us in this, what shall we say, schizophrenic war on terror. with one hand, starting back in afghanistan, where we and the saudi's created this great idea of the global terrorist enterprise that was created in order to help the mujahedin fight against the soviet union.

this has come back to bite us in a very big way. it is time to shut the whole enterprise down because with one hand, with one hand we and our allies are fighting it, but with another hand we and our allies have been funding it, training it and arming it according to even hillary clinton. herself, her leaked memos from the state department revealed that in hillary clinton's estimation the saudi's are still the major funder of sunni jihad forces around the world. we started this. we can shut it down. that is our answer to isis and to terrorism. [cheers]

hold onto your hats, folks. we are in a whirlwind right now. will a whirlwind that is way bigger than any of us. we have a job to do. we have a role to play that will not he played by anybody but us. we are the ones we have been waiting for when they tell us to get out of the way because we are standing in the way of the lesser evil. the answer to that is that this

politics of fear, which we have been told to bow down to, has only delivered everything we were afraid of. all those reasons we were told to vote for the lesser evil because we didn't want the off shoring up our jobs, the meltdown of the climate, the massive bailout for wall street, the expanding prison state, the attack on our civil liberties and on immigrant rights. all those things we didn't want is exactly what we got by allowing ourselves to be silenced and letting a lesser evil speak for us. [cheers] wil remember, when they try to tell you you are powerless remember what alice walker says. "the biggest way people give up power is not knowing we have it to

start with." we have it. we are going to use it in this election. we are saying no to the lesser evil and yes to the greater good. because we are not only deciding what kind of a world we will have in this election, we are deciding whether we will have a world or not going into the future. the day of reckoning is coming closer and closer on climate change. we are told there will be a civilization-ending development in the form of massive sea level rise as soon as 2050. anybody planning to be here in 2050? i think a few of us do, myself included.

we cannot wait. we have to act now if we want to stop that sea level rise from happening in 2050. we need to declare a state of emergency right now. and undertake a wartime scale mobilization to create those 20 million jobs and create that 100% clean energy now. we have a crisis in nuclear weapons. and again, thanks very much to the democrats, bill clinton, who removed us from the anti-ballistic missile treaty. framework for nuclear disarmament. and barack obama who could lead -- created a $1 trillion budget for us to spend on a new generation of nuclear weapons and modes of delivery. on the count of climate, on the count of nuclear weapons and the same nuclear arms race we are once again headlong plunging into. and on account of these endless

and expanding wars that are blowing back at us all around the world. we cannot afford to sit this one out. the lesser evil is a losing strategy because people stopped coming out to vote for lesser evil politicians throwing them under the bus so the republicans will win anyhow. and to look at donald trump. donald trump does not stand alone. donald trump is about the rise of right-wing extremism, not only in this country but in europe. and if bernie sanders himself so often said, the only solution to the likes of donald trump is a truly radical progressive agenda that restores our needs and ends the economic misery that promotes the kinds of demagogues we are seeing in donald trump.

we are the ones we have been waiting for. hillary clinton is the problem. she is not the solution to donald trump. we are the solution. we are the ones we have been waiting for. this is our moment. together we do have the power to create an america and a world that works for all of us. the power to create that world is not just in our hopes. it is not just in our dreams. right here and now, it is in our hands. we will make it happen together. we are unstoppable. thank you so much. [cheers] on we go. thank you. [cheers]

>> gop senator today cause of may will not vote for donald trump for president in november. she wrote in a washington post opinion piece and this is not a .ecision i make lightly i'm a lifelong publican. donald trump does not reflect historical republican values or the inclusive report to govern that is critical to healing the divisions in our country. follow the road to the white house coverage on the c-span network. >> tomorrow night on c-span, former president built clinton jimmy carter -- bill clinton and jimmy carter on policy changes that they left the white house. and they look at global

politics, and her turnout, this up in court and dealing with isis. 8:00 p.m. eastern. later recover wisconsin's first congressional district where it election night speaker, paul ryan, running against primary challenger. live coverage of that race here on c-span. >> next, congressman brad sherman outlets waited disabled community can engage lawmakers together issues -- together issues reflected incognita. following his remarks, a panel discusses how to bring these issues to the forefront through media coverage. this is about one and a half hours. >> hello, president of the

spectrum building. a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to advance people with disabilities weird people with disabilities to have opportunities to fight anyone else. people with disabilities are one of every five americans. that is 56 million of american citizens. we have no better friend in congress then congressman brad sherman, porno. he actually has been on the front line of these issues personally and professionally. he is a close personal friend of mine who i've known for an experiment long time. -- extremely long time. is intelligent and has integrity. onhas published up ads employment for people without disabilities -- with disabilities, spoken out on these issues, engaged in the alsos personally and he is

helping our organization. to beingankful for him here. there is no better friend than congressman brad sherman for the disability community. [cheers] >> jennifer, my only request is that you be the person to introduce me where ever i might speak anywhere in the country. i i brad sherman from california's best named city, sherman oaks. [laughter] it's an honor to be with you and i hope that i've been invited to speak because of the wisdom i have accumulated over the last 20 years in congress, and not just because i got to the room. but by definition depending upon your definition, those with disabilities are the largest

minority group in the country, and one of the few that you may join at any point in your lives. best, all of us are cap temporarily able-bodied. is also the most disadvantaged economic group in this country. 28.7% of those with disabilities are lived in poverty. that exceeds any other racial or ethnic group. 22 million working age disabled country onlyn this , one out of three have jobs. you've got other experts to talk to you about disability and about how to, as a community, to overcome the difficulties that you face. i'm here to talk a little bit about how to persuade members of congress, how to lobby when you don't have a pack. .

i'll go through some points. first, have allies and create a coalition. when you hand that paper to a member of congress or a senator, you are going to want to say this is endorsed by the entire community. the one thing that will make a member of congress reluctant to help out is the fear that they are going to sign onto your program only to hear from others in the same community that they should have gone in another direction. second, keep in mind how busy and thinly spread a member of congress is. i'm talking about disability issues now. bankinge working on regulation when i go back to my office. before that i was focused on the job in the peninsula. if you don't know where that is, that's fine but it just illustrates that just as a member of congress doesn't know a lot of what you know, that's

because they have to know a lot of things you don't have to know. so they are an inch deep and a mile wide. members of congress, when you meet with them, want to make you happy. first of all it's a congenital personality disorder. that is why we went into politics. second, it's an occupation necessity. we need to make as many people as possible happy. and third, you are the good guys. but when people come to talk to us we always feel that is not a no-brainer. the people talking to us always think their proposal is a no-brainer. and invariably what they are proposing is either going to take a lot of political capital and time for the member of congress they're talking to or it's going to have strong opposition in the bureaucracy or the ideologies that runs around washington, or it's going to

cost government money. so there are very few slam dunks. there are many more opportunities to persuade, but if they really didn't cost anything and was spectacular and everybody agreed about it, it would probably be a suspension bill that already passed 20 years ago. now and then there's a magician thrown out of society for revealing how the tricks are done. i'm about to get thrown out. because i want to tell you not what you learn in politics 101 but politician 101. how to deal with the media, how to deal with the requester i was told this by a politician in his 90s back in my area but i'm sure he's not the only one. he said, he said, brad, never put it in writing if you could just say it. never say yes or no if you can just not.

never nod if you can get by with a smile and best of all, see if , you can get by with just a wink. [laughter] what you do not want out of a meeting as a smile or a general belief that the person you're talking to love super much and want you to love them, but really hasn't committed to anything. now, a lot of people, and they're just real happy to see a member of congress. they want a selfie that's fine, , that may be important. and so many of you have incredible stories of how you have triumphed over an impediment. and that's an important story. and you may want to provide general information, but even if you provide general information, by the time a member of congress has a chance to use it, there have been 500 other meetings on

banking regulations and the jaffna peninsula. they may have forgotten. when you calm, the question i ask the group that i like is, if you control this right hand and this voting card and the pin, what would you do? if you have a solid answer to that question, then you believe that meeting with something tangible. so you go into the meeting saying, here are all the groups in our community and they all want you to cosponsor this bill. they all want you to put out a statement saying you're going to vote against the bill. we would like you to sign a letter to the appropriations committee saying to fund this program at no less than $116 we want you to sign this. we million. we want you to vote that way. we

we want you to cosponsor. if what you want is just an understanding and an appreciation of what you've accomplished there are many people that can provide that to you. only the member of congress can provide you with that letter, that cosponsorship or that vote. so ask for something specific, don't leave until you get a very specific yes or no, he didn't say no, just don't leave. [laughter] and the final thing you may want is a letter to an administrative agency saying fund this grant, or change this regulation. if you are in the ticket congressional action, pass a bill, get an appropriation, you want to make sure you have a balanced group of members of congress on your side. and if anything of republican is more valuable to you at this time been a democrat. if you are trying to influence an executive agency, you don't have to worry about balance, and

the democrats are more powerful than a republican. so keep that in mind. so who you want to sign the letter depends on little bit onto the letter is addressed to. and if what you want is a telephone call or something that you can't see being done, the question is who on your staff do we call to get a report on whether you made that phone call and how it when? you may seek immediate in washington. you may seek a meeting in the district. if you want a meeting in washington you may just want to meet with the aids. frankly, lauren is with me here. she does all the thinking, planning, decision-making. my job is to stand behind a microphone and look pretty. i but talking to the legislative assistant may be more important.

you may be able to get that meeting longer and more relaxed during the district work period like today. i recommend trying to meet with the members in their district office. first come if we don't get the meeting you can show up at their meeting. and stand up at a town hall and say, will you do this or will you meet, promise to meet with us this week person-to-person on that issue? another advantage of the district office meeting is that i have experts in my washington office on various legislative matters so i don't feel bad if the group meets here in washington with one of my legislative assistance. i don't have legislative assistance in california, and i kind of figure i've got to do the meeting myself. you will want to e-mail, e-mail a petition, make sure that you list both the physical address and e-mail address. the reason you want to provide the e-mail address is what you

want is a virtual cycle. ask them to do something. give them an e-mail list of people who want them to do it. when they do it tell them to tell the e-mail list they did it. then tell your e-mail list to thank them for doing it and then tell your e-mail list to ask them what they've done for you lately. the best thing you want is a situation, i sent out 400 enough to group of people that care about something, one of them catches me in the grocery store and thanks me for doing it, and then i go to lauren and i say, why haven't we put out another one of those e-mails to the disability community? and she was a because you haven't done anything recently and you for that community. i'm i give a response well, to be a , list of what i need to do. so

virtual cycle, do something can report something, be encouraged, have a list of people to tell that you done it. i'd like to thank my colleagues would be virtuous tree falling in the forest with no one to hear that most of us want to do good things with people who agree with them noticed. and then final i would urge the disability community with several organizations and a to rate the voting records of members of congress. and that rating can be not only how did you vote, but what did you cosponsor? and give awards not because our shelves are empty but because it issue, that's a powerful thing you can do that we can then use to brag to our constituents that we are actually doing something in washington. i look forward to hearing the next panel. i'm almost jealous that i don't, i took it to comment on this up

because i have the microphone. [laughter] i'll just make a prediction about this election. the bernie sanders and donald trump tsunami is, for the establishment, for the elite, that first heart attack that you make it through. and all know the guy who a month after he's out of the hospital is eating a cheeseburger on the couch. i think the elite's will survive this, and they will go back to trying to pass tpp in a lame-duck session. which is the equivalent of having a big rib dinner on the couch a month after a heart attack. and if they succeed, then in 2020 the elite's will have a second heart attack. so what happened this year with both bernie sanders and donald trump was way outside the thinking of what the elite to

believe what happened. and they will either adopt the policy changes or they'll go back to the same old behavior. so i'm brad sherman from sherman oaks, and thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much, congressman. i would like to invite our panelists to come out. we have a terrific group of panelists who are about to speak with us. first is eleanor clift who's with the "daily beast" into i've been following for many years on the mclaughlin group. and when she was at "newsweek," she authored numerous books including those about women in political power. i'm very excited to have her here because as a woman who was with the that women's issues, she talked about disenfranchised populations and how they can get more power and now we have a woman who was nominated for the presidency from a major party for the first time. we have clarence page it was just an outstanding pulitzer prize winning journalist and columnist who also is on the mclaughlin group and also has

worked with b.e.t. so he knows what it's like for a marginalized community to try and take power. we see anced -- african-american president. richard wolfe has been in washington for more than two decades with "usa today." he is currently focusing on the supreme court but he's covered congress and pretty much everything in this town. is a he is journalist of very, very high regard and just an extraordinary leader. and then we have a sometimes journalist, sometimes find it and sometimes everything, norm ornstein who i also know for decades. he is extraordinarily, well, just genius on everything to he writes for numerous publications. i think you all know him from

aei. we will have a vigorous conversation here. will talk about campaign 2016 but we're not going to do that usual stuff of who is up and who is down. we're not going to focus in on donald trump and who said what and who tweeted whether we're -- we're really going to talk about this disability community, sort of what's happened in campaign 2016 with people with disabilities, what are we seeing, and would love an -- we will have an opportunity for people from the audience to ask some questions. let me throw out the first question to the panel which i'd like each of you to address. which is what are we seeing in 2016 when it comes to the 56 million americans with disabilities? is there a change in how the campaigns are handling these issues? and if so what are the changes that you are seeing? let's start with rich and then go all the way down. speak i

>> one of the obvious changes is respectability. shoving microphones in front of people's faces at public events around the country. i think that's a great thing. beyond that, however, other than reminding everybody that it's the largest minority group in the country and the importance of disability issues. i think the problem that we have in the campaign and in all campaigns is that disability from the outside in is not seen as a controversial issue. it is seen as an issue that everybody agrees on that everybody is what is built if only there was money, or if only there was the wherewithal to do something about employment to do something about housing, to do something about community living, to do something about community living. occasionally with a reauthorization bill comes along the everybody is for it, everybody gets on board but otherwise it disappears into the woodwork because there really isn't that controversy between a

trump hillary clinton or in the past between romney and obama that other issues have. it's funny because when you're involved inside the disability community, which i think a lot of us are you see all of these , controversies among disability groups. my son has autism and so between autism speaks on one hand and the self advocates on the other hand, there's tons of controversy but those issues don't necessarily bubble up to the political level on the outside because they are seen as internal issues. which to some degree they are and they wish they didn't exist. i'm not sure i'm not optimistic about huge change in terms of disability issues in this campaign. i'm more optimistic about policy changes, if any on who gets elected and i won't get into that. but i don't see that much of a change from this year compared to past years in terms of the

level of interest in disability. again, the main reason think it's just not a controversial issue. i would not expect, unless you do this, to hear a question about disability because those folks are in the debates would think that's a wasted question. we would get a lot of nodding and winking and smiling and not necessarily the type of brouhaha that helps ratings. >> thank you, jennifer. norman and i were just talking about everything that's wrong with the media. nobody criticizes the media as much as media people do. we can talk about that in connection with his current campaign. what is interesting to me is richard talked about the controversy. we live and breathe controversy for morning, noon and night. of doublynugget

especially true during a presidential campaign in which you've got every issue of course under the sun competing for attention. which ones get the most attention from those that are the most controversial. people with disabilities as an thebilities rose in campaign for example, went donald trump and sold a "new york times" report with disabilities. made fun of him like a schoolyard bully. it was almost an additional campaign for this campaign and everybody in the media jumped on it because it said so much about the race. you've got one candidate who makes fun of people with disabilities and one does not. it could be hardly more clear. then you've got other issues where i wish people with disabilities as an issue came forth, like, for example, black lives matter one of the biggest controversies going on this day is related to crime and law enforcement and police behavior

and the incarceration epidemic. how much of our incarcerated population has disabilities? recently did a study on the. a -- on this. a huge percentage. >> 40% of people in jail, 32% people in prison. we have 150,000 who are blind or vision impaired. high-fiber thousand -- 500,000 with cognitive impairments that our incarcerated today. >> very good. if i knew anything about numbers i would've stayed in engineering , school, but it is true though a tv in particular loves pictures and hits numbers. this is one big impediment to getting serious issues into debate if they do it with numbers but if you have a lot of stories narratives, this is what , makes news. this is what gets media attention at public attention the everybody loves stories. not

not many of us can recite all 10 commandments but everybody knows what the 10 commandments came from. everybody knows that story of moses. that's what the bible is, stories. that's what journalism, effective journalism is, it's stories. when you have a race in which, well, we have some wonderful, well, one key difference this year that i've noticed between the parties, look at the conventions to which convention spotlighted people with disabilities? which had people with disabilities speaking out on stage and highlighting these issues? it was the democrats. that was the defining issue to me in this election. this is the way disability issues come forth. generally it's when they are a part of a larger debate, either a partisan conflict or just human relation conflict. so i expect to see the issues return.

already donald trump is talking about the regulating them. that would include ada relations. behind every regulation there's a story. just tell people government red red tape, i hate that. bureaucrats, blah, blah, blah. but if you tell people of folks are being helped people who are , able to now make a living and independent who had to be dependent before, everybody loves that kind of story. so so anyway, i could go on all day but i will give you a chance, norm. >> thanks, jennifer. first it's a great to be on a panel with three journalists who have walked the walk and talk the talk. having said that, clerics and i -- clarence and i were talking about immediate andy schleck, nobody is more critical about the media and the media but it's almost always stop us before we kill again. [laughter] a couple things to say about the

campaign. first to reiterate what clarke said. i haven't done it but my guess is if you google disability and campaign 2016 the first 100,000 items it would come up would be donald trump ready to of the new -- ridicule of the journalist. that's what has brought the word this about onto the campaign stage. not policy very much. but maybe another element which is at one point top right of all things are done for the disabled community with his hotels and properties. as if it were a quick gesture of -- great gesture of humanity when he was something complying with ada regulations. but that is about it. the part of the problem we have is media coverage of the campaign is virtually policy for you. journalists mostly know nothing about policy. maybe enough to ask one question the debate but a follow-up is something not possible. and in many ways for me a defining moment in the campaign, it wasn't about the disability issue. donald trump was about totally

press conference with north dakota delegates where he had gone over the top in terms of a majority. three cable news networks have pictures of the empty podiums for an extraordinary, excruciating length of time. at the same time, hillary clinton was unveiling a set of proposals for how to deal with the employment and the middle class. not covered at all. it is horse race. it is controversy and it is trump. that means that the real issues, what we're going to do now to punctuate and make sure that the ada is workable and expanded, what we're going to do about mental health policy, a particular interest of mine, are not covered at all. and here we also have another of the problems with false equivalence. if you look on the hillary clinton website you will find thousands and thousands of pages of policy, including about the

disabled community. we are soon going to get an extraordinarily detailed data policy proposals on mental health policy. donald trump has none of that but if they cover the one, however going to cover the other in an equivalent passion? so we get basically nothing. i want to make one other point, which is something i believe has to be dealt with and focus on in the campaign ahead. and that is access of the disability community to the polls. there's a story just today we've had a whole series of voter suppression laws that have been struck down or sent back by the courts in recent days. one of them in north carolina and that includes an attempt to restrict early voting days. that's been now taken away. we're going to have a substantial number of early voting days in greensboro, north carolina, the republicans are trying to cut the number of polling places for early polling

in half. at the response to that. take into account that the money for voting in most jurisdictions has been cut back, the machines are not extraordinarily controversial because of a fear of russian hacking among other things, but also every area has difficulty getting an adequate number of machines, the right kinds of machines. people who participate in polling places. and the disability community is going to much greater difficulty voting. voters were again is going to take place may be reading against the disability community. i'm starting to do all the work with the foundation come and wonderful foundation to do with this problem but it's also something that otherwise is not going to come up. and if we don't have the right kinds of machines for people who are deaf or blind, you don't

have the right access to polling places for people who can't get there, if you don't have early voting for those who need extra time especially, we are going to have a real problem. that means the political leverage of the charity will be reduced as well -- of the community. >> i certainly second just about everything that's been said. the the media is overly infatuated with the horse race and then with controversy, but it has ever been this way. yesterday with the reality you find. donald trump actually did the disability community a favor by doing that mocking presentation, which is seared into everybody's brain. and the reporter that he made fun of, i was reading about him, he had a long-standing relationship with donald trump , i think he interviewed him over the course of a number of years like 20 times. so this was not somebody who

just wandered into the trump tower one time and caught trump offguard. so the election is going to be about issues to some extent, but it really is a character issue or a presidential temperament is -- issue. and i think donald trump almost daily gives us examples of the kind of temperament he has. and at the democratic convention clinton actually had a number of people coming forward, basically attesting to her character. and i thought the young man who has a form of dwarfism who spoke on the stage, again, drove home her commitment to these issues. and reporters kind of make fun of hillary clinton. she's got a three-point plan for a five-point plan for just about every issue you can imagine. and

and she says that she's controversial when she runs for a job, but when she does the job she's effective. i was especially struck by a long piece in the recent new yorker magazine about the attempt to close guantanamo. and a lot of it is congress' fault, kind of a partisan issue but the white house fell down on that job. throughout the piece is the work that hillary clinton did try to follow up, working her contacts and so this is a woman company -- you can get a commitment out of her for just about anything you can be pretty sure she's , going to work very hard to get it done i must say i'm not really that cognizant of what the legislative goals are to the disability community, and i think that's important to get that out front so that the legislative goals can be out of there. so i think i want to turn this

into a conversation. so i look forward to hearing your questions. >> thank you, eleanor. before we get started, rich sent me an e-mail letting me know that sadly brian clawson who was a disability activist particularly in the autism community tragically died. he asked if we could have a moment of silence for him which i thought was a good idea. but i would add that many in the disability have died lately and that we should think for someone -- some moments about the many leaders that we've lost in our community. i would especially like to focus on the 19 people in japan who were brutally slaughtered while slipped. most people watching on c-span probably don't know about this but very recently in japan at a , place where adults with disabilities, particularly significant disabilities live, somebody came into the home and

decided to eliminate people with disabilities because the individual thought it was more merciful that they should be slaughtered. recently there was a movie in hollywood, me before you, i that really glorifies encouraging people who have significant disabilities to commit suicide because it is a better, happier solution for people who don't have disabilities if they quote-unquote burden of having people with disabilities around that did not exist. we are very deeply concerned about the messages that people get in the media from movies like me before you that showcase glorify trying to get people with disability to commit suicide. and then in japan we have is horrific assassination which is what it was, of 19 innocent people who were sleeping in a group home in japan, whose

throats were slit. the media almost didn't cover it at all. so i would like to just, before go to the next question, have a moment of silence before i ask the journalists to talk about how to get the stories of people with disabilities out there. just a few moments, please. [silence] so i turn to our panelists because each of you, we'll start with eleanor, talk to the difficulty of getting this was a

-- the stories with people with disability's out of the media. and i wondered, in campaign 2016 and beyond, how do we get these stories out so that people with disabilities are seen for having equal value as everybody else? >> in the campaign context, clarence said people love stories. and i thought again the young man who talked of the democratic convention. and hillary clinton in her acceptance speech followed up on that and said, i think he was like seven years old when she first met him and she lifted him he must havehe -- had a 40 pound brace on. these little touches stick in your memory and then make the stories come alive. hillary clinton right now is trying to promote her good character. and so now is the time, i think they are very eager to showcase people who she is help over the

years. but humanizing disabilities so it's not just one umbrella word. and also expanding into disabilities that we can't necessarily see. i think people understand when someone is blind or someone is death, we are familiar with that as a culture, but i think the word disabilities covers a lot more than that. i think the public has to be educated. we have seen so much progress in this country on gay-rights and same-sex marriage and civil rights. we're talking about everything. this is a moment for this it's community. the voting power is there, and so whenever you approach the politicians, i would have those numbers there. the fact that this community is getting more activists with each

passing election cycle, i think that's power, real power. >> i would say there actually is a little better coverage than we've had in the past. in part that's true, if you look at these tragic cases of people with autism or in some instances of mental illness being shot and killed by police. in almost every case, not everyone but almost every case it's a family member calling for help and what they get is a loved one who is shot. what we know as we get more of those stories out there is that crisis intervention training makes a dramatic difference, that for so many people with mental disabilities, and it's particularly true of those with autism and some others the , standard police procedure of giving in order and the command

and increasing the level of intensity has exactly the worst affected. and as you get people trained, there's a judge in florida who has done miraculous things who has managed to get police and other jurisdictions there more , than 20 comments hard to do because you got to go away for a week to get this training. a lot a lot of police think they know know what they're doing. but when they get the training they now understand that have cut the number of violent incidents dramatically. if we could get more of that, it would help. it's but i'm afraid it's going to take more than that and i think the bigger problem we have is not even getting the coverage of the issues, it is the larger reality that in congress not even where you have a consensus this is, we have them on a whole series of bills of mental illness policy that has passed

through the house and in some cases through the senate and heaven knows of anything will make it through congress before the end in this dysfunction. but but in every instance when you talk to leaders, it's yes, we want to do that but we need to pay for. to pay for me to can't have have revenues, you can't take it out of defense, you can't take it out of most of the entitlement programs. that means you have to take it out of food stamps or housing or a handful of other programs. as long as you have the handcuffs that keep us from getting the money to do what is crisis intervention training are all of the things they need to be done to provide access to people, we will be spinning our wheels. >> one thing that is important to note these days is just what norm was saying that there's not , much happening around capitol hill except us right now.

depending on how this collection comes out we may have more gridlock in the future. but it's amazing and absence of action in washington, how much is going on in the states that it has got as much attention as as it should . the laboratory of the states out there, everything from the marijuana legalization debate to the kind of issues we're talking about here today, very states -- various states are moving ahead. other states need to know about what works and those states where the greatest changes are working. i think, well, part of, the main advice i would give to folks who are trying to get their message out is to remember, you reporters to. in fact, increasingly you are reporters. because today everybody's got a tv studio in the pockets called a smartphone. today everybody is on social media. we've seen numerous examples where individual,

non-journalist, the whole definition is changing as far as i'm concerned. that's significant because me downtown, i may not know that wonderful story you are dealing with everyday that you take for granted because you see it so often but the folks downtown need to know about it. it means a lot more to here or go to a news conference and have actual people there who are age -- experiencing the issues we're talking about rather than just statistic. we were talking earlier about people with disabilities in prison. mental health care is largely unappreciated element of our private problems in the country. we need more attention to these aspects than just to the violence that is occurring in

our streets. what's the follow-up? there's a lot of stories come -- once i convince my editor can because it is a good story. it it may even be a good news story about the once in a while there is good is going on out there but it does get much attention as the bad news largely because the public doesn't have the appetite for. everyone says they were more good news that we know what sells. that's a constant tension we are engaged in. but something to be aware of when you try to get your message out. >> one of the problems, it was a good point, i want to pick up on what clarence just said in terms of good news stories. maybe we should all be grateful for the fact that you see all of the things like willowbrook that put disability on a map back in the 60's and 70's. and now we don't have those

horrible stories to that extent to draw attention to what's wrong. the problem with good news stories, and i agree, it would be nice to read a few more of them, is that by showing stories of people on the spectrum for people with disabilities who are succeeding, what are you saying? are you saying we don't really need any more services or we don't need a solution to housing or employment, so the issue these days are adult so states -- service needs because they have been a good job at the zero population over the last several 221 decades. now what we really need obviously because the cost jennifer works hard on is employment. we also need much better housing , better community living much , better solution for people once they drop off from school at transition age of but the 22. stories that we would tell, generally speaking, whether they be at a political convention or on capitol hill would tend to be people who are high functioning, people who are succeeding, and

that just creates the problem of what is the message we are sending if we take somebody like my son who is sort of poster child for autism, not severe, not high functioning, just down the middle, limited language or he doesn't have severe needs. he he has a loving, that takes care of him but his story is a lack of. it's a lack of housing solution for the future but it's a lack of a better job. he has a job. it's a good one. he could use a better so those one. stories are sort of, they don't come with pictures. they are what people are lacking. the stories of the past with -- were these horrible conditions in a place like low broke that obviously lead to improvements, vast improvements, don'tw that we have -- have the touch of stories, we do have little things that happen,

runners, leads to something like aponte's law or so the things norm was talking about with police not knowing how to handle people with disabilities. i think some states now including virginia there's something on your not driver's license whatever it is you have, and licensed that and said of a covers license that identifies you as a person with autism or those with disabilities or those are little minor solutions to i hate to call the minor problems but they're not the major problems of we don't have enough housing, we don't have enough employment, we don't have enough money. it's difficult to put a face to those problems because it's a it's lack of rather than a condition that you would expose like institutions of the 1970s. >> we are going to take questions from the audience after my final question that i will ask. my question is, there are two issues we're grappling with as respectably that i would like your thoughts on. one, we would look at the sort

-- when we look at the sort of poverty civil rights agenda, we , see these silos with african-american community with immigrant community or the has -- hispanic community are in silos and people with disabilities are not within those organizations. i know that is starting to change largely because of what rodney hood and jpmorgan chase are doing to make some of the national these accessible. but but also the disability organizations of which there's more than 100 different really good national disability rights organizations or service organizations largely around one particular disability. every single one of their ceos and presidents is white, every single one. so the first question is how do we break down the barriers so that people are disenfranchised can work together towards making that greater success in the economy and in other places like

criminal justice reform what people thought that the black issue and they didn't realize know, it's a disability issue also and here is how. and if you are minority or immigrant edge of a disability, all my likelihood for the school to prison pipeline. the second is that we have a great success with a candidate questionnaire to the presidential candidates. hillary clinton, jeb bush and others gave incredibly thorough answers. donald trump has not answered yet. we would like to see senate races and governor races for them to really search to address the policy issues in these questionnaires. how do we get candidates to pay attention to our issues? they fill out the questionnaires on guns and fortunes and so many issues but until now there has never been a candidate question on disability issues on a national level ever. those are my two questions. you can choose how you want to

and then they will turn it over to the microphone. there is now a microphone in the center of the room. >> i just want to say briefly, congressman brad sherman said you should rate congress, members of congress, rate officials, that letter grade, that is something people can relate to. it pops up in people who are interested in the disability community, and even those who are not will notice where somebody is. i think we are on disabilities, i would call it a market issue. it tells you a lot about where a candidate is an official is on the issues as well. so why would recommend it, i would take it at august the idea -- congressman's idea on that. >> many, many years ago the environmental community had a dirty dozen, and it really had an impact. no member of congress wanted to be a member of the dirty dozen. so i think taking eleanor's brad's seriously would be a good one. on the first point, jennifer,

this is a universal problem. look at the medical research and individual diseases that all see the others as rivals for financing. instead of joining together to try and enhance the overall amount of money going to medical research, they see everybody else as intruding on their turf. that's the problem. it's going to take some creativity to get organizations to see that there is a synergy here and working together at that than somebody trying to intrude on their own turf. somebody's got to take the lead and maybe that's one of the areas respectability could you. -- do. i would take eleanor's .1 step they shouldn't just be about or the. they shouldn't just be about officeholders. it should be about candidates. if candidates don't answer don't answer the questioner, put out something that gives them an app until they respond. and then maybe you get a little more sensitivity.

>> it's been interesting because legally our lawyers have told us that we can't give people a scorecard because we are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. so what we've done is we've sent out identical questionnaire to all the candidates come as a -- candidates, both elected officials and their opponents the candidates all have been so , we report it would not the answer it and then we have to give verbatim exactly what they answered. but clearly another entity could be formed with a different legal status because we as a nonprofit have a certain tax status that it's enables contributions to us to be tax deductible, if you can't do that and reach people -- rate people in that way. but it's a very interesting idea. clarence? >> you taught me something about not for profits. i'm on the board of committee to protect journalists which has done a lot of work as you noticed around the world.

we run a list of like the dirty dozen, the worst behaving countries, as far as journalists are concerned. even robert mcgaughey wants to be known as a respected leader. he hates to be on the list. we can get some leverage that way. this is something i throw out. i i think when it comes to getting attention to these issues, very often it gets issues a person with disabilities get overshadowed by other issues that appear more pressing. appear more pressing. i'm thinking about something osha's reminded of recently. you may recall one of the videotaped police confrontation episodes, a psychiatric, psychological counselor was tending to a young man who was playing with a toy truck, but the report came in that a man with a gun was at

this location. police arrived and, both of them lay down. the fellow who had a mental disability did not lay down. the counselor did lay down and held up his hands up and said don't shoot, i'm a counselor. he was shot anyway. of course an episode like that is going to actually make people think about the issue of police conduct. very little attention was given to the fact that this was a fellow with mental disabilities who need to attention and he's not alone. there are others like him. that's the occasion for activists to say hey, this is what is needed in this kind of situation. this is what is available. this is what ought to be available. norman is right, very often like minded organizations will field -- will feel competitive when

they ought to feel like coalescing. get the areas where you overlap and where you can work together. very often you can bring more attention to folks, well, the whole issue of law enforcement and police conduct to me is, so the problemso talked about before, 40% of incarcerated caps on disability. one repercussions of that, we need more attention of the to find out. >> you talk about the specific statistic. we work very heavily on the issue of employment for people with disabilities and we are constantly talking about how one out of three people with a disability has a job. one of the things we did find very helpful, and i think this goes to what eleanor and what norm was saying, is a rather than talking about the elected officials we just talked about , the stats in the different states. what we found was in some states, 50% of people with

disabilities are employed, and in other states only 25% of people with disabilities are employed. that is a massive difference between one out of every four and half have been a job. what was interesting to us at least was who the states were. who had the worst gap between labor force participation some , people would see such and such that has a bad economy. so what we looked at was the gap in the labor force participation rate, the percent that is in the workforce, people with a disability and without a disability and were the gaps the largest and smallest? what was the worst? maine. maine was the worst. people consistently think america, it is the worst it will be mississippi or alabama. african-american states will be the worst. vermont was catastrophic.

when we released those numbers, we saw, first viable inmate in maine who worked on these issues hated us. it was factual. we have seen some dramatic improvements in some of the policies in maine and we're hopeful that will make a difference. we had to go about it a different way. we haven't done done that on -- done that on criminal justice yes. we have just looked at national picture so you maybe think about that. >> one of the things come to something called stepping up initiative that has come from the council states of governments, the association of county of the american psychiatric association foundation where they have come to realize that the jails have this extraordinarily large population of people with disabilities, mostly mental disabilities, and it's an enormous strain on them. now they're working to find best practices to try to reduce the. -- that. my guess is that as you get back to looking at alliances, that

groups like the national association of counties and the council of state governors come -- governors, when they come to understand that the problems of homelessness, for example, can be reduced. al franken office is the best -- often says the best solution to come with it is to get people's homes. but it's also that if you can find ways to get him employment, then you reduce the economic burden on the county and the states. getting that message out through those organizations would help. >> i want to make sure i understood the first issue that you raised, which was what did you say, 100 of one to 50 display groups all white. is that indicative of whether its hispanic organization or black or poverty that in those populations there for civil rights issue tends to be that a -- and not disability were as whites are particularly may be well-to-do whites are coming to

this without a public issue, without a minority ethnic racial issue, and so that might be the reason for it. i don't know. >> right. so my sense is that if you look at his at the disability rights movement, i think i'm justin dart. just and are with this extraordinary individual from a very wealthy family. dart drugs. father was very important in the reagan administration and he himself because he was a wheelchair user, literally could not get into basins -- buildings. so his horizon were really, really hurt by the fact that he literally could not get into buildings. it was the independent living movement, the people who were wheelchair warrior spirit i actually look at them and i see white wheelchair warrior's. these are people who had a good education. the had a two parent family. they had all the skills and the drive to make it to the top of the corporate ladder or whatever

they wanted to go but because of the disability, their horizons became limited. and so the beginning of the disability rights candidate really comes from those individuals who have

meetings have been taking place throughout the city, throughout this nation talking about access to basic dignity rights based on ethnic groups are immigrants and people with disabilities could not participate at all. the person impacted by multiple ways that they had a minority ethnic or sexual orientation or whatever, and a disability found that they were unable to basicipate in their social justice movements.

we are working as an organization with foundations to fund poverty and there are billions of dollars going to enable people in poverty to achieve a better future, and people with disabilities cannot even apply for funding. of have to enter a portal race, gender, or sexual orientation and people with disabilities cannot even apply for the bunny. that is across the board that we are seeing. i can answer the question. explanation.he that just makes it much more lightning for all of us. on the question of campaign questionnaires, i know organizations like yours and others like to pin candidates down during the cycle of the election so they can then say you said you would do this and now to talk to put up or shut up. i understand that, but i think it's far more important, i don't